Whither Incentive?

School starts three weeks from tomorrow. A week from today, I fly back East for my wedding. So time is, as they say, of the essence.

And yet it is unspeakably hard to finish this damn article that I drafted last summer (and which remains an ungodly mess), or to polish up the details of my syllabi, or to finalize readings for my classes, or really to do any damn thing at all. Uck. How're y'all doing?

Je suis de retour

Once again, I find myself overwhelmed and paralyzed by the wealth of things that I ought to be blogging about. So, once again, I will simply jump in and write something, as disappointing as that something will doubtless be, and probably forego lengthy narratives about my trip (which would be uninteresting to all but a polite few, I'm sure).

I did, however, promise pictures. So here are three more:


That's me and TM (faces blurred) on a tandem bike near Villerville, in Normandy, atop a preposterously long hill. The bike riding was fun. However! I am a fairly established bikerider--or I was, having completed an AIDS ride in 1999, at which point centuries were a more or less weekend occurrence--and thus reasonably hardened to bicycle seat discomfort. The seat of this bike seemed pretty cushy: broad and modestly padded. But by the end of the day (we probably rode 25 miles, maximum; it was slow and heavy going), I felt that what a yoga teacher might call my sit-bones were being ground to a fine powder by means of rotation upon a granite slab. It hurt to sit down for the next two days. TM experienced discomfort, as well, but described his as more of an "impaling" sensation. We were delighted to return the bike at the end of the day.

But don't we look smart in our hats?

And here is the bizarre new branding that I discovered in Honfleur:


Hildegard has gone into business; apparently the abbess/visionary/renowned advisor thing just wasn't sufficiently lucrative. But hey, at least her remedies are organic.

This is TM admiring some curvaceous half-timbering in Honfleur:


Don't you like his hat? Unfortunately it was left behind in Paris. But since it was primarily suited to the resort-towns of Normandy--being all Proustian and all--perhaps that's for the best.

School starts soon, so substantive blogging may resume at some point. (Though there is that pesky wedding thing coming up in two weeks....)

Leeds vs. Kalamzoo: The Death Match

(That title really is too cheesy, I know. Apologies.)

Apologies, too, for the long gap--but seriously, France? Get some frakikn wifi already. What the hell? The like THREE places in all of France that claim to have wifi actually don't. In two of them, the owners (of the cafe or in one case a wine shop--why a wine shop advertizes free wifi is a cultural difference that I will not dare to explore) actually lent me their laptops. This was very nice of them, but certainly made me email in haste rather than blog at leisure.

So I'm at Leeds, and, as I don't have the proper outlet adaptor, will not be able to spend extensive time online for the next couple of days. Rather than regale you with hilarious pictures from the first week and a half of my trip (I promise the following: Me and TM on a tandem bicycle, wearing preposterous hats; a re-enactment of Marie de France's "Les Deuz Amans"; and Hildegard of Bingen's line of homeopathic remedies--they're organic!), I shall instead provide an itemized comparison of the most essential elements of the two major medieval congresses.

(Bear in mind that I have attended one Leeds panel so far--I arrived this afternoon.)

Dorms: Despite the shared bathrooms, Leeds wins. Vastly more comfortable beds (and it was made when I arrived! No monastic brown coverlet!); only one bed per room; non-cinder block walls; and a quaint little sink in the corner. I am also conveniently located near the hilariously titled "Female Toilet," so things are good.

Wine hours: Again, this goes to Leeds. Red and white wine! In glasses! Not swill! Generously poured! Hurrah!

Dining halls: Can't make an educated guess. I've only eaten in the Kalamazoo dining hall once or twice, and that was in 2003, so it wouldn't be fair to say. Leeds' food isn't bad so far, though.

Book exhibit: Here's where Kalamazoo scores some points--it's much bigger--although the more European orientation of the Leeds exhibit at least ensures that there's not too much overlap between the two. But as I'm saving suitcase space for wine and calvados, I won't be buying many books, anyway. (Still, it's fun to look.)

Conveniently, the two people whom I know at this conference also know each other. I had no idea. How nice! Just had a lovely dining hall dinner and a drink at the dorm bar (score another point for Leeds!) with both of them.

Paper is in the morning. I've convinced myself that it's better than I thought it was. We'll see--no one reads my main subject, so I anticipate roundabout questions.

Interlude

I promise that I will blog again someday. Maybe from France. Maybe with pictures. Who knows?

For the moment, I'm in NYC and depart for Nice tomorrow evening. Wish me luck with all the kids. (Erm, did I explain this? TM and I are escorting high school students on their flights to France. We wash our hands of them once we land, but in the meantime, any lost passports and drunken fifteen-year-olds fall under our jurisdiction. Yikes!)

Hope you're all well--I'm behind on my blog-reading, but will catch up sometime, I'm sure!

The Laziest Blogger

I've been planning a post called "The Laziest Scholar Writes a Conference Paper," but given my utter slacker-ness on this here blog, I think I'm going to have to continue to put that off and just give you a Lazy Blogger update. Actually, in other areas of my life, I have not been lazy in the least, so my apologies for bad blogging aren't going to be too deeply heartfelt.

Three good bits of news today:

1) My "heart condition" appears to be pretty much what I thought it was--not at all serious, easily treatable with beta-blockers, exactly what my mom has. I still have to wear a monitor for 30 days, but that will wait until I get back from Europe.

1a) I will be allowed to remove the monitor for my wedding day.

2) So far, at least, my co-payment for the various EKGs and whatnot has been $80, not the $2500 that I feared. I will not be surprised if I get a whopping big bill from the insurance chumps in a month or so, but for the moment, I'm happy.

3) I have a book contract. I have a book contract!!! Or I will, once the editor gets the latest version (it's in the mail) and gets the contract itself together. But there are no more potential obstacles: The Board has approved it!

Oddly enough, I feel less ecstatic about this than I expected. Maybe because I've been waiting and almost sure that it would go through for so long? Maybe it hasn't sunk in? I don't know. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy, and I'm not unhappy with my low-key response. I do think it's pretty awesome. But I'm not having a powerfully affective reaction at the moment. Perhaps that will come later. Getting engaged has been sort of a similar emotional ride.

I would like to note, however, how great this press/editor has been all along. He responded immediately to my proposal, and the turnaround at every stage of the process has been terrific. Through both review periods the reader(s) got through the MS in two or three months and provided excellent, constructive feedback. I really feel like it's a better book--and only a year ago I was sending out proposals! (Just under a year ago, actually. I see from my blog records that July 14 2008 was the day that the editor first contacted me, which means that I'd sent the proposal out about a week earlier.)

So yeah, that's that. And the other reason that I am not going to write a post about conference papers right now is that we leave for 5+ weeks tomorrow: first a 16-hour drive to Momland, where we'll spend a week; then we have a few days with TM's parents; then we leave for 27 days in France. Ta da! And we've had lots to do to get our house ready for our ex-student house/cat/plant/lawnsitter. At some point, we have to get ourselves ready, too.... Packing, for example?

OK, whew! More when I'm stationary. Maybe.

How to Scare Yourself

1) Have a doctor express a mild concern about your heart.
2) Give yourself an uncharacteristic attack of heartburn.

(This works even better if you've got a hypochondriac mother whose anxieties you can channel at will.)

Really, other than my panicky little freak-out this morning (and since Rolaids took care of the chest pain, I'm pretty sure I'm okay), I'm not particularly worried--in fact, I'm more annoyed about having to pay a big deductible plus 20% of subsequent costs for the tests I'm having than I am concerned about my "condition." Thanks for all the nice comments to the last post, though! I'll let you all know how things turn out...once I actually meet with the cardiologist on August 26 to discuss the test results. And yes, this is the earliest I could get in--the other two options were a day when I'll be in France and the day that I leave for my wedding.

(By the way, Belle--we'll be in Paris from 7/16-19 or so. And Sis--send me this legendary list of patisseries!)

Before I write anything of general interest: a tedious health update!

I'm 33 now (my birthday was yesterday)--and apparently it's starting to show.

I had a doctor's appointment this morning--just a routine check-up, but I wanted to ask about a few other things while I was there. First off, I have apparently gained 10 pounds this year. I'm still in the normal range for my height (and honestly I don't know where I've put those 10 pounds, though I do feel a little squishy some days), but this is not a trend that I like. It would seem, therefore, that the halcyon days of a high metabolism that kept me at the same weight no matter what I ate or did is over. No crisis exactly, but heck, I have to start going to a legitimate gym, it seems, sense the yoga options in these parts are so meager. I did some running a few weeks ago, and that was all right, but I have some knee problems (which I asked about today: tendinitis! Good news, actually, compared to the irreversible damage I thought I had), so I'd rather do something gentler, and the pool is closed for repairs.... This is a boring topic, though, so on to the more exciting health news!

I also asked about these heart palpitations that I have occasionally had for all my life, basically. My mom has them and is on beta-blockers, but it's not life-threatening or anything, so I kept forgetting to ask doctors about it until today. He was pretty unfazed, said that it was likely either a totally benign thing or a pretty common and non-worrisome thing for which it's a good idea to take the beta-blockers, and set up an EKG and some blood work. Ho hum. An extra thirty minutes in the office, I figure, oh well.

Two EKGs later, my heart is Not Normal. Whatever it is that's going on is probably no big deal and I've probably had it all my life, but blockage . "What's the worst case?" I asked him, and he gave the answer all in a rush but there was the word "fatality" in there, although he hastened to say that it was EXTREMELY unlikely that that was what was happening in my case. So now I have to have some echocardiograms and a stress test and wear a continuous heart monitor for thirty days, then see a cardiologist when I get back from France to discuss the results.

This was, I admit, a little upsetting.

But on the bright side, at least I'm getting it checked out, right? And it's probably something I've had all my life (it could be congenital, he said, which seems very likely since both my mom and my grandmother have/had similar palpitations, and neither one has ever had any heart problems other than that). But one does not want to have a doctor come into a room with an EKG report, shut the door, and tell one that anything is "not normal."

Between that, and our first pre-marital counselling session today (which was pretty cool, really, but lasted two hours), today has left me feeling emotionally drained. I'm happy tonight--TM has been lovely and soothing, as is his wont--but I am going to just write it off, work-wise, and do some pleasure reading, maybe watch a little TV over the internet. Besides, it's almost 9. Clearly I am not doing work today.