Blog Archives

Well, here I am back from the brink of fall-semester-induced insanity.  I dearly wished to have kept up with the blog more actively, but it is unfortunately one of those things I’ve had to include lately in the complex time/energy equation of daily life. I hope to get things freshened up in a bit in the next couple weeks, design-wise, and to try and jam out a few miscellaneous update posts, and if I get really froggy I might even be able to pick up the threads on a couple of half-finished drafts!  Won’t that be exciting…in a reheated-leftovers-kind-of-way!

So basically I thought I’d just try to capture some short-ish snippets from my current stream of consciousness, but be warned there is little organizational rhyme or reason.

Fall sucked. I tried not to be tedious here and whine-blog ad nauseum about my academic woes, but I gotta say, this fall was a ringer.  I may have been a little more emotionally balanced than past semesters, but the two classes I took were incredibly demanding on my time and patience.  After putting it off for two years, I had to take another class from the she-devil, that whorish instructor that nearly made me quit the program way back in my second semester.  I’m pleased to report that (obviously) my stubborn persistence was more viable than her stupidity, but the consequence was having to take another class from her.  It was every bit as obnoxious as I expected, but forewarned is forearmed. Or some shit like that.

I’m so fatigued. I presume this is not a unique phenomenon for any grad student but I am definitely feeling the drain of this academic adventure.  I am lately beginning to look at the tally book to evaluate whether the trade-offs, financially, emotionally, logistically…will be worth it.  I do value the experience and the opportunity, blah blah blah, but still.  When viewed in scope with the rest of my life, I am just really fatigued right now…intellectually, emotionally, physically.  It is sort of a numb feeling at times and I think some days it causes me to coast through other life-minutiae to which I should be paying more attention. Sigh. And ironically this causes my insomnia to flare up, so here I am blogging at 5 o clock in the morning.

One semester to go. Yes this is very exciting, but I am also currently experiencing a lot of trepidation and anxiety because I don’t have a handle yet on what the hell I’m going to do for my capstone applied project.  I’ve been saying that for well over 6 months, with a sort of blind hope that I’d be struck with an academic epiphany (yes, this does happen to me sometimes), but as yet, I haven’t been able to dial in the picture with any clarity.  I’m planning to do some serious thinking, and maybe some serious drinking, and then maybe some serious thinking-drinking over the next couple vacation weeks. The failsafe plan is to BS something or other that is doable but perhaps not anything in which I’m really personally or professionally invested.  Less than ideal, but it offers an escape hatch from grad school, and ideally, I can pick up the threads of more-invested research projects a bit further down the career road.

Merry Christmas. This has been truly a less-than-engaged holiday season for me.  I have been so drained that it’s been difficult to summon the mental energy for anything other than the basics for the sake of the little genius. Minimal decorating, minimal shopping, minimal excitement, minimal everything. We decided to stay home this year for Christmas morning, but I am a little bummed that Gmom, Uncle Bubba & co. won’t be joining us. Instead we will be packing up and heading to their place later in the day for Christmas dinner and to spend a couple days in the (hopefully) snowy northern reaches. So we’ll still get to spend some time together, but no Christmas morning follies and famous Gmom cinnamon rolls.  The thing I am most looking forward to is a lovely Christmas eve feast that FF, kiddo and I are planning to cook together.  I really wish it were possible to enjoy such a thing with all my siblings and their families too, but it is simply impossible to gather everyone for Christmas anymore.  I wish it were important to them in the same way it is important to me, but I guess that is part of growing up and away from one’s immediate family.

Our little monkey

Little genius is 5. We did a combo-birthday extravaganza with K2 and it was a really fun, happy day. We rented one of those moon bounce inflatable things and everyone had a great time. They went with a Tangled (Rapunzel) theme, and we happened to also see the movie the same weekend, which reminds me…I’ll have to whip up another post one of these days regarding my reaction to such a weird Disney movie.  Moving on. Recent kiddo developments:

• New antagonistic/argumentative/dramatic behavior swings.  Um hello, where did THAT come from? It’s crazy and I haven’t figured out how the hell to respond to all that yet.  Ugh.
• Yesterday she discovered her first loose tooth! This is exciting and yet it makes me feel a little nervous and anxious…which is kind of strange, but there you go. Hopefully this first baby tooth experience goes smoothly with a minimum of drama, and the tooth fairy comes through with some good loot.
• She was pretending to be a mommy giraffe the other day with 2 babies and couldn’t recall the word “nipples”. She called them “piffles”, and both FF and I nearly wet ourselves trying to hold back the hysterical laughter.
• This spring will be her last semester of preschool, and then it will be on to Kindergarten. Still makes me want to go somewhere and cry a little.
• This spring she is switching from the regular gymnastics class to a combo dance/gym class.  Because my kid? she wants to DANCE! I think this is going to be a lot of fun for her (and us).
• We are going to get her started with soccer at our local Y sometime in the next couple months and she is very excited, yet anxious about “not winning games” and thus being ineligible to receive trophies.  Uhh? I didn’t even TRY to explain the concept of non-competitive soccer yet.  Will definitely cross that bridge when we get there.
• She randomly had a freak-out the other night around 4am when she came into our room to sleep, because she noticed while getting in bed that the fuzzy blanket caused a couple static sparks. You would have thought the kid was about to get hit by lightning.  She was so wigged out that even after 30 minutes of patient (sleepy) discussion, she still wouldn’t stop sitting on her pillow plastered against the wall, cringing away from the dreaded, death-ray blanket.  She simply couldn’t be reasoned with and she chose to go back to her own bedroom to sleep, rather than risk electrocution by killer blanket. Oddly by the next day, she was over this phobia and all was well again for her with our bedroom.  WTF?
• She recently volunteered herself to help out with a project at my office, in which we needed a child to “star” in a brief educational video on measuring height of pediatric patients.  She was willing to do this as long as we all promised NO shots or needles.  Pretty pragmatic negotiator, if you ask me. Anyway, it went well and she was quite cooperative but halfway through production, a renegade spider appeared in the clinic room and she refused to commence acting until the media techs disposed of the offending vermin. That’s my girl!

I finally got to watch season 6 of LOST. I always wanted to watch the show but never connected with it during actual broadcast seasons, so I decided to make it my summer entertainment project, and consumed the first 5 seasons in short order.  But due to various time constraints and Netflix availability issues, I did not get to start season 6 until last week.  I gotta say, I tried to avoid a lot of the media/fan commentary since May so as to not spoil the ending but I was generally aware of a lot of fan heat following the finale.  After impartially watching the season 6 episodes, I have to say I found them to be really confusing and lacking a lot of the little touches that captivated me in earlier seasons.  And then…the finale. I had high hopes to get some questions answered and to generally just not be pissed off.  On the one hand, it seemed pretty anticlimactic, and there were more unresolved issues than you can shake a stick at, but on the other hand, awwwww, who doesn’t love reunions!  Still, I think it was pretty weak for a story that had so much magnificent potential, creatively-speaking, and such a strong cast. So I guess that leaves me thoroughly irritated, if not exactly pissed, and still kind of mourning what could have been but able to make peace with the way they closed it.  I read one critical analysis which suggested that the weirdness might be easier to take if one viewed the final season storyline separately from the other 5, and I think there is something to that notion.  For the record, I’m still totally in love with Des, and I’d certainly play footsie with Sayid as a reasonable second.

Before this gets any longer. So much for “shortish” stream of consciousness! This final bit is a multimedia box of holiday cheer…the few things that have actually brought a little Christmas spirit my way lately.

1. Baby it’s cold outside – Martina McBride/overdubbed Dean Martin version.  how is it that I didn’t hear this particular version until a couple weeks ago? Definitely the best I’ve heard and deliciously retro-glamorous! Just listen to that smooth, sexy Dean-voice surrounded by big sultry brass, and McBride’s crystalline, expressive voice playing along.  Brilliant!
2. I have to watch the Christmas Can-Can every year by Straight No Chaser because it’s just damn funny. 
3. Amazing light shows created by hobbyist dude in Utah.  Really incredible and worth a few minutes of exploring on his website.  Here is a sample:

*but I’m more burnt out than a flaming piece of toast.