Rotate the foodstuffs!

Yeah, so... I gave my location for that last entry as "The DMP," and then I realized that I hadn't really, you know, mentioned what the hell that is.  (This is probably related to the fact that I haven't really posted here, as such, in a few weeks.)  For a while toward the end of the school year, I'd gotten really stressed out, wondering what the hell I was going to do over the summer to convince someone to give me money for rent, utilities, food -- you know, those little unnecessary luxuries of modern life.  Right up at the end, with a lot of other stuff going on and my stress level rising, I had pretty much decided that I would just take out loans and pay myself to write over the summer.  And then, during finals week, a bolt from the blue!

I had applied, toward the end of April (I think that's when it was?) for a number of extra positions in the coming year, so that I could boost my income and maybe pay off [some of] my credit card debt and/or save for next summer (which will be, uh, lean).  I ended up getting a 25% appointment for the school year, bringing me up to three-quarter time (the maximum appointment possible for a grad student).  It didn't, however, include any summer funding, so while I was happy about the opportunity for Au/Wi/Sp, I was still nowhere for summer.

And then (here's the bolt), my boss for the upcoming year offered me a 50% (i.e. normal-for-a-graduate-student) appointment over the summer.  Yay!  So 20 hours a week I'm here in the English Department's Digital Media Project.  We're the department's in-house rich media production and pedagogical development unit.  This is actually a fancy way of saying that I sit at the front desk and check out equipment :)  Over the summer, the teachers are all pretty experienced and know how to use any tech they plan on using.  But during the school year it should be more lively in here, with various projects going on all the time.

Woot money, woot CV line.

I feel very accomplished right now.  I took pretty much the whole day off on Sunday, because it was ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS outside for the first time this season.  And then I slept pretty badly that night, so I had to come home and nap after teaching on Monday (thank God my afternoon classes were canceled that day [professor -- same one for both -- was out of town]), else I fall asleep at my desk.  And then, as naps so often do, even when necessary, the nap pretty much made me worthless for the rest of the day.  I made a delicious risi e fagioli soup with swiss chard, which I *am* proud of, but that was about it.

So I realized last night that I had about three days worth of work, and about a day to do it in.  I started in on it this morning, and the longer I worked the more I realized how incredibly fucked I was.  I mean really, royally screwed, as in neither prepared to teach nor learn tomorrow.  I was supposed to rehearse with Minstrelry tonight, but I sent them an apologetic email and put my head back down and worked more.

And here it is, a quarter after midnight, and I'm about to go to sleep.  I have graded papers, I have written a short-short story, I have written up commentary on a classmate's manuscript for baby fic, I have revised and expanded my lesson plans for tomorrow, and I have attended a planning meeting for the end of the year (yeah, I would have skipped that one, too, except I didn't realize until about 10 minutes before we started how slammed I was, and I was already sitting there doing work while other early-comers chatted around me).  I still have 12 poems I need to comment on before the undergrad workshop I'm sitting in on this quarter, but that's not until 5:30 tomorrow -- I've got three hours of freeish time sprinkled throughout the day tomorrow, and I should be able to squeeze that all in.

So I'm tired, and I'm stressed, but I also feel proud of myself for managing to keep my nose to the grindstone* all afternoon -- I'm generally not good at that kind of sustained effort.  And in the end I managed to dig myself out of my hole, so go me.

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*I nearly said 'nose to the wheel', which seems to be a conflation of 'to keep one's nose to the grindstone' and 'to keep one's shoulder to the wheel'.  I think I sort of prefer the neologism to either standard saying, but oh well.

So things here in Columbus-town are interesting, as always.  Last weekend Kevin was in town for my birthday/Mollie's birthday/Liz's move-out/why-the-hell-not, and in a surprising turn of events we ended up moving all his stuff out of the storage unit and into the apartment, thanks to the unexpected opportunity to press a friend and his rented moving van into service.  Now K's back in DC, and I'm left here with this bizarre apartment that's gotten stuck in the middle of a transition.  Which is fun.  On the other hand, Liz's old room has undergone adequate conversion into The Study, so I'm sitting in here at my desk looking out over the sunlit front lawn.  And a shirtless man wielding a wheelbarrow just jogged up the hill.  So that's something.

I should really be working right now, but I spent a little time earlier typing up the poems I've written so far for my independent study of poetic repetition, and in the process discovered that I've written more than I thought I had.  That seemed like a good enough reason to reward myself with a little break.  This, by the way, is the reason the reward system has never worked for me as a means of self-motivation: I'm too good at rewarding myself.  I think, "I'll just reward myself with a half-hour of TV after I read these two 20-page article," and if I'm being surprisingly diligent, I'll decide after the first article that it was really quite dense, and I deserve a reward now (more likely, I'll decide I deserve the reward after about half an article).

I'm trying to puzzle out my new neighbors.  I mean, there's a big PODS thing sitting on the lawn, which is currently being unloaded.  But... the apartment next door isn't really that terribly nice, as far as I can tell.  And PODS, while not super-expensive, just strike me as a slightly higher-budget solution than the next-door apartment signals.  I also can't tell who lives there (as is common, there are a lot of people helping to unpack, but it's hard to say who the actual tenant(s) are).  I'm pretty sure the guy with the puntable dog lives there, but I'm at a loss for the others, if any.  Time will tell.

Elisa and Francis got married down in Nacogdoches on the 28th, which was very nice.  They both looked fantastic, and I felt rather honored to be able to contribute my voice to their wedding.  Although they did make it hard for me by choosing the most emotionally-charged song in the American Catholic repertoire, "On Eagle's Wings," which has been sung at more weddings, funerals, and other major milestone events than I can possibly express.  Nice and easy to sing without choking up.  But yes, a lovely ceremony and reception, all done in-house: no wedding planners or caterers.  I have the memories of making countless fruit skewers to attest to this.

What else is going on... poor Jetta.  The AC died about an hour into my drive from TX to OH, which I guess really makes it "poor me."  It's in the shop right now.  Hopefully Tom (mechanic) will get back to me soon about an estimate, and hopefully said estimate will be less than astronomical... AC repairs aren't really know for their cheapness.

That's most of the news from Lake Wobegon.  And now it is off to Pistachio with the inimitable merodi_no_yami and flohchica!