I think I have great potential to be crazy. And by great, I mean a lot. I already have some weird geeky/nerdy quirks that set me apart from normal people, and now I've realized that I obsess. I obsess, easily and with ever increasing frequency, about the smallest most insignificant things. And I can't let go... the obsession must run its natural course whether that be a day, a week, a month or a year. For example, ever since my sister brought the Rat Terrier home (we didn't keep her ONLY BECAUSE the vet in charge of her care decided she had fallen in love with the pup... so I graciously deferred) I've been obsessed with getting a puppy. I've narrowed it down to Boxers and Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.

Now, I'd like to qualify this by saying IF I were to get a puppy, it wouldn't happen until post next big move. So sometime in August. When I've settled... sort of.

ANYWAYS... the last time I felt like this, I ended up with Pretty. So in all likelihood, the chances of me actually getting a puppy are pretty high. Which would make me the a cousin of the Crazy Cat Lady known as Crazy Pet Lady as an addition of a puppy would make two cats (both vocal Siamese), two fish (both happy bubble blowing Betta's) and a puppy of either considerable size or considerable hairiness.

Build me an ark and call me Norah.

3:30 p.m., there's a knock on the door. I get up from my desk, where I was very successfully writing many, many words, and answer it. There is a strange man in a plaid shirt, paint stained pants and black framed glasses holding a red canvas bag standing at my door.

"I'm the plumber." He says. This declaration is met with much confusion on my part. The plumber had visited us yesterday to fix the apartment next door's bathroom faucet. That's right, I said the apartment next door. Apparently, access to their pipes necessitated a large one foot by one foot hole to be cut in the wall behind the head of my bed. I assumed that the duct taping of the hole after five plus hours of poking around yesterday rectified the problem. I was not happy with the fact that a hole had been cut into the wall and patched, gaudily I might add, but I was dealing with it (you couldn't see it when my bed was in place any ways).

And then the plumber came back. It's 8:30 and he's been gone for exactly 30 minutes and he STILL HAS TO COME BACK TOMORROW.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"I need to solder the pipes," sketchy plumber man informs me. I'm a little perturbed because I'm in gross writing clothes (i.e. grass green yoga pants and scruffy old Greek week shirt with, that's right folks, food spatter stains on it) and, furthermore, I'M MAKING PROGRESS ON MY THESIS. Serious progress, we're talking three pages single spaced which brings my total page count for this particular essay to 17 (out of a projected 25). I've been struggling with this essay and was in such a writing groove it was unbelievable. The memories were flowing, and I was waxing lyrical like crazy. It was a Good Writing Day. But I figure, based on my soldering experiences from high school shop class in which I actually used a soldering gun to solder, uh, whatever it was that needed soldering, that this would take maybe an hour. Tops, two hours.

Uh, no. As previously stated, the plumber man didn't leave until 8 p.m. Furthermore, after reopening the wound in my wall, he LEFT for like three hours to tool around in the other apartment... the apartment that actually possesses the busted pipes. Meanwhile, I'm stuck on the couch, losing all train of thought as I start to worry that one of the cats is gonna get sealed up in the wall (not that it would matter, as I could just rip the duct tape off).

Until the plumber knocked. I had to move my bed, and move myself away from my desk, which just killed any momentum that I had. And I didn't manage to get it back. So out of the eight hours that I had set aside to write and possibly revise, about four of it went down the shitter.

*sigh* The thesis gods are testing me.

Today I will be working hardcore on my thesis. I have forbid myself from watching T.V. (even though The Prestige sits wickedly on top of my T.V., beckoning to me with it's sweet siren song "come watch me...I'm good, I promise." I will resist), and I have turned on the radio (I work better with some sort of sound in the background). I've even cleaned off my desk--which my future brother-in-law made for me for Christmas this year--in the hopes that sitting at it will inspire me to get sh*t done. Probably not, I'll probably end up right back on the couch but at least I'll feel all official for a little bit.

I've also set a page limit that I much reach today: 25. I'm 15 pages into a non-fiction account of my life with my Indian host family (with craftily woven sub-themes of treatment of women and my own burgeoning sense of self). I have two major scenes left to write, which should take me about 10 pages. Which would bring my thesis (minimum page requirement of 100 pages) up to 78. I've mapped out three additional possibly stories, so it's a matter of taking one of those and fleshing it out for at least 15 pages and then it is all revise, revise, revise!

I so can't wait to get this thing done. I'm hoping that in the end, maybe I can publish at least one of my stories in a travel magazine, but we'll see. I think they're more literary and less magazine-y. I do need to get published though because as I was putting together curriculum vitae yesterday (the academic world's version of a fancy resume that includes things like courses taught and items published) I realized how pitiful it was. I totally wouldn't hire me based on it... which is bad, because I want to teach. I love it.

So, off to thesis!

I got this call from a good friend of mine last night. It went a little something like this:

Friend: So... I've got to ask. Are you seeing anyone?
Me: (shrieking in abject rage and frustration) You've GOT to be kidding me. Seriously, you did not just ask that.
Friend: (laughing) I know, but he's freaking out. I guess he was seeing someone who said...
Me: (interrupting, and pissed) Yeah, I know about that. You can tell him exactly what I've been telling him--I'm seeing my thesis. Seriously, he's such a WOMAN.

The person in question is this boy that I had gone on a few dates with, hung out with, and may-or-may-not-have snuggled with on a few occasions. We had "the talk" and I explicitly let him know that I was NOT looking for a boyfriend at this time, as I had a semester to finish out (both teaching wise and thesis wise) and that in all likelihood, I was moving out of state at the end of the summer and am in capable of carrying on a long distance relationship.

Translation: I just ain't that into you, buddy.

Which I thought he was fine with. On paper, this guy is pretty cool. He's thoughtful, educated, has a job and so forth. However, he started to do things that just really irked me. Like the sounds he makes when he's eating. Or the level of road rage he exhibits when driving. Or the clingy manner in which he'd whine if I said I couldn't go out--people, it was bad enough that even though I didn't have the money to go out, hadn't showered, and was running on 4 hours of interrupted sleep, I STILL went out cause he whined. Unshowered. Unmake-uped. Un-awake. It pissed the ever loving living shit out of me and was pretty much the clincher on our "budding" relationship. That and the fact that he continually called me (for like four or five days straight) saying something to the effect of "You'd tell me if you were seeing someone else, right? You wouldn't just lead me on would you? Cause I went out with this girl once who said she had to write her thesis but was actually stringing me along while she decided if she wanted to date me or not."

Dude... I'm not that girl. Furthermore, grow some balls buddy and stop acting like a pussy. I'm 28 years old, have basically told you that I'm not that into you (see the book by the sorta same title). I don't have the time. You're 32 years old. Can't you just accept that like a man, and move on? I seriously want to say to him, think about all the things that women have ever done to you that are not attractive. Now all the qualities that men say they don't like in women--the whining, the clinging, the jealousy--you're so totally doing!

So the point is this: the whining like a girl, SO not attractive. The asking my friends (even though they're our mutual friends) to dig for dirt, SO not attractive. The jealously over time spent with other boys (who I've known longer than you), so not attractive. The clingy need for me to call you every single day, SO not attractive.

Dude, stop acting like a girl.

Tags: boys

So one of my students has chosen for their research paper case text an episode of the new Doctor Who. I'm not sure how many people under the age of say, 40, have actually watched this little BBC gem in its original incarnate with Doctor Who played by British Actor Tom Baker with his funky striped scarf. I remember spending endless hours at my maternal grandparent's house enjoying this show with my Grandfather. We'd laugh and wax philosophical over the adventures of the socially inept time traveler and his robotic dog. It's one of my fondest memories of a man who said little.

Now, apparently, they've made a hip new 21st century version of the Doctor. He's very British, very geeky, and very sexy in that geeky British way. And I'm totally hooked. I watched one episode, "The Girl in the Fireplace"--the episode that my student will be using in her paper--and I'm hooked. It's totally hokey in that way that only BBC series are hokey but its still great.

You should check it out.

It's a well known fact in my family that I am a COMPLETE and TOTAL sucker for anything with padded feet, a wet nose, and whiskers. That being said, let it be known that I am DEFINITELY in trouble.

"So... you still want a puppy?" My sister asks over the phone line. I can hear what I think is a bit of smirk in her voice.

"K____, we live in an apartment. And I have cats."

"I know, but she's really cute." She pauses, waiting for me to take the bait.

*sigh* Shit. "What kind of dog is she?"

"A cute little Rat Terrier, she came in with a broken leg." She takes a deep breath, going for the gut--she knows that my heart bleeds for the unwanted and unloved. "She's not the kind of dog I'd want and no one around here can take her, but then I remembered you want a puppy."

Doh! But I resist. "K____, I have cats."

"Just saying... anyways, I'll see you later tonight." Click.

Long story short, I haven't be able to stop thinking about the puppy. I've research the Rat Terrier (they're more mild mannered and smarter than a Jack Russell terrier) and I've even poked around Rat-Terrier.com. I'm not even a small dog kind of person--I like my dogs to be able to fetch a stick of sizable girth and not some measly twig--but something about this breed (maybe their loyalty, or the goofy faces they make, or tenacity , or the extreme need to please) is just getting to me.

Seriously, could YOU resist this cute little face*? Could you?






*This is not a picture of the actual puppy in question, rather it is some adorably cute Rat Terrier I pulled off a google search... but still!

Well... March Madness is upon us. I've got a bracket up on ESPN with a bunch of grad school buddies/Team HOTT budies--mostly boys who think they're all sporty athletic and that a mere slip of a girl such as myself would never have a clue about anything that involves referees, jocks and various size and shape balls.

I've picked Florida to win. This was an interesting process that involved a little bit of selecting top ranked teams, debating whether or not a teams mascot could beat the snot out of another team's mascot if they were forced into Thunderdome (two mascots enter, one mascot leaves--see what I did there? Get it? Get it? If not, you need to watch Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome so I don't feel like such a tool), and a little bit of insider info provided by the boys at job #2. So here's hoping the Gator's win, and that my picks were solid and that I wrack up a lot of points and bragging rights.

Go Gators!

You scored as CPO Galen Tyrol. You never wanted to be a glamorous Viper pilot. You are happy knowing that without you to fix their birds, they cannot fly. You fell in love with the wrong girl, but is that so wrong? Maybe, but you don't really care.

CPO Galen Tyrol		81%
Capt. Lee Adama (Apollo)		81%
Lt. Kara Thrace (Starbuck)		75%
President Laura Roslin		63%
Col. Saul Tigh		56%
Lt. Sharon Valerii (Boomer)		50%
Number 6		38%
Commander William Adama		31%
Tom Zarek		31%
Dr Gaius Baltar		25%

What New Battlestar Galactica character are you?
created with QuizFarm.com


OK... Apparently I am both the Chief and Apollo, but the tie breaker made me the Chief. Which I don't mind, I think he's a very conflicted character with a heart of gold. Still... it would be nice to fly a Viper... although, he DID create the Blackbird... See, conflicted!

I'm having some serious problems with my writing lately. I've become very undisciplined--haven't written anything in over a month. No thesis (which I need to get moving on) no short stories, no work on the NIP (Novel In Progress)--granted, said novel is in the planning/character building stages so... yeah. I'm really frustrated with myself because I've gotten off track. I used to sit down every Monday-Wednesday-Friday from 4-roughly 6 p.m. and write, and then every Tuesday-Thursday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. But its been over a month and nothing.

In part, and I know this is just an excuse, I feel really frustrated and daunted by the whole "Getting Published" thing. Its hard... seriously hard. There's a market for "literary" fiction (i.e. literary journals) and there's an inexplicable market for poets (note: my apologies to any poets out there who read this. I like poetry, I really do, I just don't get it.). However, the genres that I dabble in--non-fiction, sci-fi/fantasy--don't have this huge market for "beginner" writers like myself. Which is odd, cause they're apparently the two most popular forms of literature consumed by the public.

I'm definitely not suffering from writer's block... more like writer's frustration. I spend a lot of time wondering if, at the age of soon-to-be-28, if this is really worth it. Do I struggle to get published for the next 10 years, or do I simply make half-hearted attempts while pursuing something more lucrative (or at least something that will pay the bills)? For example, I love teaching but I don't want to teach Freshman Comp for the rest of my life. If I want to pursue the teaching thing, I need more school (i.e. a Doctorate), in what I'm not sure--maybe Literature Studies, or Film Studies--but on the other hand, if I continue to slog through the Freshman Comp classes, work my tail off at a second job, and attempt to get published, I could teach writing workshops. Which would be awesome.

I guess the point is, I'm frustrated. And because I'm frustrated, I feel creatively blocked. I know its mental, I know I need get over it and get beyond it, but its hard. Its really, really hard to pour your heart and soul into something that is potentially never going to get recognized. But the thing is, I love it. I love it in the most irrational way possible. I love getting lost in the words and the story and the lives of the beings. I love the clack of my fingers across the keyboard when a fit of inspiration hits. Love it in ways that can't be explained. And I suppose that loving something doesn't make it any easier.


Tags: writing