Lit. Theory and a Hair Cut, Two Bits.

I went to get my haircut today. And because I'm not terribly picky about who cuts my hair, I usually end up with someone new almost every time. This time it was a very nice woman who I had never met before. And when I told her what I wanted her to do, she said, "Okay... Are you sure?"

This is the point where I started to get a little nervous.

Really, I'm not too adventuresome about too many things, especially something as semi-permanent as a haircut and especially this week, for reasons that I'll share some other time. But I wasn't sure what I wanted, and I was thinking about eventually trying something similar to what she was suggesting, so I decided to listen to her. It wasn't until we started discussing the movie No Country for Old Men and she correctly used the word "protagonist" that I started to relax a little. And then she asked me about what themes I had noticed in the movie. And we talked about some of Cormac McCarthy's other books and the themes in those books and the relationships between this movie and the books. I have to say that it was all sort of surreal, not your usual Salon smalltalk chitchat of the "How's you're day going?" and "Are you originally from here?" variety.

And my hair looks pretty good too. :)

No, I'm just a lesser deity.

So two nights ago, Jen and I are watching "Ghost Hunters," as we do most Wednesday nights, and my phone rings at about 9:45, or so, our time--near midnight for our friends and family in the Midwest and so a very odd time for my phone to ring.

I answered the phone, and it was a woman who asked in a voice full of awe, "Is this God?"

Since I'm not God, I simply said, "no, this isn't."

To which she bitterly replied, "I must have the wrong number," and hung up.

I am not making this up. Some lady from Colorado Springs thinks that God has a cell phone in Central Washington and is randomly calling people to find it.

Now if I was a little quicker and a little meaner, I might have made a joke or two: "God's not in right now, can I take a message?" "Speak, child." or any number of comments dripping with sarcasm. Unfortunately, I was so shocked that I dropped the ball.

But I've learned from this experience. The next time someone calls asking for God, I'll be ready with, "Which God are we talking about? Oh, no, I'm just a lesser deity." or "He hates to be disturbed while he's smiting the wicked. Can you call back?"

On Stevens Pass

Jen and I drove to Bellevue (on the west side) this weekend. The drive is never fun this time of year, especially at night. But I always forget how incredibly beautiful it is. On our way home, Jen and I decided to take "Stevens Pass," U.S. Highway 2, instead of "Snoqualmie Pass," I-90, and "Blewett Pass," U.S. 97. It was actually a clear day, and as we drove east, you could see the snow-capped mountains in front of us.

Trees, mossy from Northwest rains, lined the roadway near the bottom, and the further we got from the city, the more the road would wind and the closer the trees and sheered rock walls would press in. In places, the road would run alongside a river just beginning to swell with snow melt. And as we drove up into Cascades, the snow got deeper and deeper, until we were driving through a ploughed out trough, near the summit. There were walls of snow at least six feet high on both sides of the road. What an awesome experience it is to drive these roads--though being a passenger, taking curves at 60 miles an hour, staring down over the guardrail into an icy river, can put a damper on the experience.

Succotash Sunday

A bit of everything's on my mind today. It's all up there mashed together, like a neuron stew. So let's pop the top and dig in, Indiana-Jones-and-the-Temple-Doom style.

Diss. stuff is going okay, I suppose. I recieved comments back from my director. We had a small chat, and I realized that I really don't know very much about how these things are generally structured. At least, I know the basics, but when you get right down to it, I'm not really sure what's going on, totally. Were I back in IL, I'd be able to sit in the department lounge and pull out 6 or 7 dissertations at random to see what they look like. However, I'm not there, which makes my job just a little more difficult.

And so when I talked to my director he had to sit down with me and say things like, chapter one sets up your problem; chapter two is a review of literature; chapter three is your methodology; etc. You have to admit that this information is some basic stuff that I should've known. And so the drafts that I sent over were not doing the jobs that they should have. They were more of a hodge podge of ideas, things that should have been given a little more direction and should have been split up into more than two chapters.

I do have a plan now for my next submissions. And of course that's a good thing. Next step, I guess, is to work on it. I should have a pretty big block of time next weekend. We're going to a volleyball tournament in Bellevue (over by Seattle). That means a quiet hotel room and nothing to do for like 5 or 6 hours. Plus, the 'burbs means decent bookstores, where I might find some helpful stuff. Besides your used bookstore chock full of Daniel Steele, Stephen King, James Patterson and the works, all we have here is a Hastings, a store where the "religion" section carries 90-95 percent Christian books, Bibles, etc. with the Koran and the Torah thrown in for good measure and the "philosophy" section contains books on Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and so on. I find that just a little wierd, as if Christianity is "Religion" all of these other things are "just philosophies."

Found out today that my little bro., Alex, set a date for his wedding. Did I tell you all that he was engaged? It happened over Christmas. Cute story, actually, though I'm not going to tell it. Don't know if you remember him; pretty much my twin but three years younger. He's getting married on Sept. 27 to an absolute cutie-pie sweetheart. And I'm the best man. I was really happy to hear that. I'm really hoping that Jen and I are back in the Midwest by then, but we haven't heard anything definitive.

Been interviewing, with a few prospects, but nothing has panned out. A colleague of mine says that she's surprised. I am too, a little. She's kind of summed up my thinking on the matter, when she says that I have the experience and the education, that I'm pleasant to get along with, and that for these reasons I should be a competetive candidate. It just makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong in the way that I'm presenting myself. It's very a frustrating and humbling process--especially when you apply for a position that seems perfect for you and you don't even receive a response, not even a rejection letter. What are these places looking for? Who is getting these jobs? What's going on in the mind of search committees when they look at my application materials?

I'm also a little worried about my mom, who slipped and fell on a cruise back in January and is still undergoing physical therapy. It looks like it's going to take quite a bit more time too. She tore her ACL, and she's had some other complications related to her treatment. It's been almost two months, and she's still immobilized. Jen and I are really wondering why and are a little annoyed at how the whole situation is being handled by her doctors. It's pretty frustrating, especially being out here, where it takes 5 hours and just under a grand for us to travel home, which is pretty much the reason that we're looking to move back. So my mom is worried that she won't be able to do much at Al's wedding; she pictures herself going down the aisle in a kneebrace and a walker, which shouldn't even be an issue based on her injury because of how far away the wedding is, but it is an issue because of how it's being handled and so it's just a big mess. Sigh. What are you going to do, though, right? Grin and bear it? Get angry? None of it does any good anyway.

Working with a student who plagiarized last quarter... I'm letting her rewrite the essay she plagiarized. I'm pretty sure it was unintentional plagiarism, and this will be a learning opportunity for her, hopefully. She doesn't get it. Thinks it's about adding in a few quotation marks here and there. Got angry when she saw her final grade. Well, maybe if she came to class she'd understand. It probably came as quite a shock to her when she came to my office to make arrangements for rewriting the essay, and I told her that she needed to come up with her own idea for the essay, that her thesis for the essay was someone else's idea. We'll see how things turn out.

Well, that was thoroughly depressing. :) But in a good way, I suppose.