Happy New Year!

Hi folks! Hope everybody had wonderful holidays. I had lots of fun with the wee ones, and ate so many Christmas cookies that I will probably be spending the next two weeks in elastic waistbands. Better living through the invention of rubberband pants!

I'm now stopping at home for a moment of stillness and privacy between visits to family.

I do have one complaint about the holiday season. Before I left I made sure that the local felons who attempted to break into my apartment the day I returned from Christmas visiting last year would have an extra day to do so, and a nice clean and comfortable place to ransack. (I also removed all my easily carried valuables, including my computer tower.) These are not the smartest of felons, clearly, because they had a loud argument on my front porch last year about 'whether we should go through with it' when somebody 'thought that car wasn't here yesterday.' That somebody was right, of course, and I was waiting at the top of the stairs with my umbrella and hammer in hand, ready to do battle. Yeah, yeah, I know. Unsafe. I've always been more brave than intelligent, and there doesn't seem to be a cure.

Anyway, this year I decided that robbing me would absolutely serve them right. I'm a grad student. Hello. I threw my fancy earrings in my handbag, and my computer tower in the trunk of my car, and that was the end of my hockable belongings. Still, attempted felonies do not excuse poor hostess skills, so I left a sparklingly clean place, and a number of snacks and beverages on the kitchen counter. And, after all my elaborate efforts to secure my fortune and my reputation, they didn't even bother to show up this year. I call that rude.

Happy Holidays

I am off to homebase for some niece and nephew face-time, puppy-snuggling and cookies.

Have a great holiday!

Does This Come With a Tiara?

As seen at the fine blogs of Ancrene Wiseass and Bardiac

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Venerable Lady Heo the Laconic of Much Leering Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Winter Break To Do List

Count this list as a combination public-accountability statement, and an opening to make suggestions.

[Update: I have no idea what happened to the formatting here, and I can't fix it. Sorry.]

Time-sensitive:

- Call/write Professor who sent out that CFP for 5-7 *minute* papers, and make sure that wasn't a typo. 'Cause, geez!

- Work on abstracts for 1) that 5-7 minute thing that I'm really hoping will be 5-7
pages, 2) Heroic Age CFPs for June and January, and 3) no holds-barred grad
conference at my alma mater.

- Speak to substitute-wranglers at local public schools. Travel takes money, ya
know.

Less time-sensitive:

- Finish up Wheelock and get started on the Oxford Latin Reader.

- Find a person Fluent in German. Bribe him/her to speak with me for a couple of
hours a week. (Don't want to lose my German)

- Get a grip on theory.
- Read Eagleton's book.
- Swipe undergrad Intro to theory syllabus from friend who TAs that course.
- Using syllabus as a guide, read selected bits in the Norton anthology.
- Go on a quest for any other "Idiot's guide to literary theory" I can find.
- I suppose Said and Foucault will have to be a part of this, but Derrida makes
me queasy and Spivak makes me cry. So, starter theory then.

- Swipe area exam reading lists from other universities (people who do the PhD here
make their own), begin compiling the Medieval and Renaissance stuff I need to
read for eventual quals and/or simple self-respect as a medievalist. (I've
already read many of the things on the lists I can find, but there are still
gaps.)

Actually, I'd be happy to get about 1/2 of that done. Eh, we'll see.

Announcement

Well, this is hard. Might as well jump right in, right?

This coming May, I will become -- probably temporarily -- one of those people who suffers from the most dreadful of academic illnesses: Terminal MA. My grades so far are good; this is not the university handing me my hat and suggesting I open a coffee shop or take secretarial courses.

Rather, I know for certain that I do not wish to continue at Microburg. I love my work. Good lord, I got all tingly just a few weeks ago when Ansaxnet had a discussion of the meaning of -sceaft. I am seriously hooked on OE studies. And I genuinely like most of my professors and colleagues. But somehow the mix just isn't working. I shouldn't be this angry while doing work that I love among people I (mostly)like.

However, I also don't know where I want to go from here. I admit that I didn't properly investigate Microburg when I decided to come here. It has a good reputation, some very good medievalists, and is close enough for me to reasonably consider visiting my family often-ish. But, man-o-man, do I ever hate it here.

So, rather than sending out a bunch of applications to places I can't possibly a) afford to visit, and b)properly investigate before the applications are due, I decided to take a year and think about where I want to be next. It might also help to be a member of my family again for a minute, and work off some of this ridiculous debt I've acquired.

So, there you have it. I will be an industry outsider for a bit. Unless, of course, I get all CC adjuncty in the interim period, which may yet happen.

We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Blogging.

Alright. I'm no Persephone, and Spring will not arrive now -- although I have spent most of the last couple of weeks underground, and it is unseasonably warm today. Just sayin' -- but I really like the melodrama of Victorian art. And I wanted to look at something pretty.

Things I have learned this semester:

- I have NO Business in a theory-based class. This is the third time I've done this to myself, and the third time my thesis completely unravelled before my very eyes less than a week before the paper was due. The scrambling and editing and huddling on the couch clutching a pillow that then occur all conspire to make me believe I'm just an idiot w/r/t theory. Which is weird, because I really like philosophy, and I really like literature, but when you mix the two...blargh.

- If I never read the phrases "Throughout History," or "Since the beginning of time" again, that'd be swell.

- While I am sympathetic to writers who explore the ways in which their own masculinities were constructed by the societies in which they live, and use their art to 'consider alternative ways of being and knowing,' I'm unwilling to accept that blatant misogyny is an acceptable means of working those isssues out. So, I really don't want to hear about all the 'radical' things X author said in Y work, when his big, 'radical' contribution can be summed up thusly; "See? I can put my boot on a bitch's neck just like you! Let me in the Man Club already! C'mon!" Seriously, dude, misogyny is not an alternative way of either 'being' or 'knowing,' so knock it the hell off.

- The more education I get, the more likely I am to say very bad words in regular conversation. Counter-intuitive, no?

Now, what's been going on in the world since I tuned out for navel-contemplation?

Gone Fishin'

Somewhere in the deep, there is a thought swimming around. I aim to find it.


Regular blogging to resume around the middle of next week.

Good luck with the late-semester craziness to all of you!