Spring semester: day forty
This is technically the first real day of "spring break," though for me it's been ongoing since Thursday night when I came home and closed myself off from the world. This is, technically, still the weekend for me -- I always have Mondays off anyway.
Leaves of Grass is over five hundred pages long. I read it in two sittings over the course of about nine hours, focusing on the important sections a bit more and skimming some of the others which were rather inconsequential, as my director had instructed me. I'll probably have to review it a bit more between now and the actual exams. Following Whitman, I read through an E.E. Cummings collection I have (there's no way I could read his entire collected works, as he wrote over 2,000 poems), which took about another four hours or so, and then powered through 185 pages of Anne Sexton poems (damn that woman is depressing -- hauntingly beautiful in her writing, but depressing) and Allen Ginsberg's collection, including Howl, which I read yet again for probably the fiftieth time. I made the note in my notebook (which I keep in one hand, while the book is in the other) that Ginsberg is the 20th century reincarnation of Walt Whitman -- he's what Whitman would have been had Whitman been born 100 years later, and much of Ginsberg's writing reads like continuations of Whitman, picking up the torch, carrying it forward.
I guarantee you there is going to be a question on the comps about the similarities and differences of Ginsberg and Whitman. Guaranteed. When those two are on a reading list, one cannot help but ask that question. And I'm prepared to answer it now.
Aside from how time-consuming it is and how much I'd rather not be doing it most of the time, the reading/studying is going well enough. I've tried to balance my time devoted to it, tried to meter out when and how long at any given time I can work on it. About half of the texts are here on my computer in PDF, and the other half are actual physical books on my coffee table. I'm still reading about 300 pages a day, roughly, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. On Saturday, for example, I read about 800 pages. No, that's not a joke. Yesterday, about 400. Today it'll be about 400 as well, roughly -- I've got Frank O'Hara, John Keats, and W.H. Auden on the docket for today. O'Hara and Auden should go rather quickly -- two hours or so on each, but on Keats...ugh. Keats has a lot of poems to wade through. I have O'Hara's collected works and Auden's selected stuff out of several anthologies. Tomorrow it's Yeats, Frost, and Lowell.
I'm not getting completely burned out yet, but that's probably because of how I tend to manage my time. I get myself in "study mode" and don't emerge from it until I'm done with a particular author, take a short break (to eat, shower, get up and move around, etc) and then re-enter it. I spend about 12 hours studying every day, roughly. I think that's a decent number. When I reach (or get close to) that 12-hour point, I stop for the day and decompress -- whether that's with podcasts, chores around the house, talking to Daisy for a bit, etc. If I finish before that? Even better -- it means I get a bit more of a break for that day. Sometimes I break it up into two six-hour sessions or three four-hour sessions, but it always hovers around 12 hours per day. This is a schedule I'd like and/or need to keep from now until I've gotten through the big bulk of readings I have, which will end around Thursday (after that it's individual collections by poets, 100-200 pages each, that I'll have to read through). As next weekend approaches, the bulk of my readings will be done, and I may actually get a little of that spring break everyone's talking about and enjoying but me.
I have noticed, however, that because of my studying I am increasingly more tired and run-down with each passing day. On Saturday, I slept until 1PM. Yesterday, almost 3. Today, almost 4. The more I read and study, the more sleep I need to recover my brain, apparently. I still go to bed at roughly the same time every night (read: 4-5, after reading until 2 or 3), but am so exhausted that I don't generally wake up before mid or late afternoon. I am glad that I'm getting this taken care of now, as to do it during normal class sessions would be a nightmare (and I'd never be able to sleep or concentrate at all.)
There's not been a whole lot else going on in my world, really; I've sent a few emails to the higher-ups in the department to see if I can figure out what exact day my comps will take place on -- they're scheduled for April 4th or 5th. The 4th is a Thursday, so if I have to take them that day I need to know ASAP so that I can pre-emptively cancel my classes that I teach and schedule everything around that date within those classes. This is a question, apparently, that's difficult to answer. This week, the director of the MFA program is apparently going to sit down and schedule the actual days, however, so that should be solved soon enough. As for all of my other deadlines and paperwork, they are in and taken care of at this point, and I even got a ream of acid-free, archival paper from the department chair so that I can print two copies of my thesis for the library when I'm given the go-ahead to do so (I have to wait on that too, it seems).
All of my bills at the moment have been paid and mailed; I got my latest credit card bill (my Amazon card) and paid it, the cable bill has been paid (even though said bill went up by three dollars between last month and this month), I've bought groceries and the like to get me through most of this week, and most of the laundry has been done. I still have to wash the sheets and blankets, but need enough free time to pay attention to those while doing so (in case the drain downstairs overflows again). My parents have also, according to my mother, mailed my second box of Christmas stuff to me as of this morning, so I should be expecting that by the end of the week as well. It's like a second Christmas, a reward for doing little else but studying, and my Stephen Crane collection has also shipped. By taking care of most of my extant responsibilities, I've freed up the rest of my week to do nothing but take care of the comps reading and do my taxes (whenever I have the time to do that, of course).
Yesterday my reading would've finished much faster had I not been forced to spend the course of almost three hours calculating midterm grades, grading quizzes, and posting everything on Blackboard and Banner for my students. I did do this, however, and that's another big weight off my shoulders; I have nothing else to worry about in that department until the 26th, at least. I did shave off my beard, too, on Friday night -- I left a thin goatee to grow back in so that I'm not completely clean shaven (which I hate) and by the time classes resume next week, I should have a good covering of stubble and hair again without all of it being too thick or thin. At some point soon I'm going to have to switch out my wardrobe for summer, too -- it's getting warmer every day, and I no longer need to wear layers every day that I leave the house. It was 83 on Thursday, and I taught in shorts for the first time this semester. It was wonderful. I am also desperate to break out my flip-flops and sandals again to wear every day -- I hate wearing shoes and socks if I can avoid doing so, and as this may be my last few months where I can dress so casually for anywhere I'd work, it's even more important to me that the weather get warm and stay warm soon.
Of course, now that I've said that, we're supposed to get rain/sleet/snow here on Wednesday and Thursday. At the end of March. My parents are dealing with some sort of small storm like that back east right now, actually. This has actually been a sort of shitty winter for the most part -- snowstorms, school cancellations, cold winds, getting stuck in West Virginia after Christmas due to a snowstorm, etc. It reminds me of living back home, when winter weather started in October and didn't end until April. This time last year, I was back home for Spring Break, and it was in the 60s and 70s there every day. Oh, how things change.
On that note, I'm going to bury myself in my reading and attempt to get as much done as possible today. I'm not exactly in the mood for it, so I have to force myself to do it.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Radio Silence, Part II
I have constructed my plan of attack for the next ten days or so. It shall go as follows:
- Saturday, March 16: C.K. Williams, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg
It all looks deceptively simple and well-thought-out, doesn't it?
It's really not. It's me trying to come up with some way to tackle a veritable mountain of books, the rest of which I received in the mail this afternoon. I also found that, to my oversight, I did not order a Stephen Crane collection -- and, really, his stuff is very hard to find online in PDF form (as is Auden, actually, for some reason). Therefore I ordered the Library of Congress Crane collection for $3 on Amazon, but since it's a used book, who knows when it'll arrive. Not that I think my director will put a Crane question on the exam, mind you (he's told me more than once how much he hates Crane), but I want to be prepared from all angles, so to speak.
I've already modified this plan somewhat; while I finished my Williams collection this afternoon, Whitman has proved a daunting task. As you folks probably know at this point (as I've repeated it ad nauseam), I cannot stand Walt Whitman. I don't exactly know why, but I can't stand him. I've never liked him. I've tried, over the years -- really I have -- but I really can't grasp him. He's long-winded, boring, very full of himself, and his subject matter is all over the place. I've been told by my director to try to focus on his more important works, such as Song of Myself and Leaves of Grass, so that's what I've done -- and even those are very, very tedious to get through. Song of Myself took me three hours. Leaves of Grass is even more ponderous. I see why he inspires people, I do, and I didn't mind Song of Myself really, but this is just ridiculous. It's now 11:30 PM and I'm trying to slowly work my way through Leaves of Grass. I shouldn't have put Whitman on my reading list. Ever. Ever ever. I'm really at about the point where I want to say "fuck it" and choose the other option if there's a Whitman question on my exam. Again, I see why he's inspirational, but I cannot fathom what people like about his writing. And, of course, if I want to stay on task and not fall behind, I have to read all of Allen Ginsberg's works by the time I go to bed tonight, too.
Already I can't tell you how much I wish this were all over. Every time -- every time -- I have a break from school during the semester, whether that be fall break, spring break, Thanksgiving week, or what-have-you, there's always something that must be done that sucks away all of my time. Always. All of my friends are enjoying their breaks, having fun, celebrating St. Patrick's Day, and I'm chained to my PDFs and books, doing nothing but studying. Already I can tell you that there's not enough hours in the day for everything I have to do over the course of the next ten days, already I can tell you that my relationship with Daisy is going to become strained because I just won't have time to talk to her for hours every day, and already I can tell you that I'm going to go batshit crazy over my break because I don't actually get a break and can't even relax any. Not even right now, not even while I'm writing this -- I'm shirking responsibility right now, I'm wasting time writing here when I should be reading and taking notes, but it's driving me insane. And it's only the first real day of my intense reading-and-studying-for-comps schedule. I can't tell you how much I'd rather be playing a video game, watching a movie, simply dicking around on the internet, or fucking sleeping. But I can't, it's just this. All this. All reading, all studying, no social interaction, no fun, nothing -- not until comps are over and I can relax.
Not to mention that I have no clue when I'm going to work in my students' calculations and midterm grades before Wednesday when they must be posted. Or do my taxes. Or take care of the myriad other things that must be done during this time. I'm already stressed out and frazzled and pissed off at the world. Having to read three or more books a day and retain it all really doesn't help much.
Some of you may be saying "But Brandon, why didn't you do this studying earlier? Space it out more? Order your books earlier, so that you didn't have to 'cram' over spring break?"
That's not how it works for me. I couldn't afford the books until my loan money cleared at the end of January. I've been swamped with student work up until just now, and there's a bunch of it to go. My memory is shot -- three years of grad school not only completely destroyed my love of reading, but it has also burned out my ability to remember anything anymore for any long stretch of time; hence why I had to create a plan of attack in the first place and why I keep multiple to-do lists around the house and at school to remember what I need to do during any given week. Even if I'd had the books over the summer (again, another time when I didn't have any money to buy them) I wouldn't have retained any of the knowledge between then and now. Cramming is really the only studying style that's ever worked for me -- retain the knowledge as long as is necessary, then empty the recycle bin and forget it. I just want to know enough to pass the comps, and then I don't care anymore. I won't have to care anymore. I'll have a month to breathe and focus on myself and my students in the meantime. But these next three weeks or so are going to be very, very stressful, and I'm already feeling its effects.
I've noticed that in the past two days or so, I'm becoming increasingly impatient and frustrated very quickly in my interactions with other people, even Daisy -- Daisy is a sweetheart, she's a saint, she's the woman I'm going to marry, and I find myself getting frustrated and impatient with her. It's not her -- it's not her at all -- it's my stress levels. It's very hard to keep them in check. Very, very hard. This afternoon, at Walmart, I wanted to strangle the people in front of me in line because they were paying for their stuff with at least three different forms of payment -- EBT, cash, check, check card, something along those lines, who knows -- and they kept getting declined on their attempted transactions. I was just there to get cat stuff, coffee, and cigarettes, and had a few other essentials in my cart. I just wanted to be done, and there was a line of at least five other people behind me. I wanted to scream. Normally I'm not this ready to blow my top; I am a very caring, understanding, and compassionate person. But I secretly, internally, wanted to scream and beat them all about their heads and bodies. Again, that's not who I am. It's my stress levels. Everything is irritating and infuriating right now. And having to force myself to read through Walt Whitman is. not. helping. It's just one more irritating thing to do.
I keep reminding myself that soon, it'll all be over -- that these three weeks or so are just a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things, and that they'll pass by quickly, that my comps will be taken and will be over quickly (good or bad) and I'll be done with this stressfulness, but right now it's not helping. Really not.
Daisy suggested that I should take my books and notes downstairs to the bedroom and study while in bed, at my leisure. I can't do that; I'd fall asleep. Every time. I'd never get anything done because I would always fall asleep. I'm always so constantly sleep-deprived that all of my studying has to be done while sitting up and with a pen and notebook in my hand to take notes; it's the only way I can stay on task. I've also had to turn off Facebook and Twitter, or I'll be constantly distracted by more fun things to read and reply to, things which will suck away time that I desperately need to use constructively. I have to force myself to stay on task, as miserable as that may be. And, believe me, it is miserable.
More later. Maybe. Who knows. It's not like I have time to write here anyway, not with that list of books I have above.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Radio Silence
Spring semester: day thirty-seven (in a row?)
So, folks, it's that time.
I've collected my students' papers and have already graded them, over the span of about fourteen hours total. Out of my total of forty-six students, two didn't turn in papers, and three will get a zero as they did not upload them to SafeAssign. I did this so that I can get said papers back to my students tomorrow -- it will only help those of them who wish to do rewrites, and it will let them know more accurately why they have the midterm grade in the class that they have. It was a long, brutal slog of a grading process to get them all done before bed tonight, but it's for the best that I did so. I also had to finish up my assignments for the visiting writer, and was also forced to prepare for tomorrow's class, in which I'll be covering two articles, introducing paper 2, and giving a quiz before I let my students go for spring break. It will be a very long, work-filled day. I've already told Daisy that, basically, she won't get to talk to me for most of tomorrow, due to everything I have to take care of before break starts.
I'm already exhausted; the events of this weekend -- what with Daisy being here, then her getting stuck halfway home in the snowstorm, then my basement flooding again, and now with the papers, grading, reading, and everything else I've been doing, I'm severely sleep-deprived and will more than likely remain that way at least until Friday or Saturday. Everything that must be done between now and then seems like an insurmountable task, coupled with the fact that once break starts on Saturday, I basically have to cut off contact with everyone in order to buckle down tightly, brace myself, and read hundreds of pages per day of comps books, taking notes on them all. I call this "radio silence." My phone will remain off, my computer will (for the most part) remain off, and I will be immersing myself in book after book after book. Unless something happens, or unless I get through my studying faster than expected (an unlikely event in itself), you really won't hear much from me here until around the end of the month or so when I emerge from my literary self-exile to see the light of day once more. This is not something I want to do -- ignoring everyone and everything in the world around me -- it is something I simply must do if I want to graduate in a month and a half. It's not a choice. I cannot get distracted, and cannot be disturbed during these next few weeks.
Of course, since I have to spend all of this time reading and studying, it's going to be the most beautiful weather of the year during Spring Break -- on Friday, for example, it's supposed to hit 79. Tomorrow? 72. It's not supposed to drop below freezing again at night for the foreseeable future. Spring, apparently, has finally arrived -- two weeks after two crippling snowstorms back-to-back, and four days after one hit Daisy in Nebraska.
I have ordered my last set of comps books, emptying my "booklist" wish list on Amazon to the tune of about $80. They arrive on Friday. Yesterday I got my T.S. Eliot collection in the mail, as well. I don't want to have to buy all of these texts either, obviously, but if reading and studying them all means I'll graduate, well, I don't have much of a choice there. On the plus side, I get to support some poets whose works I admire (well, the ones still alive, anyway; most of them are long dead). Again, going into Spring Break I'm upping my game -- I'd like to get through two or three full collections per day. If I can do that, the remaining days afterwards I can simply review my (well-written) notes to beef up my mind in preparation for battle.
The drain field has gone down back to normal again; both last night and tonight I showered normally, and yesterday I did a full load of laundry with no issues. I still have a lot of backed-up laundry to do over the course of the next week or so, but for now everything appears to be fine once more. Hopefully it stays that way, as I've been putting off washing the sheets and blankets for far too long. I need to switch out the entire set of bedclothes to more summer-friendly sheets and blankets if it's going to stay warm, so this needs to be done at some point soon. I'll have to work my way through all of my laundry slowly, however, so that I can avoid any more flooding incidents, and I'll be keeping my eye on it as much as possible for a while when I do happen to run a lot of water at once, just to be safe. At the very least, I'll have ten days in a row off, days where I don't have to go anywhere and can do things like laundry and cleaning between different volumes of my comps studying.
Daisy has been at her new job for two days already; today was supposed to be her third day of training, but she's violently ill -- she thinks it's food poisoning of some sort, as it's not acting like a stomach virus -- so she called in sick and they told her she could catch up on everything tomorrow when she goes back in. I feel so bad for her; as I was grading all day, I didn't even know she was sick until after 9PM tonight as we'd been mostly out of contact for the day. This training she's going through is difficult for her, as well; training at her new job lasts a full two weeks, eight hours per day, and she's basically given lists of terms, acronyms, and scripts that she has to memorize, as she's tested on them. She mentioned referring me for a job at this place once I graduate, but as much as I'd love the money, it's not a job at all suited for me -- I don't have the patience or the skills for it, and while I do already know a fair amount of the terms she was telling me she has to memorize, working in an environment that's so high-stress, not to mention with lots of other people, rubs me the wrong way. Daisy is, as much as she doesn't want to admit it or thinks otherwise, much, much more social than I am, and thrives in high-stress environments. I'm totally not that guy. I'm the teacher, the writer, the guy who wants to be left alone to his own devices to do his work on his own time and get paid for it with minimal social interaction and an ability to hold some sort of authority over himself.
On the plus side, she does get paid for her training, and should get a paycheck for her first week there (read: this week) at the end of next week. I get paid on Friday, as the break starts, which is good -- it'll offset the $80 I just spent on books and the $116 I just spent on work clothes for Daisy (clothes that, I'll add, she looks fantastic in). I've also timed my gas fill-ups on my car rather well, too; I have more than enough gas to get me back and forth tomorrow, and won't have to get any more until the next time I decide to go out -- which could be the middle of next week or later, depending on when I next need groceries. I'm planning to stop tomorrow night on the way home for around-the-house essentials like cat litter, cigarettes, and coffee (the "three C's," as I call them). Most anything else can wait a while, as I have a large amount of food to live on for a bit.
I've also made the announcement to most of my colleagues and friends (and I'll make it to my students in the morning) that since it's supposed to be really warm for the foreseeable future, over Spring Break, the beard is coming off. I no longer need a "hair scarf," as it's the middle of March and will only get progressively warmer from this point forward through the summer. I'll probably shave it off tomorrow or Friday, depending on how tired I am tomorrow night when I get home. I wanted to style it into a handlebar mustache with long sideburns, but I'll probably just shave it all off with my trimmers, leaving it a bit longer and/or thicker in the goatee area. I very, very rarely shave clean when I have to be around people on a regular basis, as I look like I'm twelve. Looking like you're twelve when you're a university instructor, male or female, is a bad bad thing -- you'll immediately lose respect in the eyes of your students. We'll see what happens; my beard has been driving me nuts for the past few weeks anyhow, and if I take it off now it'll grow back to a somewhat-respectable length by the time I graduate in May, if I let it.
On that note, I'm going to bed, as I'll be getting up in a little more than five hours to get ready to go to campus; I'm stuck there tomorrow night until at least 6PM, as I have my final meeting with the visiting writer at 5. Maybe, if I'm tired, I'll get to take a nap in my office in the afternoon.
So, folks, it's that time.
I've collected my students' papers and have already graded them, over the span of about fourteen hours total. Out of my total of forty-six students, two didn't turn in papers, and three will get a zero as they did not upload them to SafeAssign. I did this so that I can get said papers back to my students tomorrow -- it will only help those of them who wish to do rewrites, and it will let them know more accurately why they have the midterm grade in the class that they have. It was a long, brutal slog of a grading process to get them all done before bed tonight, but it's for the best that I did so. I also had to finish up my assignments for the visiting writer, and was also forced to prepare for tomorrow's class, in which I'll be covering two articles, introducing paper 2, and giving a quiz before I let my students go for spring break. It will be a very long, work-filled day. I've already told Daisy that, basically, she won't get to talk to me for most of tomorrow, due to everything I have to take care of before break starts.
I'm already exhausted; the events of this weekend -- what with Daisy being here, then her getting stuck halfway home in the snowstorm, then my basement flooding again, and now with the papers, grading, reading, and everything else I've been doing, I'm severely sleep-deprived and will more than likely remain that way at least until Friday or Saturday. Everything that must be done between now and then seems like an insurmountable task, coupled with the fact that once break starts on Saturday, I basically have to cut off contact with everyone in order to buckle down tightly, brace myself, and read hundreds of pages per day of comps books, taking notes on them all. I call this "radio silence." My phone will remain off, my computer will (for the most part) remain off, and I will be immersing myself in book after book after book. Unless something happens, or unless I get through my studying faster than expected (an unlikely event in itself), you really won't hear much from me here until around the end of the month or so when I emerge from my literary self-exile to see the light of day once more. This is not something I want to do -- ignoring everyone and everything in the world around me -- it is something I simply must do if I want to graduate in a month and a half. It's not a choice. I cannot get distracted, and cannot be disturbed during these next few weeks.
Of course, since I have to spend all of this time reading and studying, it's going to be the most beautiful weather of the year during Spring Break -- on Friday, for example, it's supposed to hit 79. Tomorrow? 72. It's not supposed to drop below freezing again at night for the foreseeable future. Spring, apparently, has finally arrived -- two weeks after two crippling snowstorms back-to-back, and four days after one hit Daisy in Nebraska.
I have ordered my last set of comps books, emptying my "booklist" wish list on Amazon to the tune of about $80. They arrive on Friday. Yesterday I got my T.S. Eliot collection in the mail, as well. I don't want to have to buy all of these texts either, obviously, but if reading and studying them all means I'll graduate, well, I don't have much of a choice there. On the plus side, I get to support some poets whose works I admire (well, the ones still alive, anyway; most of them are long dead). Again, going into Spring Break I'm upping my game -- I'd like to get through two or three full collections per day. If I can do that, the remaining days afterwards I can simply review my (well-written) notes to beef up my mind in preparation for battle.
The drain field has gone down back to normal again; both last night and tonight I showered normally, and yesterday I did a full load of laundry with no issues. I still have a lot of backed-up laundry to do over the course of the next week or so, but for now everything appears to be fine once more. Hopefully it stays that way, as I've been putting off washing the sheets and blankets for far too long. I need to switch out the entire set of bedclothes to more summer-friendly sheets and blankets if it's going to stay warm, so this needs to be done at some point soon. I'll have to work my way through all of my laundry slowly, however, so that I can avoid any more flooding incidents, and I'll be keeping my eye on it as much as possible for a while when I do happen to run a lot of water at once, just to be safe. At the very least, I'll have ten days in a row off, days where I don't have to go anywhere and can do things like laundry and cleaning between different volumes of my comps studying.
Daisy has been at her new job for two days already; today was supposed to be her third day of training, but she's violently ill -- she thinks it's food poisoning of some sort, as it's not acting like a stomach virus -- so she called in sick and they told her she could catch up on everything tomorrow when she goes back in. I feel so bad for her; as I was grading all day, I didn't even know she was sick until after 9PM tonight as we'd been mostly out of contact for the day. This training she's going through is difficult for her, as well; training at her new job lasts a full two weeks, eight hours per day, and she's basically given lists of terms, acronyms, and scripts that she has to memorize, as she's tested on them. She mentioned referring me for a job at this place once I graduate, but as much as I'd love the money, it's not a job at all suited for me -- I don't have the patience or the skills for it, and while I do already know a fair amount of the terms she was telling me she has to memorize, working in an environment that's so high-stress, not to mention with lots of other people, rubs me the wrong way. Daisy is, as much as she doesn't want to admit it or thinks otherwise, much, much more social than I am, and thrives in high-stress environments. I'm totally not that guy. I'm the teacher, the writer, the guy who wants to be left alone to his own devices to do his work on his own time and get paid for it with minimal social interaction and an ability to hold some sort of authority over himself.
On the plus side, she does get paid for her training, and should get a paycheck for her first week there (read: this week) at the end of next week. I get paid on Friday, as the break starts, which is good -- it'll offset the $80 I just spent on books and the $116 I just spent on work clothes for Daisy (clothes that, I'll add, she looks fantastic in). I've also timed my gas fill-ups on my car rather well, too; I have more than enough gas to get me back and forth tomorrow, and won't have to get any more until the next time I decide to go out -- which could be the middle of next week or later, depending on when I next need groceries. I'm planning to stop tomorrow night on the way home for around-the-house essentials like cat litter, cigarettes, and coffee (the "three C's," as I call them). Most anything else can wait a while, as I have a large amount of food to live on for a bit.
I've also made the announcement to most of my colleagues and friends (and I'll make it to my students in the morning) that since it's supposed to be really warm for the foreseeable future, over Spring Break, the beard is coming off. I no longer need a "hair scarf," as it's the middle of March and will only get progressively warmer from this point forward through the summer. I'll probably shave it off tomorrow or Friday, depending on how tired I am tomorrow night when I get home. I wanted to style it into a handlebar mustache with long sideburns, but I'll probably just shave it all off with my trimmers, leaving it a bit longer and/or thicker in the goatee area. I very, very rarely shave clean when I have to be around people on a regular basis, as I look like I'm twelve. Looking like you're twelve when you're a university instructor, male or female, is a bad bad thing -- you'll immediately lose respect in the eyes of your students. We'll see what happens; my beard has been driving me nuts for the past few weeks anyhow, and if I take it off now it'll grow back to a somewhat-respectable length by the time I graduate in May, if I let it.
On that note, I'm going to bed, as I'll be getting up in a little more than five hours to get ready to go to campus; I'm stuck there tomorrow night until at least 6PM, as I have my final meeting with the visiting writer at 5. Maybe, if I'm tired, I'll get to take a nap in my office in the afternoon.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Kansas Flood, Part III
Spring semester: day thirty-five
At 3AM, as I was still awake, I sent Daisy a message that included this photo:
At 3AM, as I was still awake, I sent Daisy a message that included this photo:
This is what it looked like in York, where she was, at the I-80 entryway point. Note that there are no cars on the road. At all. Yes, I realize it was 3AM, but on major interstates like I-80, it's not like traffic just stops, ever. This led me to believe that the interstate was still closed, which I told her. I looked at a few other sites, a few other road-condition-status places, and was finally able to determine that yes, I-80 had reopened at some point, and the DOH was advising speeds of 0-25mph, "extreme caution."
Mind you, Daisy was in a hotel room two hours from home during normal driving conditions, and five hours from the time she had to be at work in the morning for her first day of orientation/training (which takes place in the daytime before she switches over to night shift next week).
Via Facebook, we messaged back and forth for a bit discussing road conditions and discussing the route home, which past Lincoln or so, showed that traffic was flowing mostly normally. Nebraska actually has a really nice, up-to-the-minute DOH website with real-time stats and alerts, so that helped a lot. Finally, around 4AM, she left York. I told her to let me know when she got home safely and to be very careful, and with nothing left for me to do to help, I went to bed.
When I awoke, I found that she'd made it back home in Omaha by a little after 7AM, and that the roads were indeed terrible -- she said there were cars and trucks run off the road and scattered all about the interstate, and for those three harrowing hours she had to be intensely focused on driving. A minor slip-up could've sent her off the roads and into a ditch, or something. The brief picture she painted reminded me of, as Parker mentioned last night, The Day After Tomorrow. Regardless, she made it home safely and with enough time to get ready for work -- she's been in her training since 8AM, across two different work "campuses" for it. I can guarantee you she's dog-tired, though. I certainly would be.
As for the events at my own home, well...it's quiet here. Really quiet, as it always is when Daisy leaves. I let the drain clear out while I slept, and when I awoke I started a load of laundry (washing all the towels I'd used to dry out the floors). It ran just fine, though it bubbled up through the floor drain a bit at the very end of the washer's draining cycle, which tells me that while the water table levels are much lower than before, it still needs more time to go back down. I stopped the washer and am waiting a few hours before I let it complete its rinse cycle, as it will dump the rinse water the same way and cause it to overflow again, badly, if I just let it run. The water table levels are much higher than they were last week, as evidenced by the fact that even flushing the toilets (as a test) while there's water in that overflow drain will make the groundwater rush up through it more. Not sewage or backwash or anything like that, but groundwater. I had to wash those wet towels, however, or they will become moldy and mildewed just sitting in the washer waiting on the water to go down some more over a few days. I have been using as little water as possible around the house since yesterday afternoon, as well, to let everything drain before I do anything else. I haven't showered, for example, for fear that with how it's backing up now from running a simple load of laundry will make it overflow again as well. I plan to shower tonight, with the plunger pulled, and let it drain out in the morning (if I have to) before I go to campus.
We're not supposed to get any rain this week, and the temperatures are supposed to be up around 75 by Friday, so hopefully the abundant sunshine and lack of precipitation will help that groundwater go down and dry up a bit more. If not, and it keeps backing up when I try to do even a small load of laundry or run the dishwasher or something like that, I'll get some of those foaming pipe snake bottles and dump them down that drain to see if it can clear out whatever's in there, since at that point I would imagine it's somehow clogged between my washer's drainage and the street. If that doesn't work I'll (regrettably) have to call my landlord and see what he thinks the problem is, but that's totally a last-resort option. As I've said before, this has happened before once or twice over the years, and it's usually precipitation-related in some fashion or another. It's more of an inconvenience than anything else, really. It's just a pain in the ass.
As for Daisy and her viewing of the Holy Trilogy, which I also mentioned before -- well, she liked the films okay, I think. She didn't protest them, though she did laugh at a few of the scenes with cornier dialogue (which was, really, to be expected). Her willingness to sit through them and purposely-veiled excitement to see where they were going and how they would end was exciting to me. I think she enjoyed them a lot more than she let on.
"Now there are three more to go," I told her. "The next ones take place before these ones. They fill in the backstory. The original trilogy is all about the redemption of Anakin Skywalker -- the prequels show his fall to the Dark Side and the rise of the Empire."
Again, I defend the prequels; yes, at times they are extremely goofy and/or slow. No, I don't think they were extremely necessary to complete the story. But, that being said, they do take care of that pretty well, sewing up most loose ends. And, again, I really defend Episode III as the secondary pinnacle of the series right beneath The Empire Strikes Back.
It also came to mind that aside from the aforementioned Episode III, I don't own the other prequels on DVD. I have an old VHS tape of Episode I somewhere, and I used to own Episode II on DVD before I sold it many years ago. This is a glaring oversight in my film collection -- I'll have to get the prequels on Blu-ray before Daisy comes back down here again. Luckily, Amazon has the collection for about $40 or so. Don't try to purchase the individual DVDs of each film either -- good lord they're expensive, since they're now out of print.
I've been working, off and on this afternoon, on my final "assignments" of sorts for the visiting writer. She's out of town until Thursday, and I meet with her for the last time on Thursday night at 5PM. I didn't want to stick around campus that long on Thursday, but I have little choice. Her final assignments are revision assignments, something I gave her the idea for last week when we met. To me, they're sort of pointless, as my thesis has already been finished and turned in. While there's always the chance that one of my readers or my director will say "hey, revise this and that," the chances of that happening are quite slim -- again, most of the poems in it have been heavily revised already compared to what anyone has seen before. However, for the other poets who meet with her on a weekly basis, revisions are quite helpful.
I also have some administrative stuff to do this week before Spring Break starts -- as you know, I'm collecting my students' papers tomorrow morning, and shall begin grading them as quickly as possible so that I can focus more on reading/studying for comps as much as possible over the course of the next two weeks or so. I'm trying to make a rough plan for that, actually -- plot out the poets I'm going to study on a day-by-day basis -- but I'm still working on it. I have a big T.S. Eliot collection coming to me in the mail, though it may not arrive for another week or so as I bought it from an independent bookseller on Amazon. Aside from that, the grading of the papers has to come first and foremost so that I can enter my students' midterm grades into the system and be done with them. The midterm grading system opens today, and closes on the 20th (the Wednesday of Spring Break), while the actual midterm date is on Wednesday the 13th. There's a lot of adding and calculations to be done in the meantime. I also have to print the "recommendation form" for my thesis out of the MFA handbook and get my director to sign it and return it to the creative writing program director by Thursday as well, as without that form he can't turn the thesis in to the "committee," whoever that may be. Paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork. As you know, all of my readers have the final copy of my thesis -- the chair of the department, who is my third reader and a trusted friend/ally, told me that he'd been reading through it already and highly enjoyed it. This makes me swell with a little bit of pride, at least; I'm not sure he'd say that, however, if he and I weren't as close as we are, but eh. It still feels really nice.
As an aside, the washer just completed its drain/spin cycle for the second time and nothing came up through the floor drain, not even a bubbling or water visible four or five inches down inside the drain, so I'm guessing the water table is starting to drain out (either that, or the first time took out the clog of whatever was backing it up). I shall still be cautious, obviously, over the next few days, but it looks like the time of crisis for that has mostly passed.
But, yeah, here's my schedule for the rest of this week:
Tomorrow: Office hours 7-9AM. Teaching 9:30 and 11. Office hours 1-4 (grading, mostly). Writing Center 4-5. Home. Food. Daisy. Bed.
Wednesday: Grading. Grading lots. Taking care of any remaining things I have to do before Thursday (including refreshing my memory on the readings I'll cover in class). Possibly doing another cautious load or two of laundry. Possible short shopping trip for cat food/litter/small essentials.
Thursday: Teaching 9:30 and 11 followed by a long stretch of nothing in the afternoon before my meeting with the visiting writer at 5. Possibly/probably more grading, as I'm giving a quiz to my students on Thursday in class. Home. Food. Daisy. Bed.
Friday: Sleeping in as long as possible. Calculating midterm grades, as by this point hopefully all of my paper and quiz grading will be finished. Posting midterm grades. Posting paper and quiz grades on Blackboard. Planning out my "attack pattern" for the large remainder of my comps reading. Payday. Ordering the last of my comps books, if I have not already done so by this time (+/- 5-6 books or so). By Friday, it's also supposed to be 76 degrees, according to the Weather Channel's latest forecast.
I have a feeling that Saturday will be another "sleep until I can sleep no more" sort of day, because I'll need to gather my mental energy to begin plowing through the rest of my comps reading and studying from that point forward all the way through Spring Break. It also means I'll miss most of March Madness basketball, too; I can't focus on my studying while the TV is on, so I'll be doing much of my reading in silence and solitude on my living room couch with the cats piled around me.
As mentioned before, I also have to do my taxes over break. I'm not a fan of doing my taxes -- in fact, most of the time I dread it. A lot. It's just not a pleasant experience, and this year I'll probably get a little less back than I usually do, as I made an extra $1800 over the summer while I was teaching, which may disqualify me for some tax credits here and there.. I also had a big influx of Christmas orders from my online business as well, which doubled my income from that compared to 2011. While it's not something that takes more than a few hours (at most) to do, I just hate doing it. I file my taxes on the paper forms still, as well, since with those I can make mistakes and make changes and/or print out another form if I screw up the first one. I calculate them by hand and calculator, and do them by-the-book. Daisy shakes her proverbial head at me because I do this, but the one time I filed my taxes online (2007 or so) I ended up owing the feds $40-something because I didn't have to go through every little step and process that I can go through on the paper copies. Since then I've always taken care of it by hand and have gotten about $1k back in refunds every year, roughly. Kansas state taxes, on the other hand, are needlessly complicated and difficult to figure out as well; I've never seen a state tax form so complicated and unnecessary. I filed them online one year, but to do so they charge you $5. It's just easier to fill out the form there and stick it in the mail.
On that note, I have a raging headache, so I'm going to get something to eat (to see if that helps) and talk to Daisy a bit once she returns home from her first day of work. I'm excited.
Kansas Flood, Part II
It has now become quite apparent that after it rains or snows any significant amount that I have to wait a few days before I do laundry.
After everything being fine for about a week and a half, the latter half of this week (well, really Thursday, Friday, and a bit yesterday/last night) we got a good amount of rain -- almost an inch or so of measurable rainfall. It was also in the 60s and low 70s for the past few days until today, so all of the remaining snow still left over from Q and Rocky melted off. This once more equates to a ton of water in the ground and in the city drainage system, and again equated to my basement flooding this afternoon from the same floor drain under my washer when I did a load of laundry. Again, more mud was involved -- though not as much as before, gladly -- and I know it's not in my own plumbing but in the drainage system outside the house itself (as evidenced by the fact that the occasional leaf, seed/pebble, and/or bird feather (yes, feathers) will come up through the drain. None of that stuff's in my system; that's backing up from the drainage system outside. Sigh.
Once more I broke out all my towels, fan, and dehumidifier to dry up the basement. I really should invest in a good wet/dry shop-vac. The bad thing is now I have a stuffed hamper full of clothing that I'll have to wash very, very slowly over the next few days/weeks, and keep an eye on the drain. It's supposed to be really warm and dry this week -- temperatures could reach 75 or so for the first time this year -- so I'm really hoping that drain field dries up and I can actually, y'know, use my washer like I always have in the past. I'm not completely convinced, however, that there's not some sort of muddy clog at the end of the line somewhere, since it's now backed up twice in the past several weeks. There's suddenly a lot more water in the ground, yes, than there has been in quite some time, but still. I'm considering getting a few bottles of that foaming pipe snake stuff and just pouring it down the drain before I run any more laundry to see if that helps. It's not causing damage or anything, it's just a huge pain in the ass when it backs up and overflows. And it is draining, which means it's not a blocked pipe or anything -- it's just draining so slowly that the washer's drain cycle overflows it when that much water is pumped into it. My washer probably uses about 10-15 gallons of water per load -- it's not a high-efficiency machine or anything; it's probably almost as old as I am. My ex's mother got it off Craigslist four years ago. It also probably didn't help that I ran the dishwasher beforehand, either, even though I'm pretty sure it doesn't drain the same way as the washer does.
It's actually been a day of bad luck for not only me, but Daisy as well. Let me further explain.
On Friday, I told Daisy that it looked like she was going to get some snow in Omaha today, and that said snow may snarl her trip home this afternoon. Mind you, on Friday it was almost sixty degrees here, and snow seemed like a really strange thing to be warning Daisy about at that time, but the weather people in Omaha were calling for it, so I wanted to tell her ahead of time. It didn't look bad -- they were calling for 2-4 inches, which isn't really much at all, and we weren't supposed to get anything here -- it was supposed to rain a bit here in Newton, that was about it. I asked her then if she wanted to go home on Saturday afternoon/night instead of Sunday (read: today) so that she could beat it home, but she refused; she's good at driving in snow, and 2-4 inches is nothing. Unless there's a thick coating of ice under it or something along those lines, even I could get to campus and back in the Monte Carlo with no issue in 2-4 inches of snow. It might take a little longer, yes, but even I have driven in that much snow before. I've driven that thing in eight or nine inches of snow (as you may recall the aftermath of Q, before Rocky hit), and have gone back and forth to campus in about four or five inches before. Daisy's car is much better in snow than mine is, so she wasn't worried about it. By the time we'd gone to bed last night, the weather people were predicting yesterday's occasional rain to have turned over to a light snow for this area, with a trace to an inch accumulation possible. I shrugged that off, as we'd gone out yesterday afternoon for a bit and it was 55 degrees -- I wore shorts, even, for the first time this year. By the evening, the skies were clearing up. We were both tired, however, and decided to stay home and forego my colleague's birthday party (I sent her a message of apologies and told her I'd hoped it was fun). I showed Daisy the rest of the Holy Trilogy (more on that later) and cooked us dinner.
I got up early this morning, around 8:30 -- long before Daisy would rise -- and found that no, it hadn't snowed (or, by the looks of it, had done anything) here. The temperature had dropped by twenty degrees, yes, but it hadn't snowed or rained any more; the ground was dry. I came upstairs and made coffee, checking the weather for Daisy's trip, as that would dictate when I would wake her up and say something along the lines of "hey baby, you'd better get ready if you want to beat the snow."
This was a moot point -- by 9AM, it was already snowing in Omaha, as well as all over the northeastern quadrant of Kansas. I checked her forecast. They'd upped the snow totals to 3-5 inches, but even that wasn't that much of a concern, and since it was already snowing, there wasn't a lot she could do about it -- she had to go home today, as she starts her job tomorrow morning at 8AM sharp. I awakened her a bit later and told her the news.
"Eh, oh well," she said. "It'll be fine. I'll be okay."
We had breakfast and spent some cuddle time together in bed with the cats before I helped her pack everything up and she left for home. She left here around 1:30 or so. I told her to be very careful, as she'd run into the snow about two hours into her drive (and her drive is about six hours long, give or take).
A few minutes after she left, she sent me this message:
Hm. That's interesting. Her GPS is part of her phone; it plots the fastest route, though at this point she pretty much knows how to get here and back -- she simply uses it as a backup guide. I sent her this message for more clarification:
She didn't reply; she was driving, and I didn't expect her to reply until she stopped for gas or for something to eat someplace, so I busied myself with getting something to eat, and taking care of the household chores that I'd been putting off while she was here over the weekend -- the dishes and laundry. You, ahem, already know how that went. When the drain flooded in the basement again, I was down there for a while cleaning up and monitoring the situation. In the meanwhile, I tried to push out of my mind the fact that Daisy was apparently driving into a snowstorm. I didn't know what the "another hour" thing meant, though I would later find out.
I came back upstairs a bit later, after the waters had receded (no kidding) and checked my computer. No new messages, and she hadn't even seen the last one I'd sent yet. Okay. Again, driving. So I opened up a game on my computer, as this weekend is really the last bit of time I'll have to relax for a bit, and played it for a while. I turned it off to see this:
Followed by this:
...what the hell?
It was 7:12 PM when I read the messages. She'd just sent the last one. I went into crisis mode.
I-80 east is what Daisy takes to get to Omaha. She goes north from here until she hits York, Nebraska -- a decent-sized little town that's about the three-quarter-way point between here and there, and then from York gets on 80 east, which takes her directly to Omaha in about two hours, give or take. It's sort of an upside-down letter L from here to there.
I-80, for those of you unaware, is also a major interstate highway. And, apparently, the snowstorm she was driving through was bad enough to close it. Close it down. Seriously. This was bad news. Mind you, Daisy should've been home already by 7:12, which tells me how slowly she'd been driving through the snow to even get to York.
I asked her if she was okay, with "okay" meaning "not dying, car isn't out of gas, you won't freeze to death," etc. She was fine, of course. She was sitting in the Walmart parking lot in York, a Walmart where -- coming or going -- she always stops at anyhow to get something to eat (they have a Subway inside it, and she loves their veggie subs). However, I-80 had been closed for hours at that point, which tells me how awful the weather was there.
Again, I looked out the window here, and nothing. Sun setting, birds chirping, windy with some clouds. I checked the weather forecast for her again.
"Weather.com says 4-7 inches total for Omaha, with about an inch or so more to fall between now and midnight. The worst is hitting there. It should clear out of York in less than an hour."
I paused for a moment, as she told me how bad it was, before asking:
"So, um, what's the game plan then?"
"One sec," she replied, and then went silent.
Of course, during this time, I'm in full-on panic mode; I'm worried about her, I'm worried that she's going to get stuck two hours from home, and I'm blaming myself for all of it -- if she had left yesterday, if she hadn't made the drive down here because of me, she wouldn't be stuck in this situation. Inadvertently, at least, this is all my fault. Rationally, of course, I know it's not, but there's always a reason to blame myself -- surely it has something to do with my self-esteem and/or self-worth levels, though who really knows.
While waiting for her to respond, I began talking to Parker, filling him in on the details and telling him what was going on.
"Right," I said. "No use even trying if we couldn't get her home anyhow. If I left the house now, with the weather as it is, I could probably get to York around 3AM. However, it's not like that would matter if I couldn't do anything anyhow. If 80 is shut down, I can drive up there all I want and all that will happen is I'll get stuck there with her."
"If we need to go -- if she's in trouble: call," Parker said. "We'll pack up, hit the road, and pull a Day After Tomorrow."
I told him I'd keep him updated on what was going on and get back to him. A few minutes later, Daisy responded:
And so, that was it. She's checked into the hotel for the night, or at least until around 3:30 AM -- at which time she plans to try to get back on I-80 east to Omaha, if it's reopened.
After everything being fine for about a week and a half, the latter half of this week (well, really Thursday, Friday, and a bit yesterday/last night) we got a good amount of rain -- almost an inch or so of measurable rainfall. It was also in the 60s and low 70s for the past few days until today, so all of the remaining snow still left over from Q and Rocky melted off. This once more equates to a ton of water in the ground and in the city drainage system, and again equated to my basement flooding this afternoon from the same floor drain under my washer when I did a load of laundry. Again, more mud was involved -- though not as much as before, gladly -- and I know it's not in my own plumbing but in the drainage system outside the house itself (as evidenced by the fact that the occasional leaf, seed/pebble, and/or bird feather (yes, feathers) will come up through the drain. None of that stuff's in my system; that's backing up from the drainage system outside. Sigh.
Once more I broke out all my towels, fan, and dehumidifier to dry up the basement. I really should invest in a good wet/dry shop-vac. The bad thing is now I have a stuffed hamper full of clothing that I'll have to wash very, very slowly over the next few days/weeks, and keep an eye on the drain. It's supposed to be really warm and dry this week -- temperatures could reach 75 or so for the first time this year -- so I'm really hoping that drain field dries up and I can actually, y'know, use my washer like I always have in the past. I'm not completely convinced, however, that there's not some sort of muddy clog at the end of the line somewhere, since it's now backed up twice in the past several weeks. There's suddenly a lot more water in the ground, yes, than there has been in quite some time, but still. I'm considering getting a few bottles of that foaming pipe snake stuff and just pouring it down the drain before I run any more laundry to see if that helps. It's not causing damage or anything, it's just a huge pain in the ass when it backs up and overflows. And it is draining, which means it's not a blocked pipe or anything -- it's just draining so slowly that the washer's drain cycle overflows it when that much water is pumped into it. My washer probably uses about 10-15 gallons of water per load -- it's not a high-efficiency machine or anything; it's probably almost as old as I am. My ex's mother got it off Craigslist four years ago. It also probably didn't help that I ran the dishwasher beforehand, either, even though I'm pretty sure it doesn't drain the same way as the washer does.
It's actually been a day of bad luck for not only me, but Daisy as well. Let me further explain.
On Friday, I told Daisy that it looked like she was going to get some snow in Omaha today, and that said snow may snarl her trip home this afternoon. Mind you, on Friday it was almost sixty degrees here, and snow seemed like a really strange thing to be warning Daisy about at that time, but the weather people in Omaha were calling for it, so I wanted to tell her ahead of time. It didn't look bad -- they were calling for 2-4 inches, which isn't really much at all, and we weren't supposed to get anything here -- it was supposed to rain a bit here in Newton, that was about it. I asked her then if she wanted to go home on Saturday afternoon/night instead of Sunday (read: today) so that she could beat it home, but she refused; she's good at driving in snow, and 2-4 inches is nothing. Unless there's a thick coating of ice under it or something along those lines, even I could get to campus and back in the Monte Carlo with no issue in 2-4 inches of snow. It might take a little longer, yes, but even I have driven in that much snow before. I've driven that thing in eight or nine inches of snow (as you may recall the aftermath of Q, before Rocky hit), and have gone back and forth to campus in about four or five inches before. Daisy's car is much better in snow than mine is, so she wasn't worried about it. By the time we'd gone to bed last night, the weather people were predicting yesterday's occasional rain to have turned over to a light snow for this area, with a trace to an inch accumulation possible. I shrugged that off, as we'd gone out yesterday afternoon for a bit and it was 55 degrees -- I wore shorts, even, for the first time this year. By the evening, the skies were clearing up. We were both tired, however, and decided to stay home and forego my colleague's birthday party (I sent her a message of apologies and told her I'd hoped it was fun). I showed Daisy the rest of the Holy Trilogy (more on that later) and cooked us dinner.
I got up early this morning, around 8:30 -- long before Daisy would rise -- and found that no, it hadn't snowed (or, by the looks of it, had done anything) here. The temperature had dropped by twenty degrees, yes, but it hadn't snowed or rained any more; the ground was dry. I came upstairs and made coffee, checking the weather for Daisy's trip, as that would dictate when I would wake her up and say something along the lines of "hey baby, you'd better get ready if you want to beat the snow."
This was a moot point -- by 9AM, it was already snowing in Omaha, as well as all over the northeastern quadrant of Kansas. I checked her forecast. They'd upped the snow totals to 3-5 inches, but even that wasn't that much of a concern, and since it was already snowing, there wasn't a lot she could do about it -- she had to go home today, as she starts her job tomorrow morning at 8AM sharp. I awakened her a bit later and told her the news.
"Eh, oh well," she said. "It'll be fine. I'll be okay."
We had breakfast and spent some cuddle time together in bed with the cats before I helped her pack everything up and she left for home. She left here around 1:30 or so. I told her to be very careful, as she'd run into the snow about two hours into her drive (and her drive is about six hours long, give or take).
A few minutes after she left, she sent me this message:
Fyi: My gps says it'll take another hour to get home.
Hm. That's interesting. Her GPS is part of her phone; it plots the fastest route, though at this point she pretty much knows how to get here and back -- she simply uses it as a backup guide. I sent her this message for more clarification:
An hour extra or...?
She didn't reply; she was driving, and I didn't expect her to reply until she stopped for gas or for something to eat someplace, so I busied myself with getting something to eat, and taking care of the household chores that I'd been putting off while she was here over the weekend -- the dishes and laundry. You, ahem, already know how that went. When the drain flooded in the basement again, I was down there for a while cleaning up and monitoring the situation. In the meanwhile, I tried to push out of my mind the fact that Daisy was apparently driving into a snowstorm. I didn't know what the "another hour" thing meant, though I would later find out.
I came back upstairs a bit later, after the waters had receded (no kidding) and checked my computer. No new messages, and she hadn't even seen the last one I'd sent yet. Okay. Again, driving. So I opened up a game on my computer, as this weekend is really the last bit of time I'll have to relax for a bit, and played it for a while. I turned it off to see this:
6:10 PM: *sigh* it's going to be more than that. 80 is closed and I'm stuck in York, trying to find another way home.
Followed by this:
7:05 PM: And I'm stranded. Roads are terrible and all the hotels are booked.
...what the hell?
It was 7:12 PM when I read the messages. She'd just sent the last one. I went into crisis mode.
I-80 east is what Daisy takes to get to Omaha. She goes north from here until she hits York, Nebraska -- a decent-sized little town that's about the three-quarter-way point between here and there, and then from York gets on 80 east, which takes her directly to Omaha in about two hours, give or take. It's sort of an upside-down letter L from here to there.
I-80, for those of you unaware, is also a major interstate highway. And, apparently, the snowstorm she was driving through was bad enough to close it. Close it down. Seriously. This was bad news. Mind you, Daisy should've been home already by 7:12, which tells me how slowly she'd been driving through the snow to even get to York.
I asked her if she was okay, with "okay" meaning "not dying, car isn't out of gas, you won't freeze to death," etc. She was fine, of course. She was sitting in the Walmart parking lot in York, a Walmart where -- coming or going -- she always stops at anyhow to get something to eat (they have a Subway inside it, and she loves their veggie subs). However, I-80 had been closed for hours at that point, which tells me how awful the weather was there.
Again, I looked out the window here, and nothing. Sun setting, birds chirping, windy with some clouds. I checked the weather forecast for her again.
"Weather.com says 4-7 inches total for Omaha, with about an inch or so more to fall between now and midnight. The worst is hitting there. It should clear out of York in less than an hour."
I paused for a moment, as she told me how bad it was, before asking:
"So, um, what's the game plan then?"
"One sec," she replied, and then went silent.
Of course, during this time, I'm in full-on panic mode; I'm worried about her, I'm worried that she's going to get stuck two hours from home, and I'm blaming myself for all of it -- if she had left yesterday, if she hadn't made the drive down here because of me, she wouldn't be stuck in this situation. Inadvertently, at least, this is all my fault. Rationally, of course, I know it's not, but there's always a reason to blame myself -- surely it has something to do with my self-esteem and/or self-worth levels, though who really knows.
While waiting for her to respond, I began talking to Parker, filling him in on the details and telling him what was going on.
"My first thought was a road trip in the Jeep, actually. But I'm not sure we could get through if the roads are closed."
"Right," I said. "No use even trying if we couldn't get her home anyhow. If I left the house now, with the weather as it is, I could probably get to York around 3AM. However, it's not like that would matter if I couldn't do anything anyhow. If 80 is shut down, I can drive up there all I want and all that will happen is I'll get stuck there with her."
"If we need to go -- if she's in trouble: call," Parker said. "We'll pack up, hit the road, and pull a Day After Tomorrow."
I told him I'd keep him updated on what was going on and get back to him. A few minutes later, Daisy responded:
You both are adorable. I'm fine. A hotel got a cancellation (my parents kept calling places, I guess, even after they said they were all full.) I'm here. Checked in. And even if I wasn't, I'd be fine.
I love you and appreciate the concern.
I just need to go out to my car and get my stuff.
I'm at the Hampton Inn in York.
And so, that was it. She's checked into the hotel for the night, or at least until around 3:30 AM -- at which time she plans to try to get back on I-80 east to Omaha, if it's reopened.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
The Holy Trilogy
This is what I like about springtime in Kansas -- at 11:18 AM, it is 55 degrees and rainy. Daisy is on the couch in the living room with the cats, eating breakfast and relaxing. I'm drinking coffee and trying to wake up more efficiently. It's a typical lazy Saturday morning.
We've done a remarkable amount of things this weekend already -- yesterday, since she got her new job that she starts on Monday, I told her that my plans for the day were to take her out to find some work clothing for it. Said job, even though it's on overnight shifts (for the time being) has a really strict dress code for its employees. Daisy has what I would call, ahem, eclectic tastes in clothing, as I've mentioned here before; she really doesn't have "dressy" clothing. She has clothing, of course, that she could wear to work at her old job, which (I will admit) is semi-dressy, but nothing that couldn't be worn out to say, a club, as well. And Daisy has a lot of clothing -- I've seen her closet, I know what's in there -- but the vast majority of it isn't business-appropriate under the dress code that her new job has. Also, while Daisy herself is a bit relieved at the fact that she'll soon have a paycheck coming in on a regular basis, she really doesn't have the money now to purchase what amounts to a new wardrobe.
Mind you, I'm sort of in this position myself, or will be in several months when I will start interviewing for more formal work -- I don't really have any "overly" dressy clothing either. I have clothing that's formal enough to get by, I suppose, but the vast majority of my own daily wardrobe consists of nerdy t-shirts, tie-dyes, and cargo pants/khakis. I don't own jeans (well, I have one pair of black jeans, but I never wear them), and I only have one pair of dress shoes -- a pair that, while comfortable, haven't been worn in about four years. Could I go to an interview and look very well put-together? Yes, of course, but so could/did Daisy. I wouldn't be able to work a job like hers without purchasing a ton of new shirts/ties/slacks myself.
My idea was to take her to the local Cato store -- a chain she'd never heard of before I mentioned it, by the way -- to see what she could find. For those uninitiated, Cato is basically like a Fashion Bug/Deb/Gap-type of store, and caters more towards actual women than fifteen-year-olds. They're also quite inexpensive and rather fashionable, and this is the time of the year where a lot of the more formal stuff -- longer skirts, slacks, dressy shirts -- are all put on clearance to make way for the summer apparel. Newton doesn't have a mall or even a real "department store" like place to get clothing; we don't even have a Kmart or an Old Navy up here. If you live here and you want clothing, you either order it online and hope for the best, or you buy the latest in Walmart fashions (and, again, hope for the best). Cato is basically the last bastion of civilization for any woman in this town who may want to dress professionally -- or, you drive 25 miles to Wichita or 35 to Hutchinson to shop at a real clothing store.
If Newton had any decent thrift stores left, I would've taken her to one or more of those as well, but since the only one that was worth going to up here (The Salvation Army) closed down over two years ago, there's nothing like that here anymore either. This town is where old people go to die.
Anyway, I'm belaboring the point.
After about two hours scouring the racks in Cato (including armfuls of clothing and two trips to the dressing room), Daisy had found a lot of good-looking outfits and stuff to wear. When she was finished (read: satisfied), she began thinking hard, making mental calculations.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm adding all of the stuff up in my head," she said, "to see how much I can actually afford to spend."
This sort of surprised me.
"Honey, do you think I would take you out clothes shopping for work, when I know you don't have any money until you get paid, and say something along the lines of 'well, here you go, buy it all,'? No. Duh. I'm buying all of this for you. Get whatever you want."
"No, you're not," she said. "I have money. You don't have to buy anything for me."
"Yes, I do. That's the whole point. I wanted to take you out and get work clothing for you. Why would you have assumed anything else?"
I have paid off all of my bills for the month already, including both of my credit cards which had balances. My electric and water bills are paid. The rent is paid. I even took the initiative after I got paid last week and repaid my mother the other $250 I owed her from last summer when she loaned me money to live on. My finances right now are completely in check, and I had no big expenses coming due aside from the seven or eight books left to order for comps. Daisy, meanwhile, has been living off her unemployment checks and her tax refunds, and does not have a lot of excess funds to work with. The plan all along was to get her whatever she wanted when I took her out.
"I'm getting it," I said with finality. "Don't worry about it. Get what you need, get what you want. I can afford it. You can't."
She finally relented (though she protested silently up until the moment where I slid my Citi card through the machine). The final haul? I'll quote her on it:
The grand total was $116. And I was happy to do it. The bag of clothing easily weighed ten pounds or more, and if it helps her look formal for work (she got a lot of really gorgeous things, actually), then I'm even more happy to do it.
She did bring up later, however, how I always "do for her," but never let her do anything for me. I reminded her that every time she comes down here, she brings a veritable cornucopia of foods and/or little gifts for me, and the fact that she makes the journey at all is more than enough. I'm basically locked here in Kansas until I'm done with grad school (a huge factor in being stuck here and unable to really go anywhere or do anything, obviously) but also because it's not like my Monte Carlo is the most up-to-date and up-to-repair car on the planet. I want to do everything I can for my fiancee to make her visits comfortable and worthwhile, even if she says simply being with me is enough. Daisy is one of the most generous people I've ever met, and also hates it when people try to buy things for her or gift her with things. It's not like I'm trying to "buy her love" or repay her for anything, it's just who I am. All I want to do is make things easier on her and make her happy.
I did later relent, when we went to Walmart last night to look for baby clothes for her (a month away from birth) pregnant sister, and let her get me a $10 bag of almonds (she insisted). I do let her do little things like that from time to time because it makes her happy to do them. But, really, she's right -- when she's here, I do as much as I can for her. She made the comment last night that I "wait on her," meaning that if she needs something -- a glass of water, or an item from across the room, etc -- I get it for her, and jump to attention in doing so. She's not used to this. She also asked why I don't "let her in the kitchen," i.e., why don't you let me cook with/for you?
Well, the answer to that is multifaceted, really -- for one, while it is open and easy to move around in, my kitchen is rather small. Not super-small, but small enough. There's not a lot of counter space, and the lighting is dim because the overhead lights burned out a long time ago, and I can't figure out how to replace them (fluorescent lights, like you'd find in an office). Daisy and I are both large people, so it's not like both of us working in the kitchen at the same time really works that well most of the time. For two, when Daisy is here -- even though she and I are equals, and even though we're engaged to be married -- I still consider her my guest. She's the only other person who is ever in my home with me, unless Rae and Jay are visiting. It's the mentality of, to some extent, this is my home, so sit down and be my guest, let me serve you. This is mainly because I feel that she makes such sacrifices to spend time with me, what with the drive down here and back (which is taxing on her car to some extent, as well as her gas tank) and the fact that she always brings a bunch of stuff down here to eat/cook/feed me/etc. Getting out of the house to come down here for a weekend is like a mini-vacation for Daisy -- why should I be like "Okay, you're here; get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich" when she's here to be with me? I'm not that sort of guy anyway.
Also, to a smaller extent, I am...ahem...fairly particular about a lot of things. Since I live alone and am a bit obsessive about my home and where everything is/goes, Daisy (unknowingly, of course, and certainly unwillingly) disrupts my flow of normal life. This is not her fault, of course -- it's one of my own little mental quirks. I've noticed, for example, that almost always when we're getting ready to go out, that I sort of follow her around and talk to her a lot, watch her, etc. It wasn't even until this weekend, when she brought it to my attention jokingly that she didn't need supervision, that this is really what I was doing -- making sure she turns off the water, making sure she turns off lights, closes doors, puts things away in their proper places, doesn't leave out stuff where the cats can get it, etc. -- I realized that this is exactly what I'm doing. And really, it's mostly subconscious. I trust Daisy inherently, yet I get twitchy about my living space being...altered? disturbed? I don't know exactly how to phrase it. It's not her; she's a grown woman, she's intelligent, she knows I get twitchy about my stuff and compensates for that, yet I still find myself checking every door to make sure it's closed, checking the lights, the water faucets, etc. Again, one of my quirks. Again, pretty sure there's something wrong with me.
Ahem. Anyway.
As I've mentioned before many times, Daisy is not, by any sense of the word or stretch of the imagination, a nerd. Never has been. She once referred to Star Trek: The Next Generation as "that show with the bald guy and the one with the funny forehead. In space." While she is well-versed in things like RENT, Avenue Q, Anne of Green Gables and stuff of that ilk, she couldn't pick Darth Vader out of a lineup and has no clue what planet Superman is from (Krypton, for you nerd-luddites). While I was able to culture her a bit a month or two ago by showing her all of Firefly and Serenity, both of which she liked, it was only proper for me to continue that education by showing her where modern science fiction truly began -- and that involves, of course, invoking the Holy Trilogy.
I also shouldn't have to explain that the Holy Trilogy, of course, is the original three Star Wars films. The prequels, in case you were wondering, I refer to as the "Unholy Trilogy." I am one of the few people I know who defend the prequels, actually -- yes, they have their goofier moments, of course, but by and large they're good films in their own right. I am especially fond of Episode III, as I found it to be a fantastic wrap-up to what basically amounts to "the fall of Anakin Skywalker" story arc.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Daisy has never seen any of the Star Wars films. At most she says she's seen bits and pieces of them, a few minutes or moments at a time. She told me that as a child, she watched the beginning of Star Wars (Episode IV, A New Hope) and found it boring and slow, so she lost interest and never tried watching any of them again. This is a situation, of course, that I wanted to rectify -- because, really, no one should be in their twenties (or older) without having seen at least the first three films. I do firmly believe this, actually -- these are films that shaped our entire pop-culture environment, films that changed how people make movies period since their releases. I believe the Holy Trilogy is universal; anyone can watch them and enjoy them, and understand what's going on within them.
I don't meet many people who have never seen the films; when I do, as it's so rare, I absolutely delight in introducing those people to them. Of course, there's always the backstory to traverse as well -- I had to explain to Daisy why they were made out of chronological order, and why they'd been re-released over and over ("Special Edition" and all that) briefly, so that she could get her bearings, but I'm wondering if that was even necessary. I have the DVD releases of the films, all of which include both the Special Editions as well as the normal theatrical presentations -- yes, I made sure to jump on those while I still had the chance to get them before the Blu-ray releases -- so I had the choice of which ones she could see.
I will state now that I chose the Special Editions for Star Wars and Empire, and the theatrical presentation for Jedi. Mainly because, even though there's the controversial Greedo/Han scene in Star Wars, there's also a few added scenes that weren't available in the original version, such as the scene with Jabba in Mos Eisley and Luke's added interactions with Biggs and his friends, which rounds out the film a bit more and explains things a little more deeply. For Empire not a lot is different; they update the special effects and backgrounds a bit here and there, and they redid the conversation Vader has with the Emperor to make it more up-to-date -- as well as replacing Boba Fett's voice actor with Temeura Morrison for continuity issues and....wow, I'm going way too in-depth with this, aren't I? Ahem. Let's continue.
Daisy told me a while back that she would watch the films with me if it was important to me that she do so. It is, of course. I want to foster in her the childlike fascination and grand scope of rich storytelling that I had when watching these films for the first time. It's like a gift I wanted to give her. Come, darling, join me in my world. Again, to me it's like an education of sorts. She's been educated in a completely different style and manner than I have when it comes to pop-culture stuff; I want to open her to a whole new side of that world. It's not a forceful thing (ahem, no pun intended), but more of a "honey, let me show you a big part of why I'm the person I am" sort of thing. The bonus in watching the films, of course, is that she'll now get a lot more of my nerdier references, such as how I refer to my Monte Carlo as the Millennium Falcon. "Hear me, baby? Hold together" and all that.
How did she fare? Well, I'll have to answer that in my next post here...
We've done a remarkable amount of things this weekend already -- yesterday, since she got her new job that she starts on Monday, I told her that my plans for the day were to take her out to find some work clothing for it. Said job, even though it's on overnight shifts (for the time being) has a really strict dress code for its employees. Daisy has what I would call, ahem, eclectic tastes in clothing, as I've mentioned here before; she really doesn't have "dressy" clothing. She has clothing, of course, that she could wear to work at her old job, which (I will admit) is semi-dressy, but nothing that couldn't be worn out to say, a club, as well. And Daisy has a lot of clothing -- I've seen her closet, I know what's in there -- but the vast majority of it isn't business-appropriate under the dress code that her new job has. Also, while Daisy herself is a bit relieved at the fact that she'll soon have a paycheck coming in on a regular basis, she really doesn't have the money now to purchase what amounts to a new wardrobe.
Mind you, I'm sort of in this position myself, or will be in several months when I will start interviewing for more formal work -- I don't really have any "overly" dressy clothing either. I have clothing that's formal enough to get by, I suppose, but the vast majority of my own daily wardrobe consists of nerdy t-shirts, tie-dyes, and cargo pants/khakis. I don't own jeans (well, I have one pair of black jeans, but I never wear them), and I only have one pair of dress shoes -- a pair that, while comfortable, haven't been worn in about four years. Could I go to an interview and look very well put-together? Yes, of course, but so could/did Daisy. I wouldn't be able to work a job like hers without purchasing a ton of new shirts/ties/slacks myself.
My idea was to take her to the local Cato store -- a chain she'd never heard of before I mentioned it, by the way -- to see what she could find. For those uninitiated, Cato is basically like a Fashion Bug/Deb/Gap-type of store, and caters more towards actual women than fifteen-year-olds. They're also quite inexpensive and rather fashionable, and this is the time of the year where a lot of the more formal stuff -- longer skirts, slacks, dressy shirts -- are all put on clearance to make way for the summer apparel. Newton doesn't have a mall or even a real "department store" like place to get clothing; we don't even have a Kmart or an Old Navy up here. If you live here and you want clothing, you either order it online and hope for the best, or you buy the latest in Walmart fashions (and, again, hope for the best). Cato is basically the last bastion of civilization for any woman in this town who may want to dress professionally -- or, you drive 25 miles to Wichita or 35 to Hutchinson to shop at a real clothing store.
If Newton had any decent thrift stores left, I would've taken her to one or more of those as well, but since the only one that was worth going to up here (The Salvation Army) closed down over two years ago, there's nothing like that here anymore either. This town is where old people go to die.
Anyway, I'm belaboring the point.
After about two hours scouring the racks in Cato (including armfuls of clothing and two trips to the dressing room), Daisy had found a lot of good-looking outfits and stuff to wear. When she was finished (read: satisfied), she began thinking hard, making mental calculations.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm adding all of the stuff up in my head," she said, "to see how much I can actually afford to spend."
This sort of surprised me.
"Honey, do you think I would take you out clothes shopping for work, when I know you don't have any money until you get paid, and say something along the lines of 'well, here you go, buy it all,'? No. Duh. I'm buying all of this for you. Get whatever you want."
"No, you're not," she said. "I have money. You don't have to buy anything for me."
"Yes, I do. That's the whole point. I wanted to take you out and get work clothing for you. Why would you have assumed anything else?"
I have paid off all of my bills for the month already, including both of my credit cards which had balances. My electric and water bills are paid. The rent is paid. I even took the initiative after I got paid last week and repaid my mother the other $250 I owed her from last summer when she loaned me money to live on. My finances right now are completely in check, and I had no big expenses coming due aside from the seven or eight books left to order for comps. Daisy, meanwhile, has been living off her unemployment checks and her tax refunds, and does not have a lot of excess funds to work with. The plan all along was to get her whatever she wanted when I took her out.
"I'm getting it," I said with finality. "Don't worry about it. Get what you need, get what you want. I can afford it. You can't."
She finally relented (though she protested silently up until the moment where I slid my Citi card through the machine). The final haul? I'll quote her on it:
My darlin' took me shopping today for work: five skirts, one dress, two jackets, and three shirts.
Thanks suga' papi, ahem, Brandon.
The grand total was $116. And I was happy to do it. The bag of clothing easily weighed ten pounds or more, and if it helps her look formal for work (she got a lot of really gorgeous things, actually), then I'm even more happy to do it.
She did bring up later, however, how I always "do for her," but never let her do anything for me. I reminded her that every time she comes down here, she brings a veritable cornucopia of foods and/or little gifts for me, and the fact that she makes the journey at all is more than enough. I'm basically locked here in Kansas until I'm done with grad school (a huge factor in being stuck here and unable to really go anywhere or do anything, obviously) but also because it's not like my Monte Carlo is the most up-to-date and up-to-repair car on the planet. I want to do everything I can for my fiancee to make her visits comfortable and worthwhile, even if she says simply being with me is enough. Daisy is one of the most generous people I've ever met, and also hates it when people try to buy things for her or gift her with things. It's not like I'm trying to "buy her love" or repay her for anything, it's just who I am. All I want to do is make things easier on her and make her happy.
I did later relent, when we went to Walmart last night to look for baby clothes for her (a month away from birth) pregnant sister, and let her get me a $10 bag of almonds (she insisted). I do let her do little things like that from time to time because it makes her happy to do them. But, really, she's right -- when she's here, I do as much as I can for her. She made the comment last night that I "wait on her," meaning that if she needs something -- a glass of water, or an item from across the room, etc -- I get it for her, and jump to attention in doing so. She's not used to this. She also asked why I don't "let her in the kitchen," i.e., why don't you let me cook with/for you?
Well, the answer to that is multifaceted, really -- for one, while it is open and easy to move around in, my kitchen is rather small. Not super-small, but small enough. There's not a lot of counter space, and the lighting is dim because the overhead lights burned out a long time ago, and I can't figure out how to replace them (fluorescent lights, like you'd find in an office). Daisy and I are both large people, so it's not like both of us working in the kitchen at the same time really works that well most of the time. For two, when Daisy is here -- even though she and I are equals, and even though we're engaged to be married -- I still consider her my guest. She's the only other person who is ever in my home with me, unless Rae and Jay are visiting. It's the mentality of, to some extent, this is my home, so sit down and be my guest, let me serve you. This is mainly because I feel that she makes such sacrifices to spend time with me, what with the drive down here and back (which is taxing on her car to some extent, as well as her gas tank) and the fact that she always brings a bunch of stuff down here to eat/cook/feed me/etc. Getting out of the house to come down here for a weekend is like a mini-vacation for Daisy -- why should I be like "Okay, you're here; get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich" when she's here to be with me? I'm not that sort of guy anyway.
Also, to a smaller extent, I am...ahem...fairly particular about a lot of things. Since I live alone and am a bit obsessive about my home and where everything is/goes, Daisy (unknowingly, of course, and certainly unwillingly) disrupts my flow of normal life. This is not her fault, of course -- it's one of my own little mental quirks. I've noticed, for example, that almost always when we're getting ready to go out, that I sort of follow her around and talk to her a lot, watch her, etc. It wasn't even until this weekend, when she brought it to my attention jokingly that she didn't need supervision, that this is really what I was doing -- making sure she turns off the water, making sure she turns off lights, closes doors, puts things away in their proper places, doesn't leave out stuff where the cats can get it, etc. -- I realized that this is exactly what I'm doing. And really, it's mostly subconscious. I trust Daisy inherently, yet I get twitchy about my living space being...altered? disturbed? I don't know exactly how to phrase it. It's not her; she's a grown woman, she's intelligent, she knows I get twitchy about my stuff and compensates for that, yet I still find myself checking every door to make sure it's closed, checking the lights, the water faucets, etc. Again, one of my quirks. Again, pretty sure there's something wrong with me.
Ahem. Anyway.
As I've mentioned before many times, Daisy is not, by any sense of the word or stretch of the imagination, a nerd. Never has been. She once referred to Star Trek: The Next Generation as "that show with the bald guy and the one with the funny forehead. In space." While she is well-versed in things like RENT, Avenue Q, Anne of Green Gables and stuff of that ilk, she couldn't pick Darth Vader out of a lineup and has no clue what planet Superman is from (Krypton, for you nerd-luddites). While I was able to culture her a bit a month or two ago by showing her all of Firefly and Serenity, both of which she liked, it was only proper for me to continue that education by showing her where modern science fiction truly began -- and that involves, of course, invoking the Holy Trilogy.
I also shouldn't have to explain that the Holy Trilogy, of course, is the original three Star Wars films. The prequels, in case you were wondering, I refer to as the "Unholy Trilogy." I am one of the few people I know who defend the prequels, actually -- yes, they have their goofier moments, of course, but by and large they're good films in their own right. I am especially fond of Episode III, as I found it to be a fantastic wrap-up to what basically amounts to "the fall of Anakin Skywalker" story arc.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Daisy has never seen any of the Star Wars films. At most she says she's seen bits and pieces of them, a few minutes or moments at a time. She told me that as a child, she watched the beginning of Star Wars (Episode IV, A New Hope) and found it boring and slow, so she lost interest and never tried watching any of them again. This is a situation, of course, that I wanted to rectify -- because, really, no one should be in their twenties (or older) without having seen at least the first three films. I do firmly believe this, actually -- these are films that shaped our entire pop-culture environment, films that changed how people make movies period since their releases. I believe the Holy Trilogy is universal; anyone can watch them and enjoy them, and understand what's going on within them.
I don't meet many people who have never seen the films; when I do, as it's so rare, I absolutely delight in introducing those people to them. Of course, there's always the backstory to traverse as well -- I had to explain to Daisy why they were made out of chronological order, and why they'd been re-released over and over ("Special Edition" and all that) briefly, so that she could get her bearings, but I'm wondering if that was even necessary. I have the DVD releases of the films, all of which include both the Special Editions as well as the normal theatrical presentations -- yes, I made sure to jump on those while I still had the chance to get them before the Blu-ray releases -- so I had the choice of which ones she could see.
I will state now that I chose the Special Editions for Star Wars and Empire, and the theatrical presentation for Jedi. Mainly because, even though there's the controversial Greedo/Han scene in Star Wars, there's also a few added scenes that weren't available in the original version, such as the scene with Jabba in Mos Eisley and Luke's added interactions with Biggs and his friends, which rounds out the film a bit more and explains things a little more deeply. For Empire not a lot is different; they update the special effects and backgrounds a bit here and there, and they redid the conversation Vader has with the Emperor to make it more up-to-date -- as well as replacing Boba Fett's voice actor with Temeura Morrison for continuity issues and....wow, I'm going way too in-depth with this, aren't I? Ahem. Let's continue.
Daisy told me a while back that she would watch the films with me if it was important to me that she do so. It is, of course. I want to foster in her the childlike fascination and grand scope of rich storytelling that I had when watching these films for the first time. It's like a gift I wanted to give her. Come, darling, join me in my world. Again, to me it's like an education of sorts. She's been educated in a completely different style and manner than I have when it comes to pop-culture stuff; I want to open her to a whole new side of that world. It's not a forceful thing (ahem, no pun intended), but more of a "honey, let me show you a big part of why I'm the person I am" sort of thing. The bonus in watching the films, of course, is that she'll now get a lot more of my nerdier references, such as how I refer to my Monte Carlo as the Millennium Falcon. "Hear me, baby? Hold together" and all that.
How did she fare? Well, I'll have to answer that in my next post here...
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Let it Be
Spring semester: day thirty-three
I was informed via email a few days ago that while March 15 is the "due date" of my thesis to my thesis director, ideally he should've had it for some time by that point, should have read it, and the 15th is the last date by which he should recommend it to the graduate committee.
Uhh, yeah, that's not what they told us originally, at all. We were simply told that we had to have our theses to our directors by March 15. That's it. No details, no "get it done super early," nothing. Just by March 15. When one tells a grad student that something is due on a certain date, expect said grad student to turn in that project at the latest possible time/hour/minute of that date -- because, really, that's what we do. Well, most of us, anyway.
Now, my thesis has been done in several forms and ways, and I could've called it "finished" six months ago if I'd wanted to -- but I didn't. I wanted to keep writing in it, keep revising, adding, and removing poems from it, to make it the best collection possible. I volunteered a full draft of my thesis to my director a little over a month ago, around the beginning of the semester, so that he'd be able to look it over -- printed it out and gave it to him -- and since then I've been slowly revising and adding things here and there, taking some words out, changing around line breaks, spacing, taking entire poems out or adding more in, etc. We had a meeting last week, as you may know, and I told him that I'd have the final version to him no later than the 12th or so at the latest, getting it in with a few days to spare and allowing him to see the difference between the draft and the finalized copy. This also allowed me to get one huge weight off my shoulders and to better focus on my studying for comps over the course of the next month or so, as well. He told me he'd read through most of my draft at that point, and had enjoyed it (which surprised me, really); he liked the flow of it from one poem to the next, understood its overall themes and progressions, etc. I knew then, as I said in my last post here, that my thesis was about 95% finished as it was. I had to make some tweaks here and there throughout it, but if I'd so chosen (or in the event of a catastrophe) he could've kept that copy and I could've called it done.
After that email, I knew what my course of action for yesterday would be: sleep well, get up, and finish it. So that's what I did.
Over the course of about five hours yesterday morning and afternoon, I performed the final read-through and edit of my thesis. Some poems were heavily revised, again. Some poems were added, and then revised and rewritten. Some poems were removed entirely, while others were left relatively untouched. I changed the order of a few of them. I completely restructured and re-edited the title poem of the collection, which is the last poem in the manuscript. There were poems I wanted to add to it, poems I wanted to work on more and find a place for within it, but I did not. I will always be able to compile another collection at some point; it's more important that this one be finished now.
The final copy -- title pages, table of contents, special thanks and all -- is 46 pages. It's the best that I can make it for what it is. Those 46 pages represent three years of work within this program, good or bad. I've written many more than 46 pages of poetry in that time, of course, but those are the best ones, the "representative" ones that, to some extent large or small, I'm proud of enough to include in the thesis. I printed three copies of it, one for each member of my reading committee, and sealed them all within manila envelopes. I will deliver them today. No, the other readers don't need it until April 1, but if it's done, there's no reason to hold it back from them. The month of April in the department is a mess most of the time, what with everything going on as the semester wraps up. It's similar to the month of November in the fall semester. If I get said copies to them now, they may be able to have some free time to read them over Spring Break in a week and a half.
Of everyone in my life, only two people other than myself have read the completed thesis thus far in its entirety, though more than have read the drafts -- Daisy has read it, as I sent it to her last night, and her father requested permission to read it as well, permission which I gave wholeheartedly.
"It's really good," she told me. "Made me cry. I'm an emotional person. Let it be."
Eh. I'm happy enough with it, I suppose. If I could describe my poetry, it would be "poetry good for those people who don't read poetry that often, 'cause they'll like it and think it's brilliant, while scholars of poetry will think it's crap and/or merely passable -- nothing to write home about."
This is, really, the most accurate (as well as brutally honest) description I can come up with. Again, I do think some of my poems are good. Some. Not all, or even most. I've said before that I can't hold a candle to some of the better writers in my own department, even -- writers who, fiction or poetry, get published all over the place, and frequently. Only one poem out of my entire thesis has ever been published, and that was over a year ago now. The fact that no other publication wanted my stuff is proof that to an audience of poetry scholars, it's not outstanding work. I am, however, grateful in some capacity that most people outside of that bubble who read it tend to enjoy it, I suppose. It's a small vindication.
"Is that what you want?" a colleague and friend asked me on Tuesday afternoon. "To be famous? Is that why you write?"
We were discussing her many publications and the sheer talent and creativity she possesses in her own poetry. I'd showed her some of my drafts that I'd let the visiting writer work over earlier that afternoon.
"Well, no," I said. "I used to want that, but I stopped wanting to be famous a long time ago. Too much bullshit, too much pressure."
Literary fame is a strange fame anyway; it's not like famous authors or poets, unless they're really well known (like a Stephen King type of person) will get mobbed on the street. It's not like they can't go into public without hushed whispers around them all the time. Would I like to be moderately known, eventually? Sure. If someone says my name, I want someone else to respond "oh yes, I've read some of his work." But do I want to be King-famous? No. Most of the poets I've read over the years, even the really well-known ones, I couldn't pick out of a lineup because, really, I've never seen what they look like. I only know what Sharon Olds looks like, for example, because I followed her on Twitter just to send her a tweet saying how much I liked her book Strike Sparks.
Rich, however, is a different story. Screw fame -- just give me the money. But that's not even why I write. People say that writers write simply because they must, and to an extent, that is true -- for better or for worse. I write, and even write here, in this blog, because I want to leave a legacy. I've said many times that I'd forego all of the money, all of the fame that I could eventually (but unlikely) obtain via my writing if only I were reprinted and republished continually in every new volume of the Norton or Longman Anthologies every few years. If I even write one poem that bears my inclusion, I'd be happy.
But I'm getting off track. The point is that my thesis is done, and it will be turned in this morning. After finishing it, I ate dinner and was in bed before 7PM -- I didn't read anything, I didn't grade anything -- I just went to bed. I told Daisy that I was exhausted (which I was, for some unknown reason) and passed out. When I awoke around 4AM, I checked my email, took a shower, and here I am now, awake for the day.
I took the too-small sport coat I ordered from Amazon in to campus on Tuesday morning for Parker to examine it. Parker's a tall guy, but he's pretty rail-thin, and I don't say that as an insult at all -- he's just tall and thin. He tried it on and it was massively too big for him. It's too big for him to get tailored to fit him, and it's too small to get tailored to fit me. It's a strange size, even if it does say "XXL" on it. I left it on my officemate's desk with a note saying that if it could fit him, he could have it. I returned later that afternoon to find that it didn't fit comfortably on him, either -- too big in the shoulders and chest. I tried a few other friends, including the chair of the department, and it was either too big or too small on them as well. I ended up giving it to my friend Brian, who is slightly taller, but a fair bit slimmer than I am.
"Yeah, this fits pretty well," he said, buttoning it and smoothing it out, "but there's no way this is a 2XL. It's more like a large."
"That's what I thought," I told him. "Most of the time, 2XL stuff is big on me. This coat was tight, unbuttonable, tight across the shoulders, arms too short, etc."
"Yeah, I can wear this," he said.
"Good, then it's yours," I replied. "Merry Christmas."
He offered to give me money for it or buy me lunch at some point, but I kindly refused. It was less than $40 -- I was just happy someone would get some use out of it, and the returns process for Amazon isn't worth the hassle for $40. Screw it, I don't even care. However, Brian does have a ton of old vintage clothes he's collected over the years, from relatives, thrift shops, etc, and says that he has a blue corduroy jacket that would probably fit me, one he doesn't wear or use, and offered to bring it in as a sort of trade. I told him sure, if I could use it, I'd take it and wear it. I love corduroy, and haven't owned any corduroy clothing in years (it's coming back into fashion again, which makes it incredibly expensive to purchase new). Even if it doesn't fit, it's not like I'd ask him (or anyone else) for any sort of payment. I'm really not that sort of guy.
Today should be relatively painless and short; I am finishing up the last of my student workshops this morning, and their paper is due on Tuesday, when we start the next unit of the class. I'll be coming home around noon to get something to eat and to do a quick tidy of the house in preparation for Daisy to arrive this evening for the weekend. I don't know what time she'll get here -- it will rely heavily on when she leaves the house and begins her journey southward, and she operates on Daisy Standard Time as always. It will be good to get a few short days of relaxation time with my fiancee before next week, and the next month, becomes hectic as hell again. Next week is crazy for me; I collect those papers on Tuesday, the midterm date is Wednesday, I meet with the visiting writer for the last time on Thursday at 5PM, and then Spring Break starts, during which I will be doing little else but spending six to eight hours every day, if not more, on reading through my remaining reading list for comps. I currently have 27 of the 35 books required for me to study, and the others I'll be ordering sometime within the next week so that I can get them quickly and add them to the pile. I have read through and completed approximately four and a half of those 27 thus far, over the course of the past three weeks or so. Granted, some of those four and a half were 500-page collections, but still. This means that most of my break, I'll be going through about two books a day, maybe three. This is an insane amount of reading/studying/cramming, obviously, and it means that I'll be pounding coffee and sleeping little -- in addition to doing other tasks like grading those aforementioned papers, calculating midterm grades, and finally doing my taxes as well. For graduate students, there's no such thing as "Spring Break." It's always a headlong rush from that point forward to finals week. This semester, it's also a headlong rush to graduation, as well.
Speaking of graduation, I have purchased expensive, ivory linen paper and envelopes, and once I'm done with comps, will be buying a few books of stamps to send out a homemade, very elegantly-crafted set of graduation announcements to friends and family. I've planned to do this for a while now; I have a graduation announcement template that I'll follow, and it is much, much cheaper to create them myself and mail them out than to order a package from an official printer of announcements and spend $200 or more on them. Again, to use a phrase I've said several times in this post already, screw that. I'll spend about $40 total on paper and stamps, and print them on my laser printer next to me, using the remaining paper and envelopes for resumes if necessary. I have a ton of different fonts and designs at my disposal here on my computer already.
Also speaking of graduation, I doubt my parents will be able to make it; my mother has not brought it up in conversation since I told her of my engagement on the phone a few weeks ago, and it was looking even then as if there wouldn't be any real chances of them coming out here for it. I've basically processed and accepted this at this point; it's not like any of my other relatives will be able to come to it, either. That's what happens when you live 1,000 miles from where you grew up, and when where you grew up happens to be poor, destitute backwoods West Virginia. I'll still send out announcements to my entire family, as is customary, but the only familial support I expect to see at my graduation is Daisy and possibly her parents -- and I wouldn't even really want to inconvenience her parents if they're unable to make it. Truthfully, it wouldn't really matter to me much either way if I went to graduation completely alone, attended the ceremony and went through the motions, then came back home and went to sleep. They've already told us that we don't get our actual diplomas at the ceremony, but we must pick them up a month or so later or have them mailed to us -- the scroll that's given to us when we walk contains the directions on how to retrieve said diplomas. My ceremony is on Friday, May 17, for the liberal arts. They split it over two days depending on which school you're graduating from. At least, I've been told that's when my ceremony is -- who knows, really, to be sure. That's also the Friday of finals week, which means that in the days leading up to it I'll be crazy-busy grading papers and calculating final exam scores and final grades for my students. They certainly want to do it fast and get it over with, apparently.
On that note, folks, I shall leave you for the weekend -- there is much to do, and in 25 minutes I must make my morning drive to campus.
I was informed via email a few days ago that while March 15 is the "due date" of my thesis to my thesis director, ideally he should've had it for some time by that point, should have read it, and the 15th is the last date by which he should recommend it to the graduate committee.
Uhh, yeah, that's not what they told us originally, at all. We were simply told that we had to have our theses to our directors by March 15. That's it. No details, no "get it done super early," nothing. Just by March 15. When one tells a grad student that something is due on a certain date, expect said grad student to turn in that project at the latest possible time/hour/minute of that date -- because, really, that's what we do. Well, most of us, anyway.
Now, my thesis has been done in several forms and ways, and I could've called it "finished" six months ago if I'd wanted to -- but I didn't. I wanted to keep writing in it, keep revising, adding, and removing poems from it, to make it the best collection possible. I volunteered a full draft of my thesis to my director a little over a month ago, around the beginning of the semester, so that he'd be able to look it over -- printed it out and gave it to him -- and since then I've been slowly revising and adding things here and there, taking some words out, changing around line breaks, spacing, taking entire poems out or adding more in, etc. We had a meeting last week, as you may know, and I told him that I'd have the final version to him no later than the 12th or so at the latest, getting it in with a few days to spare and allowing him to see the difference between the draft and the finalized copy. This also allowed me to get one huge weight off my shoulders and to better focus on my studying for comps over the course of the next month or so, as well. He told me he'd read through most of my draft at that point, and had enjoyed it (which surprised me, really); he liked the flow of it from one poem to the next, understood its overall themes and progressions, etc. I knew then, as I said in my last post here, that my thesis was about 95% finished as it was. I had to make some tweaks here and there throughout it, but if I'd so chosen (or in the event of a catastrophe) he could've kept that copy and I could've called it done.
After that email, I knew what my course of action for yesterday would be: sleep well, get up, and finish it. So that's what I did.
Over the course of about five hours yesterday morning and afternoon, I performed the final read-through and edit of my thesis. Some poems were heavily revised, again. Some poems were added, and then revised and rewritten. Some poems were removed entirely, while others were left relatively untouched. I changed the order of a few of them. I completely restructured and re-edited the title poem of the collection, which is the last poem in the manuscript. There were poems I wanted to add to it, poems I wanted to work on more and find a place for within it, but I did not. I will always be able to compile another collection at some point; it's more important that this one be finished now.
The final copy -- title pages, table of contents, special thanks and all -- is 46 pages. It's the best that I can make it for what it is. Those 46 pages represent three years of work within this program, good or bad. I've written many more than 46 pages of poetry in that time, of course, but those are the best ones, the "representative" ones that, to some extent large or small, I'm proud of enough to include in the thesis. I printed three copies of it, one for each member of my reading committee, and sealed them all within manila envelopes. I will deliver them today. No, the other readers don't need it until April 1, but if it's done, there's no reason to hold it back from them. The month of April in the department is a mess most of the time, what with everything going on as the semester wraps up. It's similar to the month of November in the fall semester. If I get said copies to them now, they may be able to have some free time to read them over Spring Break in a week and a half.
Of everyone in my life, only two people other than myself have read the completed thesis thus far in its entirety, though more than have read the drafts -- Daisy has read it, as I sent it to her last night, and her father requested permission to read it as well, permission which I gave wholeheartedly.
"It's really good," she told me. "Made me cry. I'm an emotional person. Let it be."
Eh. I'm happy enough with it, I suppose. If I could describe my poetry, it would be "poetry good for those people who don't read poetry that often, 'cause they'll like it and think it's brilliant, while scholars of poetry will think it's crap and/or merely passable -- nothing to write home about."
This is, really, the most accurate (as well as brutally honest) description I can come up with. Again, I do think some of my poems are good. Some. Not all, or even most. I've said before that I can't hold a candle to some of the better writers in my own department, even -- writers who, fiction or poetry, get published all over the place, and frequently. Only one poem out of my entire thesis has ever been published, and that was over a year ago now. The fact that no other publication wanted my stuff is proof that to an audience of poetry scholars, it's not outstanding work. I am, however, grateful in some capacity that most people outside of that bubble who read it tend to enjoy it, I suppose. It's a small vindication.
"Is that what you want?" a colleague and friend asked me on Tuesday afternoon. "To be famous? Is that why you write?"
We were discussing her many publications and the sheer talent and creativity she possesses in her own poetry. I'd showed her some of my drafts that I'd let the visiting writer work over earlier that afternoon.
"Well, no," I said. "I used to want that, but I stopped wanting to be famous a long time ago. Too much bullshit, too much pressure."
Literary fame is a strange fame anyway; it's not like famous authors or poets, unless they're really well known (like a Stephen King type of person) will get mobbed on the street. It's not like they can't go into public without hushed whispers around them all the time. Would I like to be moderately known, eventually? Sure. If someone says my name, I want someone else to respond "oh yes, I've read some of his work." But do I want to be King-famous? No. Most of the poets I've read over the years, even the really well-known ones, I couldn't pick out of a lineup because, really, I've never seen what they look like. I only know what Sharon Olds looks like, for example, because I followed her on Twitter just to send her a tweet saying how much I liked her book Strike Sparks.
Rich, however, is a different story. Screw fame -- just give me the money. But that's not even why I write. People say that writers write simply because they must, and to an extent, that is true -- for better or for worse. I write, and even write here, in this blog, because I want to leave a legacy. I've said many times that I'd forego all of the money, all of the fame that I could eventually (but unlikely) obtain via my writing if only I were reprinted and republished continually in every new volume of the Norton or Longman Anthologies every few years. If I even write one poem that bears my inclusion, I'd be happy.
But I'm getting off track. The point is that my thesis is done, and it will be turned in this morning. After finishing it, I ate dinner and was in bed before 7PM -- I didn't read anything, I didn't grade anything -- I just went to bed. I told Daisy that I was exhausted (which I was, for some unknown reason) and passed out. When I awoke around 4AM, I checked my email, took a shower, and here I am now, awake for the day.
I took the too-small sport coat I ordered from Amazon in to campus on Tuesday morning for Parker to examine it. Parker's a tall guy, but he's pretty rail-thin, and I don't say that as an insult at all -- he's just tall and thin. He tried it on and it was massively too big for him. It's too big for him to get tailored to fit him, and it's too small to get tailored to fit me. It's a strange size, even if it does say "XXL" on it. I left it on my officemate's desk with a note saying that if it could fit him, he could have it. I returned later that afternoon to find that it didn't fit comfortably on him, either -- too big in the shoulders and chest. I tried a few other friends, including the chair of the department, and it was either too big or too small on them as well. I ended up giving it to my friend Brian, who is slightly taller, but a fair bit slimmer than I am.
"Yeah, this fits pretty well," he said, buttoning it and smoothing it out, "but there's no way this is a 2XL. It's more like a large."
"That's what I thought," I told him. "Most of the time, 2XL stuff is big on me. This coat was tight, unbuttonable, tight across the shoulders, arms too short, etc."
"Yeah, I can wear this," he said.
"Good, then it's yours," I replied. "Merry Christmas."
He offered to give me money for it or buy me lunch at some point, but I kindly refused. It was less than $40 -- I was just happy someone would get some use out of it, and the returns process for Amazon isn't worth the hassle for $40. Screw it, I don't even care. However, Brian does have a ton of old vintage clothes he's collected over the years, from relatives, thrift shops, etc, and says that he has a blue corduroy jacket that would probably fit me, one he doesn't wear or use, and offered to bring it in as a sort of trade. I told him sure, if I could use it, I'd take it and wear it. I love corduroy, and haven't owned any corduroy clothing in years (it's coming back into fashion again, which makes it incredibly expensive to purchase new). Even if it doesn't fit, it's not like I'd ask him (or anyone else) for any sort of payment. I'm really not that sort of guy.
Today should be relatively painless and short; I am finishing up the last of my student workshops this morning, and their paper is due on Tuesday, when we start the next unit of the class. I'll be coming home around noon to get something to eat and to do a quick tidy of the house in preparation for Daisy to arrive this evening for the weekend. I don't know what time she'll get here -- it will rely heavily on when she leaves the house and begins her journey southward, and she operates on Daisy Standard Time as always. It will be good to get a few short days of relaxation time with my fiancee before next week, and the next month, becomes hectic as hell again. Next week is crazy for me; I collect those papers on Tuesday, the midterm date is Wednesday, I meet with the visiting writer for the last time on Thursday at 5PM, and then Spring Break starts, during which I will be doing little else but spending six to eight hours every day, if not more, on reading through my remaining reading list for comps. I currently have 27 of the 35 books required for me to study, and the others I'll be ordering sometime within the next week so that I can get them quickly and add them to the pile. I have read through and completed approximately four and a half of those 27 thus far, over the course of the past three weeks or so. Granted, some of those four and a half were 500-page collections, but still. This means that most of my break, I'll be going through about two books a day, maybe three. This is an insane amount of reading/studying/cramming, obviously, and it means that I'll be pounding coffee and sleeping little -- in addition to doing other tasks like grading those aforementioned papers, calculating midterm grades, and finally doing my taxes as well. For graduate students, there's no such thing as "Spring Break." It's always a headlong rush from that point forward to finals week. This semester, it's also a headlong rush to graduation, as well.
Speaking of graduation, I have purchased expensive, ivory linen paper and envelopes, and once I'm done with comps, will be buying a few books of stamps to send out a homemade, very elegantly-crafted set of graduation announcements to friends and family. I've planned to do this for a while now; I have a graduation announcement template that I'll follow, and it is much, much cheaper to create them myself and mail them out than to order a package from an official printer of announcements and spend $200 or more on them. Again, to use a phrase I've said several times in this post already, screw that. I'll spend about $40 total on paper and stamps, and print them on my laser printer next to me, using the remaining paper and envelopes for resumes if necessary. I have a ton of different fonts and designs at my disposal here on my computer already.
Also speaking of graduation, I doubt my parents will be able to make it; my mother has not brought it up in conversation since I told her of my engagement on the phone a few weeks ago, and it was looking even then as if there wouldn't be any real chances of them coming out here for it. I've basically processed and accepted this at this point; it's not like any of my other relatives will be able to come to it, either. That's what happens when you live 1,000 miles from where you grew up, and when where you grew up happens to be poor, destitute backwoods West Virginia. I'll still send out announcements to my entire family, as is customary, but the only familial support I expect to see at my graduation is Daisy and possibly her parents -- and I wouldn't even really want to inconvenience her parents if they're unable to make it. Truthfully, it wouldn't really matter to me much either way if I went to graduation completely alone, attended the ceremony and went through the motions, then came back home and went to sleep. They've already told us that we don't get our actual diplomas at the ceremony, but we must pick them up a month or so later or have them mailed to us -- the scroll that's given to us when we walk contains the directions on how to retrieve said diplomas. My ceremony is on Friday, May 17, for the liberal arts. They split it over two days depending on which school you're graduating from. At least, I've been told that's when my ceremony is -- who knows, really, to be sure. That's also the Friday of finals week, which means that in the days leading up to it I'll be crazy-busy grading papers and calculating final exam scores and final grades for my students. They certainly want to do it fast and get it over with, apparently.
On that note, folks, I shall leave you for the weekend -- there is much to do, and in 25 minutes I must make my morning drive to campus.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Sturdier
Spring semester: day thirty
Countdown to Comps: one month
A month from today (or tomorrow, depending on which day I'm scheduled), I take my comprehensive exam. I'm nervous -- a lot more nervous than I should be, really. I don't know why; in the past several weeks, I've been spending a lot of time reading and studying, so much that I've put off other things that are more important for the time being, such as finalizing my thesis and getting it ready-to-print and submit. I've actually tried to make a little headway on that today, really -- I've ordered a special ream of acid-free paper on which I must print two archival copies of my thesis for the library to bind, and I've been hard at work editing poems in and out. I've added a new poem I've been working on, and took out a few that didn't overall fit the theme of my thesis (which is, loosely, "love, loss, and heartbreaks caused and suffered"). It's sitting at 45 pages right now, with about 40 of that being the actual poems and the others being the cover pages, special thanks, table of contents, etc. I only need 25 pages of actual poetry, but I'm an overachiever. Yep. It'll be about 50 pages, give or take, when it's done, and once I call it done, I have to call it done -- meaning I can't focus on or work on it anymore at all. I have but a week and a half to finish it, and I can honestly call it about 95% done and ready as-is. I've put all of the "official" necessary opening pages into it (for the university and the program, not me) and have now added page numbers and have fixed the formatting (I was told that the rather elegant-in-my-opinion sans-serif font I used, URW Gothic, gave people headaches).
Daisy had a second job interview this afternoon with the company that was not RayRal, but a similar (well, somewhat similar) firm. She apparently wowed the hell out of the interview staff -- oh yeah, that's my girl -- and less than an hour after she got home, they called and offered her the job. She accepted. Daisy now has a steady job again, and has to cancel her interviews and withdraw her applications for the other positions and places she was interested in. This is a management position, too. The only drawback is that she will be working night shifts, something like 9PM to 7AM, and this will (for a while, anyway) drastically change our communication schedule as she works and as I finish up my degree here in these next two months or so. But, I will add, the money is good and she will get three-day weekends every week. They're also willing to work with her around my graduation date as well, so she can come to town over that weekend. She starts a week from today, on the 11th -- which means she'll have to get back home rather quickly on Sunday after she comes down here this weekend.
I couldn't be happier for Daisy, really; she's been unemployed and searching for work for almost four months now, and has been worried (though she'd never show it) about finances and the like. I've been worried about her finances as well; this hasn't exactly been a secret either on here or between us. This company she'll be working for offers multiple opportunities for career advancement, and it seems like a job she'll enjoy doing. It's the first step down a long path to where we will both be financially stable and comfortable eventually, and (I would imagine) it takes a huge weight off of her shoulders.
Me? I'm still here in Kansas, workin' on this whole poetry thing and continuing to desperately avoid the real world.
As you folks know, there are lots of things I worry about, to the point where sometimes, I can't sleep at night. I had a hard time sleeping last night anyway, for example -- the humidifier is wayyyyy too loud and I'll definitely have to get used to it; it sounds like a constant coffee pot steaming and gurgling, and I had to unplug it in order to get some real rest, and the electric blanket was too hot, so I had to turn it off. First world problems, whine whine whine, I know, but still. I've also had some rather troubling social issues pop up over the past few days with several friends -- nothing that really affects me directly, but enough to make me worry, and in the midst of all of this, of course, I'm still dealing with the crushing pressure of I'm not sure I can study and/or read enough for this exam, not to mention and I'm grading papers, and I'm creating lesson plans, and I'm doing everything else I normally must do to keep the proverbial wheels greased (paying bills, getting groceries, and the like). Until last night, I hadn't even showered since Wednesday. I realize that probably sounds disgusting, but also keep in mind that I never leave the house if I can avoid it -- there's so much on my plate at any given time that it's really difficult to stay on top of everything without forgetting something important. For example, I forgot that hey, I'm meeting with the visiting writer again tomorrow, so I should probably do the assignments she sent to us last week, right? Yeah. That would help.
My parents back home are set to get a big snowstorm tomorrow night -- Winter Storm Saturn, they're calling it (apparently, unless they've given it yet another goofy name). My mother sent me a message this morning saying that there are at least three different projected snowfall models, and if it moves through just right, it could be as bad as the Blizzard of 1993.
First off, nothing's going to be as bad as the '93 Blizzard. For those of you who weren't in the northeast when that happened, count yourselves lucky -- three to four feet of snow, with eight foot snowdrifts and below-zero temperatures isn't going to be topped anytime soon unless you live in Canada or Alaska or someplace similar.
O, Canada, our home and native landddd....
I checked the weather back home for her this morning, and their storm projections from the NWS at present time is similar to what we had here in Kansas with the last storm -- 8-14 inches or so, roughly. That's on par with an average storm back home, though it may get worse between now and when it hits. I told my mother that I would tell her "I hope you have enough food," but I've seen the pantry and refrigerator in that house. My parents stock up on stuff, as I've mentioned, like the zombie apocalypse is imminent.
To keep up/catch up on my comps reading and studying, I read about 50-60 pages of Sharon Olds tonight, finishing her collection (and therefore knocking one more book off my list) and started in on my C.K. Williams collection, reading 130-140 pages of that -- about half the book -- before calling myself done for the day. I told Daisy that if I can read and study that much every day between now and April 4-5, I will be satisfied with myself. Of course, I won't get to read much this coming weekend, if at all, since she'll be here. I still think I can do it with a bit of time to spare, hopefully. I do have all of Spring Break, after all.
Tomorrow is my long day on campus as per the usual Tuesday schedule -- I have to teach, then have office hours, then have visiting writer, and then do my hour in the Writing Center. Task after task after task. I also have two students who have scheduled appointments with me during my office hours as well, as they want me to look over their papers (which I'm happy to do) before they turn them in. Right now it's cold and rainy -- let's hope that trend doesn't continue for my morning commute.
Countdown to Comps: one month
A month from today (or tomorrow, depending on which day I'm scheduled), I take my comprehensive exam. I'm nervous -- a lot more nervous than I should be, really. I don't know why; in the past several weeks, I've been spending a lot of time reading and studying, so much that I've put off other things that are more important for the time being, such as finalizing my thesis and getting it ready-to-print and submit. I've actually tried to make a little headway on that today, really -- I've ordered a special ream of acid-free paper on which I must print two archival copies of my thesis for the library to bind, and I've been hard at work editing poems in and out. I've added a new poem I've been working on, and took out a few that didn't overall fit the theme of my thesis (which is, loosely, "love, loss, and heartbreaks caused and suffered"). It's sitting at 45 pages right now, with about 40 of that being the actual poems and the others being the cover pages, special thanks, table of contents, etc. I only need 25 pages of actual poetry, but I'm an overachiever. Yep. It'll be about 50 pages, give or take, when it's done, and once I call it done, I have to call it done -- meaning I can't focus on or work on it anymore at all. I have but a week and a half to finish it, and I can honestly call it about 95% done and ready as-is. I've put all of the "official" necessary opening pages into it (for the university and the program, not me) and have now added page numbers and have fixed the formatting (I was told that the rather elegant-in-my-opinion sans-serif font I used, URW Gothic, gave people headaches).
Daisy had a second job interview this afternoon with the company that was not RayRal, but a similar (well, somewhat similar) firm. She apparently wowed the hell out of the interview staff -- oh yeah, that's my girl -- and less than an hour after she got home, they called and offered her the job. She accepted. Daisy now has a steady job again, and has to cancel her interviews and withdraw her applications for the other positions and places she was interested in. This is a management position, too. The only drawback is that she will be working night shifts, something like 9PM to 7AM, and this will (for a while, anyway) drastically change our communication schedule as she works and as I finish up my degree here in these next two months or so. But, I will add, the money is good and she will get three-day weekends every week. They're also willing to work with her around my graduation date as well, so she can come to town over that weekend. She starts a week from today, on the 11th -- which means she'll have to get back home rather quickly on Sunday after she comes down here this weekend.
I couldn't be happier for Daisy, really; she's been unemployed and searching for work for almost four months now, and has been worried (though she'd never show it) about finances and the like. I've been worried about her finances as well; this hasn't exactly been a secret either on here or between us. This company she'll be working for offers multiple opportunities for career advancement, and it seems like a job she'll enjoy doing. It's the first step down a long path to where we will both be financially stable and comfortable eventually, and (I would imagine) it takes a huge weight off of her shoulders.
Me? I'm still here in Kansas, workin' on this whole poetry thing and continuing to desperately avoid the real world.
As you folks know, there are lots of things I worry about, to the point where sometimes, I can't sleep at night. I had a hard time sleeping last night anyway, for example -- the humidifier is wayyyyy too loud and I'll definitely have to get used to it; it sounds like a constant coffee pot steaming and gurgling, and I had to unplug it in order to get some real rest, and the electric blanket was too hot, so I had to turn it off. First world problems, whine whine whine, I know, but still. I've also had some rather troubling social issues pop up over the past few days with several friends -- nothing that really affects me directly, but enough to make me worry, and in the midst of all of this, of course, I'm still dealing with the crushing pressure of I'm not sure I can study and/or read enough for this exam, not to mention and I'm grading papers, and I'm creating lesson plans, and I'm doing everything else I normally must do to keep the proverbial wheels greased (paying bills, getting groceries, and the like). Until last night, I hadn't even showered since Wednesday. I realize that probably sounds disgusting, but also keep in mind that I never leave the house if I can avoid it -- there's so much on my plate at any given time that it's really difficult to stay on top of everything without forgetting something important. For example, I forgot that hey, I'm meeting with the visiting writer again tomorrow, so I should probably do the assignments she sent to us last week, right? Yeah. That would help.
My parents back home are set to get a big snowstorm tomorrow night -- Winter Storm Saturn, they're calling it (apparently, unless they've given it yet another goofy name). My mother sent me a message this morning saying that there are at least three different projected snowfall models, and if it moves through just right, it could be as bad as the Blizzard of 1993.
First off, nothing's going to be as bad as the '93 Blizzard. For those of you who weren't in the northeast when that happened, count yourselves lucky -- three to four feet of snow, with eight foot snowdrifts and below-zero temperatures isn't going to be topped anytime soon unless you live in Canada or Alaska or someplace similar.
O, Canada, our home and native landddd....
I checked the weather back home for her this morning, and their storm projections from the NWS at present time is similar to what we had here in Kansas with the last storm -- 8-14 inches or so, roughly. That's on par with an average storm back home, though it may get worse between now and when it hits. I told my mother that I would tell her "I hope you have enough food," but I've seen the pantry and refrigerator in that house. My parents stock up on stuff, as I've mentioned, like the zombie apocalypse is imminent.
To keep up/catch up on my comps reading and studying, I read about 50-60 pages of Sharon Olds tonight, finishing her collection (and therefore knocking one more book off my list) and started in on my C.K. Williams collection, reading 130-140 pages of that -- about half the book -- before calling myself done for the day. I told Daisy that if I can read and study that much every day between now and April 4-5, I will be satisfied with myself. Of course, I won't get to read much this coming weekend, if at all, since she'll be here. I still think I can do it with a bit of time to spare, hopefully. I do have all of Spring Break, after all.
Tomorrow is my long day on campus as per the usual Tuesday schedule -- I have to teach, then have office hours, then have visiting writer, and then do my hour in the Writing Center. Task after task after task. I also have two students who have scheduled appointments with me during my office hours as well, as they want me to look over their papers (which I'm happy to do) before they turn them in. Right now it's cold and rainy -- let's hope that trend doesn't continue for my morning commute.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Malaise'd
I have been super-tired all weekend. I don't know why. My body is sending me the signals of "go back to bed, go sleep, go rest," etc, for no real reason -- I've slept nine hours or more every night since Thursday. Yesterday and today I've been plagued with a persistent, annoying/throbbing headache, as well. Not a horrific headache, mind you, but one that's always there, one that makes it difficult to concentrate on nearly anything for any amount of real time.
The overflow drain situation has apparently been remedied and is no longer a problem; I did a load of laundry this afternoon to test to see if it would kick back up and re-flood again, and it didn't -- the drain remains bone-dry despite a large load of laundry, taking a shower beforehand, and running my dishwasher. My dehumidifier and fan dried out the carpet downstairs, the dehumidifier collecting about 1/4 gallon of water from the air, and everything is back to normal. Strange that it happened on Friday and not today, when the temperature got to nearly sixty outside and much more snow melted off. The grass is visible now in most yards of the neighborhood, though on my side of the street there's still a bunch of snow in the yards due to the sun never really reaching it in its winter arc across the sky.
Daisy thinks that it's possible I'm getting sick (to explain why I'm tired all the time and have a persistent headache). I don't feel sick at all, thankfully; I couldn't really tell you why I'm feeling so out of sorts. It's just a fatigued feeling more than anything else, and I can't really explain it much better than that. I've been off for three days, and I'm off tomorrow as well, and it's still largely unknown why I feel odd. Daisy herself, as you know, was ill all last week, and is just now beginning to fully recover and feel somewhat normal again. She's gone out with friends the past two nights to her favorite clubs in Omaha, so it's clear that she's recovered well.
Next weekend, Daisy will be coming down here -- it's the only weekend for the next month or so that neither of us will have anything to do. I don't collect my students' papers until the 12th, and the two weekends after that are part of Spring Break, which means I will be deeply immersed in grading, studying, and (for fuck's sake) finally doing my taxes. One of my colleagues is celebrating her 50th birthday on Saturday night, and has invited me and Daisy to her party at her home, so we're planning to go to that if at all possible. I'm looking forward to it, actually, if we get to do it -- it means that I'll be able to get out of the house for once and enjoy myself for a little while without having to worry about everything pressing going on in my own life. If we don't get to go -- if the weather's bad or something else happens, then that's fine too. I'll still get some much needed time with my lovely fiancee.
Because I've been feeling "off" all weekend, I've not done a whole lot school-wise; I edited all of my students' workshop copies yesterday in one fell swoop, and found them to be much better overall than I was expecting, which gives me hope that most of my students will do well on this paper when I collect them next week. My headache, however -- in addition to my fatigue -- has prevented me from doing any more reading/studying for comps, something which I wish to rectify tomorrow and read about 200-300 pages to make up for. I should be getting my next set of comps books in the mail tomorrow as well, so I'll be able to dive into them one after another after another until I am too tired or otherwise bored with reading them. I'm actually a bit excited to tackle a fair amount of them; in this batch I've got Bob Hicok, Ben Lerner, and Dean Young to read through. I just ordered a hardcover Eliot collection too, as his collected poems are really hard to find online in PDF, if they're even out there.
Tonight, in the overnight hours, I have some chores to do and errands to run; I have to make a trip to Walmart and to put gas in the car, and I need to write out my bills that I had come in earlier this week (electric and water, respectively). I also have to plug in the humidifier to see if it works once I get ready for bed, which will (hopefully) help my allergies -- I'm convinced that at least some of my tiredness and headache is allergy-related; it may rain tomorrow and/or later this week, so that may be part of it. It's also, again, near sixty today when it's been in the 20s and low 30s at the warmest since the snowstorms last weekend. Perhaps I'll wake up tomorrow morning and not be incredibly congested or coughing like crazy, for once. It's at least worth a shot, I think. I'm trying it with just water (filtered, of course, to get rid of most of the minerals) tonight, but I also purchased a few tiny bottles of essential oils that I can put a few drops of into it as well -- I made sure I purchased the model with which I could do that, because I think ahead like that -- and can spread a nice bit of fresh tangerine scent throughout the basement while I sleep at night.
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