One Tough vonCookie

Bounty (*NOT* the Paper Towel)

I’ve had a real stroke of luck… Actually, I’ve had three real strokes of luck in recent weeks.  I found out today that I got funding for the conference I’m attending in November from an organization on campus, which, added to two other sources of funding that/who shall remain anonymous, brings my grand total to an amount that will cover my lodging at Fancy-Schmancy Hotel where the conference is being held.  Woo-hoo!

When you’re as broke as I am, every little bit helps.

And with Mercury in retrograde and everything!  This makes up for  a lot.

October 6th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | The Random Wonderfulness | no comments

Carnival of Sorts: Cover Letters

I’m writing cover letters today, and therefore will be perhaps excessively brief in my assessment of the situation:

This sucks.

October 6th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | Carnival of Sorts, The Profession | no comments

Got Corpus?

Jeezy Peasy!  I have to select my corpus of the literary works I’m going to include for study in my last two chapters of my dissertation.  I’ve been putting this off for a very long time, and now suddenly I must do it immediately.  I have 12 days of *intense* reading ahead of me.

And for the life of me, I can’t wake up today.  I need coffee in the worst way.  I think I’ll head up to 7-11 for my cup of mediocrity.

More later.

October 5th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | La Tesis | no comments

Lights Out!

Q: What do you do when the power goes out in your town?

A: Sleeeeeeeeeeep.

Q: And when the power comes back on?

A: Sleeeeeeeeeeep… Until you wake up and realize you still have cover letters to write, a corpus to go over, an entire dissertation to finish…  But at least the Incomplete’s done!

We had a power outage today in this little tiny corner of Liberal Paradise, probably due to the shocking rain and wind that came through last night.  I was out in it in the middle of the night, unable to sleep as usual, but this time not banging my head against the wall to try and force myself to be tired.  I just decided to enjoy the whole experience, from storm to 7-11.  It was great.

The power came back on in the afternoon, and instead of scrambling to do *a ton* of work, I lightly flipped around on Teh Internets looking for info on obscure Spanish poets (and what I say obscure, I mean barely anthologized).  Then I took a nap and had strange dreams about HSbf.  He pops up from time to time.

I woke up at 6:30, made my way to The Sev and got my coffee, now I’m good to go, and I’ll be working for a good few hours on portfolio building stuff.

If I have anything interesting to say that doesn’t revolve around general whining or self-deprecation, you’ll hear from me later.

October 4th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | A Cookie's Life | no comments

What’s That Sound?

Soft pitter patter… what on earth is that?

Rain.

The first rain of the season.  So, so welcome.  It’s just beautiful outside right now, and I’m awake, listening to the rain, knitting, and listening to an NPR podcast.

Perfect Friday night.

October 4th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | Mother Nature | no comments

Carnival of Sorts: MLA = Major Migraine

In spite of myself, I worked today.  I loaded up all of the information that I could find about all the possible job leads into my Outlook/Google calendar and then promptly got a migraine.

I read through at least 300 job listings, and at the end of the 3 hours it took me to do this, I had 62 openings that bore a vague resemblance to something I could do.  Really not bad, actually, considering.

But I’ve got this feeling, this horrible sinking feeling, that I’m too much of a rara avis to land one of these jobs.  Science and literature?  Really?  There’s not even an obscure post-doc for that?

I’m going to be a hard sell.

None the less, as Mary Poppins says, “Best foot forward.  Spit-spot!”

Time to work on… everything.

October 2nd, 2008 Posted by voncookie | Carnival of Sorts, The Profession | no comments

Go Here. Now.

http://www.palinbingo.com/

October 2nd, 2008 Posted by voncookie | Humor Me, The Political Machine | no comments

A Day Off… Just *One* Day Off…

I simply refuse to work today.  Will not work!    *stamps foot

I’ve been doing *so* much lately, and the injustice of having a six-chapter dissertation is just starting to settle in.  If I were writing a four-chapter dissertation, 1/2 closer to done than I am right now.

Considering that, I really shouldn’t be taking a day off, but fuck it.  I deserve today.

…although, admittedly, I’ll probably read something today, and that constitutes “work” right now.  I guess I can’t be a perfect slacker.

I’d like to give a shout-out to everyone who helped me through this Incomplete with all their moral support.  TooBeaut, in particular, who let me bounce ideas off him incessantly until I’m sure he could have written the paper.  LaceWhore, too, was also helpful when I got all freaked out on Tuesday, and she harshed me right back to work by reminding me that I let myself get all upset about stupid shit.  Thanks, LaceWhore.  Thanks, TooBeaut.

And now back to… we’ll call it… the pursuit of FUN!!!

October 2nd, 2008 Posted by voncookie | A Cookie's Life | no comments

Writing Travelogues: Liveblogging the End of The Incomplete

12:30 a.m.

Technically, I have two pages left to write to fulfill the 20-page term-paper requirement.  Technically.  But I have a lot more than two pages left of material.  And I’m tired.  So I’m going to take a quick nap and finish this up in the a.m.  More soon.

2:22 a.m.

Finished.  Four years of anxiety amounting to this moment.  Finished. Just need to print and publish.

Fuck, I’m exhausted.

And so, so relieved.

September 30th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | Writing Travelogues | 2 comments

Writing Travelogue: The Incomplete, Part III

I was just thinking about how I’m writing this paper, how I’m choosing to finish The Incomplete.  Not my usual M.O. of writing everything the day before it’s due, although I have pulled a few unintentional all-nighters.  No, as it turns out, grad school has taught me something after all, and I am writing this paper in a truly adult way–logically, bit by bit, editing as I go along, making sure I don’t repeat too many words, using a thesaurus, taking a few days for the writing process itself, doing additional research to beef up my bibliography.  Looks good for me, I hope.

My big fear right now, though, is that Overlord #1, for whom I am writing this paper, will mark me down on it simply because it has taken me so long, thereby ruining my good GPA.  But I guess we’ll see.  I don’t think he’d be malicious in that way, but one never knows, really.

I’m enjoying the writing today.  It feels, for lack of a better word, like a massive brain dump that’s challenging but also a relief.  And I’m proud of myself that I got an early start.  This is a good thing, and also shows a bit of maturity, that I’m not dicking around too much, and just doing the work I need to do so that it will be possible for me to actually sleep tonight.

Won’t that be nice.

OK, back to the brain drain.

September 30th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | Writing Travelogues | no comments

Oh, It’s Bad, It’s So, So Bad…

Wall Street has decided to play a gigantic game of “Chutes and Ladders”. You know it’s a bad day when you open up your iGoogle page and see this:

Stock Market Plunge 09/28/08

Jeez.  That’s something I never wanted to see in my lifetime, although I guess I already did, post-9/11.  But really, now?

I know nothing about the economy except to know that this sucks.  But I also think that the House had it right to not pass the bailout.  I don’t know why, but it just seemed like a really, really bad idea to me.

Make way for the soup kitchens!

September 29th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | Oh, the Humanity!, The Political Machine | no comments

Picture It, the Parking Lot, 7-11, 3 a.m.

Getting my 3 a.m. jones for 7-11 crap coffee, I head out up the hill to get my fix.  I drive into the parking lot at “The Sev”, go inside, get my Dark Mountain Roast 16-oz cup full o’ mediocrity and head back to my car.  As I’m about to pull out of the parking lot, I look to my left and there’s an enormous deer–a stag, complete with antlers–licking the ground as if it were made of salt.  He doesn’t see me, and even when I start the car he doesn’t startle.  I have to drive past him to get out of the lot, and he just calmly ambles away, giving me plenty of room to make my left turn.  He looks completely casual as he crosses the street, using the pedestrian walkway, even.

So random.  So wonderful.

September 29th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | The Random Wonderfulness | no comments

Writing Travelogue: The Incomplete, Part II

I’ve decided the insomnia ain’t so bad after all, as long as it leads to productive output.  I’ve just written a one-page prologue to my Incomplete that can serve as an abstract, and I’ve had a new vision as to what this first part of the essay is all about.  (Ever heard of Rey Pastor, the Spanish Mathematician?  No?  That’s a shame, since he’s going to figure quite large in the introductory pages.)

Mathematics never really interested me in high school, but I was good at it.  Good, not great.  I got a 4 on my AP Calculus (AB) exam back in 199x.  Then I got to college and I started Calc 2, got my first exam back, and it was a big, fat D.  I dropped immediately, just after my Dad reminded my that I was no longer a Big Fish.  The pond had gotten much much larger.

Anyway, back to The Incomplete, Insomnia, and Infinitesimal Calculus…  The writing is going well tonight.  I technically have Someplace To Be at 11 a.m. tomorrow (today), but we’ll have to see if I get enough sleep to attend that particular venture.  The Incomplete sort of trumps all right now.

Two more days to write this S.O.B.

I’m enjoying it sooooooo much.  I haven’t been this excited about a paper in years.

… this is the first term paper I’ve actually written in, well, years.  Hello, 2004!  It’s been a while.  And it’s a million times better now.  I know you, Incomplete.  And here we shall duel.

September 29th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | Writing Travelogues | no comments

Writing Travelogue: The Incomplete, Part I

A little background:

The paper known as “The Incomplete” is one that’s been hanging over my head since Fall of 2004.  Several times I’ve started to research it, and then have lost interest.  My original topic–the problem of the actor in Symbolist theater–was more confusing than interesting, and so I kept putting off the paper… for four years.  Now I’m at a point where I have to send out transcripts and I really want this Incomplete off my record.

Still, I’m at a loss as to why The Incomplete has taken me so long to tackle, and I realized today what’s been hanging me up, and surprisingly it’s not the topic of the paper itself, but rather the circumstances in which the original paper developed back in Fall of ‘04.

That semester began the day after a bat-out-of-hell, 6-hour drive back from L.A. where I had been for two weeks liquidating my cousin’s apartment after she fell ill and had to move back to NJ.  She herself had been in the hospital, too sick to move, even, and her friends, my aunt and uncle, and I spent two weeks of 16-hour days either visiting her or going through her stuff to pack it into manageable boxes to ship home.  It was exhausting work, and by the time I arrived back in Liberal Paradise, I saw that I was covered–and I mean covered–in bruises, head to toe.  My body ached with the stress, and my soul ached for my cousin who had become a mere shade of herself.

I had to teach the next day, a group of kids that I liked well enough, but whose education I admittedly put on the backburner, as I had become convinced after all that time spent with my cousin in the hospital, that I no longer wanted my Ph.D.  I wanted to go to Med School after all, my original intent when I started college.  So while I was going through the motions teaching, I was also harboring a great secret, which was that I was not planning on staying.  I was getting information on Post-Bacc programs in the mail, planning on doing what I needed to do to get those Bio, Chem and Physics classes in so that I could apply for Med School in ‘05 or ‘06.

As a sort of afterthought, I sent out a paper for a conference in Hawai’i.  And then I went back to planning my escape.

Then, in early October, I got a call from my mother saying that my grandfather had died.  We had all known it was coming–he had Alzheimer’s disease–but it was horrible nonetheless.  I flew back east to be with my family for a week or so, setting up substitutes to teach for me, interrupting the process of bonding with my students traumatically so that by the time I got back, we felt like mutual strangers.

My grandfather’s funeral was difficult for everyone, and the sadness over his death lingered for quite some time, casting a pall over my studies, and allowing for a general confusion to set in where there had been a right amount of determination to go to Med School just a few weeks before.

In mid-November, with my class now completely beyond repair, the students engaging in cliquish wars amongst themselves, I got an email about that afterthought paper: it had been accepted for the Hawai’i conference.  Suddenly I was back in the game, I had dealt myself back in, and I surreptitiously let go of my ideas about Med School and rejoined our regularly scheduled program of Literature already in progress.

By that time it was the end of the semester, practically, and it dawned on me that I had this paper to write, but that I was still writing papers the way I had in High School.  If I was going to be an academic, as I had apparently decided, somewhat unwittingly, I needed to learn how to write a paper.  So I went to my professor and asked for an Incomplete early in the game, telling him that I needed to learn a new process for writing, and could I have some extra time to do things the right way. He agreed.  Little did he know it would take me four years to come back to it, ironically having learned how to do things “the right way” from having not only passed my Qualifying Exams, but also having completed three chapters of my dissertation.

So, I guess my reasoning for taking the Incomplete was both a little duplicitous– I couldn’t come right out and say, look, I’ve had a hell of a semester and I *just* *can’t*–and also a little true–I did need to learn how to write in a different way.  But now it’s been four years, and in the past two I’ve discovered how I can wake up twice a month bathed in sweat and heart pounding over the fact that I still haven’t written The Incomplete.

That ends… now.

Off to write.

September 28th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | A Cookie's Life, Teach It, The Past is a Foreign Country | no comments

Sleep of the Damned: Viral Insomnia—Can’t Fight the Moonlight

I’m beginning to think that my inability to sleep comes and goes in cycles that are unavoidable.  Nothing to do with anxiety, nothing to do with my meds not working, or the fact of my bipolar disorder.  Nothing of the sort.  Just a virus I pick up every three weeks or so… It lasts a few days and then I return to normal.

LaceWhore, during our trip to Half Moon Bay, said to me the other day, in essence, “Why fight it?”  Her logic: I have no job, no real set schedule, few actual obligations, so why not sleep when I want to sleep and be awake when my body wants to be awake?

Good point.

That’s one of the things about being on fellowship… it just doesn’t matter when you do your work, as long as you do it.

I have several deadlines coming up, the first of which is 1 October, when I have to turn in The Incomplete from 2004.  Hurrah, it’ll be done.  I think once that’s checked of my list of chronic anxiety-inducing phenomena, I’ll be one happy vonCookie.

And then I take the 20-page paper and shatter it into 5- to 10-page pieces and recycle it into the Diss.  Way to Reduce and Reuse, etc.!

This is actually good insomnia, despite my identification of it as being “viral”.  The word “viral” in this sense is not meant pejoratively, just as a descriptor for the way it works.

Oh, insomnia!  You are such a barrel of oppositions!  You make me productive, and yet you wear me out.  What will I ever do with you?  I simply cannot fight the moonlight.

…HOWWWWWWWWWWWWL…

September 25th, 2008 Posted by voncookie | Sleep of the Damned | no comments