flotsam

An odd week. Lots of general crankiness mixed with nostalgia mixed with I don't wanna. Maybe I'm just sick of all my gray-black-red winter dress clothes, but every Tuesday and Thursday I stand in front of my closet and wish I could just throw on a fleece and old sneakers. Do it up grad-student style.

The students have similar expressions on their faces. I told them that it's that time of the semester: I look out and see fifty-four faces that are exhausted and glazed with general pissed-offness.

Most laughed. The really tired and pissed off ones didn't.



I saw The Hold Steady on Thursday night in a venue that was essentially a high school auditorium. Maybe two hundred in attendance. I sat on the side of the stage the whole set. Front-row witness to Craig Finn's charming, Woody-Allen's-chunky-little-brother-flailing-ness. Should have brought the D40 after all--the pictures would have been amazing. I have non-blurred ones from my little bar camera, but I liked the colors in the out-of-focus shot the best.

It was a good show, though a little strange to stand next to new people and listen to songs that remind me only of old people. I actually teared up when they played "Massive Nights" and "Party Pit" back to back. Gonna walk around and drink some more ...



Big department meeting yesterday. We've been asked to trim our budget by a large figure. Say one-and-a-half-times-my-salary figure. Of course, this is the story all over the country. Of course, we have the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Even so, it sucks. Keep those fingers crossed for the B.

We followed up that cheery discussion with a review of all the new MLA changes, which in turn spurred a gripe session*. Commence nerdy grumblings**.

I gave a friend a ride home afterward and mentioned in passing that last week, when I was out walking Truman, a woman yanked her car over to the side of the road. The window came down and out came her hand, dog treats in her palm. I just had to give these to him, she said.

My companion said, God. I would worry they were poisoned.

Pause.

I'm sorry, he said. That was really pessimistic. I think I'm just tired.



Other randomness from the week: snow is back in the forecast. The dog got buzzed. I found myself in line at the grocery store late last night. In my basket: mini corn dogs and daffodils. A student who was going to be running Boston is injured and has to sit out.

In the same class: a student had been turning in short-shorts about a beheading. This was raising all sort of cultural sensitivity issues in workshop, so I finally asked her what sort of research she'd conducted. I was expecting None. Or maybe Wikipedia.

Nope. She was a flight attendant for ten years before this. Flew to Middle Eastern countries regularly. Lived there off and on. Once attended an execution. When in Rome ...

Well then.



But as I write this, a small mourning dove has landed on the roof outside the window. S/he has tiny pink feet and a smudge of iridescent green on the neck. Now another one has joined the first. Now they're singing.



*the problem being, as I see it, that MLA still can't wrap their head around the fact that electronic sources are inherently different from print, so to insist upon basing electronic citation formats on the model used for print does very little and in fact causes more problems; inserting "web" or "n.p." in a citation does not actually do much to clarify the matter.

**The B and I have privately decided that we are going to start a movement to eliminate MLA format. We'll all have to pledge our allegiance to APA, but really, in the long run, it's going to be easier on us all. If you're interested, write me for more details.