These Eyes Are Berries

Now That It's Raining More Than Ever

Hullo, lovies!

I mentioned JD is very popular. Right? Well, after a month of debating and considering various exciting opportunities, etcetera, a decision has been reached:

JD is going to New Zealand for six months as a consultant. He'll be there November through April and they're putting him up in a furnished apartment and paying him a shitload of money. They're flying me out in December (as his friend put it: "they're paying for a conjugal? That's pretty pimp.") and I'll probably go out another time in March over my spring break. He'll probably go to another conference in Australia in February, and he and I have talked about visiting parts of Fiji, or the Cook Islands, or Easter Island (though that one's a little far-fetched, it's fucking far away from everything).

Decision came down to: 1) Catapult career into high gear in one fell swoop or 2) continue plodding along doing essentially "more of the same" until wife graduates in a few years, then begin trying to move up a peg or two career-wise.

This seems like the most excellent choice, objectively. However, this means all kinds of unpleasant bullshit for us personally. I have to learn how to cook. He has to buy power converters so he can take his PSP. You know, super-huge consequences.

It is fucking incredible that he's been given this opportunity, and fuck if I'm going to let temporary discomfort stop him from doing it. Plus, HELLO, free vacation to New Zealand. Also, I have to advance soon and this lets me be totally up my own ass about that since I don't have to pander to loved ones. har.

So we've got a couple months to arrange these ducks into a pleasing, orderly row. Visitors more welcome than ever now, both here and to NZ. Hope you guys love being emotionally supportive, because I will probably be a huge whiny baby about everything all the time.

Yaaarp. Fuck, it's awesome.

Once, Once I Knew How To Look For You

1. Fuck. Fuck if there is not a shitload of crap happening.

2. I'm constantly reading career-related shit now. Things that sound vaguely like concessions about choosing "alternative" careers from what I'm being groomed to do. To me, these things don't sound like concessions at all. I continually waffle on this topic-- what shall I do with myself?-- yet when we break it down into component pieces, I am not cut out for traditional career choices. I like JD. I like free time. I don't think the intrinsic joy of doing independent research offsets the costs of being so far up my own career's ass for such an extended amount of time still to come. And really, judging from the faculty I know who have recently been tenured, it doesn't let up once you cross that bridge. It's a fat fucking fiction that it's only this heavy for another 8 years (which sounds pretty gruesome anyway). I'm leaning. I'm leaning very decisively this time because I took a look around and it's been 4 years and it's time to get the fuck out of here. It will still take forever and there's a ton of work to do, but my fear and trembling about the next chunk of life has been replaced with steely resolve. Ish.

3. Some of this decisiveness is being prompted by JD's career trajectory. Which has recently become just that, a trajectory. It's shocking to both of us how quickly this happened, but in hindsight I am not totally surprised that he's become a rising star in his field, I think everyone who's ever met him has a strong reaction to him. Right now things are in this somewhat awful state of flux-- he has several offers on the table that we are discussing, the most heart-stopping being the idea that he's already at a point in his career at which he could viably choose to freelance himself out as a temporary consultant/contractor, traveling around the globe for chunks of time. This is totally enthralling, tinged both with selfish little whines like, "but then i would have to learn how to cook" and selfish little secret thoughts like, "oh god I could be so productive if he would go live on another continent for a few months."

Adding to the ambiguity of a career cobbled together with consulting opportunities is the abject terror I feel now that I am in my 5th year and even teaching funding isn't always guaranteed. At any moment (before each quarter, anyway), I can be informed that there isn't work for me. But when you work the uni pays your tuition/fees for you. Which are exhorbitant for people who aren't receiving a paycheck. And you have to pay your tuition/fees and be enrolled full time in order to live on campus. See how this snowballs? So I am contractually forbidden to find outside employment, yet I am no longer guaranteed anything from the school. And I am following a totally average time-to-degree course like everyone else in my program, and I am thus fighting bile about how screwed we will/would be if they yanked my funding and in-campus housing.

There are creative solutions, of course. I have friends, I can sleep on couches, especially if my husbie is traipsing around in the south pacific. But I don't want to deal with all this added uncertainty and shittiness now. Grad school bureaucracy is total bullshit. And some days I feel spiteful enough to think, secretly, "Oh yeah? No teaching funding? No on-campus apartment? Well, suck on this, bitches: ABD! That's right! I fucking said it."

What kind of manky fucking system trains people up this well and refuses to make it reasonable to finish a thesis? Honestly.

Anyway. I'm getting fed up, and that irritation is incredibly motivating, and I suppose that's what is important. I'm getting to a good, zen place from which I can crank out a proposal and finish the shit I'm working on, and assume that I'm not destined for a top-tier anything, and be totally content with my 85% effort comfort zone. Even my excellent advice-er has lately expressed intense misgivings about the "crapshoot" that is the trad'l job market. I love her for that. I love the profs who candidly say, "I got a job with 3 publications. you can't do that anymore. you guys are totally fucked." and no, I don't even have three publications. And I'm not holding my breath to have three before I leave here, either.

BOO HISS.

You Can Normalize! Don't It Make You Feel Alive?

We bought JD a new macbook the other day. Waaah. I know I am supposed to be loving and mature and shit, but I am violently jealous. It can perform magic and stuff that mine can't do.

Speaking of, we attended the midnight showing of the new HP5 movie earlier this week. Sweet god, I love this series. Sweet god, I want to squinch Hermione's cheeks all the time. My new theory, about book 7, is that Dumbledore himself was one of Voldemort's horcruxes. That's why Snape had to kill him. Oooooh, right? yeah I'm a genius.

Last Saturday we went to see the Decemberists with the LA philharmonic. I can now officially die any time and be totally content with the amount of living I have done. That was the best thing ever. They played the Tain, which is a 20-minute, four-part opus something akin to "freebird" that some rapscallion always cheers for at decemberists concerts, much to the delight/chagrin of the hardcore fanbase who chuckle dismissively at this idea. They, however, played it at this show, marking the first time I had heard it performed live, and they played it with a full orchestral backing. Sweet christ almighty. best. thing. ever. Also playing this show were Band of Horses and Andrew Bird. Both fucking spectacular. I made little videos of much of the decemberists' performance but haven't posted them on youtube yet or anything. if anyone's interested i might.

jenny and mike left boston this morning! Oh, adventure. I hope they have some good comp cds in the car to tide them over. Else that will be a loooooooong drive.

My officemate, who is ridiculously hard-working, the golden child of the whole department and especially our advisor, and my very patient, hand-holding grad student mentor and informal advisor for the past few years has a great job at a real university being a real professor and she is slowly moving her shit out of the office. Yesterday I moved some of my shit from a bookcase across the room to the more conveniently located, now-empty one over here, and I almost had a panic attack. I don't want to be the oldest student and I don't want to help the littler ones and I don't want everyone looking at me to see how to teach/do research/successfully land a job/be professional in any context/work hard. Ugh. I don't want to pioneer this shit for the next couple years. I want someone sitting right next to me who won't fall over laughing when I ask a really, really stupid question about something I ought to know already.

Compounding my existential waffling is a bunch of work I am finding it impossible to focus on. I am giving a guest lekshur for said officemate in the class of hers i am taing this session in a week, yet i can't write the stupid lekshur. ok, but this class is 3 hours long. i am pretty sure i need to at some point, put SOMETHING on a slide and think about what words should accompany it. Jesus. If only I could decide on a stupid career path I would be so motivated, right? Blugh.

Last night, though, JD and I were both working dilligently at 2am on talks we have to give soon, on our yuppie-pants apple laptops. That was really amusing to me. What kind of people are we to both be prepping powerpoint presentations for our careers? It just seems so fucking adult and weird. At least one of us is motivated and will end up being successful. I am talking about him, you guys. Duh.

Ok, fine. I am going to get some shit done before a meeting later with a person who is ten years older than me, a former engineer who decided he wanted his soul back and has converted to research, who is much more focused and driven than i am but i am in charge of him and that makes me feel icky. great.

What the fuckery is this? Stupid fucking feelings of inadequacy. Go away! Why is this career so fucking rife with ambiguity?! SO ANNOYING.

For Those Of You Who Still Think We're From England...We're Not. No.

Here's some photos Ashleigh took. There's more on her snapfish account (obviously, they didn't jsut come out here, take three photos of us, and leave) but I don't know if I am allowed to link to her photos. I guess she needs to update her blog to share those things with you guys.





JD and I went cd shopping at this excellent used cd store the other night. Ohhhh sweet god. We each bought like ten cds and they are fucking rad. I am thinking, a real genuine awesome comp cd is finally about to come of this. It has been SO long since I bought a cd, instead of stealing music. Now I am grown and my skool seems to be cracking down on stealing, so I will buy used music. It's way better, you guys. I put all my new music on my iPod and the gym has never been so much fun. I'm really into LCD Soundsystem right now (that's the new background song), also got the new arcade fire FINALLY, the new Andrew Bird, a mewithoutyou cd, jose gonzalez, the rosebuds, new modest mouse, blonde redhead, pelican, tomahawk, a talking heads best-of collection (USED!), a tortoise + bonnie prince billy cd, a rare black heart procession UK import I have never seen before, herbert, the battles. Ahhhhhhhhhh. It is going to be a great day for a compthology sometime soon. I like to think that if I provide you all with nothing else, I can supply you with music artfully arranged in a pleasing song order. Jenny tells me that she usually ends up liking only one or two songs on every cd I make, but she REALLY likes those, so it's cool. Hmmmm. I understand comp cd burnout, you guys. So even if I just sent you one, hit me up. This might have to be a three-parter again. Oh, summer. What do you do to me? I fucking forgot how great life is when you have excellent music following you around everywhere, too. No one can be glum when faced with this! Ahhhhhh.







So for the 4th we went goodwilling. I spent $80 and got like sixteen items of ridiculously awesome clothing. I found a twee little tote bag with a reared-up unicorn quilted onto the front of it, but decided not to buy it because, honestly, it doesn't scream, "professional." Maybe it will still be there when you come visit and we can get it next time. Goodwill is awesome. Also, to be patriotic we went to see Sicko. Ugh. I am going to reserve final judgment until the next election, but if things go south I am applying to jobs in other countries for SURE. And I am going to start encouraging my mother to move to scotland. Because if she didn't have to worry about her health insurance premiums, I think her life would be a hell of a lot easier. Mine too. Yours too. yak. Then we did laundry. That's right. Life is so glamorous and exotic at all times.

To Know Me All Wrong

Office hour. Friday. Friday afternoon. No chance anyone is coming to pick my brain about resirch, syince, or life more broadly. Hence, blogging. Plus we just had a lively diskussion sekshun in which I allowed them to pretend to be working on a class project so they are thoroughly tired of me today.

My officemate noticed my Incredible Grey Hair today. "Wow," she said, chewing thoughtfully on some trail mix. "You've got grey hair!"

"Yah," I replied wittily, "I have since I was in high school. But usually I color it. But then my sister was all on my case to leave it alone. Also now I'm broke. Oh and I'm hoping it looks cool eventually."

"I never noticed that!"

"Yarrp."

Oh hey that reminds me. Go see Hot Fuzz the movie if it's playing near you and/or you like comedy. Heeee-larious. I haven't even seen Shaun of the Dead but it is the same people and it's pretty awesome. Almost Super-Troopers awesome. It's an action movie homage/parody but it's funny and loving. According to the reviews I read about it, it's very deferential to the genre as opposed to... oh, just, here.

Life is so fantastic and also busy. My social life has been off the chain lately, which is great, but I am not so excellent at balancing responsibility and fun. So usually I'm like, "ahh, fun. yes, I could use some fun" and then nothing gets done. I am trying for the billionth time in the last few years to remedy that. My newest technique has involved emailing people to schedule meetings well in advance of actually completing the work for the meeting, leaving me panicked and rushed for time, pulling all-nighters and freaking out. But getting shit done, you guys.

My husbie has started mispronouncing words to irritate me and then repeating them ad nauseum, laughing until he is literally crying. It must be such a fun life to have a wee little pea brain that takes delight in conversations like the following:

Me: Gawd I want some chocolate!
Him: Do you want some wewwie wewwie good chocolate?
Me: Uggh don't use that baby voice. Do we have any chocolate?
Him: Hmmm. I don't know but I want some chok-lit too. I wish we had chok-it chip cookies.
Me: ARRGE! shut up with that voice
Him: Chok-it chip! I want chok-it chip cookies. Chok-it CHIP!!
Me: --
Him: CHOK IT CHIPS!! CHOK IT!!! HAHAHAHAHA CHOK IT!!

So for the last week whenever he wants me to punch my fist through the wall he gets in my face and starts going, "mmm chok-it chip cookies!" and then dissolving into giggle hysterics. He is SUCH a little girl. But I have to admit it's fucking funny to watch him autistiklly mispronounce "chocolate" so many times that tears stream from his eyes and he's hyperventilating.

Have you seen those weird "yoga" classes where the point is to force yourself to laugh for an hour? Supposedly it becomes contagious and real as you do it. I tried this the other day, forcing myself to laugh at nothing, and it was highly amusing. The cats, my only witnesses, did not find it amusing. They assumed I had lost my damn mind and hid under the bed while I almost choked to death on my own spit.

I spent some time this morning finding a suitable photograph of Lavril VaVigne (figure it out, lazy) for my advicer to use in a talk next week at a major international conferense. The world is ending.

I was having some mood problems earlier this month, not menstrual in nature, but more of a global feeling of smothering dread that was suspiciously feeling like it might be clinically meaningful. I feel better now (I feel pretty awesome now, actually), but for awhile I could literally not concentrate on anything and was sleeping a lot and hating my work. Then I voiced these concerns to my advicer and she translated them into words I could make sense of. "Oh," she said, lightbulb popping into existence above her head as I lamented my own Extreme Laziness, "you're scared shitless. That's normal."

Ahhh, I love having an advicer who curses at me and also one who Does Not Pull Punches, especially when a curse word is the most exact/precise/appropriately narrow word for the anomaly. I about cried in her office I was so relieved to hear that I am behaving in a normal manner, as normal as dysfunction is for grad skool participants in general, and since then I have been able to think and focus and shit and I am much better, thanks.

What else? Oh jeeze you guys I am not that interesting. I went shopping a few weeks ago against my better fiscal judgment and that also cheered me out of my pseudo depression funk. I got some shoes and a really prosh dress.

How about that earth-like planet, huh?

It Cares Not For Your Pyramid Schemes

Yo.

I got this wild hair up my ass to organize my entire hard drive the other day. Great, right? Except I think I deleted my iPhoto library. Yeah, last time I did this spring-cleaning-of-my-computer thing I deleted my whole iTunes library accidentally. I am freaking awesome.

My friend B wanted to go to a poetry reading tonight. Can you picture me at a poetry reading? Neither can I. I couldn't keep a straight face for more than three seconds. I'm, like, not nearly mature enough for Arts Appreciation these days. Unless by Arts Appreciation you mean artfully dodging all of my responsibilities. Or drinking margaritas. If that's what you mean, I guess then I am actually really good at it. But probably you mean something different. Better stick to the baser arts with this one.

So, so. Comme ci comme ca. School is hard as usual. JD started his class last night and I made him wear a little beanie with a propeller and take a shiny apple for the teacher. Ok, that's not true. I made him scrub his sweet round face until it shone with the light of a thousand suns though. All the better to convey unwavering interest in the subject matter of a class, in my opinion. I, on the other hand, am trying so hard to just Sack Up and Do It, but today I have to teach commas to a bunch of graduating seniors and I would rather visit the gynechiatrist.

Aside from school, I have been cramming my social calendar to the brim with fun, so that's been great. Totally having lots of fun. Ahhh. It makes me miss you guys a lot too, but what can I do. I can throw myself into my work, that's what I can do.

OH BOOOOOOY ARE WE ENTHUSIASTIC!!!!

Your Frame Went Limp In My Arms

I love my husband. He always cooks, which is great but when I try to help he usually gets all shitty and orders me out of the kitchen and out of his way. I realize that cooking is like a nice decompression thing for him, but it's not fair that I can't help! I'm not so totally inept; I've fed myself before. However, lately my whining has worn him down (or he just super-missed me while I was in Boston) and he has been assigning me benign little kitchen jobs while he's cooking, to be kind. The first day I was tasked with washing the potatos. I did this masterfully. What I really wanted, of course, was to cut them too, because to me that's the only fun part of cooking. But he had been snatching each clean potato up as I set it by the sink and had them all cut up by the time I turned around to demand that I now be allowed to cut them. Damn.

So the next day he let me cut up an onion, which he thought was hilarious because I immediately started crying and shrieking and waving the giant knife around in despair. Oh and a tomato. But the tomato came with special instructions and he had to sharpen the knife right before I could cut it. Then last night he actually let me stir ingredients in a hot pan. Oh yesssss.

Also, I love it when my husband laughs until he cries like a little girl. Last night I achieved this by telling him about my sister's particular aversion to having the word "mew" said in this very anoying voice that I have perfected (so has Mike), and her other particular aversion to being called "jennay" like in forest gump. So my impressions of both these things are excellent, and I did one and then the other until he was inexplicably sobbing and gasping for air. Hahahah. Then he told me he hasn't ever seen forest gump.

Oh and he blockbustered (not the same ring as "netflixed") that awful movie the holiday for me to watch without my asking. then he sat through it last night. And he's taking classes and he's so excited and I'm so proud of him. Also if I can't find a damned job after this I think he will be successful enough that it doesn't really matter. Thank fuck. I'm so fucking glad he's a grown up and has a career and likes it and does everything right all the time. Ok that last thing isn't totally true but close enough. Wow, I'm really getting soft in my old age.

Oh and I had my first sekshun meeting yesterday and it went really well. I may have griped about how I didn't want to do this tee ay class? well now I think I may end up enjoying it a lot despite myself. excellent.

Ok now I really have to quit stalling and mooning about over my husbie and crank out some really excellent writing.

CIAO BITCHES

You Tell Me To Keep Things Quiet

Got bored. Actually, got sick of this thing I was doing so I fucked around with this for an hour instead. Thanks a fat lot, blogger, for forcing the change in the first place. Not the template change, but W-E! I don't need a google account. But I guess the other template was pretty hard to read.

Am boring today. Felt sick all day yesterday. I love being a womyn. Did not get anything done thanks to it. Which is a real pity since I am so swamped right now. Obviously.

What was I going to tell you, blog? Oh who cares. Something uninteresting, probably.

We had a good anniversaire, thanks. Nothing interesting. I don't have any funny stories to tell you. I'm going to go to Boston in March and hang out with Jenny and possibly Raedy and see the Decemberists again. That's really exciting.

Mostly I slept, have slept, have been sleeping. That was nice. I'll be up late tonight, though. We are supposed to hang out with some of JD's friends and I have a lot of work I need to get done so I am getting cranky thinking about hanging out. I will have to put my face on, for example, and change out of pants that make my butt look like a saggy, concave trucker butt. I will need to apply some sort of heated implement to my hair and I just don't want to. I will need to polish up my small talking skillz, which I will also need tomorrow night for the Stupid Prospie Dinner that I also don't want to go to. Oh, it hurts me too.

Today I signed up for a free version of this: Backpackit and it's awesome. You guys should do that too if you like being neurotic about everything.

Uh, what else?

Christ I'm boring. Just checking out the new look.

Another Drink And I'm Ready For Action

In case you are not interested in myspace, and therefore didn't get the memo, please click here to laugh your face off.

Thank you.

Ce résumé n'est pas disponible. Veuillez cliquer ici pour afficher l'article.