Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

I got back around noon from a number of errands and strawberry-picking with some new acquaintances.  As I unloaded the strawberries from the car, I decided to try to make it all in one trip (this is where the stupidity and stubbornness begin).  So, setting down the strawberries while darting glances in every direction, I reached in to get the other bag . . . and found myself surrounded by chickens.  Very eager chickens.  Chickens who seemed desperate to get near the beautiful red strawberries I had picked (12 pounds of strawberries, mind you).  Nearly beating them back, I raced for the door.  By now, Sydney and I have each had a huge bowl of them (him with cream, me with sugar), there are two quarts ready to go on our car trip tomorrow, and seven pounds are in the deep freeze.  Harvest has begun!

Erin

This evening Sydney took a look at the dinner I’d made and said “Outside.”  He strung up the hammock while I finished up the salads and carried the plates outside.  I set the plates down on a bench and immediately had four very interested chickens closing in.  Oops.

After rescuing dinner, Sydney and I enjoyed our meal in the hammock, although I can’t say it was all peace and harmony.  Branches dropped into the salads and chickens clucked around underneath us.  Oh yes, and when Sydney noticed the birds above were sending out alarm calls, I saw that our cat had taken advantage of an apparently unlatched door and had begun stripping the rose bush of its leaves while one of the senior chickens glowered at her.

Erin

After three years of living with a vegetarian (and eating mostly vegetarian myself), I finally got a salad spinner.  Good thing, since the only remaining head of lettuce in the garden (before the next crop comes up) is roughly 18 inches in diameter and densely leaved.  Much washing to be done!

Erin

I dropped by the grocery store this morning to stock up for our upcoming trip to Nova Scotia.  Among the goodies were a couple of bars of chocolate.  When I got home this afternoon I was pleased to see that the Blue Planet/Planet Earth DVDs arrived in the mail.  What chance do either stand of making it until the weekend?  🙂

The DVDs may have to wait, since Sydney has a paper to write and I also have some reading to take care of (in addition to lots of packing and preparation).  But the chocolate?  At least some attrition is to be expected in this house.

Erin

My department seems to be doing its best to make me a good candidate for teaching positions when I start applying for jobs.  In my first year of teaching I was one of three grad students to teach sections of a new course, which meant that we got to have a hand in designing what that course covered.  In addition, the course covered some of the best stuff in the literary canon: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Jane Austen, James Joyce (and more!).  Given that most schools to which I’ll be applying for jobs want assurance that I can teach “the good stuff,” and not just stuff that falls within my narrow field of specialty, this was a great start to my teaching.

The next year I taught a course that I designed in hopes of injecting a bit more Southern lit. into my students’ diets.  Although I can’t say I “conquered” the field of women writers and characters in the South, teaching the course did help me to see just enough to discover that there’s a lot of great material to be read when I get a chance to go back to it.  I managed to fit Eudora Welty, Kate Chopin, a bit of Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, and Flannery O’Connor into the course; from them my students got to see that Southern literature isn’t all about delicate women in white dresses!

The recent teaching award I got will enable me to create a whole new course based on a design I proposed to the department committee, and I can expect to get lots of help coming up with material from my advisors and those faculty who were on the award committee and showed interest in the topic.  I also have a year in which to design it, so I’m hoping to make preparing for that course my break from dissertation work.  The course is supposed to focus on “non-linear narratives,” by which I mean stories that don’t just start from Point A and progress, in normal fashion, to Point B.  These stories sometimes start in the present and then suddenly shift to thoughts of the past–and stay there for the rest of the novel.  Or they might juggle two stories set in two different times, moving back and forth between the two (much to the confusion of the reader should he try speed-reading the book).  Stories like Slaughterhouse-Five or One Hundred Years of Solitude, or any of the stories by Borges.  I am slightly daunted by how much more knowledgeable I’ll have to get to teach such a course, but I’m thrilled at trying something that tests my abilities to talk literary style and form with my students.

And I just got an email this week asking if, since I’m not teaching this fall, I would consider being an assistant course leader for a number of new teachers in the department.  Basically, for a bit of cash and a title that looks good on a CV I get to observe and guide the new teachers as they teach the same course I taught my first year.  It turns out that two of the teachers are guys I know from a reading group, making for a slightly odd arrangement, but it looks like fun: a good way to keep myself thinking about teaching without the major time commitment of teaching my own course.

I’ve also done some part-time TAing on the side, once for a course just on Faulkner and again this past spring for another professor who asked if I’d be interested in doing some more work for him next spring.

In short, I’m pleased with how great the teaching assignments have been thus far and how many different kinds of teaching opportunities have come up.  Each new course gives me a whole new set of discussion and assignment ideas (and fun books to read), as well as making it slightly more plausible that I will actually know what I’m doing by the time I leave here.

I suppose that it’s now up to me to make sure that my research is just as fleshed-out as my teaching resume . . .

Erin

It’s been nice and quiet this morning while I was hard at work on my prospectus and paper that are due shortly. I just found out why:

There is time enough for every thing, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time … This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.

That’s from a letter written by the Earl of Chesterfield to his son on the 14th of April, 1747. If you scroll down a few pages to page 211 of the provided link, you can also see a letter in which the Earl gives advice to his son on writing letters to the Ladies.

Sydney

For the past week or so Sydney and I have been foiled in our attempts to get the garden in order; we’d hoped to get things tidied up before we head to Nova Scotia and let it all run wild for two weeks.  Although two weeks ago the weather was so hot and dry we could hardly stand to stay long enough to water, this past week it has rained us out every day.  Each day as we thought we’d set out for the garden a thundercloud appeared–with lightning, just to reinforce the point.

Finally, this afternoon, we set out for the garden, thoroughly expecting to come home again in half an hour, disgusted with yet another thunderstorm.  But we worked and worked, weeding and hoeing until the evening.  We then picked up food at the little gourmet grocery just down the road from the garden plots (it’s far too convenient for hungry gardeners and avid foodies), and ate our dinner sitting on a cliff overlooking a riverbed and accompanying forested hills–a spot that is, no kidding, 150 yards from our garden plot.  Yup, a nice place for rejuvenation.  We then continued working until the dark drove us home.

Erin

It’s been a great morning, and this despite not getting a lick of work done.

I woke up to the desire to scrub down my kitchen.  I don’t ask why or whether it makes sense when this happens; I just do it.

But then I spent almost two hours hunting down an early-twentieth-century sociologist that my advisors recommended I read.  In the process of trying to find a good book of his to read I discovered quite a bit more about him and am now really intrigued by his work and ready to read up!

I also, after pining for the Planet Earth DVDs I recently discovered, found them for a good deal on ebay and bought them.  Something like 20 hours of documentaries will be winging their way here shortly!

And Sydney surprised me by announcing that, in addition to going to see his family in about a week, we’re also (as a Penner family) going to be making a two-day trip to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia almost as soon as Sydney and I arrive.  I’m excited about traveling, I’m excited about visiting such a large park, and I’m really excited about the prospect of going on a boat tour to see puffins while there.

Alrighty, now it’s time I dig into my work before anything else wonderful and surprising distracts me.

Erin

Cornell’s been working through a massive email outage that started on Sunday and has continued, for some, up through today.  The funny thing is, most of the email servers are up and running–and have been for days.  There were three or four, initially, out of ten, that were down at the start.  Then just two were down.  It’s just that everyone I know and talk to seems to have been on the one or two that were giving the IT department fits.  Slowly, ever so slowly, servers and accounts have been made available, but I find myself continually in the group that is still offline.  There are, apparently, 8000 accounts in the server that was presenting the most resistance, with just 3000 of those accounts still unavailable as of yesterday.  Not only were Sydney and I part of those troublesome 3000, but it appears that I’m part of the 600 that remain out of commission as of this morning.  Who knew I was a troublemaker, with stats to prove it?

Erin