flaneuse.org

We all made it to this point, which was not altogether clear just weeks ago. Everyone is either home with family or heading there (I leave for CO tomorrow). Grades are in, I’m feeling much better and much seems possible with the world. Best of days to everyone.

I’ve been real sick again, the worst part being that I can’t type very well because my fingers aren’t doing what I want them to do. Never again will I take health for granted.

The breakfast of champions. Just ask all those tiny gymnasts.

I have the flu. I have piles of papers to deal with. I ache all over. I think the dog should do the grading. She’s probably much more lenient than I am.

Am back from the conference and catching up with everything there is to do in this last week of the semester. It’s a sprint from now until grades are due, with the added stress of the holidays. Still, I can’t help but like the Christmas season even though we have yet to see a flake of snow (Colorado, on the other hand, has had several good storms. Dammit.). Thank you Global Warming, which I think of as a large man who sits almost right on top of an electric heater in a dingy apartment not unlike those from the BBC series, How Clean is Your House? (The answer, invariably, is that it is a sty). So we all gasp for breath here and there, keep reading papers as soon as they come to us, fill out forms and make it to as many meetings as we possibly can.

Christmas this year is going to be very different in terms of gift-giving. Chris and I are giving each other a Christmas tree and his family went with the idea of choosing a name to give a gift to. With my family, I am running out of ideas. My parents told me that my ticket home was enough, but what to give my brother and his wife? They are doing well financially and, to be honest, I don’t know what I can give them that they would want or don’t already have. They don’t read this, so I feel OK about writing here. They both love animals, so I was thinking about giving a holiday gift or membership to the ASPCA in their names (or maybe the World Wildlife Fund instead), but what do people really think when they get a gift like that? I know I would really life it, but would it just seem like a cop-out or a waste of funds to someone else? How do I know without flat-out asking them?

Any ideas are welcomes.

and I head to Orlando for the National Reading Conference. It’s funny, even though this conference comes at a tough time in the semester (always the week after Thanksgiving), I still look forward to it even though I always transport one or two writing projects and a bunch of student papers to work on. Maybe it’s because I will be able to work on them poolside — but I think the draw of a conference is that you get to spend time with people who are excited about the kinds of things that make you excited. Even if no one comes to our presentation (a common thing for us, given both our topic and the fact that we almost always get an 8:30 am time), the chance to talk with other people about literacy and language — and to hear about the other research being done and new grant work is undeniably sexy. Most of the year, professors balance their research against so many other things. The ability to really focus on your writing and research ends once you defend your dissertation — unless you get some huge grant, and there aren’t many of those out there anymore. So this is the one place it’s OK to be geeky about what you’ve been doing. And given that this conference isn’t that large, there’s plenty of gossip and going out for fancy dinners. And a pool. Did I mention that before? I might even bring my suit this time.