bugsii

This weekend, for me, was less a weekend, more an extension of the week.  I had a lot of work to do.  The main culprit was a midterm for my Visualizing the Curriculum class.  It was supposed to be ten pages, but when I did all I needed to do, it was more like seventeen.  And all I did was analyze the About page of two blogs!  I hope I don’t get dinged for being so far over.  I feel good about the paper, but man, it took me a long time.  Here’s the intro:

“Blogs are becoming passe.  “Everyone” has a blog.  And lots of these blogs have minimal readership, and yet, millions of people have begun blogs and many maintain them regularly.  Young girls and women seem to be particularly drawn to this medium.  Though men dominate the blogosphere with blogs related to technology topics, politics, and business, women dominate the “personal” genre of blogs (Nowson & Oberlander) and tend to make use of the social components of blogs more than their male counterparts (Pederson & Macafee).  The medium of a blog is essentially an online space.  Women and girls are engaging with this space in ways that could have implications for critical media literacy and education broadly defined.  I have conducted a study of the ways in which four female doctoral students have engaged with blogs in different ways.  In this article, I use semiotics and deconstruction to take a critical look at the “About” pages of these bloggers as one way to understand the ways in which these women represent their subjectivity in this medium as a part of learning their identities.”

Saturday was basically filled with reading, writing and running (I had my 11 miler for marathon training).  I did get a break that night to watch some UFC.  Sunday was more reading, writing and running (this time only 3 miles).  I also read an ENTIRE book yesterday.  And the “best” part is that, I read the first half, took a “beak” to finish writing my paper, came back to the book, only to find out that Foucault (the author) began the second half by basically saying, “You know all that stuff I put in the first half?  I was just kidding.  Now, here’s what I really think.”  Foucault, I don’t have time for your games.

Ah well, it’s Monday morning, I am NOT well rested and I am on my way to take Dan to the airport (he’s traveling to Arizona this week) and then I have to get myself to work.  Sigh.

This morning Dan and I slept in.  Later on, we ran some errands… recycling, dropping clothes off at Goodwill, and picking up a crochet hook.  Yeah, that’s right, I like to crochet.  And since I don’t have to read a textbook a week right now, I decided that I wanted to take it up again.  So, tonight, Dan has Ben and another friend over to play games and watch UFC.  While I watch men beat each other up, I’ll be crocheting a nice purple afghan. Grandma would be proud.

pretty purple blanket

Oh, and I have Anderson and BJ!

Today was a good day.  I got my haircut, I went shopping, and then we had Ben, Matt and the other Murphy kids over for some UFC.  While waiting for UFC to start, we ate pizza, played bananagrams, catchphrase, apples to apples and then took a walk to get ice cream.  Now, we’re all huddled in the living room watching some good fights.  I’m just glad GSP kicked some butt.  Uh oh, Lesnar just won.  Boo.

I’m so tired, gotta get some sleep.

This morning we got up relatively early and were on the road by 8:15am (but if you heard Dan crying about it, you would have thought it was 4 in the morning).  We swung by and packed Ben and Matt in the backseat with the cooler and were on our way.

Ben, the cooler, and Matt

The ride was about 8 hours and we spent a large chunk of it asking trivia questions about each other.  It was sort of like a really long, crappy facebook quiz, without facebook.  Questions included… What is your dream car (Audi SUV maybe, but no real answer)?  What is your favorite color (purple)?  What is your favorite restaurant (Northstar)?  How many kids do you want to have (at least 2)?  Who is funnier, Seth Rogan or Jonah Hill (I don’t care)?  What are your three favorite movies (Forrest Gump, The Wizard of Oz and Juno)?  What is your favorite video game of all time (Sonic the Hedgehog)?  And many many more…  We have nothing to talk about on the way home now.

The Commonwealth of Virginia

We finally made it to our hotel for the night and Dan practically ran upstairs to hook up Street Fighter on the hotel TV.   He was so giddy afterward that I thought he was going to clack his heels together.  While Ben and Dan played, Matt and I went for a swim at the tiny hotel pool, then we all headed to get some grub.  Somehow eveeyone let me take them to a cute hipster cafe that was mostly vegetarian.  It was delicious!  I had fried plantains and tempeh on strips of zucchini and sweet potato!  I love finding places like that.

The horn of plenty at Ipanema's

A moment of silence before the meal

Even though we were all stuffed, we drove to an ice cream shop (Bev’s) that Dan and I went to last year when we were in Richmond for the night.  At the time, we thought it was pretty good… but that was before Jeni’s.  Now that we know what good ice cream is, it’s hard to have anything else. Matt said he actually felt sorry for the people around here that never had the chance to try Jeni’s.  It’s a darn shame.  At least the neighborhood was cute.

West Cary St.

Now, it’s off to watch some UFC.  Rich Franklin is going to get his puny little weakling butt whooped by the gorilla monster that is Wanderlei “the Axe Murderer” Silva.

I’ve been absent for a few days, so I feel the need to catch you all up (whether or not you really want to know).

Thursday: I taught my second to last class for the quarter. On the way to class, there was way more traffic than usual and a big long line outside of the Newport Theater. So, I craned my neck around to see who was on the marquis and, who was going to be there that night? David Archuleta! That would explain why the line was 99% girls and moms. Class was good, but then I had a long drive to Cincinnati. I had to go to a conference the next day, so I decided to go stay with Dan’s parents the night before. I got into Cincinnati at about 9:30 and watched the tail end of American Idol and caught up with Dan’s parents for a little bit before bed.

Friday: The next morning, I got up early to meet my teacher friend, Beth Ray, for coffee. We chatted and then she had to go to work early for a meeting, so I went back to Dan’s parents house and got to spend the morning with Joyce and Cole! We put the date on the calendar, played a video game, played with instruments (Cole loves the harp) and even watched some GI Joe. It was fun. Then, I had to go to my conference, which was interesting and helpful. It was put on by a group that had created a Virtual Gifted and Talented program, which is pretty close to what I am working on at ODE. After that, I drove back home. Dan had tickets to the Watchmen with Ben and Matt, so I caught up on old American Idol episodes and went to bed early.

Saturday: I got up early to do my long run. It was a rest week, so I only had to do 7 miles. Then, I cleaned because today, my sister and mom and Guido (and some of the Murphy’s) are coming into town to run the Arnold 5K tomorrow. Tonight, we are going to watch the UFC fight, so I might have to post again later. Oh, and the top 50 women and men in the Arnold 5K get a MEDAL, so keep your fingers crossed for me. I think I might be able to swing it.

My friend, Bri, came up to visit this weekend. At around 11am yesterday, she called because she was stuck in her driveway in Cincinnati. The ice was still bad and she has rear-wheel drive, so she was having trouble. She said she’d call back when she was on the road. About a half an hour later, she called and told me that the remedied the situation by getting table salt from the kitchen and pouring it behind her back tires. So here she is, arriving in Columbus, salt still in hand. Ha, she’s like MacGyver!

So, then we went for a quick lunch at the North Market, where we both got Indian food and then some Jeni’s for dessert!

I was afraid we’d have a hard time parking on campus, so Matt picked us up and took us to the Wexner Center to see the Andy Warhol exhibit, which is really the reason she came up. We stayed there for about three hours. It was really interesting and bizarre. They had screens set up everywhere with his weird movies playing and signs next to them telling what they were about and how many minutes was left in the movie. One “movie” was just of the empire state building for like 8 hours and when we were watching it, it was nighttime, so all you could see was a streetlight. Weird. They also had his campbell soup cans and Marilyn Monroe pictures on the walls. Apparently he was interested in starting a TV channel before he died unexpectedly in 1987, so they had a room full of TVs with headsets and you could wander from TV to TV watching parts of his shows which were mostly about fashion and celebrities. We couldn’t take pictures in the exhibit, but there was some stuff out front, so here he is in drag and not.

Dan picked us up from the exhibit and we got some Adriatico’s pizza in preparation for fight night at our house. Dan got the UFC fight on pay-per-view, Ben, Matt and his sisters came over, we played some Encore (sweet, huh, Beth F.?) and then watched the fight. It was fun, but I was so tired that I couldn’t even write my blog last night. This morning, Bri, Dan and I headed to Northstar for some delicious breakfast and now Bri is on her way back to Cincinnati. Time flies.

I’ve decided that I should stop making lists for two reasons:
1) I feel bad when I don’t get everything on the list done.
2) I put extra things on the list and then stress out about them (even though I could just not do them).

I realize that I just made a list about not making lists and there’s irony in that, but I worked all weekend long and I didn’t quite get done what I “needed” to get done. I really wish I could stop making lists, but I have a neurotic attachment. I don’t feel like anything gets done until I cross it off the list. Do any type B’s have suggestions?

Aside from not getting things done, we did have fun last night. Dan got UFC 9,992 on pay per view and Matt’s family came over to hang out and watch. First, we had Adriatico’s pizza, then we played a good game of Scattergories, then we watched grown men beat each other up. I was really into this one, but Randy “The Natural” Couture lost and we were all sad. So, to cheer us up, we got up early the next morning and had a delicious breakfast at Northstar.

This is a really bad picture. I cut off Mr. Murphy, but you can see Greg, Matt, Megan and Tess on the one side and Dan and part of Ben’s head on the other side (Erin is actually sitting between them). Maybe it was a little too early. Oooh, look at those pancakes!