Amanda's Birthday

Sometimes I think I'm just damn lucky to have met a woman like this, one who is willing to put up with my 40-year-old bullshit and my 11-year-old intelligence. At other times I think other things, but I'm trying to get a handle on that, and not take this woman for granted. In celebration of her 24 years, we're off to brunch then the mall, where she'll participate in that great consumer venture called "buying clothes for work." She's doing great at her job, and it looks like Scott County will want her full-time after her practicum and internship are finished. That would be OK with me, if she can hack the commutte, and if we stay in KY.

Speaking of that, I was at the office until midnight last night (yes, on a Saturday night) getting the envelopes right for 20 job applications. That's not a lot, but they're all in places where Amanda would like to live, so we'll see what happens. My letters of recommendation are on their way, and I'm hoping for at least one offer, just to get a counteroffer from EKU. But the Dean did say that I shouldn't bluff on this, so I'm not. If I get an offer somewhere else and nothing from here, I'm gone, to sunnier climes and lighter teaching loads, and at least 10% more money. Sweet.

Governor's Scholars

So it looks like I'll be the Campus Director for the Governor's Scholars Program at EKU this summer. The job is interesting, the challenge is great, the money is sweet, and maybe I can carve out some time to spend with the students. It'll be nice to be with the best students in Kentucky.

There are some downsides to this, one being that I'll have to live in a dorm on campus for seven weeks. Should be interesting.

On the classes front, my tech writing classes have finsihed their sites. Here they are:

EKU Science Learning Resource Center

Business Communications Primer

This is good work. It's not brilliant, but it's nice.

OK, off to a rehearsal dinner tonight, then a wedding tomorrow.

Crash and Burn

That's what happend to the old handmade computer I was working on. I turned it on on Friday and it smelled like gunpowder. Turns out, according to Wendell the god, that the power supply fried all the drives. They were in such bad shape that Wendell wanted to save them for their neat effects. He thinks it might be the electricity in the house. He brought over an oscilloscope tonight and we spent a couple hours checking te lines. I'll be calling the electrician tomorrow. And getting a UPS. And making sure I back shit up,

Now the black beast is gone, replaced by a Sony VAIO that I paid way too much for. But I was dealing with a wife who lost most of her thesis, in CompUSA at 9:00 on Saturday night. I knew I was getting gouged, but I had to do it. 1.5k for a 1.7 gig with 128 of the new 800mhz RDRAM, cdrw, dvd, 80 gig hd, 32 megs on an nvidia Geforce 2 card, firewire, and all the other standard crap. This one better last for a while.

Wendell thinks he may be able to salvage some data from the old disk, but I'm not holding my breath. Of course, if anyone can do it, it's him. He's been more than very good to us. In the meantime, we're retyping a lot of stuff, and I'm redownloading plenty. Oh well.

When Classes Go Wrong

No, it's not as bad as when animals go crazy, or milk goes sour, or anything that would make a good reality-tv special, but this is a nasty thing. Today, for instance, teaching my intro to tech writing class, it just blew up in front of me. The leader of the group doing group work didn't show up; her minions knew very little about the project. She knows barely more, but enough to screw up the template they were working from so badly that I had no idea what she was up to. After an intervention by the University's web administrator, I finally just packed it in and told them that they just had to get me their files in .txt format and that I would do the rest.

Crash. Burn. Die on the way to the hospital.

My normal classes, where I just do my schtick, don't go bad like this. It's only the ones that are project-based that have this potential. Of course, when they work they're great. But this time, this one certainly is in a slow-motion explosion.

The job hunt has come around now -- the MLA list is finally in the department, and I'll make copies of it tomorrow. I've got my letters of recommendation lined up, some decent places to apply to, and perhaps a chance to do the same job for a living wage somewhere else.

OK, off to download more mp3s (I'm thinking of Mellencamp -- doing the whole thing if I can get the damn cd burner to roll).

ThinkGeek and Nashville

I'm headed for Nashville tomorrow for a meeting of the board of trustees of The Cooperative Center for Study Abroad. Two fun-filled days meeting about currency exchange rates, international investments, and course proposals. Actualy, I kind of like it, but I'm amazed that everyone there is SO into international travel. I mean, this is life for many people. I like it, and I love to teach overseas, butI've got other things to do, too. Right now I'm putting up five international courses from EKU this year, so I'm working pretty hard on cordinating things and getting flyers done, stuff like that.

The first things I've smiled at in a long time are two shirts: ThinkGeek :: No, I will not fix your computer and ThinkGeek :: STFU Tshirt. I could use both of these. Amanda says I should wear the first one to work every day. Maybe.

One last thing -- Promotion and Tenure applications are due on Monday. I know what I'm doing Sunday.

Wendell's Got a Girlfirend

So after seeing "Serendipity," an OK flick, with my lovely bride, we headed to Hastings to get her a "greeting gift" for a friend that she's having lunch with tomorrow. She picked up a 20 buck copy of The Lord of the Rings, and I got myself Ben Folds' newest, Rockin the Suburbs. While we were in there, we saw one of my favorite students, Wendell Wilson, with his roomie Sam and some woman who may or may not have been his girlfriend. I was very excited.

I think I spend too much time worrying about the lives of my students. Will Wendell get a girlfriend? Does Keri understand this? Is Corinne tired all the time because of something bad at home? Is Byron dating? I am constantly wondering, worrying about students, partly in a paternalistic way and partly out of curiosity. I want to spare them the mistakes I've made, and want a view into their lives. I guess it's harder growing up now, or so I'm told, but I really think the fundamental issues are still the same. Am I a decent person? What will or won't I do? Can I make a life for myself like this? Who's more important, me or my friends?

Yeah yeah, it's almost 2:30 and time to go to bed -- no more worries for tonight, just a wife and a dog and two cats and life again in the morning.

Writing with Nothing to Say

I guess this is what separates the real "need to write" writers from the rest of us who do this when we have to, or when we have something to say. Rigth now, I've got nothing to say, but i'm making that the issue for a little riff, which is so pomo I just want to puke about it. I feel like I've been slimed by Seinfeld, the king of irony. A quick google search reveals that "nothing to say" is a pet phrase of songwriting hacks who turn to the internet to see their tab (kind of like the people who turn to blogs to see their writing, no?). If that search didn't give me diabetes, I'm safe to start mainlining straight sugar now.

The debate last night went fine. I took the role of the raving anarchist, and it was fun. One debater, the chair of philosophy, asked the other, a government prof, where I was getting my sources, at www.anarchistsrus.com? It was a great dig, and so true -- most of my work on this was done on the web. Of course, the first question we got was how to address these issues so lightly in the face of the 9/11 attacks. We all dropped the masks and spoke, eloquently, I think, about the nature of government. We all cautioned against the knee-jerk violent response and the runaway power mongering going on now. Remember what Benjamin Franklin said: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither."

I'm still deep into grading avoidance on this set of comp papers. I'll get them done by Tuesday, but midterm grades are due ont he system tomorrow. typical, to require the grades a week in advance of when they're needed, so that we can't give an accurate assessment of a student's progress. But hey, this is supposed to retain students. Of course, no one is really interested in retainign faculty, which is why I'll be somewhere else by this time next year.

Avoiding Work

It's an easy thing to do, this avoiding work. With the web, and the novels I need to get through, it's very easy not to write or grade. In fact, I'm skipping both of those even as I write now. I have a debate to do on the nature of government this Wednesday night. I need to distribute my opening remarks by tomorrow morning to the other participants. I'm deep into avoiding that right now. I've also got two stacks of papers that need grading by Tuesday -- maybe I'll get one of them done by then. I also have to do a midterm exam for my online class and put it up by Wednesday.

To this mix add the fact that Amanda has been out of town all weekend and that I spent yesterday coaching the Academic Team at a tournament. Yeah, I guess I'll be working late tonight.

So I'm reading Naipaul's A Bend in the River. I need to do so because it's one of the works chosen to test the masters students on this year. Once again, I feel like Jim Dixon in Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, because I've not read something I should have. His description in that book of the ultimate English professor game, "Humiliation," is brilliant. A group of "literary" people gather, and one person calls out a title of a book that she has not read. She scores one point for every person in the group who HAS read that work. That's it; it's very simple. However, the psychology behind it is brilliant. Obviously, you will score the most points with "classics," works that you think everyone else has read. So you need to profess your ignorance of some of the stalwarts of Western literature. In short, to win you must humiliate yourself. Of course, with my lack of desire to read Melville, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy, or any other 19th-century overdrawn crap, I guess I can usually clean up on that game.

anyway, here are some links you might like:

Overcoming Procrastination
The UIUC Counseling Center has this nice little page explaining why we do this and what we can do to stop. I think I'll read it tomorrow.

V. S. Naipaul: An Overview
George Landow, one of the gods of lit on the web, has done this site as part of his poco work.

Kingsley Amis
A nice primer for the man and his son (Martin), by Books and Writers, a site I've trusted for a while now.

Applying for Jobs

I think I whine quite a bit about money. At least, that's what people tell me. It's galling, however, to know that it will be another two years before I make what the average college graduate makes in these United States. By that time I'll have had six years in here, been promoted and tenured, and still not be making what the average BA will be making (of course, by then their average salary will be higher, so I probably won't be making it then, either).

There are places that actually pay a livable wage to those who teach. I'll be applying at places like Cal State Sacramento, Murray State here in Kentucky, The College of Charleston, among others, this year.

I was so frustrated that I wrote to ms. mentor, who writes a column for The Chronicle of Higher Education. She answered me in today's column. Yes, it's a nasty little business, full of deceit and trickery and the willingness to disupt your life so that you can live decently.

Kentucky's new state program is called Education Pays. Given the data they've collected, they seem to be right. Education does pay, just not for educators.

Hell of a Speechwriter

The boy is a doofus, who always looks too damn smug, who doesn't have two brain cells to rub together, even when it's his day to use the family gray matter (Jeb gets in on MWF, W gets it TR, but all weekend, because, after all, he's the prez). But he's got a hell of a speechwriter, and he knows how to deliver a line. He hit all the spots he needed to hit, emphasizing tolerance twice (twice daily might be what we need).

Now what? I'd like to think that we're out of harm's way, but I can't convince myself of that. Instead, I think we're in for more attacks, not necessarily from the air. We've been hit in the solar plexus of the military-industrial complex, and at the nerve center of international finance. I think entertainment is up next; these are the cultural artifacts that the Great Satan exports, and the things we're hated for.

Duck and cover, kids, we're in for a long fight.