I love that for another semester, I work M-Th and have a three day weekend EVERY weekend!
Spent today at a professional development seminar. Some thought-provoking stuff, some people talking to hear themselves talk. "models of advising"? wtf. The possibility of a new system with five required "encounters" between student and advisor or a hold is placed on their registration?! wtf.
Yesterday I finished my chapter and emailed it to my advisor, and by the time I got home tonight, the markup was waiting. Mostly small edits and places to expand the thinking (what, 32 isn't long ENOUGH??) so it's pretty manageable. Onward!
Sigh. My old laptop is chugging away at something, God knows what. And so I wait, conditioned by the "I want it NOW" mentality of our age. I am spoiled: I have two laptops, set up a 90-degree angles on my desk, so that I can work on documents on one, and surf for information on the other. It's quite decadent, really.
I've written quite a bit of my tourism chapter today. Some of it is boring, workman-like description - but some of it, I hope, is more analytical and insightful. I have done so much less than I wanted to with this winter break. Yet I have worked steadily at times, and have kept at it, even when it was tempting to go do something else.
I am not sure what sort of sustained effort at writing is really possible in completely unstructured days, anyways. I can write quite easily in short bursts, and can produce about 800 words an hour if I focus. But I can only do that for 2-3 hours a day. The rest of the day, even if I'm sitting at the computer, is "worthless." Surfing, checking the blogs, playing games. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't be wiser to quit the office and go do something else. Yet perhaps the act of sitting here is worthwhile too - and I should recognize its worth and stop beating up on myself?
Yeah, like that'll happen. I have about a week left. I would like to finish this chapter, and at least one other.
I listened to a podcast from my undergrad college today. The topic was relevant to my teaching, at least on the face - and I was thinking it would be a nice change of medium to assign it to my World Regional Geography class. But the lecture wasn't very good - tentative, inconclusive, methodologically weak, unclear on any sort of hypothesis - and so I am not sure it's worth it. (I am always amazed at the dreck that passes for research in the academy: are my standards really so much higher than everyone else's??)
Remember that Simpsons episode in which Homer mocks Lisa for thinking that bacon and pork chops and ham and whatnot all come from the same animal? "Oh, sure, Lisa, a magical, mystical animal...."
Well, supposedly my grandma-in-law has an "apple" tree with all sorts of other fruits grafted on it (yeah, Grandpa was an arborist back in the day). Is this really possible? It apparently does have different kinds of apples: she gave us some at Christmas - yellow delicious ones, Cortland-looking ones.
Usually home apples suck; no one can keep up with the pesticide applications necessary to produce bug-free apples in this climate. But hers were remarkably good. I made a crisp of them, which we plan on eating quite shortly.
THAT'S TOO CLEVER YOU'RE ONE OF THEM!
(Sorry. Some of these I do just for myself.)
In other news, we de-Christmased the house today. Sad. Usually I am thrilled to see the tree go and the obligatory Merriment of the Season end. But today I was not. The tree was beautiful and it smelled great (even today when dry as kindling for a house-fire) and I shall miss all my ornaments (having not seen them for 5 years).
Feeling (finally) on the mend from a bad cold that grabbed me on Friday night. I gave myself permission to be a complete slacker yesterday: read both Sunday papers, clipped articles for school; watched a bunch of West Wing episodes on DVD; napped.
I may have the possibility of some contract work: more about that if it materializes.
Since it's 2008, it's finally time to pay attention to the campaign for President. I refused to take an interest in 07. I don't know which is more demoralizing: that we will be voting essentially for some sort of mediaborg, a complete fabrication of intersecting media news cycles; or that the candidates basically reinvent themselves for whatever audience they are in front of at any moment. Or perhaps those two things are just different aspects of the same phenomenon? My point is: there is no authenticity whatsoever in Campaignland: all is simulacrum.
On the healthcare front: I signed up for health insurance in mid-September. It was supposed to take effect on November 1. Our info packets came on JANUARY 5. The HMO, oh-so-clueless Neighborhood Health Plan, has a list of "available" primary care physicians, but when you call to arrange to meet them, you find they are not available at all! So, theoretically we "have" health care, there just aren't any network physicians available for us to see. (Well, there's always the ER with a $75 co-pay.)
Naturally there is no political will to fix the health care system in this country - but I guess I should feel happy that there are doctors in town, who, for a price, can see me. (As opposed to 98% of the world, where there are not doctors or if there are they are inaccessible or not affordable.)