September 22, 2005
life gets in the way
the title's actually a quote from my student lauren, who used it--and only it--to explain why i hadn't seen her for a few days & still haven't seen all of the work she's been out there working on. i understood. i recognized the look on her face, & i'd seen it often enough in the mirror.
i volleyed that same quote back at her class today, explaining why i hadn't gotten their papers back to them yet (or at least the ones i'm actually willing to grade. the ones who haven't told me whether or not they can see the comments on the trial run i did for them? no love = no papers. they might think i'm kidding, but i'm not). first there were library quests to gather exam materials (i have a whole crate of things to read sitting like an unwanted guest in one of the chairs at the dining room table), then there were exam meetings (wherein a very nice member of my committee loaded me down with a whole other pile of books that i promised i wouldn't lose), & then there was life, which got in the way.
it's also in the way of my exam-reading process, which is why there haven't been any new posts to that effect in a few days. i was reading. and then i wasn't. i can see the future now: reading happens in terrific spurts and doesn't for long lulls. i can't help it. there are students, and there is life.
a good friend's mother died yesterday. her death was unexpected, my friend was unprepared; twenty-some people had plans this weekend involving all kinds of travel and my friend, who has way more to worry about at the moment than other people's logistics. my friend is shining like she always does through all the roughness this presents--and i'm sure in so many ways it hasn't hit her yet, and i'm trying not to think about it too deeply so it doesn't hit me either; i'd hardly even met her mother, but i'm awfully damn attached to mine! i've spent a lot of time on IM with her over the last few days. her husband's been in thailand on business (flying home from thailand right away still takes days) and she's minding two toddlers and an infant; any words i can throw her way are better than silence and spit-up and more silence and the beginning ripples of implication.
i can't fix anything that's wrong here, but i can micro-manage logistics for travelers & their weekend plans, so that's what i've been doing. on an academic relevance-scale, it's not a bump, not a blip, & certainly not a worthwhile excuse. but it's life. and it's real. and it matters. and it's not only in the way, it is the way. sometimes school makes us forget that. i hate that it takes something being this wrong to force a little occasional remembering.
Posted by ttobryan at 08:45 PM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2005
quote of the day (this doesn't help)
my little quote-every-day desk calendar--irish wit & wisdom--has this to offer:
the most accomplished way of using books is to serve them as some people do lords; learn their titles and then brag of their acquaintance. --laurence sterne
thanks, laurence.
Posted by ttobryan at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2005
moo in mormonville
from dooce:
“You volunteered to do this,” I said back to him, nodding, because that seems like a logical way to spend a Saturday afternoon, volunteering to dress up like a cow to hand out free cheese to strange, religious white people.
it might be that one has to see for one's self.
Posted by ttobryan at 05:36 PM | Comments (0)
June 27, 2005
(& i picked this one b/c it's what the nerds would say. & sometimes i are one, or at least once in a while i know what they're talking about)
Posted by ttobryan at 10:30 AM | Comments (1)
June 20, 2005
"stop talkin' about golf or i'm gonna kick somebody's ass."
--cgb
Posted by ttobryan at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
english needs this word
sprachgefühl (literally, "language-feeling")
- an intuitive sense of what is linguistically appropriate
- also, the character of a language
Posted by ttobryan at 07:48 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2005
accidentally ballistic
3 rhetorically-minded language-geeks on 2 computers w/too much culturally confusing crossover going on = a conversation much like this:
me: we have rulz?
cap'nj: yes...calvinball rulles
me: kickass. field goal!
me: bonus points for palindromes, negative points for l33+-sp34k?
cap'nj: (trans for c): WTF?! (for dissing 'leet speek')
me: omgwtfbbq!!!
cap'nj: he says you don't do it well because it's 1337
me: it's not uniform. :-P
cap'nj: clearly you speak a non-standard dialect
me: that's the whole point. it's a calvinballistic dialect.
cap'nj: (trans for c): u got pwn3d!!!
me: dude. bonus points for accidentally saying "ballistic."
me: pwn3d by WHOM?
me: you? him? he wishes.
cap'nj: (trans for c): stfu noob
me: tell 'im to phj34r me.
Posted by ttobryan at 07:54 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2005
on my way to san jose
i would love to say i've got some fab presentation geared up for CCCCs, but i don't; i don't even have a mediocre one. did that last year; this year i'm just along for the ride, to see what there is to see. no pressure is nice. feeling like i'm spending an awful lot of money to go out there and not do anything is less nice.
feeling like the virtues of networking and meeting people and listening in and experiencing are less valuable than coming home with a line to add to my CV is much less nice. i think i'll pretend i don't think that's an externally-generated value-scale, assume it's my own bad attitude getting in the way, & try to lose it in chicago; they have so many there, i'm sure, even owing just to the weather, that no one will notice another.
i would also love to say that i'm looking forward to the listening and the networking and the professional engagement, but the honest truth is right now i'm totally burnt; i'm looking forward to seeing leaves, to a day-trip into the wine country with an old friend & his wonderful folks, whom i haven't seen in an alarming number of years, to dressing like jen (& if her wee travel-irritations are the worst today throws at me, i'll be tickled positively pink!) tomorrow, to the promise of "bring sunscreen and a bathing suit," to six whole days without a flake or clump or melt-slick side-walk glaze of snow.
of course i'm taking work on the plane: vygotsky, lave & wenger, a whole collection of other books (all the smallest ones in the stack, for obvious logistical reasons) i should have read already but couldn't possibly. with nothing else to do for 14 hours in the air betwen now & my return (& another 3 or 4 in airports), i might actually finish a few of them. or, since they don't really feed airline passengers anymore, i might tear them apart instead and eat the pages.
listening to:
Posted by ttobryan at 07:11 AM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2005
kittyhat!
i've been trying to get my hands on this hat for over a year. it's a blog thing, really, which i guess makes it a school thing because it's a network thing, although i'm not sure the hat itself is in any way rhetorical.
last winter, heather at dooce posted this link to the hobby/career page of stephanie ku, an undergrad at berkeley who knits in her free time and sells her knitwear on the web. she calls the store "fishfish designs" (you already know this if you clicked the link before you kept reading), and sells the cutest handmade hats i've ever seen. the one that caught heather's attention in the first place--and so the one i went wanting and had to have, was the fishfish kitty hat.
last winter (it might have been january), the fishfish store had a memo up that said "due to demand, please hold kitty and fox hat orders until february." i blamed dooce for being popular and making kitty hats popular, but i patiently waited, and went back in february. "due to demand, please hold kitty and fox hat orders until march." i played this game for a few months, got the same message every time, and forgot about it. when it got cold this winter, i went back, to the same message, interrupted by an "i have to study for finals!" message, and then the return of the "wait until march" note. march 1st i was THERE, and i beat the message!
i braved paypal for this hat. i sent away to california (where i'll be next week and certainly won't be needing it!) for this hat. i picked colors based on unreliable screen colors for this hat. and today, after a charmingly fantastical evening down at chuck's with our best crowd ever, i walked home in the snow for this hat (which ty said i had to model on the floor because it didn't look as cool against the blue walls):
and it was so worth it.
(x-posted to lj)
Posted by ttobryan at 10:57 PM | Comments (1)
February 24, 2005
"if you want to know what the man believes in, look at his metaphors."
--becky howard, specifically in reference to bob connors, but highly generizeable.
Posted by ttobryan at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2005
substitution
"he had me juggling teacups all night. teacups! with tea in them!"
"she had me reading about quantum physics all night. quantum physics! with mechanistic paradigms!"
Posted by ttobryan at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
February 05, 2005
thought-full
"reading cannot be separated from thinking. reading is a thought-full activity." --frank smith, understanding reading, 20.
sometimes scholarship reminds me of winnie-the-pooh.
(xp to lj)
Posted by ttobryan at 04:23 PM | Comments (3)