I had hoped that it wouldn’t come to this, but I’m thinking of giving up going out for the relief of stress.  Since, you know, you can wake up the next day with a whole lot more to be all stressed about.  When I say “you” there, I clearly mean “me”.

So this past Wednesday I was a little crazy.  On Tuesday, I found myself with a paper proposal, an annotated bibliography, and a response paper due the next day.  I asked for an extension on the proposal (because that prof was least likely to disapprove) and set down to work on the other two things.  I was in my school office.  At one-thirty I went ( Read more... )

I need to write something that doesn’t need MLA-style references.

We’re on a regimented cleaning schedule around casa saskatchewan.  Everyone has a checklist.  This seems anal (okay, it is anal), but the idea was to get the kids to do the things they need to do every day in a less directly personal way.  Things are tidier and we seem to have less ( Read more... )

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I was unemployed.  Remember that?  And it was for a good, long time too.  Months and months of doing not much at all.  Now that I have to schedule everything (everything!) because I’m so very, very busy, it seems like those unemployed days were a dream.

Yesterday, for example, I had to leave class early to see ( Read more... )

I’m thankful - hugely, sincerely thankful - that I have no classes tomorrow, extra time to read some primary texts, and no SSHRC application to worry about this weekend.  The deadline was on Friday and though I seriously grumbled about getting the bloody thing in, I’m so glad not to be working on it anymore.  Some tasks are so unpleasant that the ( Read more... )

We’ve now come to the end of orientation week here in Nerdville.  I feel swamped, overwhelmed, and surprisingly happy.  I feel a lot of anxiety about doing well and working hard.  I didn’t realize, during my tenure at Evil Corp, that there was a great deal of freedom in not really caring about how the work went.  I didn’t want to get fired and I ( Read more... )

You know what’s a good thing to do?  Knitting a pair of socks.  Shall I compare to writing my scholarship proposal?

Preparation

The sock pattern spells out exactly what’s needed for knitting a pair of socks.  How much yarn, what kind of yarn, how many needles, what size of needles, the fact that you’ll need a safety pin (although I can’t figure out ( Read more... )

I’m starting my proposal for the big, external scholarships.  I went to the library.  I’ve been reading books.  I’m making notes.  I’m outlining my draft and figuring out what I need to do each day.  It’s so fun!  I forgot that school was a really, rockin good time*.  I knew there was some reason I wanted to go back.

*The “rockin good time” of the ( Read more... )

There comes a time - and I think four a.m. may be that time - when one has to sit back and not continue to work on the cleaning/organizing because it’s fucking four a.m. and other people not having a manic phase are probably trying to sleep.

Instead one might take time to reflect on her accomplishments to the delight of the internet at large.
(And ( Read more... )

Ingmar Bergman is dead.  And it’s like the lights have gone out.

It’s not that I didn’t expect this to happen:  the guy was eighty-nine years old, after all.  It’s just that I feel like the real grown-ups are leaving us.