the trees for the forest and the forest for the trees

As of today, my summer teaching is halfway over! And technically I only have 3 more weeks of instruction, because the students are presenting their final projects the last week of class. Woohoo!
Overall, the class has been fine. I do love teaching this particular class. The summer course is intense in workload, but the students [...]

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teaching in moderation

I’m on day 4 now of teaching my 8 week (4 days a week) summer class. Yesterday was the first day I spent lecturing– keynote (apple’s better version of powerpoint) and asking questions and such– and since the answered them, and seemed to understand what I was teaching, I felt some margin of success. Today, [...]

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I’m still here…

Okay, well maybe I’m not really still here, since my posting seems to have become a 1-2 times a month thing. I just can’t guarantee that I’ll write here any more frequently in the next month or so. I’ll try, I swear, but a lot of smaller entries that I used to do (links, recipes [...]

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crunch time

Where in the heck did most of April go? Jeez. A few weeks gone in a flash, and now it’s the end of the semester, and even if I’m not presently teaching or taking classes, I’m feeling that all-too-familiar end of semester crunch feeling. The feeling of too much to do– too many different things [...]

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another year passes by…

I had the best birthday yesterday. Usually people get less and less excited about birthdays as they get older. That was true for me through most of my 20s. As the years go by you wind up doing less for your birthday– spending the day working/writing and then going out to dinner or something with [...]

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addictions

Addictions get a bad reputation.
Well, sure, some are awful– addictions to alcohol, smoking, drugs etc. And some are harmless– like my total addiction to Burt’s Bees honey lip balm. I even went and bought a bundle of 12 on ebay so I’d never leave the house without one. And I am shamelessly addicted to coffee, [...]

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my first real antique furniture purchase!

I’ve been looking for a hutch/cabinet for our kitchen for a while now. Since we moved here we’ve had a rickety Ikea shelf sitting sitting in the space between our kitchen and living room– holding cookbooks and my vintage pyrex bowls. We have other vintage dishes I would have loved to display… but, see, we [...]

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Murphy’s Law

I remember my Nana evoking Murphy’s Law a lot. When I was little she had a friend named Murphy (a woman– I don’t know the origin of that name) so I, of course, thought that whenever Nana talked about “Murphy’s Law” it was her wise friend, Murphy, that she was evoking.
Murphy’s Law: Anything that can [...]

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to sleep, perchance to snore

Recently, it seems, I’ve started snoring. Jo noticed this a couple months ago, and when I was in Maine over Christmas, having nightly slumber parties with Maryann and Rob, they also noticed that I snore.
Last night Jo got to see a combination of both my sleeping skills– snoring and talking:
Jo: You’re snoring… um… hey hon, [...]

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a little less geekiness then last time…

It’s about time I blogged, and with a little less of the geekitude that was in my last post about writing.
I have a job interview today. No, not for a faculty job, but for a new job on campus. I’ve had the same administrative job for nearly 5 years. It’s paid the bills– tuition and [...]

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when the going gets tough…

the tough gets cooking.
Everything around me and ahead of meis sort of up in the air right now. And I’m in one of those non-love periods of my love/hate relationship with my dissertation. I’m sure I’ll fall back in love with it again soon– provided I (a) give it some quality, focused attention, and (b)  [...]

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… and sometimes I just go looking for a way to stress about the job market…

Let me first say this: I’ve turned in 98% of my applications. I’m not super worried– maybe it’s denial– but I’m not loosing sleep. I’m just digging in and focusing as much as I can on my dissertation. Writing has become a blessing/distraction/refuge. All I want to do is write. Even when it is hard. [...]

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so where the heck have I been?

I’ve been here:

Yeah, it looks sort of drab. I’ve had to work up in the stacks because they’ve started construction on the ceiling in my favorite part of the library. Even though it is dark and I imagine the desks haven’t been cleaned since the 70s, I love it. I sort of adore libraries.
Here’s my [...]

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comfort reading

Things haven’t slowed down around here. I got another 2 applications out last week, and the postperson told me I could take a bunch of priority mail envelopes home to make sending out the 10/1 batch a little less anxiety producing. I have writing to do (and I constantly wonder how it still takes me [...]

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Bumpah stickahs on my cah

Yeah, it’s been a while. My sister (who turned 23 yesterday! Holy Crap!) has been complaining that I haven’t blogged in, oh, forever and a day. Why?
Well, the last couple weeks have been a blur. I remember a while ago when a professor said that preparing job market materials would take ~20 hours a week. [...]

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busy busy busy

For the past week I’ve been way too busy. Way. Too. Busy. I had a couple days last week when everything piled on top of me and I just about collapsed under the weight of it all. Part of it was job applications, part of it was piling dissertation work, a big part of it [...]

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I’m ready for cardigan weather already

It seems that most people relish the sun and the heat, but they both mostly bother me. I love a bright sunny day– but only when I have sunscreen (I burn way too easily). And heat just makes me feel sick. Humidity is even worse. I appreciate some things about summer (days when it is [...]

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catching up

Yeah, I’m back in Madison. Leaving Maine and family is always hard. It is harder to believe, though, that maybe by this time next year I won’t have to live so far away any more.
So I’ve been back for a week, working on job application materials like crazy, and going to the regular day job. [...]

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I have so much to do… I’ll blog about it instead.

I just sat down and made a list of everything I need to do before I leave on Wednesday for Boston and the conference (and then after that, Maine). It is completely mind numbing. And instead of opening up my laptop to tackle some of it, I find myself blogging instead.
Here’s the gargantuan list itself: [...]

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finally, I seem to be growing up a little.

I think others who’ve been in grad school forever will understand this. There is something about getting a PhD that puts you (sometimes nearly a decade) behind other friends your age in terms of getting out into the “real world.” You know, the “real world” where you work full time, make more than $3/hour, drive [...]

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happy happy joy joy!

You remember that from Ren and Stimpy, right?
So thanks to the online world of journal publishing, my first publication surprised me by coming out today! It’s on the journal’s website as an “online first” article, and I downloaded the pdf and it even looks like a publication. In a real journal. That people will read. [...]

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it’s 2:20am

How is it possible that my cat, Hermoine, has managed to wake me up at exactly 2:20am every day for the past 7 or so days? Not 2:19am, not 2:21am. 2:20am. Can she read the clock? Does she have some crazy internal clock? What’s the significance of that time (other than the fact she wants [...]

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significant age

2 conversations this week:
1) In the front office where I work, trying to figure out why the printer wasn’t printing.
[undergrad guy who works in the office] Oh, yeah, someone else was looking for those print outs and took them. I don’t know her name.
[me] (name of person I work with)?
[undergrad guy] Maybe that’s her. Is [...]

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I want to live in a happy, good news bubble

I haven’t blogged in a while and you should be so very happy and thankful about that. Why? Because you have no idea how close I came to blogging again, for the umpteenth time about [1] writing at the library, or not writing during the weekend (especially when an SVU marathon twarts my plans) and [...]

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sometimes it’s amazing I accomplish anything at all

I never sell anything on ebay, but a few weeks ago I decided to list my old digital camera that was just lying around collecting dust. I took great photos of it, spent a nice long time writing the very clear listing for the camera, and went ahead and listed it for sale.
And it sold [...]

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scheduling: round 2

After all the time and thought I put into figuring out an intricate summer work and writing schedule, I’m going back to my old (semester) schedule of working from 9-2 Monday-Thursday and writing after 2 every day in the library. My original plans weren’t working for a couple reasons– going to the Y early in [...]

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a change of plans

I really tried going to the Y early in the morning this week. And although the thought of going to the gym early to work out before the day begins makes so much sense, it just isn’t going to happen for me.
This morning I got up at 6:45am and made coffee, and somehow I got [...]

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scheduling life

I’ve been really into scheduling. At some point in the last 6 months or so, I realized it is the only way to really get things accomplished on a steady basis. And even though I was seriously thrown off schedule a couple times this semester (that awful flu, and then surgery), the schedule really did [...]

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a surprising first day back at the gym

Wednesday I decided I could venture back to the Y and try using the elliptical trainer for 10 minutes or so. My stomach was/is still sore– especially around my belly button– but I knew I had to get back into the habit of working out at some point.
So I put my sneakers and gym clothes [...]

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new adventures in cooking

I don’t write much about food here. I might mention my love of good dark beer, but that’s pretty much it. I love cooking (and eating) but rarely have time for the cooking part. For the last bunch of years I’ve been in grad school I mostly make quick meals, and eat the same thing [...]

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