rhymes with "radical"...
Today I received both an email and a tiny note in my mailbox informing me that my sabbatical request for next spring has been officially approved! Which means that I will have no teaching or meeting responsibilities for the 8 months from January to September 2010.
(I just realized that "sabbatical" and "Sabbath" have the same etymology. Both come from Hebrew via the Latin "sabbatum", for "sit around in your pajamas and do nothing all day".)
I have a hard time imagining what that eighth months will be like. In my fantasy-in-the-head world, it consists of me writing every morning from 9:00 until 1:00, until I've produced not one but TWO undergraduate physics texts, while devoting every other Friday to studio recording and painting. In reality it will probably revolve around alternating rounds of Wii and Frito-Lay products, interrupted by frequent naps.
Either way, it sounds pretty fucking sweet.
Thursday, February 19
twitter tales...
First of all, I reiterate for any of you that don't use the Twitter... anything interesting or funny I have to say gets said there nowadays. It's just so much easier. And it plays into my personality. I mean... most of the interactions I have with people in real life are probably also less than 140 characters.
This week I made the mistake of entering a contest at BoingBoing that requires you to Twitter-follow their writers. Between Xeni Jardin and Cory Doctorow... that's a lot of fucking twittering.
Oh, speaking of "fuck" and "twitter"... according to the statistics analysis at Tweetstats.com... my five most-used Twitter words are: fucking, today, dog, day, & fuck. Which I think is fucking awesome
As much as I have embraced Twitter as a place to post, there are some things about the community aspect of it that I just don't get. For one thing, I don't understand when I get followers whom I don't recognize. I'm not talking about the spammers, those are easy to spot (Hint: anyone that claims to follow 500+ users is not really following anyone.) I'm talking about regular people who follow 15-30 users, one of whom is me, but who I don't recognize from blogs I read or people who comment on my blog, or friends of friends. It perplexes me that someone would want to read the bite-sized ramblings of a stranger with whom they don't have at least some sort of vague acquaintance. And it seems more than a little rude to send them a message asking - "Umm, who the hell ARE you?"
First of all, I reiterate for any of you that don't use the Twitter... anything interesting or funny I have to say gets said there nowadays. It's just so much easier. And it plays into my personality. I mean... most of the interactions I have with people in real life are probably also less than 140 characters.
This week I made the mistake of entering a contest at BoingBoing that requires you to Twitter-follow their writers. Between Xeni Jardin and Cory Doctorow... that's a lot of fucking twittering.
Oh, speaking of "fuck" and "twitter"... according to the statistics analysis at Tweetstats.com... my five most-used Twitter words are: fucking, today, dog, day, & fuck. Which I think is fucking awesome
As much as I have embraced Twitter as a place to post, there are some things about the community aspect of it that I just don't get. For one thing, I don't understand when I get followers whom I don't recognize. I'm not talking about the spammers, those are easy to spot (Hint: anyone that claims to follow 500+ users is not really following anyone.) I'm talking about regular people who follow 15-30 users, one of whom is me, but who I don't recognize from blogs I read or people who comment on my blog, or friends of friends. It perplexes me that someone would want to read the bite-sized ramblings of a stranger with whom they don't have at least some sort of vague acquaintance. And it seems more than a little rude to send them a message asking - "Umm, who the hell ARE you?"
Wednesday, February 18
one...
Given that both my classes are M/W, and Monday was a holiday... AND I've asked a colleague to give a guest lecture in my Astrobiology class this afternoon... I'm heading in to teach the one-and-only class I'm teaching this week. Not that I don't manage to feel weirdly busy due to a lot of other things. One of which is a letter of recommendation that's hanging over my head. I should really get it done today. Second to grading, writing recommendation letters is probably my least favorite job-related task. Unless it's a VERY good student whom I know VERY well, it always feels kind of awkward and phony. At best it just turns into a kind of pre-formatted Mad-Lib. The process is not helped by the fact that I can't seem to find my grades from the year she took my classes.
Given that both my classes are M/W, and Monday was a holiday... AND I've asked a colleague to give a guest lecture in my Astrobiology class this afternoon... I'm heading in to teach the one-and-only class I'm teaching this week. Not that I don't manage to feel weirdly busy due to a lot of other things. One of which is a letter of recommendation that's hanging over my head. I should really get it done today. Second to grading, writing recommendation letters is probably my least favorite job-related task. Unless it's a VERY good student whom I know VERY well, it always feels kind of awkward and phony. At best it just turns into a kind of pre-formatted Mad-Lib. The process is not helped by the fact that I can't seem to find my grades from the year she took my classes.
Tuesday, February 17
ruined...!
Here I am on the train... planning how I'm going to make use of a full day with NOTHING planned, and I suddenly realized that I have a two-hour technology committee meeting at 1:00 that is going to TOTALLY RUIN what I had hoped would be a day to catch up on nagging backlogs of stuff. I think I'm also supposed to sit in on a class at noon. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
That may have been the quickest shift from "looking forward to work" to "dreading the day at work" that I have ever experienced.
Here I am on the train... planning how I'm going to make use of a full day with NOTHING planned, and I suddenly realized that I have a two-hour technology committee meeting at 1:00 that is going to TOTALLY RUIN what I had hoped would be a day to catch up on nagging backlogs of stuff. I think I'm also supposed to sit in on a class at noon. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
That may have been the quickest shift from "looking forward to work" to "dreading the day at work" that I have ever experienced.
Monday, February 9
Grammies... bong!!
Not much to say about the Grammies last night except that... I can not remember the last time I owned the winner of "Best Album" before the awards show. I think I agree with my friend pippa that Radiohead and Coldplay split that ballot, leaving Robert Plant and Allison Krauss to pick up the plurality of votes, but I have to say... there is something unbeatably Grammy-ready about the combination of a country star, a never-won-a-grammy classic rock god, and a superproducer the likes of T-Bone Burnett. (Who let that goofball up there on stage to play guitar, though?) Anyway... "Raising Sand" is a good album, but it's not THAT good.
Meanwhile, speaking of Coldplay.... (I know, I'd rather not either)... during last night's show, I was afflicted with this thing that happens to me sometimes where I notice something about a song too intently, and then every time I hear it, that's ALL I can hear. And it's happened to me now with "Viva la Vida" now that I've seen them perform it live twice. HAd I not watched the drummer playing his ridiculous percussion setup, it may have never jumped out at me so strong, but now when I hear the chorus, all I hear is...
The bells! THE BELLS!!! MAKE THEM STOP!!!!
Not much to say about the Grammies last night except that... I can not remember the last time I owned the winner of "Best Album" before the awards show. I think I agree with my friend pippa that Radiohead and Coldplay split that ballot, leaving Robert Plant and Allison Krauss to pick up the plurality of votes, but I have to say... there is something unbeatably Grammy-ready about the combination of a country star, a never-won-a-grammy classic rock god, and a superproducer the likes of T-Bone Burnett. (Who let that goofball up there on stage to play guitar, though?) Anyway... "Raising Sand" is a good album, but it's not THAT good.
Meanwhile, speaking of Coldplay.... (I know, I'd rather not either)... during last night's show, I was afflicted with this thing that happens to me sometimes where I notice something about a song too intently, and then every time I hear it, that's ALL I can hear. And it's happened to me now with "Viva la Vida" now that I've seen them perform it live twice. HAd I not watched the drummer playing his ridiculous percussion setup, it may have never jumped out at me so strong, but now when I hear the chorus, all I hear is...
I hear BONG! rusa BONG! bells BONG! ringing
BONG! man BONG! alry BONG! are BONG! nging
BONG! my mirror, BONG! sword and BONG!
My BONG! ion BONG! ries in a BONG! reign field
BONG! some BONG! eason I BONG! explain BONG!
I BONG! Saint BONG! eter won't BONG! my name BONG!
Never a BONG! hon BONG! est word BONG!
BONG! that was when I r BONG! uled the world BONG!
The bells! THE BELLS!!! MAKE THEM STOP!!!!
Friday, February 6
the thing is...
... I don't really know what this blog is FOR anymore. It's not for connecting with imaginary internet friends. I do that over IM. It's not for letting out all the crazy ideas and thoughts I have over the course of the day. I do that on Twitter. It's gotten to the point where all that's left for the blog by the time the day is over is a laundry list of I did X, I did Y, I did Z. And it seldom seems worth the effort.
So that's the problem. No thoughts on a solution, for now.
... I don't really know what this blog is FOR anymore. It's not for connecting with imaginary internet friends. I do that over IM. It's not for letting out all the crazy ideas and thoughts I have over the course of the day. I do that on Twitter. It's gotten to the point where all that's left for the blog by the time the day is over is a laundry list of I did X, I did Y, I did Z. And it seldom seems worth the effort.
So that's the problem. No thoughts on a solution, for now.
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