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.

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:

 

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:

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.

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:

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...

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.

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.

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.

Kansas Flood

Spring semester: day twenty-nine

This morning, when I got up, I was determined that today would be a productive day on many levels. I emptied the dishwasher, did the dishes I had left in the sink by hand, ate some leftovers (and prepared to clean out the fridge) and I put my comforter in the washer to wash it (I try to do this every two or three weeks or so at the most). I came back upstairs, talked to Daisy for a while to wish her luck on today's job interview, which she had rescheduled by the offices for 2PM, and relaxed a little bit. With my big responsibilities of the day taken care of, I went back downstairs later to put the comforter in the dryer and refill the cats' food bucket.

First of all, the cats were acting strange. They were avoiding the laundry room, and skittishly running around it. I at first chalked this up to them being excited that they were about to get fed, but then I noticed something odd. Water. On the floor. Not in puddles, mind you, but soaked into most of the laundry room floor's carpeting.

This. Is not good.

I ventured into the laundry room to find a small nightmare of a mess on my hands.

Let me, first, describe the layout of my laundry room -- it's an open room that has open doorways on either end. On one end, behind a wall, is my bedroom. On the other end is the downstairs bathroom (the "cat room," where I keep their litter box and food/water), and slightly beyond that is the squared-off, spiral stairwell that leads back upstairs to the rest of the house. On the wall perpendicular to the washer and dryer is the furnace, and next to that, the door leading into the garage.

Yes, my comforter had finished, but what I found wasn't that great. The washer and dryer sit on a linoleum floor specifically cut and angled to hold a washer and dryer. Below the washer is a floor overflow drain, like what you'd see in a shower in a YMCA. This drain is there, specifically, as a secondary drain, and serves a dual purpose -- coming off the furnace is a water-condenser pipe that's hooked up to the air conditioning unit out back for condensation purposes (I'm sure most of you have seen one). That pipe snakes down along the side of the furnace and under the washer to rest on top of that drain, so that the condensation will drain into it. Other than that, it's just a simple floor drain that doesn't see any use.

Well, today it saw some use. When I came into the room, it had overflowed and had soaked my carpet. Not heavily, or anything, but enough to wet it over most of the laundry room. The drain itself, and the tile surrounding it, was covered with a thick, brown/black sludge. Fuck,  I thought. The first thing I did was start sniffing -- I smelled nothing. This was a good thing. This means that it was not sewage. The water had receded and had gone back down the drain, so I immediately went upstairs and got all the dark towels I had to soak up the water from the floor and carpet. Placing them strategically to soak up everything, I set one down at my knees, folded it, and bent down to examine the drain and the sludge. I stuck my finger in the sludge and, very cautiously, brought it up to my nose.

Dirt. Mud, specifically, not poop. Soil. Ground dirt. This was groundwater. Not even washwater from the washer -- there were no suds. This was slightly brown, slightly mud-chunked groundwater.

It was only then I began to slowly piece together what had happened.

Keep in mind that over the course of the past week, we have had not one, but two massive snowstorms. When snow melts, it soaks into the ground. When an area has been under a drought for a long time, as Kansas has, not all of it can be absorbed immediately -- there's lots of runoff, culverts fill up, etc. That drain is connected to the ground, and runs out to be dumped somewhere into the groundwater table in my yard or under the street into the city's drainage system, but that's the only drain in the house that drains specifically into the groundwater system, from what I can tell -- it's an overflow drain that connects to the drainage system of the washer. When the water table gets high enough with an overflow drain attached to a washing machine in a below-ground basement, what happens when a load of laundry fills that drainage pipe? It kicks it back. Kicks back dirt, apparently, with it, because the water has nowhere to go in a saturated ground or an already-filled drainage culvert where it comes out the other end. Remember how I said the melting snow on my street was creating, basically, rivers of water running down the ditches? Yep. Everything began to fall into place.

It also slowly came back to me that this had happened once before, during the summer of 2010 (I think; could've been '09) when it rained for nearly a month straight. I cleaned it up the same way then, and waited a day or two before I did any more laundry. I only remembered this because during that time I was wondering whether the shower, sink, and toilet upstairs all connected to the same drainage system and if running or using them would cause the same problem (apparently they don't, because it didn't).

I let the towels soak up all the water that they could hold, and tossed them into the washer. It was time to perform an experiment, to be sure -- I ran the washer and let the towels wash. My washer has two drainage cycles, as most washers do; the first drains the soapy water, and the second drains/spins the clean water out so that the washed items can be thrown into the dryer. I waited. Filling the washer didn't cause an overflow or anything like that, so my secondary thought that possibly there had been a leak in the water pipe that fills the washer was unfounded. I now knew that it was certainly a drainage overflow issue. As predicted, when the washer hit its rinse cycle, after about twenty seconds, I saw the drain fill with soapy water from beneath the grate and begin to bubble over onto the linoleum. I turned off the washer and watched -- after about the same amount of time, the water receded and went back down the drain. This proved my further hypothesis that there wasn't a clog, otherwise it wouldn't have re-drained, and certainly not so quickly -- it was just too much water for the outspout to handle all at once, but it wasn't anything wrong with my plumbing or my washer. In order to drain the water and continue to the rinse cycle, I had to stop and start the washer several more times, allowing the water enough time to drain out of the pipes each time. I did the same when the rinse cycle dumped its water as well, and during the final spin. Looks like I'm not doing any more laundry for a few days until the snow outside melts off completely and dries up a bit more so that I don't have to worry about overflow, and when I do run another load, you can be damn skippy that I'm going to watch the drain like a hawk to make sure that shit doesn't happen again.

As for the carpet, the actual soil didn't reach it but for a few small spots, and it wasn't nearly as soaked through as I thought -- four or five absorbent bath towels soaked it all up to the point where it was just damp at best afterwards; and I put my powerful oscillating desk fan on the floor down there to dry the rest of it off and plugged in my dehumidifier on the opposite end of the room to further dry everything up. How ironic that the day after my new warm mist humidifier arrives in the mail to help my allergies and keep my skin moisturized in the house, I have to use my dehumidifier for the first time in months to dry out the carpet in my basement.

Oh well. It could've been worse -- I could've soaked down the entire downstairs of the house if the washer hose had snapped, or something. The water also didn't get into the dryer or furnace, either, which is really comforting. Electrical fires are bad, mmkay?

Anyway, crisis (apparently) averted.

I got paid today for the third time this semester; this helps offset the $50 or so worth of books I had to purchase yesterday for comps studying. They arrive on Monday and Tuesday. I also finally received my C.K. Williams book in the mail today, so I can get started on him this weekend as well. I was planning to do that before the flooding drain debacle derailed a good chunk of my afternoon. The drain debacle occurred during Daisy's afternoon interview with another company, one who will be conducting another follow-up interview with her on Monday afternoon as well. It went well; after months of searching, she'll have had three interviews within the span of a week, which is wonderful -- and I hope she gets one of the two jobs.

The Return

Spring semester: day twenty-eight

I ventured out yesterday afternoon to find...the roads were clear. Not only were they clear, but they were dry. Dry as in you-couldn't-tell-there-was-a-snowstorm-dry. Not just the main roads here in Newton, either, but all the streets I drove on, residential neighborhoods or otherwise. It was 37 yesterday with abundant sunshine, and snow was melting everywhere -- water running down the ditches and gulleys like rivers.

Well, Kansas, I thought, we survived another crazy weather phenomenon. Just in time for tornado season to start in a few weeks, too. 

I parked my car in the middle of my driveway, as melting snow from my roof occasionally drips down the front of the house, becoming long icicles that could potentially damage my auto glass were they to fall off with a crash. This morning I found that this was a mistake -- for one, there were no icicles, but there was a thick layer of frost on the car that I had to scrape off, and my windows had frozen shut with said frost. It only takes a little to freeze the windows shut, and normally closed windows in my car are a good thing...until you remember that I have to have the driver's side window at least cracked in order to be able to get out, since my inside door handle doesn't work. This meant I had to take an extra ten minutes de-frosting the car and unfreezing said window.

Tonight, as most of the snow has now melted off my roof, I pulled the car back under the balcony's overhang, having learned my lesson. Screw it, it's falling apart anyway and I have good insurance.

Today was a long, tiring day. As mentioned before, over the extended snow-vacation, I got used to sleeping for nine or ten hours at a time. Last night, I got a little over seven hours, and by the time 2PM rolled around and I was sitting in the Writing Center, bored out of my mind, making up my missed hour from Tuesday, I was certainly feeling it. I'd drank a pot and a half of coffee and had been trying to force myself to stay awake and engaged all afternoon. I wanted to go to bed, actually, by the time I got home -- but I also wanted to talk to Daisy, who had her two job interviews today. Well, one of them. I'll get to that.

My classes weren't incredibly interesting -- as we'd been out for a full week, we had nothing to do today but collect workshop copies and talk about the final formattings of the papers they will soon have coming due. I once more had to lay down the law, so to speak, about in-text citations and properly formatted Works Cited pages. When I did, to make sure everyone was on the same page, some of looked bored, while some of them looked scared and/or nervous.



I feel bad about doing this, but I always assure them, to ease their fears, that I'm not out to get them in any way, shape, or form -- I am trying to help them out. Proper formatting and proper citations in papers is something they need to learn, and use, throughout the rest of their college careers. No, they may not always be writing papers in MLA style, but it's a good base to get them on the "hey, you have to cite your sources and cite them properly" track. If they learn nothing else in this class, they're going to learn how to write a proper research argument paper with proper citations, goddammit.

That being said, after being off for a week, I almost dread looking at their workshop copies. Some are long, some are fairly short, but the best part about their being off is that they've had time to do their best on them, and all brought them in, which is good. I have twelve of them total, and a good chunk of my weekend will be spent poring over them to help them out next week. The rest of my weekend? Thesis revision time and comps reading/studying/note-taking. I read 200 pages yesterday of Sharon Olds' work, and took 20 pages of handwritten notes.

"I'm trying to average reading about 100 pages a day," I told my thesis director in a short meeting with him this afternoon. "Covering poets in sequence, taking notes, making sure I can get a good feel for their works overall."

Reading 100 pages a day sounds like a lot, but it's really not -- not for reading poems, anyhow. It's the analysis and note-taking, getting a feeling for form, for diction, for content -- that's what takes the longest time. Extrapolating meanings from the works are easier for some poets than they are for others. Most of Olds' stuff, for example, is extremely personal and confessional, focusing not on the reader's experience but the poem itself, and getting it out onto the page. Most of her stuff is also fairly straightforward, so it doesn't need to be "translated" to be understood, so to speak.

I got my director to sign off on my comps form which will allow me to take it on the computer instead of in a handwritten fashion, and told him that I will be getting the finalized copy of my thesis to all three of my readers as soon as possible, probably before the March 15 deadline. I'm going to soak up the rest of my meetings with the visiting writer and try my best to apply her suggestions and edits to the works in my thesis before I "lock it down" and call it done. She adores my work, from what I gather from our meetings -- I don't know why, exactly, but she seems to. I've been showing her a lot of my older stuff intermingled with newer poems -- if anything, in the past three years I think I've gotten worse at poetry. I still look upon the stuff I wrote in my first and second semesters here as my best, really. I have a few others I like that I've written in the past year or so, but those are few and far between -- and, as I've mentioned before, it doesn't help that the ones that most of my friends and colleagues like the most are the ones that I absolutely hate and think are awful, really. I'm not sure I can see past my own perspective, my own cynicism, to truly take a compliment anymore, or even recognize one when a genuine one is offered.

Parker told me this morning that he wants to read some of my work. I don't normally show my work to people outside of a workshop setting -- it took me great courage to show any of it to Daisy, even, and that's saying something. I'm always afraid people are going to be like "This? That's it? This is what you've been doing for the past three years in grad school?" This is a big reason my parents haven't even seen my serious writing work, to be honest with you. It's not that it's overly personal or incriminating, but it's that...well...while I'm proud of what I'm attempting to do with my life (to a certain extent, anyway) I'm not necessarily proud of my output while I'm making that attempt. If that makes sense. It's difficult to explain. I know my parents support me in the path I've chosen (at least somewhat, anyway) and are looking forward to me graduating and moving on in the world, but even though that's a fairly big accomplishment, I look back on my time in grad school with not a lot to show for it.

Daisy says that I have deep-rooted self-esteem and self-worth issues that I need to work on, and maybe to a small extent she's right, but I really don't think that's the problem. I've mentioned before that Daisy is, for lack of a better term, a militant optimist -- she sees the bright side of everything, failure is not an option, and she's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about everything, while I am a militant realist. I try to view things from all possible angles, good and bad, without becoming too optimistic or pessimistic (limiting one's hopes and dreams to realistic goals keeps one on an even keel, I find). Failure is not an option, but it is certainly a possibility, and one has to take that into account whether one wants to or not. I apply this viewpoint to all things in life.

That being said, I told Parker I'd let him read some of my stuff -- of all of my collagues, he's one of the most academic and intelligent, yet open enough to recognize and understand a work's good and bad qualities. He's also one of the most honest and thorough people I know -- believe me, if he doesn't like my work, he'll flat-out tell me it's crap and give me a proverbial bulleted list as to why. As you know, I appreciate full-blown absolute honesty in all things. Parker's just that kind of guy.

Daisy also thinks I have a man-crush on Parker that I am just not able to process or deal with at present time. I replied to this accusation that everyone has a crush on Parker to some extent, both males and females alike -- again, he's just that kind of personable, honest, intelligent guy. I've had few colleagues over the years I've respected more; he's like a big-brother sort of figure to me more than anything else. So, yes, I trust him with my poetry. I'll have to dig out some choice selections over the course of the weekend.

After taking care of all of my campus stuff today, I exhaustedly came home. Maybe I was on campus only one day this week, but after so much time off, it felt like all five rolled into one. By the time I got home I was burnt-out, I hadn't eaten anything but two donuts and my coffee all day (Parker made good on his donut bet this morning) and all I wanted to do was tell Daisy I was okay, see how her interviews went, and go to bed. As I am typing this at 1:51 AM, that obviously didn't happen.

Daisy had two interviews scheduled for this morning and afternoon, respectively. Daisy has also been really sick all week -- this afternoon was the first time she's looked/acted completely normal for the past four or five days -- and she can't really help it, really. Sick or not, these companies scheduled interviews with her, so she decided to do everything she could to make them happy. However, this morning she was feeling so sick that she had to reschedule her first interview (for sometime next week, I think) and focus on feeling better so that she could go to the other one (for the company that rhymes with RayRal). That interview went really well, apparently, which is very good. They're running background checks and credit checks and all that on her, and if they decide to hire her she'll know within a scant few days. This is fantastic news, and I'm very happy for her -- all I want is for her to be happy, to be able to become financially stable again and have one less thing to worry about (not that she's the type to openly worry, anyhow). Her work schedule for said company would be less than ideal, however -- I believe she said they're shifts of Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday -- but it's a good, stable job in an incredibly stable company. RayRal, ahem, is not going away anytime soon, if ever. And I can't tell you how quickly I would jump at the chance to work for a company like them, especially after she told me what their facilities are like.

After talking to Daisy for a bit, I ordered my next set of comps books from Amazon tonight (it wasn't cheap, but I need them, and, well, it's either I get them now, when I get paid tomorrow, or get them later and maybe not have time to read them). I now have maybe four or five books left to purchase, at most, between now and April 5, and about fifteen or so to read. Again, with an average of 100 pages a day, I should be able to do that just fine. I'm also guessing I'll get my C.K. Williams book tomorrow or Saturday at the latest, as it's in Kansas City right now (according to my package tracker). I also received my humidifier that I ordered last week , which had been held up in shipping because of the weather. I wanted to set it up tonight, but I'm too tired to mess with it and fill it with water before bed -- I'll see how well it works in the morning. I got a model that has a little slot on the top of it for essential oils or other scents, too, so I can put a few drops of scent into it and refresh the house. I think the dry air in the house from the electric furnace coupled with the dry, windy cold air outside in the winter is what's really aggravating my allergies on a daily basis (not to mention keeping my skin really, really dried out over the winter), so maybe my $15 humidifier will help -- if nothing else, I should sleep a little more comfortably at night with it next to my bed.

On that note, I'm going to sleep -- I have a long weekend full of somewhat-busywork ahead of me, and I'd like to get it done as soon as possible. Besides, if I stay up any later, Daisy is going to wonder if I've died in my sleep or something, since who knows what time I'll wake up tomorrow.