In which we revert

Since I can't manage to make Google searches ignore me, I'm switching naming conventions back to this older style. Annoying, because I liked using the song titles, but what ya gonna do. So, I've added odd characters in the middle of some of the older post titles to head off those looking for lyrics. But if anyone has further suggestions for cloaking myself in secrecy (wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce), they'd be appreciated.

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"Do You Realize?" The Flaming Lips

Dude, the universe is whispering at me. A local newscaster just quoted a line from Bacon that a good chunk of my first chapter hinges on. And last night's Boston Legal featured a closing argument that weirdly paralleled the last chapter I was working on. Something's in the air.

But, seriously, what local tv reporter quotes Bacon, for Francis's sake?

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"That Teenage & Feeling," Neko Case

I'm in grading hell this weekend: thirtysome midterm exams, an equal number of essays, two days' worth of reading responses for my first-year class, and a bunch of weekly quizzes. All but the essays should go quickly, but gah all the same. My own stupid fault for having a week that kept me on public transit for approximately twice the number of hours I spent in class.

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"You Just Haven't ^ Earnt It Yet, Baby," Kirsty McColl

Apropos of nothing other than Flavia's new, pretty things, I recalled the one good thing that's come of this quarter's hellish teaching schedule: Because I have a hefty commute between UChaos and St. Happy, I wear my Chucks to trek, and take my lovely but brutal shoes to wear for class. Yes, it's reminiscent of office-ladies wearing their Reeboks on the subway while carrying their sensible pumps in their shoulder-bag, but it's also an excuse to break out the high, high-heeled pointy, pointy-toed lovelies for stalking around in front of the chalkboard.

In other news, this week still sucks. But Big Fancy Name in my field seemed persuaded as to the interestingness of my project.

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"White Girl," X

So, hi. There was a very bad weekend, followed by a rather bad week. There were tears, and general freaking-out, mediated by an emergency meeting with Sympathetic Job Committee Chair, where she talked me down and helped me sort out what needed to be done with the materials. And then I spent the whole weekend rewriting the letter, abstract, and c.v., as well as line-editing the two drafted chapters and slapping the Monster Chapter into draft status. Nearly kilt me, I tell ya. But! I was able to send an entirely new and complete batch of materials off to my committee on Sunday night.

Which meant I was able to show my face at My Field Event on Monday evening. I suspect that my chipper presence did as much to persuade as the materials themselves did. At least, I'm telling myself that, as I've heard not a peep since then from any of my referrers. Hm.

And then! Then, I crashed. Thank goodness this was midterm week for one class, because there was no way I could have done any more prep than I managed on the (very early) bus to campus.

There are now two application packets resting quietly in my desk at St. Happy, waiting to be sent out on Monday, along with one electronic application to be submitted the same day. But I still need to line-edit my writing sample and write up something that looks at least a little like a teaching philosophy for deadlines later this week.

Aaaaaannnnnndddd...I don't want to. I'm feeling sulky and recalcitrant. This is the nasty flip side to my short bursts of intense productivity. They wipe me out for, like, a week, and I have a miserable time re-motivating myself. Which is bad, because there's a heck of a lot to be done this weekend, in addition to the job stuff. I have midterms to grade, along with two piles of essays, plus reading for class, reading for another My Field Event on Monday, and reading for a Superstar Guest meeting on Wednesday. Who sucks at time management? I do!

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"Every Day I % Write The Book," Elvis Costello

So here we are, officially homeless for the week, ensconced in a hotel in the first neighborhood we lived here in Big City, while the construction on our apartment commences. It's nice to be back around these parts. It is not so nice to cart six suitcases filled with class clothes, regular clothes, shoes, dopp kits, computer and accessories, and all the damn books and files I'll need to work on my chapter, chapter revisions, job letter, and teaching philosophy this week. Seriously, the book suitcase is very upsetting to me, as it's a concrete representation of what I have to distill onto the page. Luckily, the book suitcase is also topped off with back copies of Entertainment Weekly.

Also, we have two bathrooms in the room, due to the architectural oddities of old hotels.

Cats went to the pet hotel, and I'm sure they're fine, but I was a crazy cat mom while dropping them off, giving extensive and detailed feeding instructions. I did, however, stop short of explaining how you have to sing songs to Maggie in which all the words are "Maggie," "beauty," "beautiful," and "pretty."

Now I have to watch some football, mark some writing assignments, and finish writing my syllabus for my UChaos class. I'm confident that I can complete the first of those tasks.

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"Your Biggest Fan," Voxtrot

Oh, dear. We're going to have to spend the next week in a hotel, with the cats at a cat hotel, while major construction is done on the apartment. The landlords are installing central air and heat, which involves cutting holes in pretty much every single wall in the place. Also, I'm losing my walk-in closet, because that's where the machinery goes.

Had this happened a month ago, we could have just grabbed some clothes and decamped, but now that classes have started, relocating means also relocating all class-related paraphernalia. Plus, this week is C.'s birthday, which he now gets to celebrate by placing all of our belongings in dust-proof containers. Fun!

Today, I went to get a cat carrier (one of ours has gone missing), only to discover that Maggie just barely fits into the soft-sided thing I got. Also, pet store overcharged me for it, by, like, $20. Tomorrow, the kitten crew goes to the vet for booster shots. And I alone will be carting the 40 pounds of cats around, as C. has an ungodly-early class.

Wah.

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"Sister Sonny," Holly Golightly

Shockingly, perusing The Goddamned List and trying to work on The Godddamned Chapter simultaneously is decidedly unproductive on both fronts.

Edit: I split the difference by spending a while searching the list and setting up my job spreadsheet, so I could feel productive and organized. Then I turned to the chapter, and have managed a measly 3 pages (and one of those is mostly a 25-line block quote). Why is this chapter being so recalcitrant? I have 23 pages of straight-up close readings; you'd think it would be easy enough to build a frame around those, right?

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"Eye of Fatima (Pt. 1)," Camper Van Beethoven

I've maintained for years that this is one of the best songs ever written, but today I discovered I'd been hearing one line wrong since forever. It's "No one ever conquered Wyoming, from the left or from the right." Which makes more sense than what I'd been hearing all this time ("called from Wyoming"), if only incrementally.

Today was a meeting at Chaos about Ambitious Intro Class that starts in two weeks. Somehow, hearing that everyone else is feeling anxious and confused about it made me feel less anxious and confused. I still need to look over some articles to fill out the syllabus, but I feel ok about getting to that next week.

Big Willie is continuing to make me scattered and time-management-impaired. I really need to scale back the information I'm throwing at them, but it already seems that every other sentence out of my mouth is "But we'll get to that next [class/week/text/etc.]." Tomorrow's their first quiz, next week the first writing assignment, so I'll start to see what they're taking in and what I need to focus on.

In dissertation news, I seem to be reading myself into paralysis again. Which means I need to get back to writing. I have Friday blocked out to just sit and produce words, after which I can go out and drink with a friend from out of town.

And just to round out this portmanteau post, today I enjoyed two delightful consumer goods: First, a fantastic clippy pressboard binder thing I liberated from the supply closet at Chaos. Second, these

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"Guided by Wire," Neko Case

Why I Am Annoying (#614 in a series):

Every time I eat plums, I have to recite "This Is Just to Say" to Mr. Eph.

The solution? Pluots.

So, class happened. It was a hot day, with eight thousand percent humidity, and while waiting for the train I had sweat actually dripping down my face. I took to blotting my décolletage like a hot-flashing grandma. So, so pretty, I was.

The classroom was also too hot, which made me extra-manic, what with the pacing and the gesticulating (my gesticulations bring all the boys to the yard, damn right, they're better than yours). While the location of the classroom is fantastic (right across the hall from the adjuncts' office), it doesn't have a podium, and the desk is actually lower than the student desk/chair combos. There is, however, a comfy upholstered desk chair, all the better for lounging in during the cabaret performances that I'll be assigning, because there's also a piano.

Not the best opening day, overall. I screwed up my dates, meandered a bit, overshot the time and didn't get through my first exercise. Eh, whatever. Next time we dive in to Favorite Play and things will go more smoothly, I'm sure. If only because the weather's finally turned and I just got an awesome dress I eBayed for half its retail. Go, me.

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"When You Land % Here It's Time," The Shins

So, there was a birthday. And there was a good dinner, and a deeply fantastic lemon tart. And a night out at the birthday party for my favorite bar. All fairly low-key, but nice.

Today has been spent cleaning the apartment in preparation for the new school term. Granted, the dining room table is still covered in piles of articles and books for Massive Chapter (which is stalled at 16 pages of unconnected close readings. I've been reading all week, trying to formulate a frame for the argument. Gah.) and bags from my mostly-failed back-to-school shopping trips this week. I've managed to buy lots of makeup, but no clothes except for a party dress. Because I clearly needed another party dress. For all my parties.

Ahem, so, makeup. I bought some. Lipstick is apparently back this fall, and I'm in favor of this development. I'm trying out a few different reds and wines. And I bought new eyeliner, which is more exciting than it sounds. There was also a haircut and color, and they are both excellent and delightful.

Tomorrow, Mr. Eph and I head out to locations southerly for my cousin's Backwoods Hippie Jamboree Wedding. I should probably be packing, and checking weather forecasts, but instead I'm watching What Not to Wear and catching up on blogs. And I'm apparently in denial about classes next week, as I have yet to even look at my syllabus for the Big Willie class. Eh.

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"When We're Dancing," Magnetic Fields

I am mercifully without an earworm today, so this is a random track from the player.

How is it that, with a month to go before classes start, I've gotten my second library recall notice of the week? That makes four total for the summer, which is more than I've ever been victim to before. Has the Unspoken Law of Summer Books been changed or something? And this last one is a book I'm currently working with, so I'll be waiting until the very last moment to turn it in and then recall it immediately.

Haircut tomorrow, then a birthday dinner out. No writing, per se, the last couple of days, but lots of reading and note-taking. I think I can see how the frame for the argument is coming together.

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"99 Luftballoons," Nena

Saw Branagh's new As You Like It last night and it was... not good. Really weirdly tricked-up for no good reason, with abrupt and pointless shifts in tone, and most of the great and strange lines were cut out. "Sweep on, ye fat and greasy citizens"? Gone. Touchstone's "Much virtue in If"? Gone. Rosalind's examples of "men have lived and died, but not for love"? Gone. Phebe's railing at Silvius that if she's killed him with love, why isn't he dead yet? Gone. And why is Kevin Kline only doing Sad Clown now? He's a perfectly fine Normal Clown. His Jacques here seemed to be an extension of his Bottom in Midsummer a few years back. Alfred Molina's Touchstone was great, but played as far smarter than he really should be, if you ask me. The epilogue was cute, though.

I just want Branagh to get back to the tragedies. Or the romances, which would fit his oscillation between serious and silly much better. I'd kind of love to see what he'd do with Measure or Winter's Tale.

Very little writing accomplished yesterday, but I did some reading and found a chapter in which the author does a whole lot of the work I'd otherwise have to do to make my point, but arrives at entirely the wrong conclusion. I'd forgotten the best part about other critics: you can make them do all the work and then sweep in to make the better point at the end. So, today, as a break from the ongoing close-reading I've been writing up (why did I think that I needed 20 pages of close-reading? Do I still think this?), I'll be arguing with Big Name Guy in this subfield.

"Touched by the Hand of God," New Order

Clearly, C. has been influencing the music in my head.

Ok, the previous plan? Not terribly successful. I just sat at the dining-room table and looked at all the same online stuff that I look at while on the couch. I managed about two paragraphs over about two hours. The work-every-day thing, I just can't get myself to commit to. So, back to the short bursts of manic productivity that have been my compositional mode for my entire academic career. I'm too old a dog for that particular new trick.

Mostly, I'm trying to convince myself that I can get a full draft of this chapter together before we go out of town next week. Of course, also in the next week I need to: do some back-to-school shopping (clothes! shoes! random crap!), get my hair cut/colored, clean the apartment before classes begin, do a ridiculous amount of laundry, have a birthday. Still, possible!

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"The Frug," Rilo Kiley

My treat today, if I manage to get enough work done, is to buy the album that contains the above song.

I'm trying to trick myself into working by altering my surroundings. Instead of playing around online while sitting on the couch, I've relegated the laptop to the dining-room table. I'm still wasting time before actually working, but I had my coffee while watching the news and reading a magazine, rather than getting sucked in to Jezebel for a couple of hours. Not sure it's working as well as planned, though.

Made my apple-cider pie last night and it turned out better than I had expected. Because I'm more of an improvisational baker than is probably a good idea, I used hard pear cider rather than the plain and sober kind. Still, quite good. Better than Jimmy Fallon's, even.

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"I Love to Hate You," Erasure

I'm pretty sure I danced to this at Neo last week. Ah, the Roaring Nineties.

I'm actually writing right now--one whole paragraph written. I feel guilty when I don't write, I feel guilty when I don't write enough, but at least making a stab at it for a couple of hours helps take the edge off my bad-feeling.

And then I get to make an apple pie. That's the carrot at the end of today's stick.

EtA: Two and a half pages, one scene. Maybe I should look into one of those page-counter widget things. Also, my space bar is sticky, so half ofwhatIwrote looks like that, like I'm writing in classical Latin orsomething.

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"It's Magic," Pilot

That's the song I woke up with in my head this morning. I had assumed it was ELO, but Google tells me it's a one-hit-wonder by a band called Pilot. Hm.

Yesterday was... not so good. My left eye leaked all day due to sinus stuff, making me unfit for anything other than shopping for shoes online and watching baseball. Will attempt again today.

And I think I'm really done with the hithering and yon-ing and have settled down here. Wordpress is lovely, but that's also where I'm keeping my reading-notes blog, and I couldn't figure out how to isolate that from the main frivolousness, so back to Blogger for me.

EtA: The goal was close-readings of two scenes (the series of close-readings makes up the middle of the chapter, where I'm talking about how a concept is being structured and manipulated). I managed two-thirds of one scene, but it's the knottiest scene I'm dealing with in this chapter, so I'll call that a minor success. Four pages, which is... ok, I guess. There's something more to be said about the closing of the scene, but I don't know what it is quite yet.

In which I discover a new thing

How is it that I had not previously been aware of this information? This will be making my life easier in so many ways.

That is all. (Oh, and the chapter did, indeed, get written, in two marathon days. It's not fantastic, but it's decent and needs only minor structural and logical revisions at the moment. Yay!)

In which I make some staggering observations

• When one waits until two days before an immutable deadline to write the final 2/3 of a chapter, in addition to whipping the first 1/3 into manageable shape, the concomitant stress may result in a certain wild-eyed demeanor and uncontrollable twitches.
• When one achieves the completion of said chapter, one may spend up to five hours playing World of Warcraft in celebration.
• When one's youngest cat, a normally hefty young fellow, suddenly refuses to eat for a number of days in succession, one may become panicked. After taking said cat to the vet for a battery of tests and x-rays, one may be confused at the lack of clear diagnosis. When the vet finally suggests that the cat may be suffering from low-grade asthma and maybe the cat owner could cease smoking in the closed-up-for-winter apartment in which the cat resides, the cat owner may feel overwhelming guilt.
• When one ceases smoking in a closed-up-for-winter apartment, said apartment almost immediately becomes much better-smelling and more pleasant to be in.
  
• When one begins smoking exclusively on a semi-enclosed back porch in Chicago in January, one's cigarette consumption is almost immediately cut in half.
  
• Chicago in January is quite cold.
• When one's cat finally begins eating normally again, even begging for extra treats in the middle of the day, one may be quite happy about this turn of events. One may even feed said cat canned chicken in celebration.

Addendum 2/1:

• Just when one thinks all is well with the cat, the cat may develop a decidedly distressing UTI, resulting in even more anxiety and vet visits for all involved.
  

In which I make no small plans

Hey! Guess what I'm doing today? Writing! No, really! I have at least half a paragraph of totally brand-new stuff! And about a page of copy-pasted stuff that totally counts!

Argh. I've been entirely off my game lately, with absolutely no progress being made on either the under-revision chapter or the new one that I want to have done by the end of the month. Part of the problem is that up to this point, I've basically be re-working previous material, which is not fun, but not terrible either. And now I have to make the turn into working from scratch on the rest of the dissertation. And I haven't started from scratch in a long, long time. I think I've forgotten how to start.

If I were smart, I'd take my own advice to my students: start writing somewhere in the middle and worry about the beginning later. But I just can't. So I'm cobbling together a provisional beginning (which will actually turn up in the middle of this two-play chapter) and hating every letter of it. Bah.

But my point here wasn't so much to complain (ok, maybe a little), but to plan. I want to churn out at least three pages every non-teaching day, and get some reading done on teaching days. Weekends will be negotiable, as I suspect once I hit stride I can (and will have to) do far more than three pages at a stretch. I need a reasonable version of this material ready for public consumption by the 29th, so we'll see if the threat of a deadline will help. And then I have two conferences back to back, presenting material that's in decent shape already. Wish me luck.