Page count: 214
Yeah footnotes.
/
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
and liftoff
page count: 200
that's right -- 200.
200.
200.
200...
Of course at this point i'm not really sure whether the last ten are remotely coherent, and I have tons of editing and translating to do
...and about five of the total was a freebie when I adjusted the left margin to the regulation 1.25 inches (for binding)...
But who cares. Let me enjoy my symbolic milestone for the moment.
200!!!!!!
that's right -- 200.
200.
200.
200...
Of course at this point i'm not really sure whether the last ten are remotely coherent, and I have tons of editing and translating to do
...and about five of the total was a freebie when I adjusted the left margin to the regulation 1.25 inches (for binding)...
But who cares. Let me enjoy my symbolic milestone for the moment.
200!!!!!!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Notes from a Hermitage
Page count: 173...
...which means, need I say, that I have only 27 pages to go. That's no more than the length of a single term paper!
Monday, July 14, 2008
There and Back Again: Misadventures of a Traveler
Page Count: 162
I thought I'd travel to my aunt's house for a dissertation-writing retreat. Simple: eight-hour drive. I left 10:00 Saturday morning. Should be there by dinnertime.
Well, it's Monday afternoon, and I am now on my third day in (drum roll please) Spring Lake, NJ. Where the hell is Spring Lake, and how did I get here?
It all started when I missed the Jersey Turnpike. I'm still not sure how I did it. I was fine through Philly, though I was almost out of gas by the time I got past the city. Fixed that problem, hopped back on I-95, which should have taken me all the way through the Garden State, and beyond.
But somehow, I lost it. In fact, I don't think I ever got onto it. I was about 40 miles away from where I was supposed to have been, as it turns out, when I finally realized that I had no idea where I was. So I was trying to figure out what happened, when my engine started making this crazy, scary rattling noise. It was bad enough that I knew I needed to get off the road as soon as possible, so I took the next available exit, pulled into a gas station parking lot, and looked around. I could not have told you within a hundred miles what part of New Jersey I was in. No clue. I had to repeat this several times to passersby when I asked them where I was, because they just looked at me like I was crazy -- are you serious? How can you not know where you are? (Try it sometime. Walk up to someone and say, "Excuse me, but...where am I?" You'll get fun reactions, I promise, even if you try to phrase it in a way that sounds saner, such as "Excuse me, but what city is this?")
Eventually, with phone calls to my dad and my uncle and AAA, I figured it out, got the car towed to the closest Honda dealership, and found a hotel for the night. It was 5:00 Saturday evening when my car broke down; Honda was closing up for the day and wouldn't be able to look at it till Monday.
As it turned out, I was nowhere near I-95. In fact, I had driven east (instead of north) all the way to the coast. I was at the Jersey Shore in the Neptune City/Belmar/Spring Lake area. Saturday night I ordered pizza in my hotel room and watched Garden State, in honor of the circumstances. Sunday morning, I got some of my stuff together and started walking east. If I was going to be stranded at the Shore, I was sure as hell going to go to the beach. There was a Catholic church along the way, so I was able to go to Mass, and the beach was only four blocks more past the church.
Now, it was a long walk -- two miles or so -- but come on, it was the beach! The most fortunate thing about all of this, I think, was that of all the places along the way I could have broken down, I had taken a wrong turn and ended up at the beach. The weather yesterday was gorgeous, and although the water was too rough to swim (thanks, Tropical Storm Bertha), I was able to wade in up to my knees or so, not to mention lying in the sun (on a hastily-purchased Pirates of the Caribbean towel, decorated with a gigantic leering skull and crossbones.)
Spring Lake, may I say, is a beautiful place. I highly recommend it for summer vacations.
Anyway, after all that sun and all those miles of walking, I was about to die by the time I got back to my hotel. (No worries, I revived...after drinking two quarts of Gatorade.) This morning, Honda called me at 7:30 to tell me engine diagnostics would cost $99, to which I muttered a very sleepy okay, then got up, packed, and got ready to check out of my hotel. Finally Honda called me back with their discovery: my A/C compressor was kaput, and it was going to cost me the whole pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to fix it. Can't I just keep driving but not turn the air conditioner on? I asked. (I know nothing about engines.) No, explained Patient Honda Guy. Your car won't go if you don't fix it.
I am still not sure exactly what this mysterious compressor thingy actually is or does, except that it is a Very Important Car Part and costs Lots Of Money if you need to fix it, but what am I going to do? C'est la vie. They can't get the part until tomorrow, though, so I'm stranded here in Spring Lake for one more night. The Honda guys were very sympathetic this morning. They gave me coffee, carried my bags around for me, and got me a loaner car to use until mine is fixed. Now, I'm at the public library, blogging and working on my thesis, because I've got nowhere else to go.
I am the homeless person at the library.
St. Teresa of Avila, patroness of broken carriage wheels, pray for us.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Blue Screen of Death and Other Stories
Page Count: 159
The other night I was minding my own business, typing away at my dissertation, when all of a sudden everything died, and all that showed up on my computer was the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.
The system recovered itself, and I only lost a paragraph or so in the end. Still, it seemed ominous, and I have spent the next two days grumbling that I'm going to throw out my crappy, unreliable Dell Inspiron 640m and buy a Mac. I don't know if I'm really going to do it; I could get it with a good student discount and a free iPod touch thrown in, which is very tempting. But I'd have to buy it on my student loan money, which is something I'm reluctant to do as long as I can still squeeze life out of the old one.
As expensive writing instruments go, though...well, not all my gadgetlust is high-tech. A Mac would be fun and would have the benefit, as my friend Tom pointed out, of "looking cool at Starbucks" (he's convinced this is actually why people buy Macs, despite what they may say about reliability and function), but secretly, what I would really rather have is this:
(That's a green Smith-Corona no.4 from the 1930s.) There is something so immediate and sensual about seeing ink go onto an actual piece of paper as you type, and of course it's all the more fun if the typewriter is a beautiful vintage one like this. I also like the fact that your thought process is different writing on a typewriter than it is with MS Word -- you can't correct mistakes easily, so you think out your sentences and paragraphs more clearly in your head before you type them. I miss being able to do that -- it's been a long time since I've written anything longhand or on a typewriter, but I still remember how it felt. Granted, it would be hellish to write a dissertation on a typewriter, because of the strict formatting rules and need for footnotes -- besides the fact that it's just not allowed anymore, and rightly so. What a typewriter is perfect for, though, is the first draft of a piece of fiction or essay.
Maybe Santa will bring me one for Christmas.
The other night I was minding my own business, typing away at my dissertation, when all of a sudden everything died, and all that showed up on my computer was the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.
The system recovered itself, and I only lost a paragraph or so in the end. Still, it seemed ominous, and I have spent the next two days grumbling that I'm going to throw out my crappy, unreliable Dell Inspiron 640m and buy a Mac. I don't know if I'm really going to do it; I could get it with a good student discount and a free iPod touch thrown in, which is very tempting. But I'd have to buy it on my student loan money, which is something I'm reluctant to do as long as I can still squeeze life out of the old one.
As expensive writing instruments go, though...well, not all my gadgetlust is high-tech. A Mac would be fun and would have the benefit, as my friend Tom pointed out, of "looking cool at Starbucks" (he's convinced this is actually why people buy Macs, despite what they may say about reliability and function), but secretly, what I would really rather have is this:
(That's a green Smith-Corona no.4 from the 1930s.) There is something so immediate and sensual about seeing ink go onto an actual piece of paper as you type, and of course it's all the more fun if the typewriter is a beautiful vintage one like this. I also like the fact that your thought process is different writing on a typewriter than it is with MS Word -- you can't correct mistakes easily, so you think out your sentences and paragraphs more clearly in your head before you type them. I miss being able to do that -- it's been a long time since I've written anything longhand or on a typewriter, but I still remember how it felt. Granted, it would be hellish to write a dissertation on a typewriter, because of the strict formatting rules and need for footnotes -- besides the fact that it's just not allowed anymore, and rightly so. What a typewriter is perfect for, though, is the first draft of a piece of fiction or essay.
Maybe Santa will bring me one for Christmas.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Land of the free, home of the brave, etc.
Page count: 151 (!!)
Still working on Plato's so-called puritanism. And getting frustrated. I am trying to be very detached and scholarly, but really I just want to shout: STOP USING THAT WORD! IT MEANS NOTHING IN THIS CONTEXT! NOTHING!!! (And that's another reason why I'm not really a very good philosopher. I get upset about these things and want to yell at people rather than arguing in a constructive, logical, and dispassionate manner. Forcing myself to write philosophy and not rhetorically-charged polemics is always a challenge for me.)
On a completely unrelated topic, a cooking adventure I had last night:
One can of white kidney beans
A cup or so of diced fresh tomatoes
A cup or so of frozen okra
About 1/4 cup olive oil
Lots of chili powder
Cumin
Dried cilantro
1 or 2 tbsp medium salsa
Salt
Pepper
Sauteed onions & garlic
Ketchup (to taste)
1 tsp brown sugar
= really good vegetarian chili; just simmer it all together in a pot for a while and adjust spicing to taste. I wanted to post the recipe here because otherwise, I will definitely forget what I put in it. It might have been better with a dash of Worcestershire sauce, too, but unfortunately I didn't have any around...
Happy fourth of July, everyone! Enjoy the fireworks wherever you are.
Still working on Plato's so-called puritanism. And getting frustrated. I am trying to be very detached and scholarly, but really I just want to shout: STOP USING THAT WORD! IT MEANS NOTHING IN THIS CONTEXT! NOTHING!!! (And that's another reason why I'm not really a very good philosopher. I get upset about these things and want to yell at people rather than arguing in a constructive, logical, and dispassionate manner. Forcing myself to write philosophy and not rhetorically-charged polemics is always a challenge for me.)
On a completely unrelated topic, a cooking adventure I had last night:
One can of white kidney beans
A cup or so of diced fresh tomatoes
A cup or so of frozen okra
About 1/4 cup olive oil
Lots of chili powder
Cumin
Dried cilantro
1 or 2 tbsp medium salsa
Salt
Pepper
Sauteed onions & garlic
Ketchup (to taste)
1 tsp brown sugar
= really good vegetarian chili; just simmer it all together in a pot for a while and adjust spicing to taste. I wanted to post the recipe here because otherwise, I will definitely forget what I put in it. It might have been better with a dash of Worcestershire sauce, too, but unfortunately I didn't have any around...
Happy fourth of July, everyone! Enjoy the fireworks wherever you are.
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