The View From Kalamazoo

So Friday night it was snowing, blowing, and the roads were crappy. We picked the kids up from the sitter, stopped at Meijer for gas and diapers, and then headed home in the murk and muck. There I was, minding my own business in the right lane of Westnedge (a 4 lane road through residential and business areas running north-south through Kazoo) when some sweet young thing in a red mustang decides to turn left into a neighborhood RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY CAR.

[photo op] My car was the worse for damage (of course. of course it was.) but since it was low-speed (I couldn’t have been going even 25, it was a very unpleasant night for driving) and everyone was belted no one was hurt. Except my pocketbook – small claims court will hopefully retrieve some or all of the repair cost, since Michigan is a no-fault state.

*sigh* It took the police an hour and a half to get there (it was a busy accident night all over town, apparently), Emma’s meds wore off while she was trapped in the back seat of the car and neither child ate til close to 8pm so the baby was fussing about being hungry as we were waiting for the cop to fill out his report and let us GO.

Yucky evening all around.

Made it to the gym again Wednesday. Even during one of my much-enjoyed bloat times I still weighed in under 260 lbs.! YAY! MIssed today – trouble getting the family out of the house on time – but they have child care til noon tomorrow and we had paid ahead so I think I’ll try to go after I feed the chillun tomrrow morning.

No letters in my mailbox yet. I know it’s still early, but the internal churning has begun. Bah.

And…I don’t get the local “newspaper,” but they have these stands all over campus with them just sitting there and a cup to donate in if you appreciate the rag – which I don’t. But I was in the student center for lunch with That Man and I passed a news stand – as I scanned the front page this little below-the-fold box just made me laugh right out loud right there in the lobby.

“Police are asking whoever is responsible for leaving a dismembered body in a wooded area off South Westnedge Avenue to call them at -, send email to — or write to —….”(continues)

*Thwacks head* So that’s where I left that darned thing! First the car keys, now…. (sort of puts a different spin on the old complaint ‘You’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached!’ doncha think?)

So I made it through the meeting with the school. They are trying to do right by Emma, even to the extent of bending rules here and there to get her more/more appropriate hlep with her reading LDs, and that’s a Good Thing. Still it’s hard to hear someone list all the things that’s wrong with your kid, even if I, in effect, already knew (and I mean KNEW) that things were Not Right with the divine Miss Em.

In other news: I actually made it back to the gym this morning – hey, it’s only been *cough* 2 months *cough*. I was dreading the scale (oh, how I “enjoyed” the holidays, including empty alcohol calories and all!) and how atrophied my noodles muscles had become. I was actually down in weight (can I hear a Hot Damn!??) and I managed to keep the same weights I was lifting last time I was in, just dropped my reps. I hurt, but it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. So I’m down 35 lbs since early this summer – not as glorious as I had hoped (but then, clearly my dedication has lagged considerably), but not too bad. Todays weight: 260 lbs.

Ph.D. Attrition: Chronicle article Doctor Dropout by Scott Smallwood is all over the blogs I read – I got a xerox in my box earlier this week, as our Dean had emailed it to all Chairs and Directors (and PESz is a man of much information disemination, a nice thing.) I’ve read and re-read it a few times. It’s nothing I can say I was surprised to see discussed so clearly and openly, although I admit it’s just another Great Fear in my collection of Great Fears as I sit and wait (and wait) for my mailbox to provide provide an answer to the question “Where do I see myself in 6 months?” Let’s be frank – I’m a woman, a mother of two small children, and not a fresh-faced and optimistic sweet young thing right out of undergrad. Even coming with an M.A. I’m a potential statistic – and, knowing that, even though I’m employed with insurance, am still willing to shell out a ridiculous sum of money and risk receiving “You suck!” letters from 7 schools for the chance to re-visit my admittedly rusty Latin and give it an all-or-nothing go. It’s no small risk for anyone, but I’m keenly aware of the greater risk in doing all of this with a family depending on me to not bankrupt us, not (possibly) move us for no good reason to a horrible place (or spend the next several years away from my children, visiting twice a month if I’m able, which is the direction The Man who likes his job is leaning), not go nuts, and not fail utterly and bring misery on us all. Interesting stuff at Critical Mass (among other sites) on this.

(of course, if I do manage to avoid the attrition pitfalls AND manage to find a needle tenure-track position in The Great Haystack a rather depressing job market I have a lot of ass-kissing and Survivor-esque manipulating and scheming to look forward to, according from this bit from the Chronicle. At this point it’s clear I’m certifiable and the nice young men in their clean white coats will be coming to take me away (ha ha) any day now.)

Am I’m Googled? Invisible Adjunct commented on the practice – and I’m left wondering if those search committees will be unhappy with my lack of dedication to my gym and dieting responsibilities, or impressed that I get off My Fat Ass and go to the gym at all. I don’t know that there’s anything of interest here for good or ill (“nothing to see here, nothing to see…move along, folks”) that will make me or break me (unless they’re mortally offended by my series of breastfeeding jokes this summer!) since I’m neither particularly to the left or right politically, I post neither personal poetry or porn (and for that we are all eternally grateful!) and try to not allow this space to devolve into endless gushing about my little destruction-adept, juice-stained prodigies. Let’s face it – I’m just not interesting enough to be worried about being Googled.

Ph.d. panic from Salon.com: The last bit is best, but it’s rather where I am right now.

“…Welcome to the world of us, the ones full of fear and trembling. Come on in and tremble with us.

And yet, look at yourself in the mirror as you tremble: Are you not still whole? You have not come apart like a shattered glass statue. You’re still able to put your fingers in the corners of your mouth and make a face at yourself in the mirror. You’re still able to stick your tongue out at yourself, or at your eminent professors, or your not-so-eminent professors.

Everything is just the way it was before you applied. Except you’re trembling.

I hope you get in. And I hope you remember what the process was like. Maybe it’s like getting born.”

I’ve given birth. I’ve given birth (twice!) without an epidural (and at least in grad school you’re allowed anesthetic – a black and tan sounds lovely at the moment.)

I can do this (getting born thing, not born-again), right? Right?

So all of my applications are out. (Out, out damn spot!) Please, someone, send me an acceptance letter and lovely funding. Pleaaaaase.

I should be celebrating with champagne of something, right? Instead my inner control-freak (not so very inner, you understand) has begun the “Your life is in the hands of total strangers and you won’t know anything for 6-8 weeks! AIEE!” mantra in my head.

At least I have the Program to distract me (insert laugh track here.)

PageMaker, intensely annoyed carpal tunnel, and thou… I’m finishing Friday now, hopefully if I can manage to work through the numb hand problem I can get the rest out to proof by EOD Friday so I can take my MLK Monday off without guilt. I’m aiming to get it out of here (to-printer, to-printer, to buy a fat book!) by next week Friday – we’ll see, what with Monday off and all. Bids – need bids. Helllllyeah I love this time of year- wouldn’t you?

SO, taking a tally, applications are stressing me out, Congress and the Mighty Program are stressful (the Program not so much based on difficulty, but a sadistically-short time line and uncooperative carpal tunnel), I can’t even take my kid to the dentist and get anything done right (they used silver fillings instead of white, as I requested…grrr) and I’ve not even started fretting about the meeting with the school tomorrow to see what they will do for Em’s reading disability issues…I can’t imagine (between time lost from the newly-assessed LDs and her severe ADHD) we can catch up to make second grade next year at this point – and retaining her is a whole other mess of issues. I’m so high-strung I hum like high-power lines.

It’s a strange sort of thing…I’m shooting for my Ph.D. at the same time I’m just trying to make sure my kid is literate at the end of high school. I just have no personal experience with the sort of obstacles Em does and will face and I admit I vacillate between despair and renewed energy to sally forth and force the school to act. More control-issues, I suppose.

[no I haven’t gotten back to the gym in, oh, over a month…I know I’ve got to start working out again, ok? it was guerilla-shopping time and I just needed the lunch break for errands, OK?!?!?]

Anyway…So Jewish leaders sent a letter to the head of the EC accusing the EU of support anti-Semitism.

His response? To cancel a seminar on anti-Seminism. *boggles* Yeah, that’ll show ’em!

On other fronts the last two applications/envelopes-o-crap are going out TOMORROW. Thank the Gods – now for the long, dark winter of unknowing…

sing with me!

12 days of ‘basement opera’ from the cat in heat (gotta call the vet! “Shut Up Mr. Kitty!”)

11 strings of lights that just fell down again overnight

10 excuses from the MIA MiL (don’t even get me *started* on this one)

9 crazy classmates at the kid’s birthday party

8 days to shop for both families and a teacher because money is so tight

7 paid days off (thank god)

6 hours of sleep (maybe) Xmas eve – I should feel blessed

#s 4 and 5 Ph.D. applications due! (only 2 more to go, da da dum dum)

4 days of cranky, feverish, teething toddler

3 half-deaf relatives holding the remote hostage

2 new tires

and 1 kid with ADHD!

Queer Eye for the Medieval Guy!

Found on The Volokh Conspiracy, and here:

(there, it’s settled – no worries about dying early for me!)

Peaking too early can kill you:

“Here’s some reassuring news for those of us whose career plans are slightly behind schedule: It turns out that peaking too early may kill you. That’s the finding of Stewart J. H. McCann, a professor of psychology at the University College of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.

McCann’s research, published in the February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, concerns what he calls the ”precocity-longevity hypothesis.” McCann analyzed the lives of 1,672 U.S. governors who served between 1789 and 1978 and found that those who were elected at relatively tender ages generally died earlier than their less precocious counterparts. Even when he controlled for the year that the governors were born, how long they served and what state they governed, the pattern held. No matter how he sliced the data, ran the regressions or accounted for various statistical biases, the story remained the same: governors elected to office at younger ages tended to have shorter lives.

And what holds for state executives seems also to hold for other young achievers. McCann also analyzed smaller but more diverse sets of accomplished people — including American and French presidents, Canadian and British prime ministers, Nobel laureates, signers of the Declaration of Independence, Academy Award winners and seven centuries’ worth of pontiffs. Again, he found that ”those who climb to the loftiest peaks in the shortest time also die younger. For the eminent, and perhaps for all, an early rise may lead to an early fall.”

I love historical disease news – this bit is from nature.com: West Nile Virus may have felled Alexander the Great.

Nothing like putting things in perspective – (from the Globe and Mail) even ancient humans caused climate change.

On ancient astronomers: (from Scientific American) German “Stonehenge” marks oldest observatory and (from The Independent) discovery of buried megaliths completes Avebury circle.

(all found at fine, fine mirabilis.ca)

On fun with corpses:

Viking queen may be exhumed for clues to killing

Last month there was a stir about some historians wanting to open King Harold’s tomb – here’s the BBC update: exhumation of ‘HaroldÂ’ refused

And scientists in Florence are planning to exhume some 50 corpses of members of the Medici family – a link to come when I find one not requiring a subscription.