It's Official: An Awkwardly Disconnected Blog PostI'm a crappy blogger. What's my glitch?
I finished grades on time. They were not the best grades I've ever given, but I haven't received a single complaint and/or request to explain why absence of points led to failure. I read my course evals (against my better judgment) and they were good, proving that I have no sense of what the students are thinking...ever. It's a dumb game to play--I hereby vow to never speculate again about whether or not my course evaluations will be good or bad. I play this every semester, and they are always good (knock on wood).
I started summer term. It's fine. Nice students, interesting class, etc. I'm just not into it. I am really sick of teaching class after class after class. (And I better get over that fast because I have another one starting soon. Blah. Wipe brain clean. Don't think about it yet.)
I'm working on my book revisions. My agent pitched the book at a conference and got a bite from a major place (my dad would say outfit, so I'm going to say a major outfit). The trick is I now have two weeks to finish my revisions. What the hell am I doing over here? Who knows.
I shall now tell you what movies I saw these past two weeks:
Duplicity--good, very twisty, excited enough about its own cleverness to make me excited too.
Gran Torino--excellent (save for a few bits of symbolism that made me want to roll my eyes because, seriously, Clint, we get it); one of my favorite movies of the year.
I shall now tell you what books I've read these past few weeks:
Still Alice--excellent, if depressing, story about a forty-nine-year-old woman who discovers she has early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Wouldn't that suck? Yeah, this book confirms that it would.
Made in the USA--okay novel about a couple of kids who run away and have terrible things happen to them; redemptive, I guess, but too redemptive to ring true for me.
Dark Places--excellent thriller/literary novel about a Satanic mass murder in the 80s. Gillian Flynn is my new writing model; her descriptions are just so good. She's a writer to watch.
Just Listen--a great YA novel about date rape; very angsty, but uplifting enough to feel hopeful.
I also watched
Lost last night, but I'll refrain from commenting in case someone clobbers me for revealing the ending.
That's it. That's all I got. More later...
Oh No They Di-intIt is not a good day to be one of my students. I've NEVER had such low grades before in a senior-level class. Wow--apparently these kids did nothing all semester long. No longer they looked so bright-eyed.
Coming Soon: A post titled "Why It's Not Good to Be Reading My Course Evaluations"
Today's News in IdiocyIn an effort to
strike through my list items on my last blog entry, I accidentally deleted the whole thing. Thanks, though, to
lisa b for sending all of my to-do tasks to hell!
Down for the CountNumber of class days left: 2 (!)
Number of final exams to give/attend/cover for colleagues: 4
Number of required fun events before the end of the month: 3
Number of optional fun events before the end of the month: 2
Number of papers to grade: uncountable (there aren't enough numbers in the lexicon)
Number of days til Awesome Man's birthday: 7
Number of parties to attend: 2
Number of cakes with profanity written in icing: 1
Number of family-friendly cakes: 1
Number of eulogies I have to write by the end of the week: 1
Number of words I've written so far: 0
Funerals of close family members that I am not attending: 1
Rating on the guilt-o-meter: 7,043
Number of movies I plan to see tonight: 1
Number of Awesome Man's family attending with us: 2
Amount of popcorn I intend to eat: a vat
Number of drafts I have to read before final papers are due: 10,000,0003
Number I finished before writing this blog
plost: 1
Number of days until grades are due: 12
Number of days until summer school starts: 12
Syllabi I have to write for summer: 0 (I'm doing the same classes as last year--finally, I figure out how to make my life easier!)
Number of burritos I plan to eat before the end of the semester: 3.5
Time I have to finish the novel revision: 1 month
Number of trips I am taking this summer: 3
Number of Kindle books I plan to read this summer: as many as I can
Number of times I plan to count shit and call it a blog post: 1 (or more)
AWOLThe only thing more
unforgivable than not blogging for months at a time is not keeping up reading the blogs I like written by the people I like.
Mea culpa. I hope you are all well.
Finals are over in ten days and then I plan to do the following things:
- Blog at least weekly
- Read blogs at least weekly
- Finish the revisions on my novel
- Read books on my Kindle
I wrote it here, so I have to do it. That's how it works.
Also, I would like to complain for one set of bullets, beginning now:
- Grades are due in 14 days; summer session starts in 15 days. What the hell?
- Both of my summer classes made in spite of my best efforts.
- I'm teaching overload next fall and 2 of the classes are new, which means I have to actually prepare them this summer.
- Fuck.
I will end this blog post by telling you that we worked on the yard ALL WEEKEND, which explains this pair of aching legs. But the upshot is that we planted rose bushes, trees, flowers, and all manner of nature-y things. Also, we dug up the scraggly stuff in our front yard that made us look like the
Clampetts. (Awesome Man has requested that I refer to that scraggly stuff by its proper Latin name:
Scraggulus Shittus.)
So this represents my placeholder until I can return in a couple of weeks. Maybe by then I'll actually have something to say.
It's Not My Fault That I've Neglected This Blog...It's Pinkdog's fault! She forced me to join Facebook, and now all I do is update my status. Thanks PD.
But I've done some stuff in the last month or so...
* I saw
Coraline--thought it was entertaining, but Awesome Man didn't like it all that much.
* Read
Outlander, a giant historical/fantasy/romance novel, at the behest of someone whose recommendations I trust completely. Thought the book was highly readable, but I'm still uncomfortable with the narrative strategy of domestic abuse=sexual arousal. And I don't think that an eighteenth-century setting gives that trope a free pass.
* Got fake tenure--woot! I'm officially an associate professor and will reap all of the spoils that come with that (haha).
* Signed with an agent at literary agency in New York for a series...a series that is not yet written. So I guess I know what I'll be doing in my spare time.
* Spent all of my spare time doing revisions on the novel that
is written. Feeling overwhelmed by it and school and everything else. The usual. Having fits of self-doubt where I question why I am doing this to myself. Wonder if it's all worth it. Will this thing even sell?? Then quickly forget self-doubts and watch
The Real World.
* Colored my hair. I'm a blondish person now.
* Kept up with
Lost and
Battlestar Galactica.
* Finally bought plane ticket to the upcoming conference at the end of this month. See some of you there.
Now I feel like I should have some kind of conclusionary bullet. Insert one here, please. I have class in a couple of hours, and I haven't done any prep work, and I'm wearing a bathrobe and slippers. How is this going to work out??
HodgepodgeThat's the one-word answer my mom used to give to me when I asked what was for supper and she wanted to let me know that she was going to clean out the fridge and feed me food that was probably sort of rotten and old. That's my blog post today.
* I got the final edits on a Boring Scholarly Article that I submitted forever ago. All the edits are easy little changes--accept track changes stuff--mostly related to the punctuation in the bibliography. Apparently, I'm a horrible bibliography
punctuator. The article will appear in
Boring Quarterly in the summer issue.
Woot!
* Conversations with Awesome Man:
Me: Name one way you are unlike Andy Rooney. Just one thing that sets you two apart.
AM:
AM:
AM:
Me: See? You are the same person!
AM: False.
Me: You both rant all the time and have crazy eyebrows. How are you different? At all?
AM:
AM: You see that guy over there wearing that shiny red warm-up suit?
Me: Yeah.
AM: And that stupid sideways hat?
Me: Yeah.
AM: I'm going to call him DJ Jazzy
Dipshit.
Me: Wow. Harsh.
Me: I'm on
Facebook.
AM: What do you think of it?
Me: I think think it's a giant time-suck invented to allow people from high school to contact you so that you can pretend that you are friends.
AM: I'm going to get an account.
[About 10 minutes pass.}
Me: So? Do you have a face?
AM: I did.
Me: Where is it?
AM: I deleted it after I created it.
Me: Why?
AM: I didn't see anyone I liked.
* I'm doing revisions on the novel today. I need to have them done in about four weeks. It's slow going, not because the changes are hard, but because it's hard to keep up enthusiasm on revisions (for me, anyway) when all I want to do is write something new. Story of my life: I always want to embark on a new adventure rather than seeing the old ones through.
* It's snowing.
* It was raining. AM and I went jogging in the rain.
* I have 300 (or so) scheduled appointments next week. I'll never get anything done.
* The fridge is empty: I'm out of hodgepodge.
