A New Year's convention that I'm adopting for the first time

Eh, what the heck. I'll do this rather than work on my MLA paper. But be prepared for lots of N/As.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

• Hosted three different sets of parent-visitors (my dad and stepmom, TM's parents, my mom and her friend) in a house that I actually own (or am at least paying a mortgage on)
• Paid a mortgage
• Had an article come out in a fancy journal
• Went to Ireland
• Paid for my mom to come with me on a trip (to Ireland, in this case. It was a very grown-up feeling kind of thing to pay for her! In fairness, she covered meals on the trip--but I bought the plane tickets and hotel rooms and all. This actually worked out really well for me psychologically, because I'd paid for everything up front and didn't have to fret about my bank account during the vacation proper)
• Rented a car all by myself
• Drove on the left
  
• Met a currently very prominent and (to my mind) rather loathsome political personage
  
• Got pregnant

The theme here seems to be: Grown-up stuff. Maybe I'm finally a proper adult?

Oh, and there were lots of knitting and gardening adventures, and probably a bunch of other stuff, too. I can't actually remember spring break at all, for example, so who knows what happened in the first half of the year.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don't remember if I had any. I think that I wanted to be kinder and/or more generous? I'm not sure that I kept them, if so. Those don't seem like quite the sorts of things that you can self-evaluate very easily.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

A couple of co-workers--actually, quite a few co-workers. Probably some other people, too, but I can't think of them right now. (I'm not putting that much effort into this exercise, evidently.)

4. Did anyone close to you die?

A cousin on my dad's side--a few generations older than me. Well, she was 91 or thereabouts, so quite a bit older. I hadn't seen her in a long time, but she was someone we always visited over the holidays until my family left the state I grew up in (when I was in my mid-twenties), so she was one of the relatives I actually knew best. (We're a pretty scattered--and smallish--family.)

I think that that's it.

5. What countries did you visit?

Ireland! (And Belgium and Finland in 2010--just need to toss those in here, even though they're past their expiration dates.)

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

A healthy baby? Maternity leave?

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Sept. 4--the date at which my pregnancy officially starts. (This is a bit of a theme, no?) Not sure about any others.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Good question. Um...making it through the Fall semester, which was inexplicably difficult? Getting a short story published (in a weird little on-line venue)? Making a journal out of paper I made myself? Those aren't very momentous. It's not that I haven't been doing things, but nothing feels like a Big Climactic Achievement. And that's fine. I don't think that life is normally measured in that way, and--as we all know better and better as we age--the thrill of The Achievement invariably wears off.

Oh! Just remembered! Paid off my student loans! That counts.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Again, not sure. I think that I was less available to some of my students this past semester than I normally am, or would like to be--but I also think that, ultimately, that was a good thing. Setting some stronger boundaries in my professional life is something that I'd like to work on this year. So no--this wasn't a failure.

Getting an article rejected, I guess, but "failure" seems like a pretty strong word for one of the inevitable set-backs of an academic career.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

A couple of colds and headaches, but that's all.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

No major purchases this year. I did pay for a year's subscription to a streaming yoga video service, which I liked a lot and will continue to use. And I bought some pretty sock yarn. Also a few really wonderful meals out with TM.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

TM, who is fantastic at all times.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Oh, feh, I don't know. Pass.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Mortgage. Trip to Ireland.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Being pregnant (although it took a while to sink in. It's still sinking in, in fact, and the excitement is still mixed with anxiety, so "really, really, really" is pretty much relative). And TM had a couple of articles accepted, which was great.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

N/A (I've listened to amazingly little music this year, in fact.)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

I was pretty happy this time last year, I believe, so I'm probably about the same on that score. Weight-wise, well, I'm up a few pounds, but to say that I'm "fatter" would be unfair, given the circumstances. Financially, close to the same, but we're in slightly less debt, so that counts as "richer," right?

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Yoga. Meditate. I gave up both in the fall due to first-trimester fatigue, which I believe was a legitimate excuse, but I intend to get back into them now that I'm feeling better. I have started doing yoga again, in fact.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worry, probably. That's always the case.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I spent it back East with my family. The littlest nephew was incredibly cute.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?

Already was.

22. How many one-night stands?

0

23. What was your favorite TV program?

Doc Martin.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No.

25. What was the best book you read?

Scott Russell Sanders, A Private History of Awe.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

N/A

27. What did you want and get?

A positive pregnancy test.

28. What did you want and not get?

Can't think of anything at the moment.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?

I saw exactly one movie in a theater--The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It was pretty good. This brings the total number of movies that I've seen in theaters since I started dating TM (in April 2008) up to 2: Our first was Metropolis. (I'm probably a poser, but I sort of love having absolutely no idea what's going on in the entertainment industry.)

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 35. We bought a new oven because ours broke the night before. My dad and stepmom took me and TM out for a nice dinner.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Immeasurably more satisfying? I have no idea.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Eh?

33. What kept you sane?

I wasn't aware that insanity was such a proximate risk.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

N/A, for reals.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?

Oh, whatever particularly outrageous thing TM read me out of the Times on any given morning.

36. Who did you miss?

A couple of friends. Family, sometimes. But I got to see a lot of them in the last few months!

37. Who was the best new person you met?

I don't know. I'm sure that there were some good ones, though.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.

No, thank you!

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

I repeat: No, thank you!

Free Dissertation Topic!!!

You know what I (& TM, who actually brought the subject up) would really like to read? A cultural history of nerds.

Seriously. Are they in fact projections of American anti-intellectualism? Did they appear as a consequence of wider access to education (and, thus, with the fear of intellectual domination)? Where did they come from? Somebody write this book, quick!

(Unless, of course, it already exists. I haven't actually checked to see whether such a thing's been written. Perhaps I'll do that now.... A cursory search of Amazon says No, as does the first page of results from a WorldCat search. People! This is uncharted academic territory! --And if I'm wrong, and you know it, please tell me so that I can go read about this fascinating topic.)

Least pithy ad campaign

Received in today's mail, and written out in prominent blue type, over a collection of smiling multiracial people with their arms around each other:

Q: How long can your kids remain covered under your health or dental plan?

A: Much longer than before in many cases.

Maybe it's the wordiness, or the vagueness of "longer than before" and "in many cases," but I find this curiously hilarious.

In other cheering news, Priss, our most melodramatic cat, has fallen in love with her new toy (a piece of string) and has taken to carrying it up to us and then meowing piteously (her meows are always piteous) until we play with her. It's really cute, and fascinating that she seems to understand play: she knows that we're the agents of the string's action, and she knows that she can get us to drag it around in the amusing fashion that pleases her so. I know that a lot of pets do this, but it's some pretty higher-order thinking, isn't it?

Not dead yet

I don't know why I haven't blogged in so long, and this isn't going to be a long post, either. I think that my last post sort of paralyzed me, blog-wise, because on the one hand I figured I should answer Maude's question re. proposal and ring (it's my grandmother's, by the way, so we had to wait a little while for it to arrive in the mail--it came with documentation from 1932! Perhaps I will show you later); on the other, I had work-related stuff going on that could have been interestingly bloggable; on the third, I felt that, while it would be weird for me to completely ignore the engagement business, I also felt an obscure pressure to blog something more academic. And so, in a triumphantly decisive gesture, I blogged nothing.

I was also absurdly busy last week: on-campus writing contest, guest writer visit (dinner and lecture), insanely important person's visit to campus (there were snipers leaning out of the window of the office next to mine, I kid you not; and also, the maintenance people painted all the peeling windowpanes), and then an overnight conference trip with a dozen or so undergrads (we got back last night amid rain and wind). Today there was a huge pile of snow on top of all the daffodils, so I stayed in quite happily, reading Virginia Woolf in my bathrobe and taking a lovely nap. Now the snow is mostly melted and I'm bracing myself for the next absurdly busy week. In fact, all of the remaining five weeks of the semester promise to be absurdly busy. If only the absurdity were of the amusing kind.

And summer will be busy, too, but in a more fun way: Kalamazoo, followed by a long lingering six weeks of watching the garden grow, then a trip out east, a month in France, and then about 2.5 weeks before we go back east for the wedding. Meanwhile, we'll also be looking for a place to live, and God knows when we'll actually move in together.

It's ironic: I know married couples who have to live apart because of their careers, but we'll be living apart because of (ahem) our gardens. I mean, the tomatoes will continue fruitful through most of September. We wouldn't want to miss that, would we?

(Actually, what we might do is move in together in mid-August or September or whenever, and then either keep our leases through September or try to work out a deal with the new tenants. What problems we have, indeed.)

Enough for now. I need to go to bed, where I will try to convince myself that another Spring Break begins upon the morrow....

Oh! And thank you, everyone, for all the lovely kind wishes! I agree with Crazy--being able to share good news makes blogging great. You made me smile, a lot. Thanks!

How nice!

Ortho and Medieval Woman have both given me Inspiration Awards! How very lovely. Thanks!

I am now supposed to nominate some other inspiring blogs. Here, after all, are the rules:

• Please put the logo of the award (above) on your blog if you can make it work with your format.
  
• Link to the person from whom you received the award.
  
• Nominate 7 or more blogs.
  
• Put the links of those blogs on your blog.
  
• Leave a message on their blogs to tell them.

Let's see.... In addition to, of course, Ortho and MW and the various other bloggers who, I see, have already received these awards, I will nominate:

1. Dr. Crazy, who always inspires me to, like, blog about something of broader significance, although that particular inspiration seldom results in action.

2. Maude, whose determination and honesty are so very inspiring in themselves.

3. Bardiac, who just seems like a really neat person.

4. Fretful Porpentine, whose life weirdly mirrored mine for a while back there.

5. Sisyphus, whose prose is too terrific to ignore.