The day that would never end...

A typical dissertation-type thing writing evening after work: I come home, the cat yells about not having enough pets while I was gone, and I trip over the cat continuously while figuring out food for both of us. I turn on Radiohead and then I write. Fun fact: I can't work or write with classical music in the background, because I get way too distracted with analyzing and active listening and whatnot.

Eventually, I notice it's quiet, except the cat is still yelling about the lack of love and/or he can see the bottom of his food dish, so I give him a few pets and then ignore the cat, turn on another Radiohead album and write more.

This continues until 11:00 pm or midnight or so. By now, the cat is yelling because it's bedtime and "good lord I can't sleep without a person next to me on the fuzzy blankie!!" Then I think of all the things I didn't get done during the day, swear, and write a dramatic "to do" list that won't get done tomorrow and go to bed to continue the same day on repeat until forever ends. Except some of the days I start writing at 9:00 am instead of going to work. Or maybe I'll have a rehearsal. Or maybe my brain can't take any more and I watch some episodes of a funny show (I've ended several series over the past month and am back to The Office again).

Fun fact: I ordered another Radiohead album and it arrived today, so I'm up to five albums rotating. I will probably feel like typing whenever I hear Radiohead for the rest of my life. One of these days, I will reach the end of this project, be mildly startled, and probably go to sleep.

An Erinku (in repetitiveness):

It's been

several years

since I've blogged

I'm a bit rusty

soon I'll have free time again

...beware

100 More Books

It started in March 2015 when I was wondering how many books a year I usually read. I thought “100 sounds about right.” It turns out I was so, so wrong. I managed 100 between March 2015 and March 2016 (see post here: https://celloerin.blogspot.com/2016/05/100-books.html). I then decided 50 books a year is a reasonable goal for me. Now that two years have passed and I’ve read another 100 books, here’s the long, possibly boring lists. I remember most of these books pretty well...mostly.

2016-2017 (bolded books are fiction. Sadly our computer died-died and lost some files, including my list, so some books in December/January are missing.) Two years after this first list, the books that have stayed with me include #3 (Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks), #15 (Women Don’t Ask), #43 (Weapons of Math Destruction), and #48 (A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea).

1. 05/20/2016 The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (for bookclub)
2. 05/24/2016 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (read aloud to Charlotte)
3. 05/28/2016 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
4. 05/28/2016 Why We Came to the City by Kristopher Jansma
5. 05/29/2016 Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey (story of Brazillian writer)
6. 06/07/2016 Foolproof: Why Safety Can Be Dangerous and How Danger Makes Us Safe by Greg Ip
7. 06/10/2016 The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny (for bookclub; about monks)
8. 06/12/2016 The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray
9. 06/15/2016 Balanced and Barefoot : How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Capable Children by Angela Hanscom
10. 06/25/2016 The Importance of Being Little: What Preschools really Need from Grownups by Erika Christakis
11. 07/09/2016 Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
12. 07/10/2016 The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde (for bookclub)
13. 07/10/2016 “Doing School” How We Are Creating Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students by Denise Clark Pope
14. 07/13/2016 Not Working by Lisa Owens (millennial coming-of-age story)
15. 07/21/2016 Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever
16. 07/22/2016 The Foundation Center’s Guide to Proposal Writing, 6th ed. by Jane C. Geever
17. 07/23/2016 Positive Parenting: An Essential Guide by Rebecca Eanes
18. 07/23/2016 Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink by Katrina Alcorn
19. 07/28/2016 The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey
20. 08/17/2016 Mother, Can You Not? by Kate Siegel (for sub-bookclub)
21. 08/17/2016 The Water-Saving Garden by Pam Penick
22. 08/20/2016 The Storied Life of A.J.Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (for bookclub)
23. 09/16/2016 Understanding and Reducing College Student Departure by Braxton, Hirschy, and McClendon
24. 09/18/2016 Nonprofit Fundraising Strategy: A Guide to Ethical Decision Making by Janice Gow Petty
25. 10/07/2016 Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver (for bookclub)
26. 10/23/2016 Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror by W. Scott Poole
27. 11/18/2016 Social Statistics for a Diverse Society, 7th Edition by Chava Frankfort-Nachmias & Anna Leon-Guerrero (for class)
28. 11/20/2016 Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly (for bookclub)
29. 11/22/2016 The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence by Dacher Keltner
30. 11/23/2016 The Gate-Keepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College by Jacques Steinberg
31. November The Mountain Shadow by Gregory David Roberts (sequel to 11)
32. December Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa by Haruki Murakami
33. December Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
34. December Book #1 lost – computer died and lost list
35. December Book #2 lost – computer died and lost list
36. December Book #3 lost – computer died and lost list
37. January 2017 Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan (for bookclub)
38. January 2017 The Guineveres by Sarah Domet (for bookclub)
39. January 2017 Improving Survey Questions by Floyd J. Fowler, Jr. (for class)
40. January 2017 Survey Research Methods by Floyd J. Fowler (for class)
41. 01/30/2017 Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education by Murray Sperber
42. 02/04/2017 Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley
43. 02/05/2017 Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil
44. 02/08/2017 Oh Crap! Potty Training by Jamie Glowacki
45. 02/18/2017 Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners by Therese O’Neill
46. 02/24/2017 Truly, Madly, Guilty by Liane Moriarty
47. 03/08/2017 Magpie Murders by Anthony Hororwitz
48. 03/16/2017 A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: The Journey of Doaa Al Zamel by Melissa Fleming (for bookclub)
49. 03/17/2017 The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod
50. 03/20/2017 Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky (so, so boring)

2017-2018 (bolded are fiction). I’m still amused that by looking at dates, I can tell as soon as I was out of classes for breaks, because all the books get finished pretty quickly. The gaps in October are from defending and then re-working my dissertation proposal. Good times. Books from the past year that have stayed with me include my introduction Adam Grant #2 (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World) and #8 (Give and Take). The ideas presented in #9 have given me lots to think about (Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion), all the non-fiction in from 30 to 50 below stayed with me, as did #43 (The Answers).

1. 04/09/17 Love and Friendship by Jane Austen. Read aloud to Charlotte
2. 04/14/17 Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant
3. 04/29/17 After the Quake by Haruki Murakami (for bookclub)
4. 04/29/17 UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World by Michele Borba
5. 04/30/17 The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality by Walter Benn Michaels
6. 05/05/17 Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozzi Adichie. Read aloud to Charlotte. For bookclub.
7. 05/10/17 The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown
8. 05/23/17 Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success by Adam Grant
9. 05/27/17 Against Empathy: the Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom
10. 06/03/17 The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. For bookclub.
11. 06/14/17 Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly
12. 06/23/17 Writing Successful Grant Proposals by Ellen W. Gorsevski
13. 07/07/17 All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai (time travel book)
14. 07/07/17 Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie. For bookclub.
15. 07/13/17 The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
16. 07/20/17 Everything You Want Me To Be by Mindy Mejia
17. 07/30/17 The Whole Brain Child by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
18. 08/08/17 Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller
19. 08/13/17 The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace (sub-bookclub)
20. 08/16/17 We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
21. 09/03/17 I See You by Clare Mackintosh (train – personal ads)
22. 10/02/17 A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel (missionaries to South Africa)
23. 10/03/17 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
24. 10/23/17 Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan (bookclub; set in Denver)
25. 10/24/17 Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
26. 10/29/17 The Fifth Avenue Artists Society by Joy Callaway
27. 11/02/17 Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education by Charles T. Clotfelter
28. 11/08/17 Austenland by Shannon Hale
29. 11/13/17 Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale (cheesey sequel to #28)
30. 11/14/17 Insight: Why We're Not as Self-Aware as We Think by Tasha Eurich
31. 11/16/17 Sourdough by Robin Sloan (for bookclub)
32. 11/26/17 Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
33. 12/02/17 The New Urban Crisis by Richard Florida
34. 12/24/17 Drunk Tank Pink and Other Forces That Shape How We Behave by Adam Alter
35. 12/24/17 The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
36. 12/25/17 Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker by Gregory Maguire (sub-bookclub)
37. 12/30/17 All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (bookclub)
38. 01/04/18 The Sea House by Elizabeth Gifford
39. 01/11/18 Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini
40. 01/15/18 The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age by David Callahan
41. 01/15/18 Departure by A. G. Riddle
42. 01/19/18 A Thousand Coloured Castles by Gareth Brookes
43. 01/24/18 The Answers: A Novel by Catherine Lacey
44. 01/29/18 The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
45. 02/15/18 Murder at the House of Rooster Happiness by David Casarett
46. 02/15/18 The Missing Guests of the Magic Grove Hotel by David Casarett (bookclub)
47. 02/25/18 The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss
48. 03/05/18 The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
49. 03/23/18 The Misfortune of Marion Palmer by Emily Culliton (current DU student)
50. 03/23/18 A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle

100 Books

In March 2015, I was wondering how many books I read in a year. I usually am in the middle of two or three books at a time, so I figured it might be as high as 100 books. Since my birthday was coming up, I thought, “Hey, my project this year will be to read 100 books by my next birthday!”

My rules were that is had to be an actual book (not articles, newspapers, magazines) and kid’s book didn’t count, or else Dr. Seuss would have put me over 100 pretty fast. So I started to read and read. It turns out that 100 books is WAY more than I normally read in a year. By sheer stubbornness, I reached 93 books by my birthday. And then I got sick. And sick again. And sick again. So it’s taken me almost two more months to finish the last seven books...but I did it. I’m currently in the middle of three different books, so I wasn’t sure which one would be the lucky 100th, but this evening, I finished one of them up. The full, possibly boring, list is below.

I learned a lot about myself and my reading habits. I read a lot more non-fiction than I think I do. This year, music-related books have taken a backseat to having to learn more about school- and job-related topics. I powered through some not-great books and made it 200 pages into a long, awful 500-page novel before giving up (it didn’t count, since I didn’t finish).

My favorite book was #32: Invisibles: The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self-Promotion by David Zweig. It helped me feel better about the behind-the-scenes work I prefer to do, even though most folks have no idea I exist. While I like acknowledgement, I’d much rather it not be a big public thing. I just like to do what I do and not have too many spotlights on me. I actually usually say I play the cello because it’s big enough to hide behind when I’m on stage. So yeah. Behind the scenes all the way!

Anyway, in addition to learning about my reading habits, I also learned a lot about a variety of topics. It turns out that coming up with 100 books means that anything I heard about went on my library hold list.

Now that my last year’s project is done, I’m aiming for reading 50 books this year. My real project, though, is to practice making mac and cheese from scratch. I’ve tried out a few recipes so far, but mostly mine have been bland. The goal is to learn to make a really good mac and cheese, because mac and cheese can be delicious. Anyway, that’s my story. Here’s an Erinku, then a crazy list of 100 books. Enjoy.

An Erinku: 

bare feet 

chilly in front room - 

welcome to May

in Colorado.

The List! Date listed is when book was finished; bolded books are fiction

1. 03/27/2015 2666 by Robert Bolaño (dark story about town of Santa Theresa) 

2. 03/29/2015 Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne DuMaurier (book club)
3. 04/03/2015 How to Be a Heroine or What I’ve Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis
4. 04/17/2015 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (dystopian world)
5. 04/19/2015 Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith
6. 04/24/2015 Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris by Sarah Turnbull (for book club)
7. 05/10/2015 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
8. 05/17/2015 Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank by Robert W. Fuller
9. 05/28/2015 Emma (read aloud to Charlotte) by Jane Austen
10. 05/30/2015 How We Learn by Benedict Carey
11. 06/08/2015 Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Muakami (for book club)
12. 06/15/2015 Budgets and Financial Management in Higher Education by Margaret McClellan
13. 06/22/2015 The End of College by Kevin Carey
14. 06/29/2015 The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
15. 07/03/2015 1066 and All That by Walter Carruthers Sellar (a very silly history book)
16. 07/04/2015 Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven: A Memoir by Susan Jane Gilman
17. 07/06/2015 Dune by Frank Herbert (for sub-book-club)
18. 07/18/2015 We Should All Be Feminists (for book club, read aloud) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
19. 07/19/2015 A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
20. 07/21/2015 Bringing up Bébé: the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
21. 07/25/2015 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (read aloud to Charlotte)
22. 07/28/2015 The Crocodile Bird by Ruth Rendell
23. 07/29/2015 Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches by John Creswell
24. 08/11/2015 Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
25. 08/13/2015 Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia
26. 08/21/2015 The Guide: A Novel of a Reluctant Holy Man by R.K. Narayan
27. 08/22/2015 The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi by Elif Shafak (for bookclub)
28. 08/26/2015 Yes Please by Amy Poehler
29. 08/30/2015 The History of Mr. Polly by H.G. Wells
30. 09/05/2015 Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
31. 09/06/2015 The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
32. 09/07/2015 Invisibles: The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self-Promotion by David Zweig
33. 09/12/2015 After Dark by Haruki Murakami
34. 09/20/2015 Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami
35. 09/26/2015 The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (for bookclub)
36. 09/29/2015 Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
37. 10/03/2015 If on a Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino
38. 10/11/2015 The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey
39. 10/15/2015 Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain by Dana Suskind, M.D.
40. 10/16/2015 The Errant Prince by Sasha L. Miller (for bookclub)
41. 10/18/2015 Queerly Beloved: A Love Story Across Genders by Diane and Jacob Anderson-Minshall
42. 10/31/2015 Gender Studies by Cranny-Francis, Waring, Stavropoulos, and Kirkby (textbook for class)
43. 11/04/2015 Grant Writing Demystified by Mary Ann Payne
44. 11/04/2015 10% Happier by Dan Harris
45. 11/14/2015 What to Expect the First Year by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel
46. 11/15/2015 Tourists Are For Trapping by Marian Babson
47. 11/16/2015 The Language of God by Francis Collins (for bookclub)
48. 11/24/2015 Grant Writing 101 by Victoria Johnson
49. 11/29/2015 The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (for bookclub)
50. 12/05/2015 Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
51. 12/06/2015 Successful Grant Writing for School Leaders by Kenneth T. Henson
52. 12/07/2015 Murder Is a Girl’s Best Friend by Amanda Matetsky
53. 12/08/2015 Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
54. 12/10/2015 Grant Writing for Dummies by Dr. Beverly Browning
55. 12/11/2015 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (read aloud to Charlotte)
56. 12/14/2015 The Ghost Apple by Aaron Thier
57. 12/14/2015 Who Gets Promoted, Who Doesn’t, and Why by Donald Asher
58. 12/23/2015 I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
59. 12/27/2015 Einstein Never Used Flash Cards by Hirsh-Pasek, Michnick Golinkoff, and Eyer
60. 01/01/2016 Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb
61. 01/04/2016 The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (for bookclub)
62. 01/08/2016 First in the World: Community Colleges and America's Future by J. Noah Brown
63. 01/11/2016 A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
64. 01/15/2016 A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
65. 01/17/2016 A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz
66. 01/19/2016 Redefining Girly: How Parents Can fight Stereotyping and Sexualization of Girlhood by Melissa Wardy
67. 01/22/2016 Re-Visioning Community Colleges by Debbie Sydow and Richard Alfred
68. 01/22/2016 Sanditon by Jane Austen and Another Lady (read aloud to Charlotte)
69. 01/23/2016 Oregon’s Highway 26: A Historical Guide by Nancy Mandel (proof-read by me)
70. 01/27/2016 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
71. 01/31/2016 How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap by Julie Lythcott-Haimes
72. 02/01/2016 Storytelling for Grantseekers: A Guide to Creative Nonprofit Fundraising by Cheryl Clarke
73. 02/07/2016 Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles
74. 02/09/2016 After Alice by Gregory Maguire
75. 02/10/2016 The Danish Way of Parenting by Jessica Alexander and Iben Dissing Sandahl
76. 02/13/2016 Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be by Frank Bruni
77. 02/19/2016 Murder On Monday by Ann Purser
78. 02/20/2016 A Wild Swan and Other Stories by Michael Cunningham
79. 02/21/2016 Capturing Music: The Story of Notation by Thomas Forrest Kelly
80. 02/28/2016 Good to Great by Jim Collins
81. 02/28/2016 Edwin of the Iron Shoes by Marcia Muller
82. 02/28/2016 Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery (sequel to #61)
83. 03/06/2016 Gently Through the Woods by Alan Hunter
84. 03/06/2016 She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel
85. 03/07/2016 Diverse Millennial Students in College edited by Fred Bonner, Aretha Marbley, Mary Howard Hamilton
86. 03/16/2016 The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine
87. 03/19/2016 The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership by Steven B. Sample
88. 03/20/2016 Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Cheryl Sandberg
89. 03/20/2016 A Cat in the Manger by Lydia Adamson
90. 03/23/2016 Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach
91. 03/23/2016 Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie
92. 03/25/2016 Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite by William Deresiewicz
93. 03/25/2016 Death Comes As the End by Agatha Christie
94. 03/27/2016 Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman
95. 03/30/2016 Death Never Takes a Holiday by Noreen Wald
96. 04/02/2016 Outline by Rachel Cusk
97. 04/07/2016 The Spymistress by Jennifer Chiaverini (for bookclub)
98. 04/26/2016 The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell
99. 05/09/2016 The Birth of Biopolitics by Michel Foucault
100. 05/16/2016 Decoding the Language of God: A Geneticist Responds to Francis Collins by George C. Cunningham (a rebuttal to #47)

Living with a Coloradan

I’ve not been writing so much lately; mostly because I haven’t felt like any of my adventures were really worth chronicling. In my brain, I’ve had a blog called “Disappearing and Reappearing Erin” about how weird it is being pregnant in public and on a college campus, but that’s way past its prime.

 

Just know that I usually blend in in the background...until I was mega pregnant. Then I stood out. To the point where I, literally, had two international students stop, point at my belly, and stare and chatter in an unfamiliar language as I waddled past. It turns out college campuses aren’t normally places where pregnant women waddle. Luckily, I’m back to being background.

 

It recently occurred to me that most locals move away from Colorado and it’s rare I meet a full-on Colorado resident; most everyone here is a transplant. Since I now live with a true Coloradan full-time, I can say that they tend to stay up late, like to play in snow, and are blue-ish when born (totally normal because of altitude, which several nurses told me, since I vaguely remember muttering something about Smurfs after seeing her). Coloradans get cranky when stuck indoors all day and like to chew on socks. My sample is small-ish; I haven’t explicitly noticed other Coloradans chewing on socks, but maybe that’s something that happens at home.

 

And that’s my story. I work a lot, I take doctorate classes, I play cello a bit, and I sing silly songs to a tiny Coloradan who likes cold a lot more than I do. Lately, she’s been eyeballing my morning coffee pretty hard, so it could be she’s got some west coast genes emerging. And she finds it absolutely hysterical when I put anything on my head that’s not a hat...but that’s obviously universal.

 

An Erinku (like gravity, except significantly less of a downer): 

“Shark, shark, shark!” 

No. That’s NOT

what the football guy

was yelling.

On That Note...

We have left-over Indian curry from yesterday. Little c is a huge fan and as big C was feeding her curry, he said, "I bet if you had an endless supply of Indian food, she would just sit here and eat it forever." I replied, "You just described my pregnancy." Because it was a world of constant curries. And on that note (mmm. curry)

Alphabet survey
A- Age: of Aquarius.
B- Biggest Fear: Black-holes, because not even light can escape. That's....pretty creepy.
C- Current Timeline: no obvious Cybermen.
D- Drink you last had: glass of (free) fancy red wine.
E- Easiest Person To Talk to: myself.
F- Favorite Song of the household: "Pants" (made up by me; often described as a baby lullaby...of anarchy)
G- Ghosts, are they really good at hiding: yes.
H- Hometown library: yes, I visited it a lot.
I- In love with: curry.
J- Jealous Of: anyone eating curry right now.
K- Kiwi? Green.
L- Last time you cried wolf: Years ago, while hiking. More like shrieking, "ohmygod is that a wolf?"
M- Middle Name: True, many people do have middles names.
N- Number of Sibelius symphonies played: two, so far.
O- One Wish: Hover Boots. I invented them. They must exist.
P- Person who you last called silly: Pee-Wee.
Q- Question you're always asked: "Do you...?"  And the answer is always, "Yes. Yes, I will eat those cookies."
R- Reason to smile: coffee, ohmygod, coffee.
S- Song last sang: "Pants." See above. It's a hit.
T- Time you woke up:  Before my coffee pot did. It wasn't pleasant.
U- Underwater colors: blue fading to black. Sometimes with coral reefs. And many fish.
V- Vocation Destination: also known as work!
W- Worst Habit: Not finishing what I'm typ
X- X-Rays you've had: mostly teeth. Because my dentist likes to use her fancy, swinging around X-ray machine.
Y- Your favorite food: curry.
Z- Zodiac Sign: Led Zeppelin.


An Erinku (in tiredness):
Coasters.
I have them.
They travel around
sometimes to return.

Ow, my brain. Or, adventures in doctorate-level classes.

So, once upon a time, I got accepted into a doctorate program in higher education. I'm taking two classes this fall, just because. By week three of the quarter, I'd surpassed 1,000 pages of heavy reading. I found out that my "not-practical" music and literary translation degrees involved a lot more action. As in, you learn history and theory, and then you sit your butt down and practice (or sit your butt down with some tequilla and translate 200 year old Spanish poetry into modern English) for hours and hours and hours over years and years and years. Somewhere along the line, you associate tequilla with Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (an old-time poet) and sitting down with good cello posture.

It turns out that a lot of other college majors don't have nearly as much action. Yes, there is a ton of thinking and writing (by the end of this week, week five, I'll have written 60 pages worth of papers), but there is a lot of focus on different ways of nit-picking on other writers, or nit-picking ways of running things, or nit-picking your own results when you study something. But instead of nit-picking, it's called critical analysis. Because nit-picking sounds a lot more like what it really is.

And when you get people nit-picking each other, they even get nit-picky about what they want to call the nit-picking. So. You've got your post-modernism. Post-structuralism. Post-colonialism. Feminist post-structuralism critical theory. And onward with a LOT of different post-things. And after much reading about all these different posts, I decided to come up with my own. Because I can be nit-picky, too.

My first one was called "Post" 1960's Batman Critical Theory. I put the post in sarcastic quotes (sarcasti-quotes! patent pending), because in all these theories, the post doesn't mean after, it means without. Because nit-picky people can't just use words the same way that words have been used for all of ever. But my theory does involve 1960's Batman, hence the sarcasti-quotes.

Anyway, this view of the world is that everyone is good, except the Joker. And you have to sometimes throw in a "Holy _____, Batman!" and that if things were looking grim, millionaire Bruce Wayne would be able to pay for cool gadgets. Things were going fine with my new little theory, until Chris got all post-modern critical theory on it and pointed out that my idea was really a post-modern, neoliberal economic critical theory with some "Holy guacamole, Batman!" thrown in. Dammit.

My new theory is the "Post" Kitty Critical Theory. It boils down to two things: boxes are good, closed doors are bad. This works for everything I've tried so far and Chris hasn't been able to crack it yet with post-modern critical theory. I have five more weeks to go in the quarter. And that is what taking doctorate level classes looks like. Because boxes are good. Closed doors are bad.

An Erinku:
My apartment:
flat boxes everywhere
an Ikea explosion
in all the rooms (some assembly required)

My 5:00 am Problems

I've been up since ugly-early this morning. And, since I had some free time, I was going to write some status along the lines of "Hi Lars. I can't sleep.Inner demons." And the appropriate response, obviously, is (said with a Swedish accent) "Ah. Your mother's beef tornadoes. If I hadn't of stopped you, you would have eaten mine, too."  But then I realized that those are lines from my favorite movie, (Psycho Beach Party, obviously) which no one seems to have watched. Except for those folks who I've forced to watch it.

It's a super odd movie and the first time I watched, I wondered the entire time if they meant to make a movie like that. Yes. Yes, they did. It gets better each time I watch. One critic whined that you can't tell the truly bad acting from the pretend bad acting. Which is fine by me, since my favorite t.v. shows are terrible 90's dramas with a similar problem.  Anyway, it's obscure enough that I can't even find the exact wording of my beef tornado quote and I don't have enough time this morning to watch the whole movie. My 5:00 am problems are very sad. INNER DEMONS/BEEF TORNADOES! And now I'm off to orient some new students.

An Erinku:

Too early

for coffee

too early

too early