Sorry I missed yesterday. And now, I am sick.

National Airport (in DC), which I refuse to call Reagan.

Or, if not sick, then beset by wicked allergies. Either way, I am a sniffly, fatigued mess.

I have, however, managed to get a lot of course reading done, and tomorrow I intend to grade and prep, so as to have a reasonably okay week, despite the whirlwind of student conferences I have scheduled.

OK. I'm going to go sniffle myself away now.

Party Time

I love my husband, and I love our evenings together. But it is kind of fun to have a night alone now and again, isn't it?

He's got a dinner thing tonight and I do not. So! Here's what's on the agenda:

Cook up a pot of spaghetti and my favorite sauce-from-a-jar (Newman's Own Sockarooni).
Eat too much spaghetti, drink wine, and watch back episodes of "30 Rock."
Throughout, cuddle kitties.
Put on pajamas and read some stuff until he gets home.

It's funny how sauce-from-a-jar seems like a special secret treat. It's so declasse: a guilty indulgence. And that just tells you something about the fantastic-fancy cooking guy I married.

How the Cats Spent The Weekend

I didn't do much better.

*And yes, these are the only cats: Kittenfoot went to live with her lovely new owner--a cat-needing colleague of ours--on Thursday. She is missed, but not by these guys, who never even detected her presence. Lazy so-and-sos.

The Laziest Scholar Struggles with an Article

Maude has asked for tales from France, but I'll put those off for a bit, because I feel that I should at least gesture towards some sort of scholarly content on this here blog. I know. Blog as source of guilt? Wacky, huh?

Anyway, here's the problem with this article. Or the two problems, more precisely.

1) I quite simply do not feel motivated to work right now, and frankly I think that, despite my extreme non-workiness over the last week, that this laziness is somewhat justified. I do have a book contract, after all. Have I mentioned recently that I'm the first person at Field to have such a contract in, oh, forty years or more? No? Well, here I go, mentioning it!

1b) Oh, and I am GETTING MARRIED in nine days. Shouldn't I be doing something about that?

2) While I think that I do have some interesting ideas that I'd like to develop in this article, I started it a really long time ago. Thirteen months ago, in fact. So I have this draft, which I think sort of sucks, and some interesting ideas, and I am not the sort of scholar who decides to rewrite things, so I'm stuck with attempting to revise in my new, interesting ideas. During the course of "revising in" I typically wind up rewriting, but I don't like to think of it in those terms. So I have this 33-page lump of text into which I occasionally inject a couple of sentences before shutting my laptop in despair.

Allow me to walk you through the genesis of this "article."

• In working on my dissertation, I read a bunch of visionary texts and lives of medieval visionary women. I come across this one, about whom not too much has been written, and, while the narrative in itself didn't captivate me, there was an interesting paragraph in the prologue where the biographer essentially tells his readers that they'd be crazy not to trust him. This paragraph winds up in my last chapter as an example of a phenomenon. It is not discussed at length.
• This chapter, because it's about Chaucer, becomes the basis for a conference paper and a couple of job talks. Interesting Paragraph is mentioned in all of these later incarnations.
• I see an interesting conference CFP (Hi, MW!) and think, Hey, I could write a paper for that, and use IP as an example there, too! In the course of writing the paper, I re-read the Vita in question, and ultimately it becomes the focus of Conference Paper 1: the phenomenon occurring in Interesting Paragraph occurs elsewhere in the text, too, and I'm interested in that.
• Months and months go by. Last summer I decide to write an article based on CP1. I read the Vita for the third time. Phenomenon might be part of a larger technique for structuring how the audience reads the text. An article (which I actually think is okay at the time) gets drafted.
  
• Then I get readers' reports on my book MS (in September), and the article languishes. In the meantime, however, I submit a proposal for a Leeds paper on the Vita and a much more famous quasi-saint's life.
• Months and months go by.
• In June, I finally write the Leeds paper. I am ashamed to admit that I do not read the Vita for a fourth time. The paper is largely drawn from the slovenly article draft (I no longer find it to be quite so okay), although I manage to refine and develop a few ideas somewhat in the process of writing it up.
• On the plane from Paris to Leeds, I decide that I really ought to reread the Vita in case I get any questions or anything. (I don't. Get questions, that is. Or at least, no questions that require an in-depth knowledge of the text.)
  
• Obviously I do not finish the Vita before my paper. I wind up reading it (fourth time!) in France and when I get back. I finished it over the weekend.
  
• This time, I see LOADS of interesting things. All kinds of stuff about reason and unreason, inner and outer experience, harmony and conflict between body and soul. Fascinating asides. I start thinking that I could, like, theorize something here about subjectivity and the divine. Fantastic!
• I start revising. I write about two sentences. I read blogs.
• I start revising the next day. Work well for about an hour. Am confronted with hideous block of text.
• Open document the next day. Hideous block of text remains intact.
  
• Repeat yesterday.
• And today.
• Yuck.
• Can I just work on syllabi, or something?

And, you know, I really don't want to read this Vita again. I mean, it has interesting stuff in it. But, like all Vitae--and these seem to be my main focus of scholarly interest from now until forever--it is frankly rather dull. At least, I think so. I find them simultaneously fascinating (conceptually) and deadly (in the details of the reading). Does this make me a bad medievalist? Or is it a sign of Scholarly Character that I only work on books that I don't actually enjoy reading? (I do enjoy thinking about them, however. I'm not so dreary as all that.)

I did fall in love with a visionary Vita-type text, once. Book 2 of Gertrude of Helfta's Legatus Memorialis Abundantiae Divinae Pietatis. But I was a green young prospectus-writer back then.

On the plus side, I took really good notes this time around (insofar as I ever take "really good notes")--so maybe I won't have to slog through the whole thing again anytime soon. Maybe?

Trying to Work, and Failing

I need to prep for tomorrow--we're talking about Plato, for Christ's sake--but I'm having some problems focusing. Why?

Some theories:

1. The relatively huge number of jobs in my field this year. (Twenty-five straight-up medievalist jobs on the JIL so far, by my count. And that's not including all the "early English" and "Medieval or Renaissance" jobs.) And some of them would be amazing--of course, these are jobs I almost certainly* won't get, but I do love the dreaming part.
   (*The "almost" has no business in that sentence, obviously. Nonetheless....) (See? The dreaming at work!)
   
2. One of the jobs that's posted is a job I had an MLA interview for last year. Why might this be? And what are my chances this year? During market-season I develop a highly idiosyncratic system of statistical calculation; it's time I get back into that.
   
3. I dunno. I'm tired. Got in at about 10:30 last night after a solid 11-hour journey (door to door). The Metropole is too damned far away. Not a place to go for a weekend. This makes me sad.
4. I just went to a "tenure and promotion" info meeting. Of course, I'm not on the tenure-track here, but there's a chance that I could be eventually. So this was somewhat interesting.
5. My two comp sections continue to be dialectical opposites. Intriguingly, however, they have switched poles: the formerly-sluggish is now lively and fun, while the other one has gone from happy and talkative to downright mute. Ech. (But the lit classes are great! I love them!)
6. I have promised myself that I can have a beer when I'm done prepping, but I really want a beer now, and thus I am not prepping.
7. I have been very stupid in the arrangement of my Netflix queue, to my aggravation. So I have a stack of movies I don't want to watch (or don't have time to watch), and the TV shows I enjoy will not come until I have watched them. Why do I do this to myself? Oh, why??

Okay. I want that beer. Reward system, I command you to work!

Bored, Bored

I am sort of trying to work on my conference paper and am feeling...unmotivated. Here's the thing. The conference is in November, so I don't feel the enormous fear/urgency that usually prompts me to get my act together and fix the weird sentences, read secondary stuff, etc. All I feel right now is the obligation to get some kind of rough argument and analysis down on paper. Well, the "rough argument and analysis" currently fills 9 pages, which means I only have one more page to write. (Yeah, okay, I'm going to have to delete all of that vague waffling that I always do for two pages at the start of any writing project, as well as at least one utterly pointless section on page 4, but I'm not doing that yet. Allow me my illusions!)

So the point is that, while I'm not thrilled with my superlative academic achievement in this paper just yet (witness the following sentence: "A textual aside by [Some Guy] reinforces this view of his role as seeking to control his reader by arguing against a more cynical interpretation of the events of [This Person]'s life"), I'm still very proud of myself for having produced nine pages of prose four months ahead of time. And therefore I'm spending a lot of time screwing around on the internet.

For one thing, I just ordered the last book in that series that everyone's talking about. I was going to wait; I felt no urgency at all earlier in the summer, when I still hadn't read the penultimate book--which I didn't think much of, to be honest--and was going to hold out until it came out in paperback. But I'm too afraid of having the ending ruined for me if I wait that long! So I've ordered it, and I should get it right before I move, which ought to give me enough time to read it before classes start.

But, well, so my bloglines are empty right now, and writing this little post constitutes the next phase of Internet-Time-Wasting. I really ought to go undine's route and cut myself off from the 'nets for a certain number of hours per day; the fact that I'm widely publicizing such content-less ramblings is all the evidence I should need.

Praise me!

--for today, I read one whole article! Like, a 30-page one! From start to finish! In a single sitting, no less!

Celestial trumpets sound....

Not Working

Since my interview is over, and I've relapsed into my policy of slack, I decided to take the day off.

(Never mind that I worked for approximately 25 minutes yesterday. See, the problem is, I'm trying to prepare my dissertation defense [8 days until it's over!], and I just don't really know what to do. I have made up a Handout, and prepared an Elaborate Outline, but basically I could run through my argument in my sleep. And I fear that, frankly, it's just going to be boring. I know that that shouldn't be a worry [and it obviously isn't much of one, since I'm taking no steps whatsoever to prevent it], but I've given versions of this spiel SO MANY TIMES that I can HARDLY BEAR to go over it anymore.)

So, today, I went to a museum and saw a neat exhibit of fiber arts (e.g. unwearable knit and crocheted things). One artist had knit dozens of biologically correct snake skins (out of yarn); they were beautiful and surprisingly lifelike. Then I got a falafel and went to the park, where I saw daffodils, crocuses, ducks, swans, a heron (or a crane? I don't know), a guy playing a flute, and a turtle.

A Google image search reveals that what I probably saw was a heron. It looked like this:


In a little while, I'll go to yoga. And then I'll likely be exhausted and lounge around for a bit.

I used to be so industrious.... I do not, however, feel particularly bad about this prolonged slump. I mean, who cares, really.

How much money fits...

...in the very ugly pig?

Answer: $96.24.

That's: 1,564 pennies; 373 nickels; 552 dimes; 3 quarters; 1 Sacajawea dollar; 3 one-dollar bills; and 1 two-dollar bill. Also 5 Canadian quarters, 1 Mexican coin, 1 Spanish coin, and 1 Turkish Lirasi.

(Isn't the pig ugly, though? My brother gave it to me years and years ago, because it was so ugly. And strange. It's a pig that's painted like a shoe that's painted like a pig. I can't explian it.)

By the way, do you like the environment that I created for the pig's photo shoot? The pig is very scholarly. Given its looks, it decided that cultivating brains would be a good bet.

Speaking of brains--one of these days it's possible that I'll actually use mine and start behaving in some kind of scholarly fashion again. It's been a really slow month.

The Body Stronger, but the Mind a Fog

Okay, I'm basically healthy now. Still have the unpleasant residual cold effects (the peeling nose is the worst), but I'm okay. And I've been taking cold medicine before bed, which means that I've been having FABULOUS dreams;* at some point I suppose I'll have to give that up.

But I can't get anything done. It's not a matter of the will. Well, maybe it is. I don't know. I'm reading a hugely entertaining novel these days, and I have two more episodes of Father Ted to watch, but I'm starting to get a little bit frustrated with myself.

In the last couple of weeks, I've started a rather large number of books. If you were to read all my posts carefully,** you might think that I'm a prodigious reader of extracurricular medieval lit, but in fact I'm just not finishing anything. I have bookmarks bristling all over the place. It's annoying. I want to finish these things, damn it, so I can stick them back onto my shelves or into the big stack on my subwoofer or wherever.

But, instead, I pick something up, I read three paragraphs, I think of something I desperately need to check online, I go to my computer, I forget what I was going to check....

Oh well. It happens, right? Tomorrow. Tomorrow is the day I start to seriously get myself together. Tomorrow is the day I drink extra coffee, if need be. Yep. Right-o.

*One thing I notice with the cold medicine is that when I wake up in the middle of the night--which I do, often--I can just sort of lie there and it's as if I'm still sleeping. I'm not, and I know it, but I'm still having these wild and vivid dreams. And then sometimes I think I'm just lying there awake but in fact I am asleep, as I discover when I look at the clock and two hours have gone by. It's a disturbingly pleasant state to linger in, this in-betweenness.

**A practice that I do not recommend.

I have taken to my bed

That was pretty much implied in my last post, I guess. But I wanted to write it anyway.

After six hours, I'm kind of staving off boredom. I finished the back issues of Bust magazine my friend gave me, and just purchased an album by El Perro del Mar with an itunes gift certificate. (The album is fabulous and strange--the ethereal vocals and sock-hop melodies remind me a little bit of the soundtracks to various David Lynch movies.) I'm listening to it off my laptop with my big-ass nerd headphones while I read the Letters of Direction section of Abelard & Heloise. (Maybe that's accountable for some of the boredom?) I've also rented a Jane Austen movie and the first season of Father Ted. Father Ted is heralded, on the back of the box, as "the best program about three Catholic priests stuck on a very small island." Good times ahead.

Luckily I have enough food to get me through lunch tomorrow. The wind is screaming and shaking my house and DAMN but it's cold out there. There's something pleasant about being holed up--for the first day, anyway.... Actually, it's probably a good thing that it's so cold; otherwise I might be tempted to go out and spread my germs.

Chinese New Year Extravaganza

Had a very fun, very LATE night yesterday at a Chinese New Year's party. Saw some people I hadn't seen in a long time. Drank a lot of kumquat martinis and played an exciting dice-rolling game that involved a great deal of shouting. Won enough cash to pay most of the cab fare home. It was a good night.

--Followed, however, by an exceptionally slow day. It's, what, 3:30? I have done nothing. And I'm looking forward to its being nighttime so that I can go back to bed. Late nights just destroy me, kumquat martinis or no.

Oh well; these weekends don't come along very often. Besides, aren't there people out there who actually take the weekends off? I'll make some kind of half-hearted effort at revising a chapter, and call it a day, I think.