Just over a month, and so much has changed
looking up there... what a cliche title. it really bites. i mean, i couldn't come up with anything better? after a whole month of abandonment? that's what you get? sorry. but yes.
okay. first things first. i got the hellish last two weeks done here in dirt town before going home. it was... not fun. but it happened. and that's what mattered.
in fact, after getting the hellish papers/grading/paperwork done, i was so ramped up with anxiety and whatnot that i couldn't rest. instead, i took my bedroom and office... and did a whole room swap. moved stuff around, vacuumed in sections, etc. there were space issues. i had to actually move a tiny portion of room A, then clean the cleared area, then move some of room B into the space in room A, then repeat by filling space in room B and cleaning room A... until my plane left, really. i ate some. i slept some. actually very little. and i packed.
at home, the goats are/were near to bursting with little babies. we got a donkey. (she's so sweet. i just love her. i still just love her. i haven't seen her since i got back to dirt town, but she's the first thing i talk about with others these days. her name is Jenny.)
dad got a bigger truck to fit with the livestock trailer, and sold his little truck -- to me. he and i drove up here, then he drove my poor little last-leg car back. i'm officially a truck driver. and i can comfortably park in all but the tightest of lots. reverse is still hellish when there are people sharking my spot, but they generally back up if i get too close. they don't seem to realize at first that i'm not sure where the end of my truck is. but i'm learning.
i resolved the bookshelves issue. since i was driving the truck up here, it made sense to stop and pick up many, many shelves from ikea on my way, since there's not an ikea anywhere near here and shipping is a base price of 300 bucks. the shelves took some time to figure out, but i lurve them.
and since i got the shelves i wanted, i could get rid of the bookshelves that were doing a half-ass, god-i-hate-these-shelves job of things. so no more cheapo walmart shelves from my college days. i did not shed a sentimental tear seeing them go into the salvation army truck. others will get much better use of them and be glad of a shelf like that. i prefer tall shelves myself.
with the shelves, i can actually store my books .... on the bookshelf! and not in boxes stacked in the closet. this is exciting times. and the birthday dolls have a home now, too. they are actually on display and all kinds of tasteful. the shelves are adjustable to the max, and so there's a shelf for keys/purse (yes, sr, i resurrected one of my old purses as a stop gap measure because i don't want a heavy keychain to ruin the truck's transmission; the disassembly of my massive keychain led to the need for a larger recepticle for odds and ends), a shelf for wine (more on that to come), and two shelves for shoes. this gets them out of my closet, which is now smaller due to the room swap above.
while in wet counties far from dry-as-dirt-town county, i purchased a significant quantity of wine that tastes good. this is key, as most wines are so bad they need much cranberry juice to be any use at all as a beverage. let's not even go near the other stuff, which is uniformly nasty no matter what you do to it. to facilitate the drinking of this wine, i bought a corkscrew. hee hee.
i got carded for the corkscrew.
sort of. when asking to see my id, the clerk commented that i probably wasn't even old enough to need the corkscrew. imagine his surprise when not only was i old enough, but i was actually a few years past old enough. man i love this place. only in a dry county would anyone care, you know?
side note: for the next bottle of wine, whenever i get around to it (they're big bottles, you know, and i'm the antithesis of heavy drinker), i'll need someone else to open it. i can work the corkscrew. i did not mangle the cork. but it did hurt my wrist to do the twisting and pushing, and my left arm isn't strong enough or coordinated enough to manage the task. so either someone else will do it, or i will drill about halfway straight down into the center of the next cork with my black and decker using a small bit, then use that to guide the corkscrew and maybe put less pressure on my wrist. my vote? convince someone to have dinner at my place and serve wine. it's more conventional than drilling your wine open. yeah?
while buying the corkscrew, i bought a can opener. see, i lost the other. i know. i see what you're thinking. how on earth can a person manage to lose a can opener? doesn't it just go in the utensil drawer or something? well, yes. it does. right by the peeler.
but if you were to bring canned salmon to work for your lunch and it didn't have a pull top and you were running too late to open the can up and put it in a container, you would (if you were me) slip the can opener in to your school bag. and then it would be in your office. and lets say you never got around to eating lunch that day. so it's still in your office. but the thing is, about 4 months later you were in dire need of a can opener at home, couldn't find it, remembered it in the office, changed your meal plans, looked for it the next day, couldn't find it, and discovered that you did not, in fact, have a fucking clue where the can opener was. so i bought a new one. because the old one is probably ... i have no idea where.
on a side note, i really hope it's not in a bag somewhere, because if i try to get on a plane with a can opener, i doubt they'll believe that i forgot it was there. i doubt i could even pull off a great "oh my god, i can't believe it, i finally found my can opener!" scene. yeah.
let's change gears.
here i am, fresh off a drive of about 8 hours. and i have these two cats in the boarding house. and a truck with a large bed but no space in the cab for cat carriers. no biggie.
here i am putting cats-in-carriers in the back of the truck. there are the cats, wide-eyed and hunched as far from me as possible as i slam the tailgate shut with enough force to ensure that there is no cat spillage as i drive home. poor cats. they were expecting the car.
they were also expecting a somewhat pleasant drive.
what they got instead was a hay ride. when i got back, the carriers were way back there, had shifted and bounced and been generally unpleasant for the cats. to get them out, i used the roller-less paint roller pole to hook the carriers. the cats were even less pleased.
poor, poor festus. charlotte was all right after a bit of poking around. festus is still not the same. he used to hide under AMS's bed. it was his hidey hole of choice for long term stays, and since it's mine now, he hasn't had to leave it. his new hidey hole of choice is less comfy.
see, he ran from the carrier to the bedroom to zip under the bed and huddle for a few days. but the bed wasn't there. things had moved around. he was lost, cast adrift in a sea of anxiety without so much as a note to say the bed had moved. At a loss, he froze in the middle of the office, couldn't figure out where to go or what to do, and crammed himself under the desk. not under the spacious leg room part. under the 3" gap on the side. i guess it's true that a cat can get into any space in which its head will fit. but he couldn't have been comfortable. and it's his new refuge. he'll get seriously stuck under there one day and we'll have problems.
they both seem allergic to the ikea shelves. they sneeze whenever they get too close to the shelves. this was unexpected, but is a wonderful thing. i mean, they haven't messed with the shelves or the stuff on the shelves at all. they sneeze and then go do other stuff. it's kind of neat.
so. we've talked wine, can openers, bookshelves, salvation army, donkeys, goats, trucks, cats. let's talk major shifts in grad school.
my thesis, for you regular readers (all what, 4 of you?), is that high fantasy number with the alchemy and religion that nearly got me in serious trouble in the airport. my director for that was so interested in reading the other parts that he basically begged me to finish it for the dissertation. and i've been working on it instead of doing other stuff i should be doing. it's the only fiction i've written in over a year and half.
if that didn't strike fear in your hearts, then you don't know what i'm talking about. let me repeat it in italics. i haven't written a non-novel piece of fiction in nearly two years. yes, this is big, bad, and ugly all around. i've written lots of nonfiction, and i've been very happy with it. but i came to this school as a fiction writer by definition and paperwork. dry spells occur, yes. they do not last this long without a great deal of fear being involved on the writer's part.
and yes, i've been praying my ass off. i basically start out for divine inspiration and peter off with a plea for any kind of inspiration. i have given myself prompts. i have started with a great line. i've started with a mental picture. i've listened to inspiring music. i've given up. i've started trying again. i've done it all. nada. nothing. not a singular drop of fiction-y goodness. or badness. hell, not even an ameturish piece i'd never even revise for all its badness.
this semester, i'm taking a fiction workshop from my thesis-director-turned-dissertation-director. it's about time, and i finally managed to get an independent study to cancel out the bad mojo that always arranges a class conflict to keep me out of this workshop. it's especially good timing when you consider that the man's leaving at the end of the semester.
...
going on sabbatical and coming right back?
...
no.
...
leaving-leaving. like, taking a new job in another state. like, really, honest to goodness, not coming back, ever, and certainly not allowable as a director for a dissertation.
so. is there anyone else who would be willing to read a dissertation in the fantasy genre? the short answer is NO. the long answer ivolves lots of tears but is still, in the end, NO.
when i analyze the combined effect of the following bulleted list, i come to a marvellous conclusion that does not require me to leap full tilt off the nearest cliff (which is good, because in the dirt town vacinity, it would be quite a drive to the nearest cliff i could actually accomplish some serious neck-breaking on)
*Note: of course, prayers never go unanswered. the answer is always no, yes, or wait a bit. sometimes, the answer involves sheets of unclean animals being air-dropped on an unsuspecting biblical apostle or two, but largely the answer is no, yes, wait a bit. given this, one can only guess that this answer was a gentle slap upside the head and a blatant hint.
**Note: no, they have not said so directly. but i know their writing, their interests, their track records with this stuff. i know their personalities. i know their deep unstated preference that genre dude deal with this stuff. i also know that committee members who are not fully on board are not good for me or for them, and i want the experience to be positive and productive in both the personal and professional levels. yes, i'm apparently alliterative today.
in short, i'm officially a nonfiction writer. my dissertation will be a collection of essays that add up to a memoir. and i've got a new director.
and for this fiction workshop, my first story is going to be about george washington's crossing of the delaware, from the point of view of one of the soldiers in his army, a vampire, who cannot cross running water.
next is either bigfoot's desire for a full-body, laser hair removal treatment or the high school girl who is in love with bulls. yes, that kind of in love. after that, the dorm dweller who is given a baby velociraptor for christmas.
what can i say? if i give them nothing else, they will get humor and bizzarro mental images. also, the fact that i had none of these ideas until roughly 24 hours *after* switching over tells me that God was holding out. that's cool. i'll take the hint. i'll run with it. i can do two wildly different things at once. i'm already doing that:
i write totally fantastical, worldbuilding, magic fiction. i write nonfiction. i study medieval literature and anglo-saxon texts. i fix computers. old and new, lies and truth. somewhere in the middle of all that is a very well-rounded CV and hopefully some good job prospects.
and that's about what i can say at the moment. for starters, i'm tired. i get to the building between 6:30 and 7:00 am these days, and 10 is just far too late to still be awake. plus, i ran around a lot today given demos to other departments' IT folks looking into our podiums, prepped technology for a job candidate (tons o' stress if something goes wrong there, let me tell you), and did the teaching thing. still not sure how this semester's going. more on that as it happens. it seems, briefly, that 9:00 classes are different beasts than 9:30 classes. half an hour apparently makes a big difference. go figure.
so. there's the collossal update. i live, i got my class materials prepared in time, and i have handled majorly stressful situations with aplomb and non-panic. all in the first what, two weeks?
i am SO looking forward to getting this monday off.
love and peace.
okay. first things first. i got the hellish last two weeks done here in dirt town before going home. it was... not fun. but it happened. and that's what mattered.
in fact, after getting the hellish papers/grading/paperwork done, i was so ramped up with anxiety and whatnot that i couldn't rest. instead, i took my bedroom and office... and did a whole room swap. moved stuff around, vacuumed in sections, etc. there were space issues. i had to actually move a tiny portion of room A, then clean the cleared area, then move some of room B into the space in room A, then repeat by filling space in room B and cleaning room A... until my plane left, really. i ate some. i slept some. actually very little. and i packed.
at home, the goats are/were near to bursting with little babies. we got a donkey. (she's so sweet. i just love her. i still just love her. i haven't seen her since i got back to dirt town, but she's the first thing i talk about with others these days. her name is Jenny.)
dad got a bigger truck to fit with the livestock trailer, and sold his little truck -- to me. he and i drove up here, then he drove my poor little last-leg car back. i'm officially a truck driver. and i can comfortably park in all but the tightest of lots. reverse is still hellish when there are people sharking my spot, but they generally back up if i get too close. they don't seem to realize at first that i'm not sure where the end of my truck is. but i'm learning.
i resolved the bookshelves issue. since i was driving the truck up here, it made sense to stop and pick up many, many shelves from ikea on my way, since there's not an ikea anywhere near here and shipping is a base price of 300 bucks. the shelves took some time to figure out, but i lurve them.
and since i got the shelves i wanted, i could get rid of the bookshelves that were doing a half-ass, god-i-hate-these-shelves job of things. so no more cheapo walmart shelves from my college days. i did not shed a sentimental tear seeing them go into the salvation army truck. others will get much better use of them and be glad of a shelf like that. i prefer tall shelves myself.
with the shelves, i can actually store my books .... on the bookshelf! and not in boxes stacked in the closet. this is exciting times. and the birthday dolls have a home now, too. they are actually on display and all kinds of tasteful. the shelves are adjustable to the max, and so there's a shelf for keys/purse (yes, sr, i resurrected one of my old purses as a stop gap measure because i don't want a heavy keychain to ruin the truck's transmission; the disassembly of my massive keychain led to the need for a larger recepticle for odds and ends), a shelf for wine (more on that to come), and two shelves for shoes. this gets them out of my closet, which is now smaller due to the room swap above.
while in wet counties far from dry-as-dirt-town county, i purchased a significant quantity of wine that tastes good. this is key, as most wines are so bad they need much cranberry juice to be any use at all as a beverage. let's not even go near the other stuff, which is uniformly nasty no matter what you do to it. to facilitate the drinking of this wine, i bought a corkscrew. hee hee.
i got carded for the corkscrew.
sort of. when asking to see my id, the clerk commented that i probably wasn't even old enough to need the corkscrew. imagine his surprise when not only was i old enough, but i was actually a few years past old enough. man i love this place. only in a dry county would anyone care, you know?
side note: for the next bottle of wine, whenever i get around to it (they're big bottles, you know, and i'm the antithesis of heavy drinker), i'll need someone else to open it. i can work the corkscrew. i did not mangle the cork. but it did hurt my wrist to do the twisting and pushing, and my left arm isn't strong enough or coordinated enough to manage the task. so either someone else will do it, or i will drill about halfway straight down into the center of the next cork with my black and decker using a small bit, then use that to guide the corkscrew and maybe put less pressure on my wrist. my vote? convince someone to have dinner at my place and serve wine. it's more conventional than drilling your wine open. yeah?
while buying the corkscrew, i bought a can opener. see, i lost the other. i know. i see what you're thinking. how on earth can a person manage to lose a can opener? doesn't it just go in the utensil drawer or something? well, yes. it does. right by the peeler.
but if you were to bring canned salmon to work for your lunch and it didn't have a pull top and you were running too late to open the can up and put it in a container, you would (if you were me) slip the can opener in to your school bag. and then it would be in your office. and lets say you never got around to eating lunch that day. so it's still in your office. but the thing is, about 4 months later you were in dire need of a can opener at home, couldn't find it, remembered it in the office, changed your meal plans, looked for it the next day, couldn't find it, and discovered that you did not, in fact, have a fucking clue where the can opener was. so i bought a new one. because the old one is probably ... i have no idea where.
on a side note, i really hope it's not in a bag somewhere, because if i try to get on a plane with a can opener, i doubt they'll believe that i forgot it was there. i doubt i could even pull off a great "oh my god, i can't believe it, i finally found my can opener!" scene. yeah.
let's change gears.
here i am, fresh off a drive of about 8 hours. and i have these two cats in the boarding house. and a truck with a large bed but no space in the cab for cat carriers. no biggie.
here i am putting cats-in-carriers in the back of the truck. there are the cats, wide-eyed and hunched as far from me as possible as i slam the tailgate shut with enough force to ensure that there is no cat spillage as i drive home. poor cats. they were expecting the car.
they were also expecting a somewhat pleasant drive.
what they got instead was a hay ride. when i got back, the carriers were way back there, had shifted and bounced and been generally unpleasant for the cats. to get them out, i used the roller-less paint roller pole to hook the carriers. the cats were even less pleased.
poor, poor festus. charlotte was all right after a bit of poking around. festus is still not the same. he used to hide under AMS's bed. it was his hidey hole of choice for long term stays, and since it's mine now, he hasn't had to leave it. his new hidey hole of choice is less comfy.
see, he ran from the carrier to the bedroom to zip under the bed and huddle for a few days. but the bed wasn't there. things had moved around. he was lost, cast adrift in a sea of anxiety without so much as a note to say the bed had moved. At a loss, he froze in the middle of the office, couldn't figure out where to go or what to do, and crammed himself under the desk. not under the spacious leg room part. under the 3" gap on the side. i guess it's true that a cat can get into any space in which its head will fit. but he couldn't have been comfortable. and it's his new refuge. he'll get seriously stuck under there one day and we'll have problems.
they both seem allergic to the ikea shelves. they sneeze whenever they get too close to the shelves. this was unexpected, but is a wonderful thing. i mean, they haven't messed with the shelves or the stuff on the shelves at all. they sneeze and then go do other stuff. it's kind of neat.
so. we've talked wine, can openers, bookshelves, salvation army, donkeys, goats, trucks, cats. let's talk major shifts in grad school.
my thesis, for you regular readers (all what, 4 of you?), is that high fantasy number with the alchemy and religion that nearly got me in serious trouble in the airport. my director for that was so interested in reading the other parts that he basically begged me to finish it for the dissertation. and i've been working on it instead of doing other stuff i should be doing. it's the only fiction i've written in over a year and half.
if that didn't strike fear in your hearts, then you don't know what i'm talking about. let me repeat it in italics. i haven't written a non-novel piece of fiction in nearly two years. yes, this is big, bad, and ugly all around. i've written lots of nonfiction, and i've been very happy with it. but i came to this school as a fiction writer by definition and paperwork. dry spells occur, yes. they do not last this long without a great deal of fear being involved on the writer's part.
and yes, i've been praying my ass off. i basically start out for divine inspiration and peter off with a plea for any kind of inspiration. i have given myself prompts. i have started with a great line. i've started with a mental picture. i've listened to inspiring music. i've given up. i've started trying again. i've done it all. nada. nothing. not a singular drop of fiction-y goodness. or badness. hell, not even an ameturish piece i'd never even revise for all its badness.
this semester, i'm taking a fiction workshop from my thesis-director-turned-dissertation-director. it's about time, and i finally managed to get an independent study to cancel out the bad mojo that always arranges a class conflict to keep me out of this workshop. it's especially good timing when you consider that the man's leaving at the end of the semester.
...
going on sabbatical and coming right back?
...
no.
...
leaving-leaving. like, taking a new job in another state. like, really, honest to goodness, not coming back, ever, and certainly not allowable as a director for a dissertation.
so. is there anyone else who would be willing to read a dissertation in the fantasy genre? the short answer is NO. the long answer ivolves lots of tears but is still, in the end, NO.
when i analyze the combined effect of the following bulleted list, i come to a marvellous conclusion that does not require me to leap full tilt off the nearest cliff (which is good, because in the dirt town vacinity, it would be quite a drive to the nearest cliff i could actually accomplish some serious neck-breaking on)
- i have had a horrid dry spell in fiction that wasn't high fantasy novel in progress related.
- i am not happy with any fiction piece i've written aside from that novel except Vadleany, which is still my baby, my one, my only, my joy.
- many prayers (tearful and otherwise) have gone unanswered* and inspiration remains lacking.
- genre-dude is heading off to different places to do his magic, and could be a reader on my committee, but not the head dude.
- others are almost singularly uninterested** in reading (to them: slogging) through a fantasy novel with lots of gore and religious overtones.
- i've been told both in workshop and out of it that my nonfiction is very strong. i'm not sure i believe that this is anything but a fluke, but it's like when i was sick and half the english department sent me to a doctor. someone can be wrong, but that many someones are rarely far off.
- while i was home, and trying to write fiction with a passion that more than bordered on desperation, i came up with no fewer than 8 memoir ideas.
- my nonfiction guru isn't going anywhere soon.
*Note: of course, prayers never go unanswered. the answer is always no, yes, or wait a bit. sometimes, the answer involves sheets of unclean animals being air-dropped on an unsuspecting biblical apostle or two, but largely the answer is no, yes, wait a bit. given this, one can only guess that this answer was a gentle slap upside the head and a blatant hint.
**Note: no, they have not said so directly. but i know their writing, their interests, their track records with this stuff. i know their personalities. i know their deep unstated preference that genre dude deal with this stuff. i also know that committee members who are not fully on board are not good for me or for them, and i want the experience to be positive and productive in both the personal and professional levels. yes, i'm apparently alliterative today.
in short, i'm officially a nonfiction writer. my dissertation will be a collection of essays that add up to a memoir. and i've got a new director.
and for this fiction workshop, my first story is going to be about george washington's crossing of the delaware, from the point of view of one of the soldiers in his army, a vampire, who cannot cross running water.
next is either bigfoot's desire for a full-body, laser hair removal treatment or the high school girl who is in love with bulls. yes, that kind of in love. after that, the dorm dweller who is given a baby velociraptor for christmas.
what can i say? if i give them nothing else, they will get humor and bizzarro mental images. also, the fact that i had none of these ideas until roughly 24 hours *after* switching over tells me that God was holding out. that's cool. i'll take the hint. i'll run with it. i can do two wildly different things at once. i'm already doing that:
i write totally fantastical, worldbuilding, magic fiction. i write nonfiction. i study medieval literature and anglo-saxon texts. i fix computers. old and new, lies and truth. somewhere in the middle of all that is a very well-rounded CV and hopefully some good job prospects.
and that's about what i can say at the moment. for starters, i'm tired. i get to the building between 6:30 and 7:00 am these days, and 10 is just far too late to still be awake. plus, i ran around a lot today given demos to other departments' IT folks looking into our podiums, prepped technology for a job candidate (tons o' stress if something goes wrong there, let me tell you), and did the teaching thing. still not sure how this semester's going. more on that as it happens. it seems, briefly, that 9:00 classes are different beasts than 9:30 classes. half an hour apparently makes a big difference. go figure.
so. there's the collossal update. i live, i got my class materials prepared in time, and i have handled majorly stressful situations with aplomb and non-panic. all in the first what, two weeks?
i am SO looking forward to getting this monday off.
love and peace.
posted by Rehkmira @ 22:16
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