2006-05-30
Excited to lecture again
I'm sitting upstairs working on my summer syllabus. It's great fun. Actually, the last week in Brazil I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this class -- how to make it more streamlined than the first time I taught it. How to weed out stuff I found erroneous while teaching last semester (e.g., does anyone really care or need to know about fascist architecture, which in the end was never truly instigated successfully anyway, in a general European geography class?).
Working on that while watching the dog. Mette has a serious eye infection. At least serious enough that her right eye was glued shut this morning when she came out of the kennel. I reckon she picked it up in the woods at the cabin or when she went for a swim in Lake Superior at Brighton Beach. Oh well... she'll live. We have a vet appointment at 4 p.m. today. She could probably fight the darn thing off, but Birgit thinks it would be a good idea, and I'm trying to be less frugal about certain things... so the vet it is.
Found my camera online today, and I'm going to order it for my birthday. That's what happens when you turn 30 -- suddenly you decide what you want for your birthday and order it. I suppose that, partially, I have the Internet to thank, because I couldn't find it in any local stores here, only online. I'm really excited to have my camera back. It took the brightest and best looking pictures of any digital camera I've seen, and it fit in the palm of my hand. (Of course, that didn't help me in Rio, but well...)
I'm so pumped to teach and have a schedule again. My plan is to devour a book a week this summer for my new topic. That shouldn't be too hard. I really want to be out of the UMN by December 2007, but to make that happen, I have to keep on top of my research. Not slack off or let anyone in this soap opera department suck me into their time wasting mobilizations. I call the grad students here soap opera stars, because most of them complain about and vocalize every happenstance in their lives as though they are owed something for being penniless graduate students. They fight everything, tooth and nails, and even worse, they meet about four times a week and clog my inbox with their incessant banter about grad student rights to funding -- as though after six years you are owed more funding -- and concerns that the department is trying to herd them out of the program -- which of course, any good department will try to do. Kurva Isten Faszat, man! I go to Brazil and my inbox is flooded with four page long commentaries by numerous grad students that I don't really know or respect complaining and hypothesizing about how unjust our department is... they have no clue how others work! I may have said this before in this blog, but if not I will say it again: if I were the department I would fire every last one of us -- just to make sure no bad apples linger -- and hire scab grad students. Seriously... right to work department. I bet some students who weren't accepted last year would come gladly from their tedious planning desk jobs and get a degree in four years while earning free tuition, cheap health care, free dental, and a $12,000 stipend! Who the hell are these whining wankers?! And instead of spending 14 hours composing self-pitying emails to annoy everyone on the mailing list with, why don't these computer lab sitters work on their goddamn research?! I may not work on my research 24/7 -- and few students do -- but I sure as hell don't complain about a good gig when I know I have one either. RRRRRrrrrrrr...
But I digress. Perhaps the heat is getting to me. I need to put on some more The Bad Plus. The best jazz trio ever. I am now certain. I hypothesized this before, but I wasn't sure because I didn't think I knew enough about jazz. But I dare any jazz trio to cover Aphex Twin, Iron Maiden, Nirvana, Blondie, the Pixies, the Empire Strikes Back, and Chariots of Fire within three albums! Ha, top that! They are touring England, France, and Spain right now, before moving on to Austria. So if anyone over in Europe reading this feels like seeing the coolest jazz band ever, and I can vouch for their live act, phenomenal, check out their tour dates here.
Working on that while watching the dog. Mette has a serious eye infection. At least serious enough that her right eye was glued shut this morning when she came out of the kennel. I reckon she picked it up in the woods at the cabin or when she went for a swim in Lake Superior at Brighton Beach. Oh well... she'll live. We have a vet appointment at 4 p.m. today. She could probably fight the darn thing off, but Birgit thinks it would be a good idea, and I'm trying to be less frugal about certain things... so the vet it is.
Found my camera online today, and I'm going to order it for my birthday. That's what happens when you turn 30 -- suddenly you decide what you want for your birthday and order it. I suppose that, partially, I have the Internet to thank, because I couldn't find it in any local stores here, only online. I'm really excited to have my camera back. It took the brightest and best looking pictures of any digital camera I've seen, and it fit in the palm of my hand. (Of course, that didn't help me in Rio, but well...)
I'm so pumped to teach and have a schedule again. My plan is to devour a book a week this summer for my new topic. That shouldn't be too hard. I really want to be out of the UMN by December 2007, but to make that happen, I have to keep on top of my research. Not slack off or let anyone in this soap opera department suck me into their time wasting mobilizations. I call the grad students here soap opera stars, because most of them complain about and vocalize every happenstance in their lives as though they are owed something for being penniless graduate students. They fight everything, tooth and nails, and even worse, they meet about four times a week and clog my inbox with their incessant banter about grad student rights to funding -- as though after six years you are owed more funding -- and concerns that the department is trying to herd them out of the program -- which of course, any good department will try to do. Kurva Isten Faszat, man! I go to Brazil and my inbox is flooded with four page long commentaries by numerous grad students that I don't really know or respect complaining and hypothesizing about how unjust our department is... they have no clue how others work! I may have said this before in this blog, but if not I will say it again: if I were the department I would fire every last one of us -- just to make sure no bad apples linger -- and hire scab grad students. Seriously... right to work department. I bet some students who weren't accepted last year would come gladly from their tedious planning desk jobs and get a degree in four years while earning free tuition, cheap health care, free dental, and a $12,000 stipend! Who the hell are these whining wankers?! And instead of spending 14 hours composing self-pitying emails to annoy everyone on the
But I digress. Perhaps the heat is getting to me. I need to put on some more The Bad Plus. The best jazz trio ever. I am now certain. I hypothesized this before, but I wasn't sure because I didn't think I knew enough about jazz. But I dare any jazz trio to cover Aphex Twin, Iron Maiden, Nirvana, Blondie, the Pixies, the Empire Strikes Back, and Chariots of Fire within three albums! Ha, top that! They are touring England, France, and Spain right now, before moving on to Austria. So if anyone over in Europe reading this feels like seeing the coolest jazz band ever, and I can vouch for their live act, phenomenal, check out their tour dates here.
