This, That, Other

Today felt like summer. This is dangerous, but not too dangerous: three days of school to go, and I actually don't have much school-related work to do at the moment. I will soon, of course (I get papers and/or exams on: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Monday (x2)), but there's a bit of a lull here, when the grading hasn't started to roll in and the actual teaching portion of my year is pretty much over.

I gave my Presentation yesterday, and it was okay. Seven people were in attendance, including The Minister--about what I expected, actually. Approximately 8 minutes before I began, a student was sent in to tell me that the luncheon started at a quarter to twelve and could I cut my presentation 20 minutes short? Would that mean I'd have to skip a lot? Um, yeah, like half the presentation. So I told my little audience that they could leave early if they had to get to lunch, and I cut a few things out (weaker portions of the presentation, anyway) and wrapped it up about 10 minutes early. It wasn't painful. I did feel that I was babbling, as I so often do when I straight-up lecture, but it's over, and it was fine.

Now I just have that Kalamazoo paper. It's drafted, but I'm not at all happy with the last 1/3. In rereading part of Huge Middle English Dream Poem (HMEDP) last week, I think that I figured out an angle to help make that portion of the paper more compelling and to deepen the argument. Now I just need to do it (and read around to see whether other people could help me out here, and possibly read a little bit more of HMEDP).

What else? Well, we're supposed to be planning a wedding, so I guess I've got that going on. So far we're keeping it on the cheap, for reals, even though it looks like the guest list will be longer than originally anticipated. I bought a J. Crew dress for $78 and got some cool Fluevogs on enormous sale, although I'm considering wearing some $2.50 thrift store shoes instead (they're white strappy little sandals with low heels; the advantage over the Fluevogs is that they'd be a lot less hot, since the Fs are closed-toe) (also, the Fs have 3" heels, and I never wear heels, so this is scaring me kind of a lot). We've got a church and the reception will be in my mom's backyard. The officiant and the photographer are our friends; Mom (an artist) is designing the invitations; music will be a combination of ipod and family members, using my brother's homemade amps and speaker system. There's a restaurant near Mom's that does pretty chichi organical American fare; while the restaurant itself is a little pricey, their DIY catering is way cheap--as in, we could easily get a substantial and interesting meal for like under $8 a person.

All this cheapness is good, because of course we have to move soon--sadly, my delightful little cottage is waaaay too small for two people and two cats, especially when one of those people likes a good kitchen and both of those people own, you know, clothes--and the rental properties around here are few and far between. Not eager to buy, we're currently working on convincing a seller to rent her place to us for a while. Hopefully that'll work out; the house is a good size for us, although it is on a busy road (but across from a cemetary, so maybe that will even things out).

In other news, I went "running" on Friday and today. I use "running" loosely because I am so not a runner; I swim and do yoga, but the pool had been closed for repairs since February, and my home yoga practice, while usually regular (I fell apart a bit this month) and very good at keeping me in touch with my body, or something, doesn't give me much in the way of a cardio work-out. I also don't like seeing yoga as primarily a fitness activity, so I think that I need something else. So I've tried jogging (more appropriate than "running") for ten minutes at a time; since I don't have a watch, I carry my cell phone--with the alarm set for ten minutes and on vibrate--in my sports bra. It works pretty well, although the phone gets a little gross. But then, I'm apparently a person who buys sandals at thrift stores, so what the hell.

Railing, gnashing, anguish

I can't do it. I can't.

Yes, I'm being melodramatic. There have been (my favorite word:) histrionics (just a little). But oh, do you ever come to a point where you look at the papers sitting in a shiny tidy pile and think, I can't? I mean, you can't even imagine yourself grading them. It's like back in the early '00s when I was in a bad relationship, living with the guy, and I tried to imagine my future with him (marriage, kids) and I couldn't see myself; I saw some other person who was only kind of like me. That's when I knew we had to break up. It's like that. I need to break up with my papers.

I've read a few, and readers, they are not good. No! What happened? Their mid-term papers were better than this. I don't understand. It's clear that many of these students (in the survey) have no idea what a literature paper looks like. And part of that is my fault--if I have a smaller section next year, I'll build in some more writing instruction--but not all of it. They should be able to write more than six pages without packing in the blatant fluff.

And as I said, their mid-terms were better. In fairness, maybe they looked at their blank computer screens, and thought, like me, I can't.

So we're all caught in this sinister merry-go-round of impossible, reluctant activity breeding more impossible, reluctant activity. I will hand back the papers--eventually--ideally before the final exam--and they will look at the first pages, and contemplate turning to the back to see their grades, and think, I can't.

Two Conclusions

I mentioned yesterday that I'm working on My First Powerpoint.

Well! Having spent several hours today putting together twelve slides, I conclude the following:

1. Powerpoint is awesome.

2. Powerpoint is a phenomenal time-suck.

Irreconcilable? Perhaps. Nonetheless, true. I feel so accomplished today, having put together my twelve slides! And now [the first half of] my talk feels so organized! With pictures! Pretty!

Pray for me, though, people: pray that I do not become That Person who reads from the slides and doesn't seem to remember why she dropped in the materials she did. Pray hard. I'm in danger.

Some weekends are just like that, I guess

Really, not productive. So not. At all.

I've read for Survey this week, which means that I've technically finished my class reading for the semester. I do have some optional/recommended stuff to get through (i.e. finishing a novel of which I've only assigned a part, in case the students read all the way to the end, as I know some already have--not a problem, really, since I love this novel), but that's it. And after this week, the teaching itself is minimal: We're watching "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" for my Arthurian seminar next week; there will be exam review and exam in Survey; and "wrapping up" and/or conferences in Comp. So yeah, it's just about done.

Grading, clearly, Is Not Happening this weekend. Feh.

But I have this accursed Presentation. It's for a weekend event at the college, so it's not for students or faculty, and it's on sustainability--a subject in which I am interested enough to agree to do the talk, but on which I am not at all an expert. I'm not sure why my name was suggested to the organizer, but whatever. So I have to give a 45-minute talk, and I'm putting together My First Powerpoint, and I can't wait for this sucker to be behind me. I currently have a fairly long and irritating outline (I don't know why it's so irritating to me, but it is); a couple of books are stacked up on my desk waiting to be incorporated--honestly, I am probably close to finished with this thing, but I am actively avoiding it.

Part of the problem, I think, is that it feels intellectually dishonest, somehow. I'm not putting much work into learning about the subject--I have a general knowledge and I've read some books, so I'm not totally faking it, but neither am I being particularly scholarly. Yesterday I flipped through a book I've read before just looking for interesting facts to drop in. Yeah, I know--it's like the worst undergrad research paper techniques all arising from me at once. I do a Google search and don't even go beyond the first page of results. That kind of thing. Yech. I feel icky.

So, yeah, it'll be adequate, but weak. It's not supposed to be High Scholarly, or anything; this is not an academic audience. (And to be honest I have yet to see anything that is High Scholarly at Field. We do not have specialized lectures hereabouts. Sometimes this makes me sad. And when I actually do some scholarly work of my own--real work, not this lackadaisical halfassery--I realize that I miss using my brain in that particular way, and wonder how long it'll be before I've lost my research chops altogether.)

This post wasn't supposed to turn maudlin or self-pitying. Mostly I wanted to say that I've been a lazy so-and-so for two days, and this week'll consequently be a little stressful, but since it's the last really stressful week for a while (I'm deliberately blinding myself to the busy-ness of the grading-+-Kzoo-preparation period), I'm finding it difficult to alarm myself into activity.

With 8 teaching days left to go

It's a warm and rainy day; the birds sound tropical. If the trees were actually green, it would feel like proper spring--but there is green on the grass and in the bushes, and that's a start.

Instead of grading, or working on my preposterous non-relevant presentation or my conference paper, or even reading for class, I would like to scratch the belly of a slow loris. The Minister thinks that she looks like Studs Terkel:

Such cuteness being out of reach, however, I shall pull up an easy chair by the open front door, wrap myself more securely in my bathrobe, and start reading.

So *that's* why so few girls are willing to stand under me.

Ten facts about Heu Mihi.

1. On average, women blink nearly twice as much as heu mihi.
2. Heu mihi can drink over 25 gallons of water at a time.
3. During World War II, Americans tried to train heu mihi to drop bombs.
4. Heu mihi is the smallest of Jupiter's many moons.
5. Heu mihi will always turn right when leaving a cave.
6. By tradition, a girl standing under heu mihi cannot refuse to be kissed by anyone who claims the privilege.
7. The pharoahs of ancient Egypt wore garments made with thin threads of beaten heu mihi.
8. It is bad luck to light three cigarettes with the same heu mihi.
9. Heu mihi has often been found swimming miles from shore in the Indian Ocean.
10. If the Sun were the size of a beach ball then Jupiter would be the size of a golf ball and heu mihi would be as small as a pea.

Perhaps the best meme ever. I found it chez squadratomagico; you may generate one for yourself right here.

And now, I'm off to the Indian Ocean, where I go to avoid the ancient Egyptian weavers.

Brave New Blogworld

Yesterday I was in a coffee shop in Nominally Ordinary City, about 30 minutes East of here. There was a guy sitting at the table in front of me--blond, early 20s-ish, sort of a lite hippie vibe--working on a computer. His back was to me, so I could see his screen; he was working on a paper of some kind. Grad student, most likely (there was a big university nearby).

Then he switches over to the web and I glance up and see that he's on Blogger, editing a post. Hm, I think. I can't make out most of the text on the screen but I manage to get the last two words of his blog title. A little googling--the two words + "blogger"--leads me to a site that has to be his: same number of words in the title, tiny picture of a blond hippie-lite guy in the profile. And so there I am, reading the poem and little reflective essay that this perfect stranger has just posted to his blog.

The poem seems fine--"edgy," you might say--and the reflections smart, engaging a critical dialogue with which I'm not really familiar. (Grad student, I'm pretty sure, now.) I follow a link to the essay he's responding to, but lose interest before I actually read it. Back to work for me.

Was I being invasive? I mean, maybe, although I don't know this guy or anything about him really, and the blog is public and all. Riding subways in various cities I have sometimes imagined that I was a spy, trying to memorize names and phone numbers on slips of papers sticking out of backpacks and brief cases, figuring out as much as I could about the people around me before my stop. We let a lot show, a lot of the time. It is not at all inconceivable that someone in a coffeeshop somewhere has seen me writing and looked up my blog, reveling a little in her secret knowledge of me before clicking away, and getting back to work.