Geeky Mom

That’s my house. Or at least how it feels despite all the organization I’ve done. The amount of stuff coming in and needing to go out is astounding. Seriously. Mail, papers from school all needs to be processed. Garbage, donatations, recycling all need to be taken somewhere. Everywhere I look, there seems to be more stuff to deal with. Ugh. I’m trying very hard not to panic about it. I knew it was going to take a while. I’m just trying not to let it slide into complete chaos. Listening to “Jesusland” by Ben Folds. That’s helping. Funny how music does that.

I was trying to plan a trip up to NYC to meet up with my dad who’s going to be there for a few days, but it’s not going to work. I had planned to go Sunday afternoon, spend the night and come back Monday, but then I remembered a search committee meeting on Monday morning. Damn. Plus Mr. Geeky wasn’t going to get to go and he really wanted to.

I’m also a little behind on the work for the class. I’m caught up with grading, even managing to do some midterm evaluations, but I’m about 100 pages away from finishing Six Degrees. I just don’t think it’s going to happen tonight. It’s 9:30 already and I really wanted to get in some writing. And I’m so not good at staying up really late. Besides, we’ll only get to the first half tomorrow anyway. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. Sheesh.

My schedule is so packed this week too. There’s barely any breathing room. I guess I’m in sprint mode now. When is winter break again?

I actually have about four millions things on my mind, none of which will cohere into a post, so let’s do some bullets, like others I know.

• Working on an article, wonder if I’ll get it finished this week. How much more outside stuff do I need?
• Need to formulate something to talk to my boss about. Must be in coherent sentences.
• Reading Six Degrees; lost a little in the science, but actually find the whole concept fascinating, and a little scary. It seems that a lot of the things that we try to “fix”–poverty, getting more women in CEO positions–are affected by this theory. It makes sense and it seems hard to reverse. Hopefully, I’ll have more on this later.
• GTD is progressing, though the living room has stagnated a bit.
• Supposed to meet with the personal trainer again tonight, but thinking of moving him to tomorrow because I need to go to a talk. Yep, think I’ll do that; don’t want to be rushed.
• Let me note for the record that I do about 80% of the housework around here. Or at least it feels that way right now. My cleaning woman does 10%. My son does 5%. Yeah, you get the picture.
• The above being said, Mr. Geeky does 60-70% of the childcare.
• Writing is going swimmingly, just swimmingly. Took last night off, but have been writing every night this week. Page accumulation is slow because I’m doing a lot of revising, but it’s coming. I’m working on two projects at once which is nice. When I run out of things to write about one, I switch to the other. I’m generally only writing an hour a night, though at least one night, I was on a roll and wrote for two. When I get stuck, I push a little bit, but generally, I just leave it for the next day. Seems to be working. Feeling pretty good about it.
• Time for a shower and getting kids ready for school and me for work.
• Maybe I’ll be more coherent later.

You really should read this story about Maryam Namazie. It does a lot to illuminate the many issues we face in dealing with religious fundamentalists in the Middle East and here. It’s a slippery slope from multiculturalism to allowing women to be beaten.

We have our Vietnam, we have something akin to Watergate, and we saw tension among the races during the hurricane. Now we need a full-blown race riot. Toledo got one. The riot was set off by a planned march of the Nazi party, who had supposedly come to Toledo to support a white man who was having a dispute with a black neighbor. Interestingly, though the articles about the riots mention that the Nazi party’s primary platform is that whites are genetically superior, there’s not much mention of additional racial tensions that might exist in the area. Is “gangs” now a code word for African Americans?

I’m about 40-50% done with the living room. One thing about working on your house vs. at the office is the increased amount of stuff. At the office, I was dealing just with my stuff. Here, there are four of us. And man, do we have a lot of stuff. Right now, I’m looking at a huge pile of board games and I got a huge inspiration for where to put them. That involves cleaning out a big cupboard. And I have plans to clean out a closet and a bureau. So, I have my afternoon cut out for me.

I’ll have to take a pause to meet with my personal trainer. Truly, I’m becoming a soccer mom. The gym I joined offers three free sessions and since it’s been forever since I’ve belonged to a gym or worked out in general, I thought it would be a good idea. I’m also having groceries delivered today! Thanks, Michelle.

Life is falling into place.

gtd

I’m not generally a big fan of dolls as toys for girls. To me, they promote too many gender steretypes. Needless to say, we have thousands of Barbies and even more baby dolls. Our most recent acquisition was soccer Barbie (sent by my mother in law). At least Barbie is the coach, even if she’s dressed all in pink. Sigh.

Still, it seems silly that the AFA is planning to boycott the American Girl line of dolls because a portion of its proceeds from the sale of one particular doll are going to Girls, Inc. Girls, Inc. generally serves an underprivileged community and promotes such things as access to birth control and help with issues of sexual orientation. The president of the company, Joyce Roche stated that “Girls, Inc. takes positions on public policy issues if it believes women’s rights and opportunities are at stake. ‘Our philosophy is that women should have the right to make decisions about themselves.’ Yeah, that’s pretty much my philosophy, too. Might have to go make a donation, or . . . buy another freaking doll.

So I’ve decided I’m done working for today. It was great to work at home. I got a lot done. I even managed to work on a draft of an article I had put aside a while back. I’ve been listening to the iPod all day (is this bad for the ears?). Went through highest ranked, then a college collection. Now it’s on general shuffle.

So here’s what we’ve got:

“See it in your eyes” Abie Hoffman & the B-Goes
“Thick-Necked Man” Crash Test Dummies
“The Consort” Rufus Wainwright
“14 Shades of Green” Chris Stamey
“The Perfect Girl” The Cure
“Now” Edie Brikell & The New Bohemians
“The Wind Blew all Around” Mary Lou Lord
“Piece of my Heart” Janis Joplin
“Don’t Let Me Down” The Beatles
“I Still Do” The Cranberries

An interesting mix.

Know what’s so perfect about this? I’ve always said that when I turn 40, I’m dying my hair purple.

Your Hair Should Be Purple

Intense, thoughtful, and unconventional. You’re always philosophizing and inspiring others with your insights.

As seen at Divided Attention

I have been up so late all week–and working so much–that I have made an executive decision to work from home. I am actually going to work, and I might do a few things around the house, but right now I’m still in my pj’s and will leisurely drink my coffee before taking a shower. My colleagues are all out, either on vacation or headed to Educause. I’m not a big fan of the main Educause conference. It’s big and corporate and its focus is not on teaching and learning. I’m actually presenting at the regional conference in January, which is small, and has more of a teaching/learning focus and you get to meet people nearby whom you might actually be able to work with.

Oddly, most of the people I work with, I met through this here blog (or the other one). Maybe I should give up going into the office and just blog.

Remember when I mentioned all that writing I had done? Well, I pieced everything together, and I have 26 pages. My little counter on here way, way down at the bottom says 26 pages. That’s from August. I did so much cutting that I pretty much ended up where I started. I had little sections that I had written that I decided not to include. Of course I did really start a whole new project. And that’s five pages. Revision is hard. But I’m on to some new sections now. Hopefully I’ll get some done this weekend.