Walking far from home

This morning, I finally finished grading my terrifying stack of essay exams for the Intro to Pseudology sections.  Heartily cheered by this, I rewarded myself by listening to the album I just bought a few days ago, Iron & Wine's Kiss Each Other Clean.

Several hours later, while attending to sundry job application matters, I made myself look at the pseudology job wiki.  Established that I have been rejected by some twenty-five of the fifty or so jobs I've applied for — probably more, in fact, but not all of them are listed on the wiki.  Made myself coffee spiked with rye.  Swallowed my pride and began adding one-year VAP positions to my spreadsheets (one for me, and one for my referees). 

And in moments of both triumphant pleasure and defeated sorrow, I took solace in this song.



Wish me luck making it through this winter.  It looks like I have to keep walking far from home for another year.

My greatest lifehack ever

My lower back has been bothering me lately, and I've noticed more that I slouch in my desk chair in an injurious way when I'm focused on my writing.  I've had the idea in the back of my mind for a while now that I should try a standing desk, particularly since Dr. Becca blogged about building her own makeshift standing desk arrangement in her office.  Now that I'm spending so much time sitting at my desk at home – with my little MacBook, not with the lovely ginormous computer at my office at CBU – my back has begun to revolt.  I nearly had back spasm until I stood up and walked away from the computer for a bit, and that was the tipping point. 

I am now standing in comfort, typing this as my computer sits on top of an obnoxiously colored file crate turned upside down.  If laziness and cheapness are our criteria, then I daresay that my solution is even more awesome than Dr. Becca's — if only because it is HOT PINK.  :D

RIP DOMA

How the hell am I supposed to concentrate on my work when there are Supreme Court rulings like this to read?

Excerpts from Justice Kennedy's majority opinion:

The history of DOMA’s enactment and its own text demonstrate that interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages, a dignity conferred by the States in the exercise of their sovereign power, was more than an incidental effect of the federal statute. It was its essence.

DOMA’s principal effect is to identify a subset of state sanctioned marriages and make them unequal. The principal purpose is to impose inequality, not for other reasons like governmental efficiency. Responsibilities, as well as rights, enhance the dignity and integrity of the person. And DOMA contrives to deprive some couples married under the laws of their State, but not other couples, of both rights and responsibilities.

What has been explained to this point should more than suffice to establish that the principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage. This requires the Court to hold, as it now does, that DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

 And the money quote:

DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper. DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.  By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment. This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages.

Pardon me while I sniffle happily a bit at this ruling.  I'll be skeptical and analytical tomorrow, but right now I just want to savor the moment.

Spring has sprung

It was almost 70º yesterday.  The weather is beautiful this weekend.  Spring has finally, finally arrived in Cornstate.  Birds are chirping, the sun is shining, flowers are beginning to bloom, and I feel invigorated by the warming spring air.  I also feel newly enthusiastic about dating again.  It's not that anything has happened on that front; it's just that spring makes me feel like, er, dating.  Yes, that's it.

Happens every spring.

Selfish but happy

After several weeks of work, including

• a spring break largely dedicated to my writing, 
• a freaking 12-hour work day today, 
• a case of tendonitis bad enough to warrant buying several little doohickies to wear on my arm so I could keep typing and cooking as needed,
• and a serious case of cabin fever from sitting at my desk so damn much,

I completed the first draft of an article and sent it off to the editor for commentary.  Check out that writing meter over there!

Once that was done, I checked in on the family back in Hometown.  It was an almost unstinting parade of human misery, including a truly awful progressive disease, punctuated only by occasional plaintive acknowledgment of how far away from everyone I am.  I swallowed hard and got through the phone calls.

And then I made dinner.  And had a few glasses of wine.  And you know what?  I may be a horrible, selfish asshole, but the plain truth is that I'm still in a good mood as a result of finishing that article draft.  Does it make sense that I feel a little bad about feeling good?

Whatever.  I'm going to finish my wine and eat some lovely food I just cooked.

Diversis sermonibus pertemptatum finitimus

• I've paid off the last of my lingering credit card debt.  The monkey is off my back!  (For now, anyway.)
• The big IRS portion of my tax refund arrived.  Ahhhhh.  Knock on wood, I can actually start to amass some savings to see me through the summer.
• I just picked up Madhur Jaffrey's Quick and Easy Indian Cooking.  I'm excited about experimenting with new recipes, especially ones that don't require a huge amount of effort after the workday.  (I'm going to politely ignore the amount of fat that some of the recipes include, for the moment.)
• Speaking of cooking fat, I was searching for a recipe for chopped chicken liver, which led me to a recipe for schmaltz.  Shudder.  It's entirely possible that I will try that someday just for the tinkery challenge of it – especially with my increasingly greasy and well-seasoned cast iron pan – but it makes me mildly ill just to look at the pictures of the ingredients in process.  I really don't understand how my Ashkenazi ancestors ever lived past the age of 50 in the pre-modern era.
• I sometimes wonder what it felt like to be one of those first proto-Ashkenazim who emigrated so far north of the Mediterranean that they could no longer acquire olive oil for pareve cooking. 
  "Well, the only fat we can even get out here in the boonies is butter.  How are we supposed to cook meat without oil?"
  "I dunno.  You think we could maybe just render animal fat into cooking grease?"
  "Oh, yeeeeccccccch!  That's gross, man!*  But....I guess I don't have any better ideas.  Go get the meat pan — and, uh, maybe some onions just to make this seem a little less nasty."
• Some geeky anti-MOOC brilliance here.  It makes me wish more people tried to formulate ideas in Yoda's (apparently native?) grammar and syntax.  Seem smarter and more insightful, it makes things.

*Get it?  Get it?  Okay, it's not the best Judeo-German pun ever, but whatever.  It's no worse than half the jokes that Freud published.

Music to soothe the soul

Before you worry, let me assure you that my soul is actually in decent shape lately.  I just felt like posting some music I've been listening to lately.

(BTW: YouTube has been dreadfully slow at my apartment the last day or so.  Has anyone else noticed this, or is my internet on the fritz again?)

A random chain of links from song to song got me to this gem.  Dare I say that I prefer it to Joni Mitchell's original?  I'm particularly impressed with this cello arrangement for drawing out that mournful Celtic drone.  Now that I hear it, I marvel that I didn't miss it before.



Another fun cover version that I learned about from Pandora.



And this one I just can't stop listening to.  I bought this album a few weeks ago, and I've been obsessing over it since.  People have been tripping out on Fiona Apple's oh-so-sexy voice for over a decade, but I don't think she gets enough credit as a composer.  Not songwriter, mind you, but composer.  Can you imagine what the score for this song must look like?  (Plus, listen for the third repeating lyric that creeps in midway, after the first two have already interwoven themselves: "You can relax around me.")

Thanks

I'm currently gritting my teeth and getting through another tough period in Hometown.  I'm feeling rather vitriolic and ungracious toward a number of people and things right now.  But, since it's Thanksgiving, I thought it would be worth reminding myself of a few people and things I'm actually thankful for.

• I actually like my job.  
• I actually like most of my students.
• I really like my colleagues.
• I have a job.  (Attending the Big Giant Pseudology Conference and meeting some old friends reminded me that some of my colleagues have never held a full-time academic job with health benefits.)  
• My book contract.  'Nuff said.
• The few people in my family who actually make my life easier, rather than harder.
• My health.  Visiting Hometown reminds me of that pretty sharply.
• My sanity.  See above.
• My friends.

And so to bed.  Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Contracted

My editor contacted me.  The press is giving me the book contract.

I may be too shocked to be elated just yet.  I think I'm going to go home and mix myself a nice drink whilst I ponder the minutiae of deadlines and back matter.  Meanwhile, I'll let Daler Mehndi do the crazy ecstatic dancing for me.  Now, where did I leave my satin robe and turban...?

RBOC: Pre-moving prep

The grumbles:

• How nice of Ghosttown's municipal government to summon me for jury duty right at the end of my time here.  How extra-nice of them to mail the letter late, so that I have per force missed the deadline to fill out an affidavit explaining that I'll be out of town at that time.  How stupid and bizarre that the letter somehow had to be routed through Major Regional City, even though I live a mile from the courthouse itself.  How charming that I must explain to these chuckleheads that, because of their slowness, I will just have to fill out the affidavit one week before the jury duty date that I will miss.  Sigh.
• It's actually befuddling how many options there are nowadays for moving house.  After lining out price comparisons of trucks, pods, and trailers, it seems the easiest thing for me is, bien sûr, also the most expensive: hiring a trailer that will drive my stuff to my new location for me, so that I don't have to mess around with winching my car to a moving truck or hire some hapless, feckless grad student to drive one vehicle or the other.  (Yes, someone actually suggested this.)  It's annoying to have to put so much on my credit cards this summer, since there's no way even to begin paying it down until I start getting paid again, but since I have a decent sum of moving expense reimbursement from CBU, I'm not going to sweat it.  
• I'm trying to be parsimonious with my increasingly sparse cash reserves, since I may have to part with two months' rent up front for whatever place I might rent.  That means that I can't pay my credit card bills in full as usual, so right now I feel guilty and embarrassed about carrying balances.  And then I remember that I have a tendency to be too hard on myself about mundane crap like this.
• On Thursday, I'm driving up to CBU to hunt for an apartment (or a house?) to rent, since it has proved so difficult to find good prospects via internet.  CBU is located in Tinytown, which is so small that, as I suspect, people don't bother paying for classified ads; instead, they just rely on word of mouth through their social networks.  Either I'm on the scene to present myself to the potential landlord, or I'm not.  Gonna be a freaking road warrior this week: after streaking up there and running around the area, I have to drive back to Ghosttown on Sunday.  It will be a very tired Koshary that staggers into his apartment that evening.
• Speaking of the apartment hunt, I'm starting to admit to myself that I might not be able to find anything in Tinytown, period, and must therefore extend my search further.  The immediate surroundings of Tinytown have precious little to recommend them, so the obvious choice is to start snooping around the western suburbs of Huge Regional City, which is where most CBU professors live.  I was hoping to avoid a daily 45-minute commute, especially given what I have heard about winters in Tinytown, but perhaps this is just the way it must be.  

The exciting murmurs: 

• Today, I powered down my office computer for the last time, locked the door, and surrendered my university keys to the department secretary.  I'm really out of Ghosttown U.
  *turns a digital cartwheel of delight*
• The fun part of watching my finances, insofar as there is one, is that my brother turned me on to an online bank with better rates than any brick-and-mortar bank I could have found in my soon-to-be-new state.  I closed out my account at the regional branch here in Ghosttown today, and deposited the cashier's check for the balance in my new account — by photographing it and uploading the pictures to the online bank.  Seriously: I now deposit checks by photographing them with my iPhone.  O, brave new world that has such gadgets in't!
• On the positive side of heading for the suburbs rather than the small town, living over in HRC would at least lessen the sense of isolation.  I've heard great things about downtown HRC, and it's only 45 minutes from there down the road to Massive University Town.  (As well as to Tinytown.)  MUT is supposed to be a lot of fun for overeducated, liberal elitists like me, particularly given the mainstream culture of the state, and I have every intention of getting down there from time to time to explore.
• Oh, and another thing about HRC and MUT: there are women there.  Many, many women.  I'm not sure that anyone who reads this blog can fully comprehend how exciting this is for me, after a year of living in a town in which there appear to be virtually no women in my natural dating range.  I'm hoping for a lot of positive unbloggable interactions.  (But I'll keep the sadsack breakup songs, just in case.)
• One more thing about HRC and MUT: I know, I'm going overboard with the acronyms here.  Once I land in my new location and have a chance to gauge the atmosphere, I'll try to come up with some more evocative pseudonyms.

Vacation!

I finally sent out that damn book review yesterday, and I feel much better for it.  If I were a really conscientious academic, I would now turn my full attention to bear upon the books that I must consider for use in my classes.  However, since I am not so much a conscientious academic as a punk-ass slacker academic, I shall instead take a short vacation.  An old friend of mine has a four-day industry conference in a city about five hours' drive from Ghosttown, and has kindly offered to let me glom onto the hotel room zi has already booked.  Cheapskate vacation FTW!

I'm debating whether or not I should even try to bring some work with me.  My friend will be tied up with professional stuff all day, so we'll only be hanging out together in the evenings.  And I should be figuring out my reading lists, I know.  But...vacation...  Hm.  Perhaps I'll bring a few of the books along with me, since I rarely do much before I've had breakfast.  I can skim a book, and then run along to see the sights around town, or just relax, knowing that I have the run of the hotel and can sashay on out to do stuff whenever I damn well please. 

Or maybe I'll just slow down.  

Off to pack an overnight bag!

Brief update

GRADES ARE SUBMITTED!!  I have finished my first academic job!  On to my summer of transition/unemployment!

*races off to the beer store*

New job!

Cute-as-a-Button University offered me the job!!  I'm over the moon about this, for all the reasons that I have previously detailed.  And, as icing on the cake, it pays a lot more money than Ghosttown U.  I mean, whoa.  They're even throwing me a sizable packet of moving expense reimbursement.  On the merits, there is literally no professional reason to stay at Ghosttown U. now.  I already told my chair here, and although zi was disappointed that zi had a late-breaking vacancy to fill, zi understood the situation once I quoted the salary and the teaching load.

I am going to leave Ghosttown U., and Ghosttown itself.

I don't think I can even describe to you how happy this makes me. 

I have renewed optimism that I can and will hit the job market full force this fall.  The early signs – and yes, maybe it's just a smokescreen, but why be negative? – from my soon-to-be colleagues at CBU all indicate that they're interested in me and my work, and they want to help build me up as a good job candidate, even when I won't be their long-term hire. 

Plus, now that I know the path my academic year will take, I can finally deal with all those fiddly details that had been on the back burner: which new bank to look for, what sort of summer plans to make, etc.  I feel a lot of security in knowing how things will play out, despite the fact that I am a professional pseudologist whose stock in trade is, to some extent, making sense of near-chaotic uncertainty.  My blood pressure has already dropped, I slept like a log last night, and I have various appointments with friends to drink in celebration.

*Joy*

New drink recipe!

It is a momentous occasion this evening.  For the first time in about two weeks, I not only managed to wrap up my day on campus at lunchtime, but I also had time to unwind at home, cook myself a proper dinner, and fix myself a drink more complex than uncapping a beer or pouring a double whiskey. 

In fact, the drink I'm having is, as it would appear, my own creation.  Here's how the invention occurred, as well as I can remember: I was having drinks at my favorite bar with some colleagues, one of whom shares my general distaste for gin.  I observed to hir that, at this particular bar and no other that I have patronized, there are gin-based cocktails so tasty and balanced in flavors that I can actually enjoy them.  Zi didn't quite believe me, although hir significant other likes gin and got aboard pretty easily.  After some discussion of the matter, and some more alcohol consumed, I...well, my memory gets hazy at this point, but I think that we argued about until it came to our minds to look up gin-based cocktails that zi might be able to tolerate. 

And here is where we may always face a mystery, for at that point (approximately), I somehow latched on to the basis for a cocktail that zi might enjoy, and then I started doctoring the recipe to make it more interesting.  Please note that none of us was mixing anything: we were just patrons at the bar, and I was fiddling with drink recipes on my iPhone.  (Side note: for the serious cocktails fans out there – hi, Dr. Becca!! – the Mixologist app is the bomb.)  Days later, my colleague and I could not determine precisely how this recipe was generated: I thought that zi had suggested particular ingredients, but it turns out that zi has an aversion to some of them even stronger than hir dislike of gin, so that's not possible.  Plus, zi swears that zi didn't suggest the name to me.  The name of the drink that I found in my iPhone app the next day doesn't seem to apply to any drink known to the world of online cocktail enthusiasts in the form in which I recorded it.  There is another gin-based drink of the same name, but the mixers are way different; you couldn't confuse these two for the same drink.  My best guess is that, in my booze-mellowed state, I thought, "That's a cool name for a drink," and I promptly applied it to mine.  I will not mention that name here, because, frankly, it makes no damn sense for my drink.  I'll take reasonable suggestions for a proper name.

Once I had this recipe down, I realized that I didn't want to buy all the ingredients, since I usually don't like gin and didn't want to be stuck with a bottle I wouldn't drink.  I went to that same bar on a slow night and asked a bartender to make the drink for me, showing him the recipe.  He added the black pepper garnish, as well as upgrading the dash of lime juice to actual quarters of lime for muddling, both of which I thought were nice touches.  Once I tasted it, I knew the drink worked as an aesthetic whole, and I bought myself a pint of Tanqueray so I could practice.

Anyway, here (at last!) is the recipe:

1 hefty jigger of good London dry gin (I used Tanqueray, but whatever you like should do fine)
Plenty of sprigs of fresh cilantro
3 to 4 thin slices of fresh cucumber
1 T. simple syrup
Half of a lime, cut into quarters
Freshly ground black pepper

Muddle the cilantro, cucumber, and two of the lime pieces in a rocks glass.  Add the simple syrup.  If you have finely crushed ice, add it on top of the muddled ingredients; if all you've got is the regular big cubes of ice that the fridge makes, put them in a shaker or, if you can fly without a net, a separate glass.  (A wine glass worked well for me.)  Pour the gin over the ice — if the ice is in a separate vessel, then you must swirl, stir, or shake the gin and ice for a bit to get the gin good and cold, and then strain the gin into the muddle.  Stir gently.  If you like a big hit of citrus with your gin, squeeze the juice of the remaining lime pieces into the drink; otherwise, keep them handy for the next round.  Grind a little pepper (not too much!) on top as garnish, and serve. 

NB: If you have small rocks glasses, you may be tempted to ease up on all the greenery.  DON'T DO THIS.  I don't enjoy gin anyway without a lot of mixing flavors, and I find that it responds especially well to high doses of vegetation — the combination suits the botanicals in the gin. 

I haven't tried the pairing yet, but I strongly suspect that this is the ultimate drink accompaniment to a good bánh mì, given the cilantro, cucumber, and lime.  If I ever come within striking distance of a Vietnamese neighborhood again, I'll try it out and let you know my findings.

Post-visit ruminations

I'm back in Ghosttown, after a whirlwind visit to, er, Tinytown, home of Cute-as-a-Button University.  CBU brought me in for a campus visit, and it all felt so positive and collegial that I am left with some hard questions no matter what comes of the visit.  Let me see if I can organize my thoughts a little.

1. CBU faculty are happy people, and Ghosttown U. faculty are unhappy.  You know how you don't notice how miserable you are until you get to taste how happy people live?  That's what I experienced during my visit.  I didn't quite realize how much tension, distrust, and pettiness circulate in my department at Ghosttown U. until I got to hang out with CBU faculty.  Of course, I didn't realize it partly because I'm sort of beneath the notice of my department's politics, but that stuff seeps into everything after a while.  
2. CBU students care about learning, and Ghosttown U. students don't.  Plain fact, for the most part.  There are exceptions aplenty, but the general trend is as stated.  There is merit in forcing academically apathetic and mediocre students to try hard and to succeed, but I have to admit that it's getting to be a real grind.  CBU more closely resembles my own beloved Alma Mater College than a typical university: liberal arts focus, an expectation of academic intensity, and, for the faculty, a priority of teaching students well, rather than gritting one's teeth and getting through classes on the way to publishing some more.  Witness the fact that my tour guide at CBU talked about her academic opportunities and classes she enjoyed alongside the sports and extracurriculars of the school; at Ghosttown U., the tour guides hardly mention academics at all, and concentrate their pitches on how old the campus is, and the great party scene fueled by Greek letter organizations and the athletics teams.
3. CBU faculty derive a sense of meaning and self from their teaching, and Ghosttown U. faculty do not.  At least, that's the general trend.  Within my department, most of the faculty seem, from my perspective, awfully lackadaisical about their teaching, and regard it as something that just comes with the job.  The few of us who really care about making the students struggle, and about making students learn things they did not know before, are all a few steps away from burn-out — even the new hires like me.  
4. I might be happier at a liberal arts college than an R1 university.  I know, not exactly a stunner; lots of people have this realization.  At this point in time, I feel like I'd have to run myself ragged to rack up the number of publications that R1 schools demand for tenure.  My work comes a little slower, partly because of the nature of pseudology and partly because I'm not one of the hardcore theory geeks of my discipline.  I don't think I could pound out a major theory article each year, even with a gun to my head.  Somehow, I didn't quite put it together that a liberal arts school, which values (and valorizes!) good teaching, might rank that higher than publications in some ways.  Whatever happens with CBU, I may want to step up my game in some fashion for apps to liberal arts schools, to drive home the point that I get what these places are about.
5. I hate Ghosttown.  There's no getting around it.  Yes, there's a great bookstore in town, and yes, there are a few lovely places to eat and drink.  But that doesn't really compensate for the fact that this place makes me existentially unhappy.  I felt a sense of relief and even impatience to be on the plane to CBU, as a respite from Ghosttown.  And I felt dread as I drove back into town.  My therapist has already noticed my distaste for my current locale, and has suggested we talk about it.  And, generally speaking, this has been the unhappiest academic year I can remember, including that rough final year of dissertating.
   Now, mind you, Tinytown isn't exactly my utopic vision.  It's actually half – half!! – the size of Ghosttown, and has even less to recommend it in a general way than has Ghosttown.  But it's less isolated from the, uh, civilized world than Ghosttown, too: only about 45 minutes away from a really big metropolitan area with lots of stuff to do, lots of people around, and a nice straight shot down a highway from Tinytown.  (Ghosttown is about twice as far away as that from Major Regional City, and that is partly so because one needs to drive half an hour just to pick up the main highway that leads to MRC.)  Most faculty at CBU, as I understand, live in one of the suburban areas of the big city in order to take advantage of the city's offerings, although of course Tinytown is dirt cheap for real estate.

So the upshot of this is that I don't think that I'll be very happy, in the long term, if I remain at Ghosttown U. or go to another such large state university with relatively little investment in teaching or intellectual engagement.  Obviously, I can't just demand to go wherever I want, but it's worth remembering that some jobs are better for me than others, even as I spam applications each year.  I also would be happier, in the long term, in a living situation very unlike Ghosttown, but that is, to some degree, an epiphenomenon of where I work.  I went into academia partly because I wanted to do work that I loved and found satisfying; if all I cared about was living in a convenient location and making a lot of money, there are a lot of other things I could have done.  It's a scary and potentially embittering realization that being a professional academician could leave me in a sadder situation than if I had, lord help us all, gone to law school.  I need to make sure I don't become one of those sad, bitter characters one finds in some schools, who wish they had gone some other route.

Happy update

Ghosttown U. wants to renew my contract for the next academic year.  Apparently, I'm not as much of a failure as I sometimes fear I am.  So hey, job for next year!

This, of course, doesn't mean that I'm throwing in the towel with that other place inviting me to a campus visit.  I mean, hell, I already bought the airfare.  My position on these matters is that I should never turn down a campus visit: it's a chance to make myself a little more visible to colleagues, and possibly seed the ground for a tenure-track job that might crop up a few years down the line.  And you never know, after all: maybe this other place will not only offer me the job, but will offer a salary so high that it would compensate for moving expenses and general aggravations of resettlement. 

I told my chair about this other possibility when zi let me know the good news that I need not go unemployed for next year.  It sounds like I can do the campus visit and wait at least a bit to hear from the other place before giving a final decision to Ghosttown U.  Given the practical constraints of a contract at a public university, I doubt there's much room for horse-trading here, but I'll see if I can use the competing opportunity as (modest) leverage for a salary increase.

I definitely have mixed feelings about staying in Ghosttown for another year, but ultimately, when I look at the cost-benefit analysis in terms of my professional development, it pretty much makes the most sense.  I'd have minimal summertime costs, since I wouldn't be moving.  I'd have virtually no prep work to do, since my courses would be just the same as this year.  I'd have plenty of time, relatively speaking, to work on my publications.  (That would definitely not be the case with the other job.)  It would be useful to build up some positive reputation with a university department as a faculty member, rather than as a grad student.  As much as I gripe (and will probably continue to gripe) about Ghosttown and its discontents, there's something to be said for the professional benefits.

On a side note, it seems that Haphazard Musings and I continue to follow parallel tracks in our respective careers.  Eerie, right?

And no, none of this is an April Fool's joke.  I gave those up years ago.  Long story.

Needs more drunk accordionist

I went out last night and had a few drinks to celebrate sending out my manuscript, like Sisyphus suggested.  I had plenty (plenty!) to eat, and I drank pints of water too, so I'm not wrecked today.  I'm not feeling quite my physical best, but I've certainly had worse hangovers.

Usually, a hangover comes with a certain amount of regret and self-loathing — a fact which, as it appears, has some biochemical basis to it far beyond my idiosyncratic perceptions.  Today, though, I'm still so relieved to have that manuscript off my to-do list for the moment that I'm smiling through the mild fuzziness in my head.  I even wore a purple shirt today, because it's awesome and I feel like communicating awesomeness.

Don't you think everyone should?

The little moments

There aren't many things in my life right now that make me happy, but there are some bits worth mentioning.  They are few and far between, but that makes them stand out to me even more.

• While walking around Ghosttown, I bumped into a student from the last semester.  She smiled when she saw me, and told me that she and a friend of hers – another one of my former students – both still talk about what a great class it was, "even though you were hard on us."  She thanked me again for a great class, and then went on her way.
• A student I've never seen before came up to me in the dining hall during lunch and said admiringly, "You're always so well dressed, man!"  I thanked him, and said, "I have to impress my students."  He nodded and said, "Keep it up, man, keep it up!"  I suspect he took me for an over-dressed student, and didn't expect me to explain my tweedy appearance that way.  On the other hand, maybe he just appreciates a sharply dressed man.  Either way, I'll take the compliment.
• I got a phone call from a long-standing friend and colleague, in which we discussed hir career moves and mine.  Zi has a tenure-track job, but is interviewing for another.  And I...well, you who read this blog regularly know my situation.  My friend has served on several hiring committees in recent years, and repeatedly assured me that I am a strong candidate for a job, especially if I get this manuscript finished and under contract.  That sounds kind of like obligatory pep-talking for a friend, I know, but it was still good to hear.  Certainly better to hear than my family making the same claim on the basis of zero understanding of my career.
• I'm practically knocking on friends' and colleagues' doors nowadays to do dinner.  I've concluded that my sense of isolation here in Ghosttown is, to some degree, my own self-perpetuating creation, and I need to work harder at socializing with people who could just go home and spend time with their families.  As much as most (maybe too much?) of the conversation can be made up of my bitching about all the ways in which my life currently sucks, it's good to be able to trade off the bitching with colleagues.  It's also nice to get out of the house so I don't have to look at my own walls for a while.  Also nice to trade tips about pedagogy, grading schemes, etc.  Having dinner and drinks with colleagues = tonic.

I've been feeling pretty small and insignificant lately.  Maybe I can turn that to some musical advantage, and give myself a nudge at the same time.