No Chaser

TTFN

Almost packed, and after a long lingering goodbye walk in my favorite coastal park, I come home to find a Speedy Delivery letter offering me a job that I really really want. Happy to be moving on such a high note.

Leaving tomorrow = no posts for at least a week, possibly more. Updates ASAP.

posted by: NoChaser at June 28, 2005 13:33 | link | comments |

Stuff and things

Caught a cold on the flight out to interview. The interview went well. Now, I am waiting to hear what happens. I am also recovering from this stupid cold only a week after recovering from the effing flu. But, we have packed just about everything in sight, except the dogs and the computers, and are now looking forward to a weekend of socializing.

We are also trying to eat the food in the fridge and the freezer, as well as some things we don't want to pack out, which makes for some bizarre dinners. Tonight we had an appetizer of Kimchi fried rice with some broccoli and mushrooms (kimchi homemade by a friend = yum!). Then I boiled a half bag of farfalle (rice gone/rice cooker packed), edamame, and peas. I dressed it with butter, soy sauce, and garlic. Chili sauce was added afterward. Sesame oil . . . nope, it's packed. It was actually a reasonable meal, but what do I know? I'm so congested, I put my nose in the jar of chili sauce and sat inhaling/exhaling for five minutes and only began to catch the scent of vinegar.

Clonk loves to do this to me now and then. I say, "We really need to go grocery shopping," and he responds, "No, let's eat everything we have first." We always eventually have to give in and buy some vegetables or fruit to really eat everything, but I take the challenge as far as possible. Often, it has resulted in some truly delicious and inventive meals. Sometimes, it's just plain weird. Like tonight.

posted by: NoChaser at June 24, 2005 18:12 | link | comments |

Moving etc.

The flu has left and we have been packing up everything in sight. I was feeling slightly sentimental about leaving this house until the new (renting) neighbors moved in next door two days ago. They are in order of least repugance: a fat old black lab, a very quiet and vaguely depressed teen mother and baby, her grimy oversized-basketball-tank-wearing boyfriend, his insane grandmother and vile grandfather.

The lab is cute but smelly. The teen mother is just in a really bad situation. The grandmother sits on the porch all day and talks regardless of whether anyone is listening. I tried to be polite and listen at first, but she keeps playing a variation of the same crazy thing, something about how she had a dog just like mine (talks about the dog a bit) but then "had a house fire" and it killed her dog and two cats. At first I was sympathetic, but she talks on and on, repeating the same things without any notable emotion. It's as if she's been lobotomized.

The grandfather is a complete jerk. He yells constantly at everyone and everything. I don't think he even has a non-yelling speaking volume. A car drives by, and he screams, "Slow down hot rod!!!" My dog barks, he yells, "Shut up you stupid little dog! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" My dog is annoying, but he does not bark at the teen mother. Why? Because she is not an antagonistic creep. This guy starting barking at my dogs when he first came to look at the house. Hmmm, wonder why my dog hates him?

The young man is totally clueless and really really dirty. Last night, he had his friends over and then took them down the street to play basketball at the neighbor's hoop -- the neighbor he has never met or asked about using said hoop. Around 9 pm the night they moved in, the kid came and knocked on our door. When I answered, he said, "Hi, we just moved in next door. You got a plunger we could borrow? I'll bring it right back." Me: "Please just keep it. We're moving and won't need it."

You can imagine the grossout howlfest that resulted. Two days they've been here, and already I can't stand them. We also got some new drug dealers down the street who are competing with the nasty tweaker/dealer two houses away from them. Their dealing is so blatantly obvious, I'm not sure how they get away with it.

So, now despite all my former doubts, I couldn't be happier to move. I don't care that I probably will not be able to replicate the azul of the my living room walls. I don't care that my new yard is a fraction of the size of this one and has two ugly junipers rather than rhodies, roses, passionflower, herbs, lavender, lilac, hydrangea, camellia, daphne, syringa, or my dear viburnum. I don't care that I will officially be bourgeois if I no longer live in the ghetto. I don't even care that they are finally finally opening a bookstore down the block. Just get me out of here!!!

posted by: NoChaser at June 18, 2005 07:05 | link | comments (2) |

Graduation was fun, seeing friends and family was fun, going out all the time was fun, sitting in the rain for two hours was even fun. The flu I contracted as a result of all this is not really very fun.

posted by: NoChaser at June 14, 2005 11:02 | link | comments (3) |

Undergrad envy

Well, the ceremony was nice, but it didn't really do it for me. We PhD's are all totally jaded. Two of us (not me) had really horrendous committee troubles all through the last few years, three of us just came off a truly crap job search year, three more are headed into the maelstrom pretty well aware of how crap it is. On top of it all, we just had five-to-ten years of training in critiquing culture, the institution, and ourselves. Not exactly sunshine and flowers for the mind.

But we did have a lot of fun watching the undergrads walk; they are so fresh and excited and full of potential. Plus, they're off on great adventures like moving to Paris, Japan, and China. After over an hour of watching undergrads scamper across stage in their adorable outfits and completely unwearable shoes, I have to add that they have it made physically as well. They don't have the back pain, perimenopausal symptoms, and shifting landscape the Ph.D.'s are dealing with. All in all, things are pretty sweet for them still. I wouldn't trade places, but I do envy the lemony scent of their joy.

As for ritual fulfillment, maybe the big event on Saturday will be better, or maybe the end of the whole week-long gradfest will be the moment of completion, but I am realizing that finishing the diss was the real moment of catharsis and triumph, not to be repeated.

posted by: NoChaser at June 09, 2005 03:55 | link | comments |

Ceremony and ceremonial togs

Tomorrow is the first big graduation event. Clonk's ma arrived today and we had dinner together. Tomorrow, more friends and relations arrive, and continue to do so in a slow trickle until the big event on Saturday. We're really looking forward to seeing so many of the people we love at once; probably won't happen again since we don't plan to get married.

The event tomorrow includes us wearing our "regalia" and being hooded by our committee chairs. The outfits are not as horrendous as I expected and the hat (tam) is even cute if you wear it at a rakish angle, which you are expressly forbidden to do during the official ceremony. I'm going to try to get away with it tomorrow however since it is the smaller departmental ceremony and thus much less stuffy. We have to get up in the morning and iron the robes and hoods because they're rented and full of wrinkles.

I expect the hooding ceremony will be the emotional ritual I need to complete this whole experience. Semi-solemnly, we walk up to the stage, some information about our work and future plans is read out, our chairs then place the doctoral hood over our heads, and we're officially part of the club. Plenty of people will cry, probably me included.

My chair emailed me yesterday to ask whether I preferred a handshake or hug after the hooding. I emailed back one word, "Hug!"

posted by: NoChaser at June 07, 2005 20:27 | link | comments (2) |

Fantasizing? Thinking ahead? Same thing?

Yesterday, I was fantasizing about keeping the lectureship I start in the fall, but concurrently enrolling in the school's MFA in Acting. I luxuriated in imagining the daily 4-hour workshop sessions in voice, breath, movement, technique; hanging out with theatre geeks who would get my pop-diva-does-My-Fair-Lady joke; reinhabiting my body and voice in new ways; memorizing lines; performing . . .

Before I began my academic path, I was very into theatre. I got involved during high school, continued through two years of college, and did some local professional shows after dropping out of college. After a while, I became frustrated with the pretension and pseudo-intellectualism of many of my co-actors and decided I needed to go back to college and get an education and put theatre behind me by extricating myself from the lifestyle, people, plays, etc.

Then, while I was working on my Ph.D., my brother went to art school and pulled me back into that world . . . slowly . . . as I would go to his performances, sing and write for him, and eventually collaborated on a full-length work with him. I found I really missed the expressiveness of the arts and felt all the more thoroughly the way academia wraps you in expanding layers of Saran Wrap. You can see clearly, but your movement becomes limited.

I mentioned my unhappiness with the limitations on creative expression in the academy to one of my mentors, and she said, "Oh, but there are opportunities for creative expression. One of my colleagues once wore a belt made of dildos when presenting a paper on queer theory." The comment intended to ease my concerns about what I felt were limitations in my chosen career path did just the opposite by revealing that creativity is limited to sharing one's scholarship at annual professional get-togethers. Of course, I'm exaggerating here. Plenty of academics perform music or write fiction or make art on the side, but it is clear that unless you teach arts, such work is most often viewed as a hobby, something not integral to the life of the academic worker or the life of the academy. It's fine if you want to do that, just don't let it make you a less rigorous or productive scholar.

During my Ph.D. work, I continued to work creatively. Despite the concerns of my committee and cohort that such activity could make me a less committed, less capable scholar and prevent me finishing my degree, those projects made it possible for me to complete my dissertation and graduate with honors. Their fears may have been well-founded, however, because those projects also enabled me to keep a foot out of the university and continue to exercise different brain functions and make me want to continue working creatively more than anything else. Some people I know -- Clonk is one of them -- have managed to find ways to infuse their academic work with amazing amounts of creative expression. I am sadly not that clever. My balance tips the other way; I infuse my creative expression with research. And, since I started grad school, I have been committed to making academic research more accessible to non-academics.

Will I apply for the MFA program in Acting? Probably not. Although it might help me become a playwright or create one-woman shows that feature my research interests, there are many drawbacks. I have issues about relying on Clonk (or anyone) to support me financially. I ultimately do care what other people think of me, and this might seem a tad too impetuous, bordering on unbalanced. Indeed, wouldn't the admissions committee have the same impression? If I had the other students in the classes I taught for the lectureship, wouldn't that be a conflict of interest? I'd likely feel I needed to hide my age and education from my cohort, and that would be uncomfortable. It would mean three more years of little or no retirement fund building, and the end result of having no more reliable form of income. It's just wildly impractical, which I am not.

But, even after enumerating these concerns and some I'll leave out, it still sounds really really fun and fresh and challenging. I am having a mid-life crisis after all, and it's certainly more appealing than buying a Porsche or having a fling with an undergrad. So, I'm torn and will continue fantasizing about this for some time to come. If you wish to vote on this potential choice, cast your ballot in the comments section.

posted by: NoChaser at June 01, 2005 12:11 | link | comments (4) |