In Fieri

Why, oh why, when I know I have more to do than I have hours in the day, do I waste the time surfing websites, reading LiveJournals, futzing with a filing system?

Why, when the tenure clock ticketh loudly, do I fritter away what could be a very productive and fruitful couple of hours annoying my cat and flipping channels?

Eh, it all gets done. With stress, torn-out hair, and the gnashing of teeth at the rampant bureaucratic layers and proscribed nature of it all, but it all gets done.

And, I'm hungry. And there is nothing automatic to eat. At all. In this house. Eating would require work. Back to channel-surfage.

PS: My paean to Talk Like A Pirate Day: "Aye, matey, pass me a mug o' grog! Smartly now!"

How do you say "queen" in Martian? How about "goddess"?

You Should Rule Mars

Mars is a planet that shines brightly and loops wildly around the solar system. You are perfect to rule Mars, because you are both energetic and independent. Like Mars, you seems attractive and bright to others - but you're difficult to pin down. You are a great thinker, but you only think in the present and ignore the future. Full of enthusiasm and inspiration, you are into your own thing... and rather insensitive to others.

One other thing: Just watched the premiere of "'Til Death Do Us Part" on Court TV, hosted by John Waters (the "Groom Reaper"). I could well be addicted already.

There, I've broken a long dry spell. Now, to bed!

...and overbooked. Sometimes I wonder why I didn't go into a job where you work 8-5 and then go home and do what you want to. I love academe's flexibility, I tell myself. And then I go home after a 13-hour day to work some more. This week, supposedly off to catch up (on work, on sleep, on sanity), is almost gone, and very little accomplished.

Then I remember The Evil Empire, and I shut up and do more work, thankful that it's in flannel shirts and blue jeans, rather than pantyhose and pumps -- or worse.

Actually, I have but myself to blame. Time management -- never my forte. :) How many all-nighters to finish term papers? It never changes. Just keep in mind: Hawaii in January. It's a mantra: Aloha 'oi and hallelujah for vacation. Real vacation, where nothing happens but sun and sea, sand and surf. Oh, and seafood buffets.

Do we all do as Gary B. used to say: Do what you hafta do now so you can do what you wanna do later?

...because all of my postings of late are her memes. ;) I write better soon, kk? As promised...

1.Your Middle Name:

2. Age:

3. Single or Taken:

4. Favourite Movie:

5. Favourite Song:

6. Favourite Band/Artist:

7. Dirty or Clean:

8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:



HERE COMES THE FUN ... ... ...

1. Do we know each other outside of LJ?

2. What's your philosophy on life?

3. Would you have my back in a fight?

4. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?

5. What is your favourite memory of us?

6. Would you give me a kidney?

7. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:

8. Would you take care of me when I'm sick?

9. Can we get together and make a cake?

10. Have you heard any rumours of me lately?

11. Do you/have you talk(ed) crap about me?

12. Do you think I'm a good person?

13. Would you drive across country with me?

14. Do you think I'm attractive?

15. If you could change anything about me, would you?

16. What do you wear to sleep?

17. Would you come over for no reason just to hang out?

18. Would you go on a date with me if I asked you?

19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?

20. Will you repost this so I can fill it out for you?

From the lovely bride, charityflint...

1. Grab the nearest book (really, the nearest...not one you go look for!).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. If you want to play, then do so.

Can you tell what mode I'm in? ...

"A few months later, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

By the time it came to an end, the case had lasted for twelve years. Notwithstanding the scorching language of the Court of Appeals, Newton admirers in Las Vegas falsely continue to treat the case as a "history-making win" for him and to misattribute to the appeals court the view that NBC's report, rather than Newton's testimony before Nevada gaming authorities, was inaccurate."

~ Floyd Abrams, "Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment." Penguin Books, 2005.

A damn fine book by a damn fine author, dedicated to free speech and press and among the finest First Amendment attorneys in the country. I actually have two copies of the book sitting on my desk, gifts for my teaching assistants last semester (who now I have to hunt down to gift, sigh!), and I have an autographed copy in my bedroom. The book is a good read even for you non-law geeks out there. ;)

OK, enough syllabus procrastinating! I wish they had a mood graphic for "not in the mood to work right now but sitting at the computer trying to be productive anyway" or somesuch.

...come and gone. Faculty meeting tomorrow, classes start Monday. As always, I feel a combination of melancholy and excitement about fall semester. Initially, it's like, Where the *#%% did summer go, and why didn't I get more DONE?! More work, more play, more life? But then the semester hits, and I do love my job, really. I get to talk about stuff I love to a captive audience. :) I get to read and write for a living. What's a better high than that?

It's been an eventful summer, in its own way. Things change and stay the same. Decisions made and fates tempted.

I guess I'm glad to be starting back, overall. As much as I love vacation, I think I love structure a bit more. Too many open-ended days, and I start to turn too much inward and go a little bit too crazy for my own liking.

And there was much rejoicing.

I was amazed at how few of my students knew this, and how relatively unimportant they think it is. I agree that it is probably a smokescreen amendment for the myriad of other issues the government should be facing and isn't, but still, it came dangerously close to passing.

I don't want to live in a country that punishes free expression like this, regardless of how noxious the majority may find the expression. "One man's vulgarity is another's lyric."

It's my theory, untested of course, that one can avoid senility (or at least make it less likely) by keeping one's mind and body active. My grandmother, for example, is in her 80s, and she walks and reads and crochets. She lives in a community for the elderly, and she is very active in that community. What she lacks in finances, she makes up for in spirit. Bless you, Grandma Martha, and may you live and love long!

I don't exercise my body like I should, but I do exercise my mind. This week I attended a training session on podcasting, on a grant I received from the faculty development center on my campus. Audio podcasting is so simple it hurts. With just a microphone and a free software package, at minimum, you can be podcasting in about 10 minutes. We actually did not use the free package, which is called Audacity, but we used Quicktime Pro 7.0, which the computer lab had and which can be upgraded from the free QT for $29.99.

Essentially, you record your voice, you save it, and you export it to the appropriate format. You can syndicate it using RSS, or, in my case, you can post it to a website where it can be downloaded to an iPod or saved to burn to a CD. I plan to record podcast flashcards so my students can study on their commutes or while they're exercising or otherwise using their iPods. Studies show that the more time you can get them to concentrate on your class when they're not physically in the class, the more likely they are to do well.

While I developed this skill for my classes, I have been thinking about Grandma Martha more and more lately, and I think that I should try to capture her voice (and image, if I can) for posterity. My hubby's grandma died last year, and he went back to Wisconsin to visit her for what he knew would be the last time. In taking pictures with our digital camera, he accidentally made a three-second movie of her with a different camera setting. We looked at it after he brought it home, and he was kicking himself that he didn't use up all the memory on the camera taking video and still photos.

My dad's grandmother, or Mummi, as we called her, was over 100 when she died. I interviewed her on audiotape, with my grandma's help as Mummi spoke only Finnish, sometime in the late 1980s. We talked about her voyage overseas from Finland (I think she came over in 1902) and her recollections of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We talked about her early, hard life in an Upper Peninsula mining community, and about her abiding faith in God and humanity. I have no idea where that tape is. Maybe my folks have it somewhere but my guess is that it's long gone -- and with it, Mummi's thin, thready voice speaking shaky Finnish, and my grandmother's translations. I don't want to lose Grandma Martha that way.

I bought a handheld digital voice recorder for this session before I realized how easy voice recording was on the digital microphone I use for gaming. Now I see a good use for it...to record my grandma, and take as much digital video of her as I can on my camera. I had somewhat unformulated plans to visit The Homeland later this summer, and now I have a mission. :) Oral histories are so much easier to make, save, and pass on than they ever were. I want my nieces and nephews to know more about their great-grandma than I can remember about mine.

THE RULES: Once you've been tagged, you have to write a blog with 6 weird facts/things/habits about yourself, saying who tagged you. In the end you need to choose 6 new people to be tagged and list their names. No tag backs!

I was tagged by kenobi65, so here goes...

1) I am addicted to index cards. I must have 20 unopened packs of index cards, all sizes and colors, and probably the same number of opened packs. I have a bunch of index card boxes, too.

2) I have a small mark, a scar, on the upper part of my right wrist, from where my dad burned me with a cigarette (by accident!) when I was a year old. Until I was in college, I thought everyone had that little mark.

3) Although I am right-handed, I wear my watch on my right wrist, which is opposite from the norm.

4) I hate iceberg lettuce. No, REALLY hate it. If it's on a burger or sandwich, I scrape it off or order without, and I pick around it in salads.

5) I have very small fingernails. Fake nails for me are kid-sized.

6) I can write very fast. I think I am the fastest handwriter I know.

Wow...this was harder than I thought! I don't have enough friends to tag, so tagging will have to wait until I have more online friends. :)

All this talk of blogging and me without a blog?! How can this be?!

Right now it's getting late, and I'm thinking I don't have a lot of creativity in me past the naming of this journal. It took forEVER to find a Latin term that wasn't taken that meant something to me. "In fieri" means "in becoming" or "pending"...and that suits me. :)