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August 29, 2004
Apt. 11D: New addition to the blogroll
I came across this by chance, but I'd like to follow this up. One seeming disconnect between me and my fellow PhD students (and some faculty as well) becomes particularly boldfaced during "extracurricular" events, like the potluck we had this week to welcome new students/faculty. That is, we are all smooshed into one house, are feasting and imbibing with relative abandon, and while I am ready to forget, for just a moment, that I have 15 books stacked on my desk at home awaiting that frantic sticky-tab franzy I like to call reading, there are always a handful of revelers who corner me to discuss projects, exams, diss work, etc. I was cornered twice thusly last week.
I am not averse to "talking shop" while outside the proverbial shop. However, once a conversation begins that is seated in scholarship, something happens (like...*poof*) that makes it awkward or inappropriate for the conversation to segue into non-academia. It makes me sound/feel like a doofus. Let me illustrate:
party-goer: "I simply felt as though the presentation lacked a clarity of frame; that the author continually re-shifted her angle creating a problematic disjunct between herself and the audience."
me: "uh-huh."
party-goer: "...and she had several opportunities to connect her work to obvious theory-heros, but it was almost as though she hadn't read them..."
me: "oh..."
party-goer: "worst was her complete lack of awareness concerning femininst and critical pedagogy..."
me: [eyes glazing, shoving curry into mouth to avoid having to speak]
party-goer: "...all told, however, a well-delivered talk, one I may be able to return to, as a springboard into [blah blah blah]..."
me: [as party-goer pauses to sip wine] "Did I mention that little Billy is walking? Not even ten months old yet!"
party-goer: [with something like pity in her eyes] "oh..."
There is a lot more going on in this conversation that I'm ignoring, I know. I also have issues with hyper-criticality (and I encountered this at the potluck as well). Actually, let me be frank: I avoid agonism of any sort like stinking death, but remind me to blog on that later.
Luckily, our program here doesn't seem to be as bad as Apt 11D's, where people she worked with didn't know the names of her kids. In fact, one of SU's "selling points" was its family-friendliness. There are a handful of other grad students in my program who are parents (many dads), and our incoming class has another MOM which I am thrilled about.
There was an atrocious article in the Chronicle last year about the number of moms who are jumping academic ship in order to be SAHMs. God knows that thought crosses my mind daily.
Posted by mryonker at 07:08 PM | Comments (4)
August 28, 2004
the cluetrain manifesto, media.org
Posted by mryonker at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)
More dissertation advice
I'm trying to figure out why terminaldegreewon't take a trackback; it must have to do with the platform or whatever. At any rate, terminal degree posted on June 7 a list of strategies for doing diss work. Very useful!
Posted by mryonker at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2004
cheap blog entry
I should be working. I'm not.
Via Palmer.
Last Cigarette: I tried smoking when I was 9. It was pretty gross, and I got into SOOO much trouble with my step-dad for stealing his lighter (mentioning the actual punishment would have CPS after him even now, 20 years later).
Last Car Ride: Picked up my new contact lenses!
Last Kiss: few hours ago.
Last Good Cry: Probably last week.
Last Library Book: The Story of Junk, by Linda Yablonsky
Last book bought: Emotional Design, Donald Norman
Last Book Read: Reading The Secret Samurai, Helen Dewitt
Last Movie Seen in Theatres: Embarrassed to admit it: Daddy Daycare. It was pretty bad.
Last Movie Rented: 13 Going on 30. But I didn't get to see the whole thing.
Last Cuss Word Uttered: Fuck, I'm sure.
Last Beverage Drank: Rootbeer with dinner.
Last Food Consumed: Double cheeseburger. URgh.
Last Phone Call: Hannah's friend's mom, inviting her to spend the night.
Last Time Showered: This morning.
Last Shoes Worn: Adidas runners.
Last CD Played: Rachael Yamagata (she sounds like Fiona Apple... a lot)
Last Item Bought: Gatorade for the kids at the pool.
Last Download: Audacity, a multi-track recording/mixing program. Decent for freeware.
Last Annoyance: The baby crawling in circles in the bed, like a dog, trying to get comfortable. I can't do anything while he does that, because at any moment he could roll off. I just have to wait, laying next to him, holding an ankle or shirt tail.
Last Disappointment: I'm rarely disappointed.
Last Thing Written: Duh, this?
Last Key Used: The damn Caravan. The exhaust stinks and the tires need replaced.
Last Words Spoken: Goodnight.
Last Sleep: Last Night.
Last Ice Cream Eaten: Twist with chocolate dip.
Last Chair Sat In: This army-issue office chair that Brian and I fight over (two desks, two computers, one chair). Normally I get stuck with a stool or kitchen chair...but not tonight!!
Last Webpage Visited: Palmer!
Posted by mryonker at 12:37 AM | Comments (1)
August 25, 2004
comfort food
I couldn't resist. As a runner andproduct of the no-fat vegan-leaning generation, the atkins diet and other no-carb trends really confound me. So George H. Williams' post from a few days back (i got your atkins diet right here) caught my attention.
My comfort food: rice krispie treats. I have a dear friend and collegue who has an acute addiction to brownies (don't laugh!! it's true...she talks about them like cigarettes--"I'm down to a batch a day"), and my love and fervor for RKTs is frighteningly similar.
Certainly NOT low carb is my recipe. The conventional recipe, for those of you who might want to slice them into jaw-busting squares: 3 TBs butter, 10 ozs marshmellows, 6 Cs krispies (melt butter, add mellows and stir til creamy, remove from heat add krispies, put in buttered dish and refrigerate).
MY recipe: ONE STICK of butter, 16 ozs (or more) mellows, and 6 Cs (or less) krispies. Do not put them in the fridge, but leave them in the buttered dish. Do not cut into squares--take the entire dish with you to the computer desk and eat the batch taffy-pull-style.
A folded (unscented) baby wipe works great to keep the sticky off the keyboard.
Posted by mryonker at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2004
Collin vs. Blog: Dissertation advice?
Collin vs. Blog: Dissertation advice?
So that I can find this later! I should probably print this out, poster-sized, and hang it here over my desk.
It would be nice if Collin would run some advice on exam writing, but since I just had coffee with him last week and bled him of as much as I could, I'll leave him alone for now.
What I hope to do (what I WILL do) is use the reading/writing for my exams as practice...set aside 3 hours a day in which I strictly discipline myself (no email, no surf, no...*gasp*...blog).
That way, by the time diss work begins, I'll be prepared. Because I KNOW the kind of writer I am: "I can't write anything...I don't KNOW anyting!! I have to read more first!!" Everytime I sit down to write, I end up reading more. This fearful babble and inertia persists until the Incomplete looms like a purple thundercloud, threatening to rain Fs.
Hm. Maybe I should work on that last Incomplete before I worry about exams.
Posted by mryonker at 09:05 AM | Comments (3)
August 11, 2004
being a real adult, and other excitement
I return from a Sunny Days board meeting. Sunny Days is the pre school at a Methodist church that Jack attends, and somehow last year I got wrangled into sitting on the board (it probably has to do with my girl scout troop meeting at that same church, my teaching VBS at that church, and my general hanging out at that church).
This year I've been wrangled into chairing this board.
Needless to say, I am the youngest person on the board, which makes me feel strange. I am also the least Christian on this board (which will evidence itself more fully later in this post). And these people, to make a long and agonizing story less agonizing, nit pick about the smallest thing. We had an hour-long discussion about TV brackets in the classrooms! They were too low! The kids will swing on them! We'll get sued when the TVs fall down on them! We have to send home no-fault letters that the parents sign, stating they understand that if their kids swing on the brackets, pull the 300lb TV on top of themselves, and are subsequently crushed, that the parents will hold the school harmless!
I drive to the meeting feeling like a real adult, a real member of a community, and leave feeling like adults sure can trifle a body to death...Like I'd rather swing on the bracket and be crushed myself than argue about the dumb brackets!!
MORE exciting is that I finally got the bookmarklet to work, so now I don't have to sign into typepad to post!! I tried a while back, and for some reason the drag-n-drop was not behaving. This is really what I'd rather have spent two hours doing tonight: figuring out the trackback crap. I will!!
In other news: I am letting the bloglines account dissolve. I can be a frootloop here; in fact, I may create a category for that personality so it can feel free to post. For those of you who don't know frootloop, she is a runner who thinks she's training for the Shamrock marathon in Virginia Beach this March. She has trouble understanding that we have children to feed, classes to prepare for/teach, and exams to read for/write. She has trouble understanding that we need to sleep !!
Frootloop thinks we are buddhist.
Posted by mryonker at 09:20 PM | Comments (1)
a drumroll for my blogroll
Three months, it's taken me, to put in a people list. It is only about half of the blogs from my favorites, but I need to go through some of the others to see if I want to list them here or not. I liked the way bloglines let me build a blogroll by searching and selecting, but the frames set up over there was really driving me batshit. Plus, when you visit your blogs over there, it doesn't actually send you to that blog, it simply opens it, bare bones design, without any commenting functions or any of the other extras people add in their margins.
Got up to run this morning at 6:30 and as I snuck the little one into the crib (we sleep-share at night), his little eyes flew open and proceeded to wake completely up. This is the second time I've had to forego a morning run because little dude decides he can't continue to sleep in the crib. I would leave him in the bed except he has a penchant for crawling out and landing on his head.
Today is an off day technically, but we got rained out yesterday night. We ran Monday on an off day, so we aren't behind on weekly mileage yet. But D is going to MA for her anniversary this weekend, so we'll be on our own to keep it up, and we all know how well I motivate myself without her (and if we don't know: I normally cannot even get into my shoes!).
Posted by mryonker at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2004
urgh
Just realized that nearly all the links in the last post are bad. URGH. I still have not figured out the dumb trackback crap. I'm fooling around with a blog over on bloglines as frootloop. This is a real testament to my inability to write myself into one streamlined identity.
I'll have to go back and fix the frickin' URLs. As in uuuuRRRRLLL.
Posted by mryonker at 05:49 PM | Comments (2)