Geeky Mom

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That’s how many words per day I have to write to make it to 50,000 words. Totally doable. Do you know how many pages 27,000 words is? Well, I didn’t, because I was writing in a text file that doesn’t paginate. It’s over 100 pages. Do you know that I have never in my entire life written more than 100 pages? It’s true. The longest two things I’ve written were 1) my master’s thesis at around 80 pages and 2) the start of another novel, also around 80 pages. 80 pages was my wall. Now I’m past it. Maybe. My motto is “show, don’t tell.” Because that takes more words.

I know academia isn’t known for its luxurious office spaces, especially for support staff, but my office has been especially crappy of late. When I first started here, I had my own office. Then, because of some staff shakeups, I was asked if I minded vacating my office to make room for a newly minted manager-type. I said sure. They put me in a room with the sysadmins, in a cubicle. Then construction on the building next to us invaded our space and so we all moved up to another, smaller, space, supposedly temporary, at least for me. Finally, they carved out new space from the prevously construction-invaded space and to make the best of things, we named the space the ETC, or Educational Technology Center.

All was good for a while. Then the fumes started. And the noise. Well, right now at this very moment, I can hear a very loud conversation from the office next door (the wall is quite thin; this happens quite often) and banging, drilling and other construction noises. It is nearly impossible to concentrate under these conditions. I’ve been listening to my iPod for the last 6 months or so and didn’t notice all this. Today, I forgot to bring it. I don’t see how anyone without headphones can get any work done.

Obviously, I’m not.

Not much to say this morning. I’m sliding into Thanksgiving. We’ll be traveling by car this year. I like long car rides. There’s something fun about not knowing exactly what’s going to happen, where you’re going to stop. Even though the route is familiar, there are so many things that could happen–the traffic, finding a different restaurant, noticing something you didn’t notice before. And you get to talk to your family or listen to a book you’ve been meaning to listen to.

Going to my dad’s is usually fun, but part of me wants to stay home out of laziness. Plus, my kids told me they really liked my cooking. I don’t hear that too often. I’ll probably cook something at my dad’s but I can’t step on my stepmother’s toes too much even though she really hates cooking. And that’s really the only downside to going there. Thanksgiving will be the only meal that’s prepared. Which is okay.

I pretty much finished the plot of the novel at 27,000-ish. Which means I have some things to fill in. I got one idea this morning, but over the next week, I’ll be going over the whole thing and adding lots and lots of crap.

All I have to say is that I’m glad this is a short week.

Words and things to do. I hit 25,000 last night. That’s the good news. The bad news is I think the novel will be over before I hit 50,000. Which means I might be going back through it and adding stuff to hit the 50,000 mark. I’m hoping to squeeze in a long session at Starbucks today.

The house is falling apart at the seams. Laundry is everywhere–clean, dirty, and somewhere in between. And we’re going out of town on Tuesday, for which we’ll need clean clothes. The kids rooms are catastrophe areas. This morning, I realized that we have a birthday party to go to at noon, for which we don’t have a present yet, so we’ll be rushing over to the store right before and then to the skating rink. Gah. Then there’s basketball practice right after.

Yesterday, we went to see Harry Potter. Then Mr. Geeky locked the keys in the car. In the five years we’ve owned the car, we’ve never done that. Thank God for AAA.

It’s amazing how quickly one’s life gets filled with the nitpicky details and complications of just making it through the day.

On Monday morning, Mr. Geeky and I were riding to work together and he says, “You know, I think you could finish your degree.” He went on to explain how, mainly by switching topics and advisors. He also promised to do laundry. So I emailed a friend of mine back at my home institution and she said, “No, you’re not crazy. Besides, you could write the dissertation in your sleep at this point; you’ve done so much work in this area.” So I called my potential advisor. He didn’t think I was crazy either. So it looks like it might happen. There are some practical considerations that might prevent it from happening. I have to get special dispensation from my department (not a problem at all) and the graduate school (potentially more problematic, but not impossible). So there is still a chance that something could prevent me from doing this on that front.

When I was attempting to finish my degree before, I really didn’t have my heart in it. I didn’t like my topic. I had been kind of pushed into it–mostly peer pressure. I also felt a lot of pressure to make the dissertation really good since I needed that work to get me a faculty position. Now, I have no desire to get a faculty position. I’m really doing this for myself. What a difference that makes.

The Movie Of Your Life Is An Indie Flick

You do things your own way – and it’s made for colorful times. Your life hasn’t turned out how anyone expected, thank goodness! Your best movie matches: Clerks, Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite

via APL

It hasn’t been a particularly tough week. Slow, actually, which might be worse. I’ve been tinkering with a few things, but haven’t had enough blocks of time to fully concentrate on anything. I’ve been trying to schedule an appointment with someone. We were supposed to meet Monday. First she cancelled and rescheduled. Then I had to reschedule. Then she rescheduled again. Finally, she emailed me and said, “I completely forgot what I had wanted to meet with you about. Let’s reschedule for next week.” Sort of sums up my week.

Plus, I’ve been staying up really, really late every night. I have been writing. I’m only up to 22,000 words. I will write again tonight and then I plan to spend a few hours at Starbucks this weekend. I should probably try to make it to at least 30,000 or so by Monday. Ugh. I can always write in the car on the way to my dad’s for Thanksgiving. Yeah, that’ll work.

Last year at this time, I was dreading visiting my mother. I’m thankful I’m not doing that this year.

I’m working on some potential life-changing things and I think that has me up in arms as well. As soon as I can let everyone in on them, I will. Also, it seems everyone around me is working on life-changing things. Kind of stressful, really.

Mr. Geeky and I spent a romantic evening in bed reading PZ’s takedown of Scott Adams’ ID vs. Evolution rant. Adams’ response to PZ is even scarier than the original, if that’s possible. He’s written even more, which I skimmed this morning, but it looks just as bad. I was reading the response out loud to Mr. Geeky (no, it was not a Bull Durham moment!). We both said, “Oh my God, he’s like our students.” He’s like our students in two ways (and students, if you’re reading this, don’t be offended; these are common mistakes for beginning writers, acceptible for freshman, not for supposedly intelligent grownups). First, he takes a source, the ID folks apparently (though he doesn’t cite them really) and uses their argument to argue the other side. When he gets called on it, he claims he was misinterpreted and hey, aren’t ID people a credible source? As PZ and many other scientists told him, “No, they aren’t and here’s why.” But he refused to accept that.

The other way he was like our students is his vehement response. Instead of addressing the actual arguments, he falls into a “I’m just right and you are wrong and besides, you’re mean” stance. Not effective at all.

Sadly, my respect for Adams has fallen. I think PZ’s response should have been a badly drawn cartoon to show that he’s as good a cartoonist as Adams is a scientist.

This post has me truly baffled. Adams says:

Mr. Geeky called me yesterday and said, I’m reading some woman’s blog about “The Last Abortion Clinic” and she says that it was her idea to watch the show. When he got home, he said, I don’t remember anyone treating you badly. Your reality is a little skewed.

Well, of course it is. I fully realize my version of events is just that, my version. It’s filled with interpretation, misperceptions, and sometimes, embellishment. To me, it’s perfectly real and truthful. If I felt scorned by some faculty, whether that was my misinterpretation or their real scorn makes little difference. I don’t hold a grudge or anything. I’m merely describing how I felt at the time. Anyway, if I asked them whether they were looking down on me because I didn’t have a Ph.D. or because I was a faculty spouse, would they admit to that? In most cases, I think the disdain was subtle and unconscious. I also freely admit that my own feelings of inadequacy might have played into my interpretation of events, but those feelings might have just made me more sensitive to certain signals.

It reminds me of something Bitch, Ph.D. wrote about a long time ago. Maybe she’ll dredge it up for us. She wrote about how women experience sexism differently than men. Men may not perceive something as sexist when women do. I remember the comment thread on this got very heated. Lots of women were saying, yeah, I feel like I experience things differently and some were saying they weren’t sure that was fair and some men were throwing up their hands and some were saying absolutely, women experience the world differently. It’s tough to decide how much you privilege individual experience of the world because, of course, each one of us brings a different background to everything we do. When you think about it, it’s amazing we communicate at all.

I actually welcome the differences. I find it fascinating when someone’s experience of something–even the exact same event–is different from mine. When we discuss why we interpret signals and language in different ways, sometimes we come up with a completely different view of things. I think the frustration in the Bitch, Ph.D. thread had to do mainly with some people not listening to others’ experiences. Some were saying, no you don’t experience the world differently from me. I see a lot of that in a lot of areas right now, all the way up to the top of our administration. Doesn’t it seem a little bit like that, like the administration thinks everyone experiences everything the same? Sure, people are different, but they still want freedom, they still can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, etc. Recognizing that you can’t know someone else’s experience is the first step to trying to understand it.

Nano writing is slowing down a bit. I made it over 20,000 today, but in theory, I should be at 25,000 by now. I’m not that worried. I still haven’t made it to the scene that will write itself. Almost there. It’s not that I’m tired of it. It’s just that there’s more going on, more things I have to keep in mind as I’m writing: where I’ve been, where I’m going. In the beginning, it’s an open road and lots of directions to go in. Now the road has narrowed and there are twists and turns that you have to keep an eye out for. I just hope I don’t run into a dead end or worse, go over the edge of a cliff.