Office Halloween Party–done!
Trick or Treating–done!
Laundry–done!
1984–done!
At the stroke of midnight, begin writing novel for NaNoWriMo–T minus 70 minutes.
Yes, I’m actually looking forward to staying up late enough to begin at the first possible moment. I’m truly geeky.
I haven’t really gotten into the holiday this year. I didn’t really decorate. We only got our pumpkin carved last night. Geeky Boy–already?–is less into it this year than last year. He’s wearing the same costume as last year and his biggest concern is hanging out with his friends on Halloween. Maybe next year, we can have a party.
Geeky Girl is quite excited of course. In fact, last night we dyed her hair red with some temporary dye. I wish I’d taken pictures of her in the bathtub because she looked like she was bleeding. When we rinsed, the tub was completely red. I think we could have shot our own horror flick. The results were not as red as I thought they’d be, given how red everything else looked in the process. But GG is happy with it and even Geeky Boy gave it a thumbs up.
The kids have a half day today, spending most of their time in a parade and a party. My department has a party this afternoon to which the kids are coming. And, of course, tonight they’ll be trick or treating around the neighborhood. So basically, the whole day is shot.
In years past, Mr. Geeky and I used to host a big Halloween party that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. Alas, for now those days are over. I went as Frankenbarbie one year. Mr. Geeky went as wolf man and one year, devil with a blue dress. The year he met my dad, he was dressed as a vampire in a peach leisure suit. I don’t know what that was about. In middle school one year, I dressed as a mafia guy–pin-striped suit, fedora, machine gun–and I won a contest. I’ve also dressed as a Rockefeller (fake fur, fake jewelry, lots of makeup), a housewife (curlers, bathrobe, pillows in interesting places), a gypsy, and a ghost. My favorite costume had to be the mafia guy. It was just fun dressing as a guy at a time when most girls would never do that. What was your favorite costume?
So here’s the results of my closet project. Nothing lifts the spirits like a more organized closet.
And below that are all the clothes I’m getting rid of. Mr. Geeky was quite the sport and got rid of a bunch of shirts!
I have been in a weird state of mind for a couple of months now. It’s not depressed exactly. It’s kind of anxious, frustrated. It’s almost anticipatory. I don’t know. And I know even less why I feel the need to share this with the internets, except that it might make me feel better to do so.
I have always been overly analytical. My first boyfriend in college chastised me for this once, saying, “Can’t you do or say anything without analyzing it?” Um, no, not really. I know it drives people crazy, most of all, me. I do sometimes wish I could just experience life without thinking about it. And there are fleeting moments when that happens, but they’re pretty short.
Anyway, I think there are a lot of global and local factors feeding into my current state. I am honestly deeply disturbed by what is going on with our administration. If you think back to this time last year, we were all anticipating the election, hoping beyond all hope that we’d see a change of leadership. I keep wondering what else they’re hiding. I feel beaten down by their policies. I feel hopeless about the future. I worry about my children’s future. Seriously. Though I try desperately to put thoughts about peak oil, global warming, and avian bird flu away where I can’t see them, I still find that they’re there, nagging at me. And I feel that the administration is only making those things worse.
Slightly more locally, my department is going through some difficult times. Most of it doesn’t affect me directly, but I still feel unnerved by it. I’m just feeling very uncertain about the direction we’re headed. That’s all I can say about that.
Even more locally, as I indicated yesterday, I’m kind of feeling the need to runaway. It’s not that there’s anything wrong. I just feel kind of overwhelmed by my responsibilities as wife and mom. Sometimes it just sucks to be the one who keeps track of the house and kids. Even if I don’t do the laundry or the dishes, I still feel like I’m the one thinking, “The laundry needs to be done” and no one else is. I’m not sure how to deal with this. I thought the GTD thing would be good, but it’s going to take months for that process to be complete on a household level. In the meantime, it’s one step forward, two steps back. Geeky Girl, at least, has taken to putting her paperwork from school in my inbox–which is just too darned cute. But still, I don’t know how you organize things on the one hand and do basic upkeep on the other. It’s not like I want the perfectly clean house, but I’m holding all this stuff in my head–the clothes, the clutter on the table, everything–and that’s not a good thing.
I’m holding out for the holidays, I guess. Can I hire a therapist and just give them the url for my blog? That seems more expedient right now.
Pretty funny. Are they trying to tell me something? This one via profgrrrrl
| You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy) |
 You’re a great thinker and a true philosopher. You’d make a talented professor or writer. |
And don’t tell Mr. Geeky. 
Quite frankly, they didn’t really have good answers for someone already in a relationship, so I kind of chose answers at random.
| Your Ideal Relationship is Polyamory |
 You want to have your cake… and everyone else’s. Which isn’t a bad thing, if everyone else gets to eat too! You’re too much of a free spirit to be tied down by a traditional relationship. You think relationships should be open and free, with few restrictions. |
Because I don’t have anything coherent to say, I will resort, as many others have, to Bullets of Random Craptm:
Increasingly, I am actually doing what I was hired to do. That might seem odd, but in my field, it’s easy to get sucked into doing related, but unproductive work. Let me explain. I’m a techie. As a techie, I know how to do lots of techie things–from html coding to video editing to using an email client. I am not, however, technical support. But that’s what many people see me as. And by technical support, I mean the person you call when something breaks. We have a fairly large staff to handle that and yet, I still frequently get the “my email won’t work and I know you’re not the person to call, but . . .” Let’s face facts, I’m a pretty nice person and I like helping people. But helping people with these trivial things wasn’t doing me or them any favors. It took me away from working on projects, developing something, reading or writing something. And it allowed them to not learn how to use some very basic software. So I started saying, “I don’t know. Look it up.” That’s what I do with my kids, my students, why not with faculty and staff.
For the most part, this has worked. After all, it was often true that I really didn’t know the answer. I don’t know all the ins and outs of email clients, browsers, word processors and the like. Some of the help desk people do, because they’ve seen it all. Yesterday, I did two things that really fall into the realm of what I think is an effective use of my time. First, I went over to help a faculty member with her professional and departmental web site. She had put together a couple of different layouts and we talked about layout, color schemes, appropriate content, etc. In other words, higher level kinds of issues related to web design, exactly the kind of issues I’m equipped to deal with. It was a really productive session that didn’t involve a lot of “go to ‘File’, ‘Save’, click here” stuff. Second, I got email from a department chair wanting some information sessions for their department. Again, she focused on higher level issues. She wanted to cover possibilities of using technology and appropriateness in different situations rather than covering how a specific application worked. Again, exactly within my realm of what I should be doing.
Even though I often hold workshops that do cover specific applications, I don’t enjoy them and they don’t seem effective. Everyone is at a different level and there’s never enough time to cover everything everyone needs. People leave a little dissatisfied and tend to forget everything you taught them. I would much rather introduce them to a concept or idea and then if they decide to use it, I come to them to help. This is what I did with tablet pcs and screencasting and it worked. We’re doing a session on podcasting today. I’m much better at being a consultant than a trainer. And really, that’s what I should be doing and I’m thrilled that people are taking advantage of those skills. I hope to do more and put myself out there more. For example, once I have more time (after teaching this semester!), I plan to stop by people’s offices and ask if there’s anything I can do for them. I’m working on a regional conference that I hope people will participate in. And I’m working on a few other things that I think will be beneficial to the community. It’s hard work, but it’s much more fun and rewarding than helping someone with email.
Suzanne Freyjadis-Chuberka, director of the women’s gaming conference, chastised the gaming industry publications for marketing primarily to men. She especially criticized their use of overt sexuality in marketing. I don’t consider myself an avid gamer, but I have always enjoyed video games and there has been, historically, a male aura around them. From the days when I used to play Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Galaga, and Defender (and beat the boys!) to playing Lara Croft, Sims, Civilization, and Quake, there has been this sense that games are not for girls. The boys got so mad at me for beating them. Once, I was on an all-female Quake team and beat the pants off of a group of 16-year-old boys. They couldn’t believe it. Oh, and we’d modded our bodies to “look” female.
The gaming industry magazine editors responded. Most of their responses are along the lines of, “We’re trying; give us a break.” But one, from the editor of Play, really struck a negative chord with me. The thing is is he makes these assumptions about how to market to women. He assumes that marketing to women would involve the projection of sexy men onto their pages (as opposed to sexy women). Here’s what he says about the variety of characters and what he thinks might appeal to women:
There are plenty of gaming genres and characters to meet every taste… Wallace and Gromit, Blinx, Chicken Little, Batman Begins—I could go on and on—have nothing to do with sexuality (save maybe female gamers ogling Christian Bale). Gaming has always been about variety… it has always been about fun—a past time for any and all to partake. Our female editor for instance came up playing Ghost’s ‘n’ Goblins, Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda etc…all great games with attractive and or heroic male leads. Does that make them “objects”? I think not.
Can we get this man some feminist theory, please? I can’t speak for all women, but how about some female leads who aren’t scantily clad sex kittens with swords? I mean, if I want to dress my character up that way, fine, but let me have the option.
He even suggests that “sexing-up” advertising is good.
There’s nothing wrong with the proliferation of the healthy physique in advertising. In fact, I believe most Americans are for it. This marketing doesn’t claim that being less then perfect is undesirable, it’s just simple logic: certain people are more pleasing to the eye and so they make for great marketing tools. We should market a game with a sexy female (or male) lead with chubby folks? I would infer that Mrs. Freyjadis-Chuberka is anti-sexuality, which puts her in a very small minority in this country.
Um, anti-sexuality? She’s not saying use chubby folks. More realistic, less male-fantasy oriented. And female fantasy is not necessarily scantily-clad men. If you would ask the market about what they want, you might be surprised by what you find out. But you go on living in your fantasy world, where you’re dominated by a sexy sword-wielding broad. Let’s just hope she doesn’t chop your balls off.
For the last few days, I’ve been listening to music through last.fm. I’ve been using them for a while, mostly to post the little list over in the sidebar of what I’m listening to. And I have listened to the radio thingy through them before. But the last few days, I’ve discovered the joy of entering in several artists I like and then they generate a radio station with songs by other people I might like. I’ve discovered Elliot Smith and Rilo Kiley. I’m sure some of you cooler people out there will think I’m a loser, but hey, I don’t have teenagers yet to point me to good music. Scrivener got me onto to Iron and Wine. After that, I’ve been on my own. Now I wish I had tons of money to plop down on new music.
Over the weekend, Ancarett pointed to a Salon article about the increase in homework for kids in the younger grades. Given that I mention homework a few times here, I wanted to weigh in . . . again.
We’re getting better on the homework front. I do think that it is important for Geeky Boy (and now, Geeky Girl) to learn time management and personal responsibility. But I’m tired of the argument that homework somehow helps students learn. The Salon article points out that this is definitely not the case for most students in the elementary grades. And the homework amount is definitely geared toward the concept of having a parent at home during those couple of hours after school lets out. If this is not the case (as it is for us), it makes getting that 1-2 hours of homework done very difficult. We get home at 6:00. We then eat dinner, usually around 6:30 or 7:00. It’s often 7:30 or 8:00 before Geeky Boy can start his homework. That means, it’s often at least 9:00 before he’s done. Yes, he could do it during after care, but he doesn’t. He prefers to take a break and I don’t blame him. Plus, he often has questions about his homework and it’s more comfortable for him to ask us rather than the aftercare teachers. That also means that our evenings are not relaxing–for any of us.
You know, I was at a meeting last week and we were talking about the way we’re all trying to do “more with less.” I’m done with that. There’s no reason we should work ourselves to death. And I think all this homework does is reinforce the idea that we’re only on this planet to “be productive.” Balance, people, balance. If we really want to have closer families, better citizens, even more productive citizens, we would strive for more balance. Work would not take up 10-12 hours of our day. There would be more down time. We shouldn’t have to do more with less. We should just do less.
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