She Was My Mother

There are so many things to do, people to write: thank yous to people who sent flowers, donations; there are lawyers and agencies and a household of stuff, there are phone calls to be made. I want to write and thank the doctors for trying, I want to write to the man who conned her and took her money, leaving her ashamed, broke and worried. I want to write to the State of Virginia correctional people so they will put him back in jail. I want to write and say I don't understand how being my mom was her proudest accomplishment and yet we still fought and argued and disagreed. I want to have some understanding. I want to remember when I'm driving in my car that I can't call her because she isn't here anymore.

And when I write will I tell them of how her breath caught, then stopped. Of how I stroked her face and told her it was all okay now? Or will I just be polite and thank them for the role they played in her death?
Her death.
She was my mother and now she is gone.

specialization, training & disciplinarity

am watching an old episode of ER, the one in which Neela ends up working at the Jumbo Mart b/c it is the only job she can get since her only training is to be a doctor, which makes her good for nothing in the work force.
unlike Neela i worked my way through school so I am indeed qualified to work in a multitude of low-paying jobs (my resume chronologically reads "Pet Sitter, Video Store Clerk, Assistant Professor").

but i had my grad seminar read Jeff Sconce's "Tulip Theory" yesterday and he discusses the fantasy of academics who imagine themselves as new media practitioners/theorists. Then yesterday I saw a job ad (with Sconce as search chair) for a new media practitioner/theorist.
so who knows? academic institutions train specialists but maybe they are too specialized for the economic reality of the very institutions that train them.

Raining! Must be Fall

Rain this time of year reminds me of when I moved to Seattle on Halloween in 2001. It was, quite literally, a dark and stormy night.
I don't mind the rain so much as the grayness that accompanies it. When I lived in California I actually imagined bad weather was more conducive to good scholarship since there is nothing to do and no desire to go anywhere once it is rainy, cold and/or snowy. Now of course I think my brain works better on sunshine.
Doesn't everyone's work better on sunshine? Winston shares my feelings about rain and snowy--he flatly refuses to endure them unless there's a walk involved and then maybe, maybe he'll go for it.

How come blogger can autosave this post from a webform but I cannot successfully run MS Word on this computer to save my own life?
Maybe the computer is trying to tell me that the days of long-form writing are numbered. Now everything must be distilled into a text message version of itself.
mst wlk dg nw. l8r

Dogs in the Night

Last night from about 3-6am we had the strangest pair of visitors--two loose, lost, sweet, strong pit bulls decided to camp out between our house and our next door neighbor's house. I guess the combined dog scent of four dogs between them attracted these wanderers. They were very sweet dogs and clearly trained, both wearing collars. But they were also "intact" pit bulls, which made us all a little nervous (esp. since the combined weight of our four dogs would probably equal only one of the pit bulls). We tried to find owner info on the tag and couldn't. Our neighbor called the police, who kindly told her that Animal Control didn't have any in until 8am (that seems dumb).
So we endured their romping between porches. They were mostly quiet but our dogs were in a fit over all the commotion and intruders.
I just have to wonder who around here keeps (and presumably breeds?) pit bulls? I hope they made it back home. They were gone by sun-up (which was at like 9am today--or so it felt like it was.)

Meanwhile, today is a writing day with a few late day appointments and a workshop with grad students tonight. I must finish up and then proof this essay and send it to my editors ASAP.

Read All About It!

Remember that show?
Somehow it popped into my mind as I was just cut and pasting together all my various book chapters, segments, bits o' text.
It isn't as long altogether as I had hoped it would be but it isn't hopelessly short either.
Plus it is full of placeholders I need to go back and finish writing that will make the manuscript longer. Anyway I think I might actually have something reasonable to trot out at SCMS this year. That's exciting.
Last night I had a big day at the MFit clinic--I found out that in the past six weeks I lowered my blood pressure a TON!!! Yay for me! I also lost all kinds of inches and pounds but it is the blood pressure that had me worried.
Been busy on my course wikis lately. It's cool to have the students participate in this way.
if i were listening to music today, it would be the new Feist I downloaded, along with some Cake and Ani. Been in an Ani mood of late.
if i had time to read a book for fun it'd be more of the Jane Austen Book Club.
if i got to go to a movie...i'm not sure what i'd see. I'm such a TV Girl. Loved John Cho on Ugly Betty last night. And Christopher Gorham (as always).

Cheeseburgers & Paradise

Despite my last post I really am a foodie at heart. Online I frequent Epicurious, Chowhound, Roadfood and other such places. I like to read food writing, especially's Meredith Brody's for the SF Weekly.
Last night my students and I were discussing the good burgers we knew. I decided a list was in order. In no particular order, here are some of my favorite, platonic-ideal cheeseburgers. (Note, my idea of heaven involves cheeseburgers. and dogs.)
1. Red Mill Burgers--Seattle WA
2. In-n-Out, various west coast (best fast food burger)
3. Fatburger, various (best turkey burger)
4. No Animal Burger, Fred 62, Los Feliz (best veggie)
5. Zingerman's Pimento Cheese Burger, Ann Arbor
6. Ruby Tuesdays (best mini-burger)
7. Chick-In, Ypsilanti (best midwest car hop burger)
8. Burgermaster, Seattle-area (best PNW car hop burger)

On the Care and Feeding of the Self

I'm six weeks into a project that I hope will help me be a better person. It feels kind of funny to type that--I don't mean morally or ethically superior--I mean physically, emotionally, health-wise better. I'm in a Healthy Life Management program (aka Fat Camp) and a Cognitive Behavioral Group for Chronic Insomniacs. I track what I eat, how much I move, how much I sleep (or not) and my emotions about both. It's all a little narcissistic and exhausting at times. But my ultimate goal is to have more agency over the environmental factors that contribute to clinical depression. Since I've been in a major depression for a very long period of time it is important to figure out what I can do about it.
So I eat better, sleep more efficiently, monitor things and generally walk the dogs a lot more.
I feel like the six million dollar woman (and I should, the whole thing seems to cost about as much): we can rebuild her, we have the technology.

But really it is good. For many years now depression has made me its bitch. No amount of drugs or therapy has really changed that so it was time for a new approach. It's funny, in my classes we talk about virtual selves and virtual identities--yet I think those constructs are present for me whether any media or tech is involved or not. Not many of my students know "depression sheila"--or they don't know that they do. And my family doesn't know "scholar sheila." I think I value the people in my life who know my various selves and who value me all the same.

Stuff that Breaks My Heart vol. 309,831

My favorite coffee/donut shop is now in a deal with Starbucks to sell their donuts nationwide.
Top Pot, how could you?

I guess it really is money, not donuts, that makes the world go round.
Above is the Capitol Hill Top Pot, location of many a dissertation writing session back in the day.

listening to: The Mountain Goats, pledge drive is messing up my week

Winston in his new "Wag More, Bark Less" get-up. He should certainly work on the second part of that one. This outfit is being transformed into his halloween look--to be posted at a later date.

what is one's blog-dentity?

so there's all kinds, right? like the Pop Candy woman to Javi to Ohbejuan to pro-blogger types like the Machinist on Salon.
but it seems to me that blogs are about a kind of selective disclosure and cultivated public persona: the academic blogger, the fashion blogger, the gossip blogger turned gossip subject.
and i wonder just how "academic" i am or want to be (here at least). Like maybe i want to blog about representations of bipolar disorder. That's academic (representations of) but also deeply personal to me.
And I don't think it is just a personal=political kind of thing either since the personal is so self-consciously constructed.