I've been gone from the U of M nearly 2 years now, and defended my diss almost a year ago. B may or may not get around to defending his thesis this summer. It would be fun to visit Mpls but I'm not making any plane reservations just yet.

I think almost daily about unsubscribing from the various U lists I'm on but I sort of like the flow of useless information, especially now on summer break, when I have only my brain for company most of the day and welcome the distractions. But I've finally established a NEW BLOG that will continue the thinking here and so this will be my last post in this space.

I have quite a lot to say about higher ed and have had no particular venue for it, so I expect to blog much more often in the new space. See you over there!

Lots of vacuuming - the tree was on its way to being a fire hazard. We stuck it in the snowbank out front that we made from the 4-5" of snow today.

Our coffeemaker died just after Christmas, and apparently Braun doesn't make our model anymore. Damn them! The department stores are mostly all sold out of anything decent - only the el cheapo and the very high-end models left after the holiday rush. (Apparently a coffeemaker is a common gift??) We've been limping along with an improv thingy in which we use boiling water from the teapot and run it through the coffeemaker's filter basket, but then part of the filter basket self-destructed and we can't get the timing quite right. Too quick, and the coffee is weak; too slow and it is too strong or bitter.

I've been trying to think where the old espresso maker was - and finally found it today in with some other kitchen stuff in a plastic bin in the garage. We hardly ever used it, but just cleaned it up and made some AWESOME coffee. I feel much better about life. Buon giorno, uno caffe americano, per favore! Only 8 weeks til Firenze! I am going to try to study just a little Italian every day to see if I can bring back some basic vocabulary and grammar. Ciao!

I soooo despise praising myself in cover letters. Look at me! I'm so great! Hire me! I'm the best at EVERYTHING (since you don't say what you are really looking for).

When I get really mired in some terrible sentence, I try to step back and try to be myself rather than shape-shift into what I think they are looking for. "To thine own self be true."

That doesn't usually work, so sometimes I have to pretend I'm someone else writing about me. But then my pronouns get all mixed up!

The upside to all this (which otherwise feels like a waste of perfectly decent winter break reading time) is that I have had to think seriously about my research "plan" and even if I am writing in a highly incoherent way about it (and trust me, I am) at least I am THINKING about it in productive ways.

Enjoying blogging again. Thinking of making time for it this spring semester.

Leading discussions with my crickets is hard - I could use some help. I usually internally condemn them as not having read the work, but actually I think some of them DO read, yet are afraid to speak. A radical geographer acquaintance attributes this to the class struggle - they are uncomfortable in college; have not been stars in high school; are insecure about their thinking and potential for intellectual success.

He is so much more charitable than I. Yet I am not convinced that it's my job to be a confidence-builder. Yet, to get the level of dialogue I want, perhaps it is all part of my work.

Tops on my list to find is stuff by 2008 Nobelist J-M G. Le Clezio. He is Mauritian-French, grew up in the desert as well as in Nice. His breakthrough was with "Desert" in 1980 - a lost culture in the North African desert, seeing Europe as unwanted immigrants.

Also he is atuned to ecology - see Terra Amata, The Book of Flights, War and The Giants. He tells his father's story in L'Africain (2004).

Alas, his recent notoriety (hey, just learned how to spell THAT!) means that his books are checked out from both library networks I belong to, and the hold lists are long. Someday...

Also when the library eventually re-opens after these pesky holidays, I will be reading about the Middle East and about the American drive to conquer the continent.

My ability to blog here may be ending soon, as I expect not to have UMN library access anymore. I'll have to figure out a new blog, which will probably be about higher education.

I just got an email from a friend (hi, Jeff!) waxing enthusiastic about how this is his favorite season. It's long been my LEAST favorite season: family tensions; pointless overconsumption. But I was a bit ashamed at his note - Christmas could be my favorite season, too: all I have to do is change my (bad) attitude.

In the meantime, Listening to Stone by Dan Snow looks like a really interesting book about the soul of stoneworking.

John DiIulio on the Bush administration: "the reign of the Mayberry Macchiavelli."

Tom Friedman on Iceland: "just a hedge fund with icebergs."

Again, Friedman, on the global economy: "We're all connected and nobody is in charge."

I successfully defended my dissertation this morning! Whew! - it was actually enjoyable: a delightful intellectual conversation with some really well-informed and thoughtful committee members.

Revisions are extremely minor: revise the abstract to reflect more accurately the contributions that my work makes, and removing a table (and the references to it) that doesn't really do what I had hoped it would. If I can get this done over the weekend, I can submit on Monday and be done.

So, yay! On to publishing articles! And yeah - I am supposed to submit an abstract today for a conference over Halloween weekend. Getting right on that....

As the nights grow cool (so different than the Twin Cities), I am focusing on energy saving measures. Our natural gas bill has gone up from $150/month back in the 1990s to almost $400/month today. Finding ways to be smarter about energy use is clearly on the agenda. B installed a new programmable thermostat for the upstairs zone yesterday, and we have been working together on sash repair. I suppose a clothesline is next. (ah, stiff-as-a-board clothing - so fresh!)

Never was so much time spent on so tiny a project: remove side rails (hard; the screws AND the side rails were slathered in paint); remove sash; assess damage; remove and clean glass; glue and clamp sash; lay down a bead of compound; insert points; realize that the other pane doesn't fit and that you've reversed the panes; remove points and start over; examine glazing and realize the profile isn't steep enough; do it again.

Tomorrow I hope it will be dry enough to prime. I think this is the only sash that is falling apart, but numerous others have their "issues," which need to be diagnosed and fixed before cold weather. Then, we need storm windows. If anyone has experience with interior storms, kindly give me a shout-out.

In other news for those of you who know me IRL, my dad was in the hospital for a week with pneumonia. He's been out for a week, and glad of it. It was a pretty hectic time, driving to the hospital to see him every day, trying to figure out what was going on, and to reconcile his "I'm outta here" intrinsic desires with today's medical expectations, PLUS negotiate all the family emotions/recommendations/expectations. In the shuffle, he lost his keys and I lost my cell phone. But I still have my dad, for which I am beyond grateful. He's quite a guy!

Oh, and also, he's old and crazy and his mindset is stuck in the 1960s. MAYBE the 1970s. But dude, it's the aughts - get with the program.

My antique hooked rugs have never been so clean! It's all good!

Good news: cut up a lot of leftover tenant crapola for the trash, brought tires up to DPW for recycling, really cleaned up the space. It's like a new garage!!

Bad news: sore and achy. And lots of hardware still to sort. I am my father's daughter - loathe to throw away anything that "might come in handy someday." But it's good to get it done. I am tired of buying home improvement supplies and then finding the same thing in a box or storage bin somewhere. Now I know: I have 4 regular hammers plus a tack hammer and rubber hammer; about 18 billion screwdrivers, 5 putty knives, 17 rolls of duct tape, and so forth.

I wish there was a way for us to compile "tool kits" for households in need. The stuff is used but excellent quality - and good tools is one area to which my usual cheapness does not extend. Really, you get what you pay for with tools. Cheap price = subpar performance and quick breakage (B is very hard on tools). I, on the other hand, have had the same wood-handled, probably antique flat-blade screwdriver since 1978, and it is perfect for my hand.

Nevertheless, we are gonna fight the entropy of the universe by planting grass seed there tomorrow, and I will eventually price the evergreens I want (Chamaecyparis obtusa) for the hedge against the adjoining shed. Then: the Mediterranean garden (all delicious herbs); the Japanese rock garden (I've collected the rocks already!) and the water feature.

A brick terrace surrounded with a mix of flowering shrubs and perennials. Coffee every morning. A fire pit with s'mores evenings. I have about a ton of biomass to burn.

(A 7,000-SF luxury home listed at $3.5 million on the site of a teardown is NOT a green endeavor, no matter what sort of spin the architect and builder are using to get some buzz for the property.)

I wonder if anyone has written about this community as a planned development? It's easy to envision the utopian world if you can start with a blank slate: creating healthy and vibrant communities from what exists is a great deal more challenging! And the utopian fantasy is well-traveled ground in academe. Still....

But all is resolved and they let him stay another night so that he can have a 24-hour drip of basically antacid medication. He has (if I understand the report and the Internot) a stomach ulcer and a condition in his esophagus in which the cells change into a different kind of cell, probably from continued acid reflux. They haven't talked about treatment, but it will probably involve medication. Mayo Clinic advertises surgical treatments, yuck.

The good news is that he probably doesn't have the very dangerous and demobilizing foot condition that we went to see the other doc about. THAT has to be a tremendous relief.

Back to regularly scheduled programming.