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After a short day at ODE, I headed from downtown to campus on the bus.  It was time to pick up my printed and bound exams.  I slogged through the heat from the campus bus stop to Uniprint, paid for my box of exam booklets, and slogged my way to Ramseyer Hall to place all but one into my professors’ mailboxes.  The final copy I kept for myself, to read and reread and mark all of the places where I fear I will be dinged.  I got on the bus to head home and I opened up to my favorite question, the one I knew was beautiful.  But, before I got to the bottom of the page, I had already found a typo, and a really horrible one.  I used the wrong “right.”  It should have been “right,” but I had written “write.”  Woe is me.  I had such a visceral reaction that the few people on the bus looked up to stare at me.  I was the crazy bus person today.  Sigh.  Ah well.  I’m only human and I read these things so many times that I apparently stopped seeing mistakes like that.  Can you tell that I’m trying to convince myself to let it go?  It’s not working.

In the past two days, I’ve been busy at 3 of my 4 jobs.  I spent all day at ODE yesterday, then I came home and worked on my research assistantship until 7pm.  That was tiring.

Today, I got up and did some more research.  Then, I stopped into the girls’ school to meet my Lego League participants and chat for a bit over lunch.  That was great and I am soooo excited about that gig!  (P.S. Even their cafeteria is amazing.)  In the afternoon, I attended a webinar for ODE, which was the worst webinar ever.  It was completely text, so I had to read everything.  Propping of the eyelids was essential to keep from falling asleep.  Note to self: Text-based webinars stink.  After that it was more research and more research (although I broke for dinner), followed by creating a schedule for the Lego League and mailing it off.  It is now 8:31pm and I am officially a workaholic.  Sigh.  BUT!  In just two more days I will be on a plane to Portland, Oregon where I will not be doing any work!  Well, most likely.

The past two days have been kinda full.  Yesterday I was stuck at home because Dan was in Cincinnati again working on joysticks.  I worked on revising my exams and getting them in a final draft before getting to the work of figuring out how much it was going to cost to print those suckers.  After much too much work in that department, it turns out that our print shop on campus, Uniprint, had the best deal.  $75 for five copies of bound 124-page booklets.  I’m okay with that.

Today, I got up a little late, bought my ticket to Denver for the AESA conference (so excited about that) and got ready to run some errands.  First, I went to drop of and get a few books from the library.  Then, I stopped by campus to drop of my “Notice of Candidacy Examination” form.  That made me feel nervous even though I’m still waiting until October to defend.  It’s just… very official, you know?  After that, I attended my first service at a mosque as part of my “challenge” this week.  I am dying to write about it, but I am going to wait until Sunday when I get to go to an interfaith dinner and evening prayers (I’ll write one long post about the whole experience, which I should say so far has been very nice!).  After the service, I had to get some groceries because Ben, Rachael and Megan are coming over for some dinner tomorrow before we all go to the Clippers game (that’s the minor league team here in Columbus, and they just built a new stadium downtown).

Tonight, Dan and I are headed to Knead (a new restaurant in the Short North) and a movie (not sure what yet, but we’re thinking Get Low, the new flick with Bill Murray)!  Looking forward to it!

Yeah, I know.  But, two are small jobs.  Here they are in no particular order:

1) Graduate Teaching Assistant
2) Graduate Research Assistant (small one!)
3) Intern at the Department of Ed. (small one, as of today)
4) Substitute teacher/Leader of after-school technology program (hmm, that sounds like two, but I refuse to have five jobs).
5) Does student count?  Crap.

So, the other day, when I looked at my schedule and was trying to decide if I could indeed take the job to lead the after-school technology program at a local private school, I thought, something has got to give.  And that something, I thought, was going to be my job at the department of ed.  And it is, sort of.  But, this morning, when I was walking in to give my two weeks, I had an idea.  See, I felt bad because there are couple things that I do that are tech-related and I didn’t want to leave the already depleted gifted section in the lurch.  So, I thought, I could just do those little tech-related things from home for just a couple of hours a week.  I am not going to go into the office after next week any longer and I’m not going to be working on anymore projects.  Still, this is starting to sound sketchy to me.  Did I make the right decision?  Time will tell.  In the meantime, I’m excited at the opportunity to work with kids again.

And now I’m wondering how crazy my taxes will be next year.  Why do I do these things?

I’ve never felt as lazy as I did today.  I had to drag myself out of bed (which took about an hour), convince myself to go running, force myself to start revising (only to fall asleep again) and then tear myself away from stupid judge shows to get back to revising.  I have no idea why I was so unmotivated.  It was no good.  I did eventually get through both exams as planned, though I still want to go back over one one more time.  I fear I will never feel finished, but I need to take these things to kinkos (although I’ve been thinking about lulu) next week for sure.  I also picked up my and Dan’s race packet for the Crew 5k this Saturday (Dan is running with me!) and registered for Bergamo (There’s a poststructural feminist pre-conference workshop.  Woot!).  So, I should feel at least somewhat accomplished on this laziest of days.

In the evening, just before I picked up Dan at the airport (yay!), I found the movie Examined Life on Netflix on demand and was intrigued.  It is a really cool documentary that gives ten minutes to eight different philosophers to talk about the examined life.  I had read three, so it was kind of neat to see them move and talk (imagine!), rather than just read their words.  Cornel West is hilarious.  Judith Butler looks a lot different than I pictured her in my head and Slavoj Zizek is manic to say the least.  And, I liked them all, though not all of them share my budding philosophy.  Peter Singer, who I had never heard of, was also an interesting guy and gave me something to think about.  He gave this scenario where you see a child about to drown in a river and you look around for their parents and no one is there to help except you, but you have nice, expensive shoes on, so if you do save the child, you will ruin your shoes.  When given this scenario, Singer explains that everyone says that, of course, they would save the child and ruin their shoes.  But, he then points out that we often buy expensive shoes when that money could help save a child’s life in a developing country.  He thinks that we should think about the river scenario as we decide how to spend our money, but more importantly, how we choose not to spend our money.  This made me think that I should start donating to a good cause rather than buying so many clothes (not that I’m really a clothes horse or anything, but I have way more than I need), but this gets tricky because if I started to save more money, I’d probably want to put it into savings for our house fund or for our future security.  I would probably do that before I donated to an organization regularly.  It’s selfish, but I really think that’s what I would choose.  It makes it seem uglier when I have to compare clothes/savings/security with a life.  Hmm.

Good flick.  Now rent it! 

The past two days have been really busy and full of good things.  Monday, first thing, I went to the grocery store and it was really nice to be able to fill up my refrigerator again after not having spent a dime the past week.  I love going to the grocery store, especially when I have time to putz a little.  After I dropped the groceries off and had some lunch at home, I went in search of a few items we’ve been needing around the house (kitchen rugs and a welcome sign).  My first stop was to Kohl’s.  I’m not all the fond of Kohl’s, really, but while I was there something odd happened.  I walked past the shoes and spotted a pair of cheap mary janes that, were I still teaching, I would have bought for school.  It was something about the dull lighting, the familiar racks, and the smell of the fake leather that transported me back to my old life as a teacher in Cincinnati.  I almost started to cry.  I’ve been emotional lately and I’m not sure why.  I think I remember feeling this way a little bit last year too.  It’s just about the time of year that I would be going back to my classroom to get things set up, unpack the supplies the team ordered, and try to remember what copies I needed for the first day of school.  I know I’ve said that I probably won’t teach kids again, but right now at this moment, I really really miss it.  I like kids and I’m a good teacher.  And, wow, I really miss the camaraderie that only a team of teachers can have as they plow through a school year making tough decisions, laughing, crying, getting to school early to prepare for a field trip, staying late for conferences and generally making a difference.  Teacher friends are the best kind.  Who would have thought that the smell of cheap shoes could take me there?

When I got home from shopping, Dan and I decided to grab a bite and see a movie.  We went to Northstar and then to see the movie Dinner for Schmucks.  I’m usually not a huge fan of comedy, but this movie was pretty funny.  I won’t ruin anything for you, but the animal artist guy was my favorite character.  He cracked me up.  When we got home from the movie, I realized that the Bachelorette finale was on, which sent me into a 3 hour black hole of television watching.  Why do I love that show?  And for the record, I think she made the right choice, even though I think she’s a jerk for sending Chris home.

This morning, Dan and I got up early to do some work at our old favorite coffee shop Stauf’s.  It was nice, even if Dan was disappointed that they have a different wheat bagel (the nerve).  I did some school work and even bumped into a school friend.  We came home for lunch and then I worked some more on resubmitting my article that had recently been rejected AGAIN.  And, listen to this, I have the whole thing formatted, all of my attachments in order, and I’m about to hit the submit button when I get an email.  A while back I had submitted this very same article as a proposal for a chapter in a book on cyberfeminism.  This was around Christmas and I hadn’t heard back and figured that my article wasn’t good enough for a chapter.  But, just at that moment I get an email from the woman that is editing the book that they are on the verge of receiving a contract and that she will need our final chapters by November 1.  The email was sent to a group of people and I really thought I received it in error, but she had attached the table of contents to the email, so I opened it just to be sure and guess what?  There I am as the author of the first chapter!  I mean, it was because it was in alphabetical order, but I’ll take it.  So, I’m feeling kind of good even if it isn’t 100% certain at this point.  And, it makes me feel like all of those rejections were for a reason.  Yay for a reason!

Ahh.  So, then I had so much crazy energy after receiving that news that my 6.5 mile run in the blistering heat of the afternoon was my fastest in months.  But, just to summarize… one day I’m missing teaching and about to cry, the next I’m getting a chapter published in a book and feeling really good about being a doctoral student.  The only conclusion I can draw at this point is that I’m a gemini.  So, yeah, astrology makes me feel like it all makes sense.  Just for fun, I looked up my horoscope for today and here’s the first line:

Finally, Gemini, you’ll be able to breathe a long overdue sigh of relief.

Yesterday was busy.  I spent all day at science curriculum meetings helping to develop model curriculum for the state.  It was sort of tiresome and I’m not sure how helpful it will be in the long run, but it was good to be thinking about something besides exams and it was nice to hang out with some teachers.  Teachers are usually either funny or happy and mostly socially adept, a welcome change from academia.

Today I was on my own.  I had a nice leisurely run this morning (and it was in the 60s!).  Then, I read a good book (The Namesake, finally!  Thanks, Beth!) on the porch.  I even snuck in some academic work I had been putting off… put together a proposal for Bergamo (one of the conferences I loved last year) and resubmitted a formerly rejected article to a different journal.  I’m hoping that both of these turn out well, but if it has been anything like the past, my conference proposals get accepted too often for my taste (as they involve a presentation) and the journal article gets rejected.  Oh well, now I just wait.

This evening, I made myself some kale and rice soup and burned my wrist with steam.  Have you ever heard that steam burns are worse than regular ones?  I have and it sure hurts worse than the burn that I gave myself last week trying to catch the curling iron.  You might call me careless, but I prefer fearless.    Tonight I plan on reading a little more and maybe watching some solo telly.  Tomorrow I go back in the office for the first time in 4.5 weeks.  Wow, time flies.

This blog post is a dud, ain’t it?  Publish!

I kind of don’t want to say it out loud because it makes me too nervous… but, I guess I’m done with my exams.  I revised my final question today and I feel pretty good about it.  At this point, my advisor told me to take a couple weeks off and then revisit each question once more before sending it to the printers (literally, I have to bind all four questions and make four copies for my committee).  I don’t know.  I don’t feel excited yet.  Maybe it’s because I still have to do a final revision.  Maybe it’s because I don’t defend my questions to my committee until October 6.  Either way, I have around 20 pages for each question and I get a reprieve.  I was even able to spend some time this afternoon cleaning out my closet!  It was nice to do some manual labor for a change.  As I was doing it, I was dreaming of my days waiting tables at Menches.  I was a good waitress and running around a restaurant for 8 hours sounds kinda nice after spending 8 hours a day for the past four weeks on my butt hunched over in front of a computer screen.  Mom, are there any openings? 

I sat on the porch all morning today, reading.  I’ve been sitting on the porch so much that I’m starting to see the same people and they are starting to get friendly.  My writer neighbor and I now regularly say hello (although I still haven’t asked him what he writes).  Our groundskeeper Sonya is always doing something in the morning.  Usually, she’s moving around the sprinkler, but today, she was dragging a giant trashcan around picking up the litter that people like to throw from their windows on Summit.  She’s friendly (even though she was a person of interest in the Zoe case) and she always says hi.  There are also a few regular dog walkers that say hello.  And lately, I’ve been saying hello to a lady that walks pretty often while pushing her daughter in a stroller.  This morning, though, she said, “No laptop today, huh?!”  Which was true.  I was just reading today.  “Yep!” I said.  How observant.  Then on her way back she said, “How do you concentrate out here with all these cars driving by?!”  (She kind of yells).  And I said, “I like sitting out here, it keeps me awake.  I fall asleep reading inside.”  “Oh, I gotcha!”  she said back with a big smile and just kept walking.  I like people.  They’re funny.

Anyway, 21 pages down today on my final exam question!  Just revisions for the next two days and then a few weeks off until more revisions!  This is very anticlimactic, but it’s still good.

Today was a really good day.  I did some serious revising and I’m really liking the way that question 3 has shaped up.  I worked most of the morning on the porch until the heat drove me inside.  Then, this afternoon Dan and I walked to a coffee shop and finished up there.  The revising was tiring, so I didn’t make dinner, instead we rewarded ourselves with some Northstar burgers!  Yum.