Musings and Rants

When you've left grad school, and you read about the world you just left, you experience two things: alienation and PTSD. Right now, my life revolves around what my publication's stance on treated wood is, or whether we are properly using the serial comma. There's stress, sure, but nothing like the mind numbing, soul sucking stress of school. And I get thanked for thngs that I do on a pretty constant basis: a co-worker and I got a big report out the door and we got thanked with cookies and lemonade!

What's funny about reading the travails of friends still in school is that I still understand, I feel like I still get it, like I'm still part of the crowd. Then I realize that there was that tamale party that I knew nothing about, or that I haven't thought about my orals lists in months and I'm not sure I'll ever think about them again.

I guess what I'm saying, in my roundabout way, is that I both miss grad school and don't. My life now is really amazing in so many ways, particularly the fact that I get to come home every night feeling like I did a good job at doing a good thing. Plus I'm in love, I'm living in the middle of a paradise, and I'm starting to make friends. I do miss teaching, though. This makes me think I might teach a class sometime soon, or start tutoring in writing. Or perhaps I should write a book or an article to get back in touch with that deep intellectual work I was doing.

Hard tellin', not knowin'.

Ha HA

I be published, and my article on a new water efficiency program got sent over to another magazine, which published it here. It's not like I'm making a brilliant argument, but this is the closest I come to a virtual fridge.

Interesting fact: when they test toilets, they use soybean paste wrapped in a "latex sheath." No joke.

THWPPPPPPPPT.

That, for those of you who don't know, is the sound of a me deflating after a very very long week. For the first time here at work I had to take work home with me over the weekend (life is hard). We had a large project to get out the door: 4 papers and a reference guide, all of which are illustrated with free images that were obtain by myself and one other person. Oh, and I did most of the copyediting as well. And the caption writing. Yay work!

In other news, I'm hard at work on my wedding shawl still. It's starting to look like an article of clothing...

Oh, and Ivan and I went to a free concert last week in Greenfield, MA: Jeffrey Foucault, Kris Delmhorst, Peter Mulvey, Lori McKenna, and Mark Erelli. All free, and there was a fish and chips stand. All of this made me a very happy girl.

Finally, I'm taking suggestions for wedding vow inspiration. Ivan and I are writing our own, and we're in the muse gathering phrase. So gather up any appropriate muses, put them in a vacuum tube, and send them right along.

Grad school, meet conference call

Today I discovered that the "real" world and the academic world aren't so different after all, mostly thanks to that wonderous invention, the "conference call." The whole thing is terribly amusing. No, really. I've also sat in on at least one meaning in which I served as the tie breaker between "to" and "with".

In other news, Ivan and I are going to New Zealand in March. And we've discovered a heffeweizen by Magic Hat called "Circus Boy." Aptly named, and a wonderful beer, for those of you who enjoy a good unfiltered beer.

The Fourth, Baby

Happy Independence Day!

Never mind that it is now July 6, and I'm a little behind the game. Ivan and I took a 4 day weekend for the holiday, and got ourselves mostly out of boxes. Our apartment now has a real workroom with a workbench and a drawing table and tools and things. The furniture is in place and newly slipcovered, and the throw pillows are about to be sewn, once we can fix my sewing machine. It's a bit possessed at the moment: the foot pedal wires are frayed, so the machine starts sewing faster and faster and faster. This is a bit scary on a 50 year old machine made entirely out of steel.

On the 4th, we went to a local brew pub, where I had...wine. Good wine. At a brew pub. I like this place! Oh, and there are super comfy couches, too. This would be the reason why we never bothered to figure out where the fireworks were being held.

So all is well in the land of the green mountains (er...hills). We are certainly accepting visitors at any point--y'all come now, y'hear?