Well, thanks everybody for the book recommendations. I'm going to check out a bunch of those books, I think. (Sarah: Bolano's been haunting me for the past week. There was an article on him in Paste, a piece in the Onion's A/V Club, and just yesterday morning I saw a woman reading an article about him in The New York Times. It must be fate.) I've also been milling over a set of short stories by Hawthorne, the first book in George R.R. Martin's fantasy series, and maybe Foucault's Pendulum by Eco (which I've begun but never finished). I'm trying to balance the intellectual (since I'm skipping school for several months) with the entertaining (since this is more or less a vacation), so we'll see how this all shakes out.
But keep the book recommendations coming. Even though I'm quickly running out of packing space--actually, I'm probably already over-full--my list keeps get updated.
That being said, I have no idea how I'm going to fit everything in my 1.5 backpacks. My travel pack is only 40 liters (not that huge) and my day pack is about half that size. Packing for four seasons (since winter will be kicking in while we're in Patagonia) is turning out to be quite a challenge. My pack was perfect for summery travel in Central America and Bolivia/Peru, but I'm worried about fitting in enough clothing to cover everything from trekking in Patagonia in March to hanging on a beach in Honduras in June. Not a terrible problem to have, but my packing list probably exceeds my luggage by about 40% right now. Nuts.
That's a minor problem. The major problem is the grading and term-paper-writing bind I find myself in these days. I need to finish my students' portfolios by Wednesday morning, then immediately begin writing my term paper for my Renaissance tragedy class. And Thursday is completely shot to hell (the good kind of shot to hell) because of all the planned gluttony. And Wednesday is drinking and playing video games with Ben. But things need to happen, and fast.
I won't even go into the fact that the subletters for our place bailed last week. Bastards. So there's that, too.
Every day, I have to fight the urge to go to the medicine cabinet, swallow Jessie's entire supply of Xanax, and hope that it puts me a coma for precisely one month.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Solicitations
Jessie and I are gearing up for our massive six-month trip to the far reaches of South America. And I'm figuring out what I'm going to cram into my 1.5 backpacks that will keep me warm, well-dressed, and entertained for that time.
So, I'm soliciting book suggestions from all y'all. Here are the stipulations:
(1) It needs to be on the longer side (a couple hundred pages is ideal)
(2) It needs to be printed in paperback (hardcover takes up too much space)
(3) It should be at least mildly entertaining
(4) I prefer fiction but will read just about anything
So far, I'm already bringing Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and probably a translation of Don Quixote, but that's as far as I made it. I think Jessie might be packing The Brothers Karamazov and some Gogol, but I can't say for sure.
Tell me what to read. Do it.
So, I'm soliciting book suggestions from all y'all. Here are the stipulations:
(1) It needs to be on the longer side (a couple hundred pages is ideal)
(2) It needs to be printed in paperback (hardcover takes up too much space)
(3) It should be at least mildly entertaining
(4) I prefer fiction but will read just about anything
So far, I'm already bringing Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and probably a translation of Don Quixote, but that's as far as I made it. I think Jessie might be packing The Brothers Karamazov and some Gogol, but I can't say for sure.
Tell me what to read. Do it.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Birthday, Birfday, Barfday
It was my birthday this past weekend. And it was pretty outstanding. In a weird echo of my 21st birthday, JR and I and some of friends went out to a hibachi restaurant and got stupidly full. Lucky for me, AK got waaay too much sushi, so I poached some of that--and stuffed myself with hibachi food to boot.
After dinner, we went bowling at what might be one of the best bowling alleys I've seen. Though it was a bit pricey--especially compared to the cheap, cheap college nights back at the bowling alley in DE--the place was almost empty (for a Friday night) and had a pretty decent bar. I was pretty pleased with my bowling skillz but the high point was coming up with the most apt nickname for KJ ever: Sarcastasaurus. That's a keeper.
And then we went to the Ring. Which was the perfect cap to the evening. Not only did I get to eat some of my favorite food for dinner and get stupidly drunk but--here's the kicker--I got to partake of two of my favorite propelling-shit-at-other-shit games (bowling and pool).
Oh, and I got schwasted. Like, drunker than I've been in years. The kind of slow, cumulative drunk that happens when I liberally pepper in a variety of shots with some methodical consumption of beer and mixed drinks. Somehow, BB and JR decided that I should drink one of every "major liquor" to fill out my celebration. That was not limited to: tequila, whiskey, Jagermeister, rum, vodka, liqueur (in the form of a Dirty Girl Scout with MW), and, last but not least, Goldschlager. BB set that last one in front of me at about 1:30 a.m. and I just knocked it back. Oops.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I woke up with possibly the worst hangover I've ever had. Like, hands-down. The kind of hangover where I only got out of bed in order to refill my water glass and linger about the bathroom wondering if the trigger was going to get pulled (it didn't). I managed to watch most of the content on adultswim.com and then about ten episodes of Arrested Development. I pulled myself together around 5:30 and managed to eke out a relatively short evening at Gretchen's fancy-pants party. (I did, in fact, wear my fancy pants.) Otherwise, Saturday was just Bad News Bear (as JR has me saying these days).
JR made a delicious, delicious cake on Sunday, which included a central layer comprised of crushed-up Mint Oreos and vanilla frosting.
I also have to throw out that RT got me a print of, quite possibly, one of the best MTTS cartoons ever made--this guy:
Alright. It's Friday. I need to go pretend to do some work.
After dinner, we went bowling at what might be one of the best bowling alleys I've seen. Though it was a bit pricey--especially compared to the cheap, cheap college nights back at the bowling alley in DE--the place was almost empty (for a Friday night) and had a pretty decent bar. I was pretty pleased with my bowling skillz but the high point was coming up with the most apt nickname for KJ ever: Sarcastasaurus. That's a keeper.
And then we went to the Ring. Which was the perfect cap to the evening. Not only did I get to eat some of my favorite food for dinner and get stupidly drunk but--here's the kicker--I got to partake of two of my favorite propelling-shit-at-other-shit games (bowling and pool).
Oh, and I got schwasted. Like, drunker than I've been in years. The kind of slow, cumulative drunk that happens when I liberally pepper in a variety of shots with some methodical consumption of beer and mixed drinks. Somehow, BB and JR decided that I should drink one of every "major liquor" to fill out my celebration. That was not limited to: tequila, whiskey, Jagermeister, rum, vodka, liqueur (in the form of a Dirty Girl Scout with MW), and, last but not least, Goldschlager. BB set that last one in front of me at about 1:30 a.m. and I just knocked it back. Oops.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I woke up with possibly the worst hangover I've ever had. Like, hands-down. The kind of hangover where I only got out of bed in order to refill my water glass and linger about the bathroom wondering if the trigger was going to get pulled (it didn't). I managed to watch most of the content on adultswim.com and then about ten episodes of Arrested Development. I pulled myself together around 5:30 and managed to eke out a relatively short evening at Gretchen's fancy-pants party. (I did, in fact, wear my fancy pants.) Otherwise, Saturday was just Bad News Bear (as JR has me saying these days).
JR made a delicious, delicious cake on Sunday, which included a central layer comprised of crushed-up Mint Oreos and vanilla frosting.
I also have to throw out that RT got me a print of, quite possibly, one of the best MTTS cartoons ever made--this guy:
Alright. It's Friday. I need to go pretend to do some work.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Reflections On My Career Choice
I'm aborting the whole summer-summary thing I had going in the last post. Just too effing daunting, especially for my fragile mental state right now.
Why fragile? Because I'm grading again. And grading amps me up in a way that I can't really describe. I'm usually OK once I get going with it, but there are frequent periods of hyperventilation before I begin and much gnashing of the teeth as I read the first few students essays. Part of this can probably be chalked up to the fact that I'm still very unconvinced of my authority to evaluate anybody's work. And part of this can also be attributed to the fact that, despite having graded close to 300 student papers in the past year--thank you intro-level teaching assignments--I'm still slow as hell in my grading.
That last bit is mostly because I type up comments for all my students' papers. Like, right now, I'm typing close to a page of single-spaced comments for a two-page assignment. The conscious part of my brain screams, "No no no no stop spending so long you douchenozzle," but unfortunately for me, I grade with my hindbrain. And so I end up writing more than the students submitted to begin with. And that's just plain fucked up.
I set my timer and everything, but I just can't stop myself. It's infuriating. I got a good response from a few of my students last semester, but by and large I think my comments go largely unappreciated. So that's my personal goal for the semester: trimming down my grading time. Significantly.
I'm also freaking out right now because James just left this morning, and all the work that Mr. Fun-Pants-O'Leary made me forget about in a drunken haze is now hurtling towards me with the force of those tiny particles being swung around the Large Hadron Collider. And, similar to that contraption, there's a chance a black hole might spontaneously appear and suck me into oblivion. God, that would be fucking sweet.
Why fragile? Because I'm grading again. And grading amps me up in a way that I can't really describe. I'm usually OK once I get going with it, but there are frequent periods of hyperventilation before I begin and much gnashing of the teeth as I read the first few students essays. Part of this can probably be chalked up to the fact that I'm still very unconvinced of my authority to evaluate anybody's work. And part of this can also be attributed to the fact that, despite having graded close to 300 student papers in the past year--thank you intro-level teaching assignments--I'm still slow as hell in my grading.
That last bit is mostly because I type up comments for all my students' papers. Like, right now, I'm typing close to a page of single-spaced comments for a two-page assignment. The conscious part of my brain screams, "No no no no stop spending so long you douchenozzle," but unfortunately for me, I grade with my hindbrain. And so I end up writing more than the students submitted to begin with. And that's just plain fucked up.
I set my timer and everything, but I just can't stop myself. It's infuriating. I got a good response from a few of my students last semester, but by and large I think my comments go largely unappreciated. So that's my personal goal for the semester: trimming down my grading time. Significantly.
I'm also freaking out right now because James just left this morning, and all the work that Mr. Fun-Pants-O'Leary made me forget about in a drunken haze is now hurtling towards me with the force of those tiny particles being swung around the Large Hadron Collider. And, similar to that contraption, there's a chance a black hole might spontaneously appear and suck me into oblivion. God, that would be fucking sweet.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
What the Hell Happened to My Summer? Oh, Right...
The last couple days, I've been snapping awake in the morning - well, early afternoon- with the realization that, oh shit, it's August. It's a similar sensation to those end-of-semester days when I wake up with the realization that, oh shit, I have to write twelve pages of my term paper today. In both instances, I get a bizarre shot of adrenaline that completely rockets me over the usual morning grogginess. More often than not, however, it lasts until just a little past breakfast and my morning shower, at which point I fall into the typical Facebook-Rotten Tomatoes-E-mail slump.
But seeing as how I haven't posted anything all summer, it seems fitting to offer up a brief retrospective account of the summer that has blasted by me in a travel- and booze-addled haze.
Phase One: Why Kevin Sucks at Life; Or, Parents, Ahoy!
So, here's something you probably already know about me: so far in graduate school, I have managed to turn in about 22% of my term papers on time. Most get finished a day or two past the due date but one (on average) lingers for a long time. This year, that paper was my spring semester paper for my Pope & Swift class. I made the awesome choice of writing on a topic which, A) I knew nothing about, B) we never discussed during the whole course of the semester, and C) attracts a particularly dry and cumbersome brand of criticism. So, I took an extra six weeks or so to trudge through a paralyzing morass of painful - excruciating! - work on Jonathan Swift's perception of economic affairs in the early 1720's. And this happened in June, ostensibly the best month in Madison, the pay-off for the purgatorial winters and ball-sweatingly hot late summer months. Yes, I'm that smart.
During that same period, both Jessie's mom and my own parents came to visit for several days each. While both visits were enjoyable in their own right, they were notably diminished for me by that Swift-shaped sword of Damocles lingering over my head. And, it also turns out, it's a huge, huge mistake to have one's parents stay in their apartment for six straight days. Much as I love them, my relationships with my folks has about a four-and-a-half day shelf, after which I slowly regress into a surly, despondent fifteen-year-old. Those first four days, though, were quite enjoyable - my parents had never been to Madison before - and we did all the stuff in the city that I'd been putting off for god knows how long. We toured the Capitol. We went on a tour of the campus. We went to the Farmer's Market. We got my mom addicted to 99. Fun.
Phase Two: Gypsy Life
Once I finally finished the paper - a glorified book report by the time it was done - and got rid of my parents, I spent the requisite week drunk. And then began Jessie's and my July gypsy life. We camped in a state park up by Chippewa Falls with Matt, KJ, Lee, and Jeff, drank a lot of Leinie's (the brewery was a stone's throw away), and played a lot of corn hole. It was awesome. We got drunk in canoes, we toured a brewery, we lit things on fire...a true Wisconsin holiday. I particularly enjoyed watching our friends bound for tenure-track jobs at Cornell enjoy their last days of pseudo-college glory. They really went out in style.
We spent the following weekend in a tent as well, this time with Ben and Renee at a musical festival in western Michigan. The festival, Rothbury, billed itself as an eco-friendly hippie-fest that was all about community and environmental awareness and blah blah blah. In reality, no, no it was not, it was fucking nothing of the sort. Our campsite was in the gulag of the festival grounds, a hastily-shorn hayfield nowhere near bathrooms and about 3/4 of a mile from the nearest potable water (which smelled like eggs). The organizers charged $3 for a pound of ice and $10 for showers and, on top of that, prohibited any food from being taken into the music area (so you'd have to buy an $8 hamburger). To boot, there was no shade, which made it impossible to sleep past 8:00 a.m., at which point you were woken up by either the suffocating heat in the tent or the douchebag across the field who was blasting Biggie AT EIGHT IN THE FUCKING MORNING.
All that being said - and those demons being exorcised - we had an awesome time. We saw some great music, including Modest Mouse (my #1 band to see), Of Montreal, and, in a throwback to our high school days, 311, DMB, and Snoop Dogg. All the shows were pretty awesome, which may or may not have something to do with the two handles of liquor and case of beer we polished off in the three days we spent there. However, the highlight was probably going to the on-site water park: eschewing the overpriced and generally shitty showers, we opted to pay the $20 per person to go to the site's indoor water park, which was actually pretty amazing. After not showering for two days (and spending most of those days in the sun), we got up early and made it to the park before the rest of the hippies filthed it up. God, it was so. Fucking. Good.
Overall, though, it was well worth it. Getting drunk in the middle of field with Renee and Ben, rocking out to a live version of "Down" by 311, shooting down a water-slide in a giant inner tube with three other people - all of it seemed like a page out of my late-teens playbook. And that's a good thing. I had some doubts about having outgrown the whole music festival thing before we went, but those doubts were quickly allayed by the combination of booze, dancing, and good company (that being our friends, not the obnoxious, self-entitled neo-hippies who made up the other 98% of the festival attendees).
Finally, Jessie and I went to visit her mom in West Virginia, by way of Raleigh, NC. It was, all in all, a spectacularly relaxing trip. We flew into Raleigh, visited her aunt's family for a little while, and then drove her grandmother's car through the Appalachian mountains to Jumping Branch, WV. Because I have paralyzing pet allergies - and because Jessie's mom is the most generous person on the face of the earth - she put us up in a resort/state park hotel near her called Pipestem. Our room overlooked the New River Gorge and a swath of mist-shrouded green mountains, the combination of which offered up some stunning sunsets. So, for a week, we just visited with Jessie's mom, sat by the hotel pool, went hiking in the mountains, and sat around our hotel room watching hours and hours of cable TV. God, I missed cable.
Well, I'm getting lazy now, so I'll leave off the rest for the next post. Which I'll write. Soon. Ish. ,
But seeing as how I haven't posted anything all summer, it seems fitting to offer up a brief retrospective account of the summer that has blasted by me in a travel- and booze-addled haze.
Phase One: Why Kevin Sucks at Life; Or, Parents, Ahoy!
So, here's something you probably already know about me: so far in graduate school, I have managed to turn in about 22% of my term papers on time. Most get finished a day or two past the due date but one (on average) lingers for a long time. This year, that paper was my spring semester paper for my Pope & Swift class. I made the awesome choice of writing on a topic which, A) I knew nothing about, B) we never discussed during the whole course of the semester, and C) attracts a particularly dry and cumbersome brand of criticism. So, I took an extra six weeks or so to trudge through a paralyzing morass of painful - excruciating! - work on Jonathan Swift's perception of economic affairs in the early 1720's. And this happened in June, ostensibly the best month in Madison, the pay-off for the purgatorial winters and ball-sweatingly hot late summer months. Yes, I'm that smart.
During that same period, both Jessie's mom and my own parents came to visit for several days each. While both visits were enjoyable in their own right, they were notably diminished for me by that Swift-shaped sword of Damocles lingering over my head. And, it also turns out, it's a huge, huge mistake to have one's parents stay in their apartment for six straight days. Much as I love them, my relationships with my folks has about a four-and-a-half day shelf, after which I slowly regress into a surly, despondent fifteen-year-old. Those first four days, though, were quite enjoyable - my parents had never been to Madison before - and we did all the stuff in the city that I'd been putting off for god knows how long. We toured the Capitol. We went on a tour of the campus. We went to the Farmer's Market. We got my mom addicted to 99. Fun.
Phase Two: Gypsy Life
Once I finally finished the paper - a glorified book report by the time it was done - and got rid of my parents, I spent the requisite week drunk. And then began Jessie's and my July gypsy life. We camped in a state park up by Chippewa Falls with Matt, KJ, Lee, and Jeff, drank a lot of Leinie's (the brewery was a stone's throw away), and played a lot of corn hole. It was awesome. We got drunk in canoes, we toured a brewery, we lit things on fire...a true Wisconsin holiday. I particularly enjoyed watching our friends bound for tenure-track jobs at Cornell enjoy their last days of pseudo-college glory. They really went out in style.
We spent the following weekend in a tent as well, this time with Ben and Renee at a musical festival in western Michigan. The festival, Rothbury, billed itself as an eco-friendly hippie-fest that was all about community and environmental awareness and blah blah blah. In reality, no, no it was not, it was fucking nothing of the sort. Our campsite was in the gulag of the festival grounds, a hastily-shorn hayfield nowhere near bathrooms and about 3/4 of a mile from the nearest potable water (which smelled like eggs). The organizers charged $3 for a pound of ice and $10 for showers and, on top of that, prohibited any food from being taken into the music area (so you'd have to buy an $8 hamburger). To boot, there was no shade, which made it impossible to sleep past 8:00 a.m., at which point you were woken up by either the suffocating heat in the tent or the douchebag across the field who was blasting Biggie AT EIGHT IN THE FUCKING MORNING.
All that being said - and those demons being exorcised - we had an awesome time. We saw some great music, including Modest Mouse (my #1 band to see), Of Montreal, and, in a throwback to our high school days, 311, DMB, and Snoop Dogg. All the shows were pretty awesome, which may or may not have something to do with the two handles of liquor and case of beer we polished off in the three days we spent there. However, the highlight was probably going to the on-site water park: eschewing the overpriced and generally shitty showers, we opted to pay the $20 per person to go to the site's indoor water park, which was actually pretty amazing. After not showering for two days (and spending most of those days in the sun), we got up early and made it to the park before the rest of the hippies filthed it up. God, it was so. Fucking. Good.
Overall, though, it was well worth it. Getting drunk in the middle of field with Renee and Ben, rocking out to a live version of "Down" by 311, shooting down a water-slide in a giant inner tube with three other people - all of it seemed like a page out of my late-teens playbook. And that's a good thing. I had some doubts about having outgrown the whole music festival thing before we went, but those doubts were quickly allayed by the combination of booze, dancing, and good company (that being our friends, not the obnoxious, self-entitled neo-hippies who made up the other 98% of the festival attendees).
Finally, Jessie and I went to visit her mom in West Virginia, by way of Raleigh, NC. It was, all in all, a spectacularly relaxing trip. We flew into Raleigh, visited her aunt's family for a little while, and then drove her grandmother's car through the Appalachian mountains to Jumping Branch, WV. Because I have paralyzing pet allergies - and because Jessie's mom is the most generous person on the face of the earth - she put us up in a resort/state park hotel near her called Pipestem. Our room overlooked the New River Gorge and a swath of mist-shrouded green mountains, the combination of which offered up some stunning sunsets. So, for a week, we just visited with Jessie's mom, sat by the hotel pool, went hiking in the mountains, and sat around our hotel room watching hours and hours of cable TV. God, I missed cable.
Well, I'm getting lazy now, so I'll leave off the rest for the next post. Which I'll write. Soon. Ish. ,
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