28 August 2008¶ Progress Report for 8/28
Exciting new development: written on the very same day in which said work was performed!
Scholastic Pursuits:
- Major reorganization of my Jesuit educational drama paper. New words: probably about 300. But I did a bunch of rethinking about the flow (and hence the argument) of the paper. There are still sections that I can’t bear to read right now, which is a problem because I need to just muscle my way through and be done with the beast.
- Typed up a bunch of stuff that I’d written by hand. You know: pencils and paper and all that. Not included in the word count because it wasn’t written today, just typed today. But it did go into the draft (above).
- Nothing else of note, alas.
Non-scholastic Pursuits:
- I watched all of The Addams Family today while I typed up those handwritten sections. Yes, one with Angelica Huston. No, I can’t really explain why.
- Spent multiple hours trying to resolve issues in the lives of people over whom I have a stewardship. People who complain about how difficult it is to be a Mormon aren’t thinking of this kind of work, but they should. I don’t begrudge the work — in fact, I am proud of it and glad to do it — but it does take a sometimes gigantic chunk of a day. Today: super gigantic. Worthwhile, but super-gigantic.
- Temple
- Viciously headed a bunch of prickly weeds growing in my lawn whilst talking on the phone (see super-gigantic labor above). Multitasking!
- Did not shave, and thus felt really stupid in the temple.
Also, I didn’t post one for yesterday because I didn’t write one up for yesterday and, well, I missed. I’m sorry. I’ll try to avoid it in the future. I’m sure you spent most of the day wondering about what happened in my life on Wednesday, thereby decreasing your productivity and costing untold sums to the American economy. We all know that our economy is such that we can’t afford those kinds of distractions, and I resolve to avoid causing these problems in the future.
I accept full responsibility for the weak dollar. And for the price of oil. And for the war. Wars. And NAFTA which drove all the jobs (all of them!) to Mexico and from there to China. I accept responsibility for China. I accept responsibility for the Cultural Revolution. Pol Pot? My fault. As was Stalin. Not Hitler, though. I’m not touching him; he is Germany’s fault. Everything else is Germany’s fault.
Back to my Wednesday. The most notable thing about Wednesday (just to relieve any remaining tension) was to kinda finish watching Firefly. We’re only through with disc 3 of the complete series, and I’m waiting for the library to deliver disc 4, so we can finish-finish, officially. I’ve got Serenity on order, too (praise be public libraries!), just to be sure I don’t miss anything. After watching Dr. Horrible multiple times, I decided I wanted to see other stuff that Joss Whedon (Wheton?) had written/produced, and Firefly seemed like it was a manageable size. Turns out to be a fun genre-blend, worth 40-mins a night for a couple of weeks. I’m not sure I’m interested in Buffy yet. Maybe when I get desperate to fill a TV-sized hole in my life will I turn to Buffy. Until then, I’ll satisfy myself with, oh I dunno, reading for my exams?
27 August 2008¶ Progress Report for 8/26
Scholarly Pursuits:
- Actually finished Wyatt for now. Turns out I like Wyatt a lot more than I remember.
- Did as much of Surrey as I can stand. I don’t dislike him, just find him less interesting than just about everyone else. I guess he has the benefit of pioneering the 4-4-4-2 sonnet, but I think that’s just the less sophisticated version that takes the subtlety of Petrarchan turn and reduces it down to a punch line, er, punch couplet. Still, Shakesp did pretty well with the form, so I guess I should thank Surrey for that. Plus, Surrey died young, and that always helps a poet’s career. Too late for me, I guess.
- I did just a wee bit of Sidney — and I still struggle to find Astrophil and Stella nearly as cool as I do, say, Shakespeare’s or Wroth’s sequences. C’mon, “Look to thy heart and write”: was there ever a time when a person could read this without rolling their eyes1?
- Jesuit paper. Ahem. Words: 0.
Non-scholarly Pursuits:
- Made some “very useful” playlists.
- Watched Black Beauty with the little boys. Was surprised to hear the horse’s voice provided by Alan Cumming. Kinda creepy, that.
- Some time-consuming but important elders quorum stuff.
NOTES:
1 Am I just a heartless, unpoetic soul? I know it’s a traditional move, but it’s still cheesy.
26 August 2008¶ Progress Report for 8/25
Scholarly Pursuits1:
- On my paper on Jesuit educational drama2 I made very, very little progress. Mostly administrative. Words: 0.
- On my prep for my quals, I mostly finished Wyatt and have some nice notes to review.
- I submitted the one remaining student’s grade that I’d procrastinated for a couple of weeks. I struggled with this one: should I smack her for unintentional (I give her the benefit of a doubt) plagiarism, or should I teach her a lesson?
- I solicited and received some nice input (from a few people) on the syllabus for the course I’m teaching this Autumn. Luckily, the term doesn’t begin until late September3.
- I returned three books, very begrudgingly, to the library, including one I need for my Jesuit paper4. OhioLink is a wonder, but the strictly-enforced renewal limit is sometimes painful.
Non-scholarly Pursuits:
- I’m not going to bother reporting this. But I did a lot of stuff around the house.
NOTES:
1 I’ve decided I need some public accountability on my progress, especially since I don’t have the benefit of courses to guide my efforts. I know that only a few of you ever read this blog, but one of you is my mother, and thus some transparency in my progress might provide some necessary motivation.
2 This is a paper that just won’t die. It is the final thing for my coursework, for a class that ended months ago. I was sick at the end of the term and took an Incomplete, and now, lacking a firm deadline, the paper is an absolute mess. It’s grown to twice its original (nearly complete at the time) length and has changed its argument half a dozen times. Right now, it has no reasonable argument. It’s simply a mess of notes and observations and prematurely aborted theses without any central organizing idea. An unqualified mess.
I find that Jesuit educational drama is both interesting and infuriating. I like the untrodden ground I get to tread, but working without a safety net of other scholars is pretty intimidating. I want to shoot ideas off people, but there’s no one to talk to really (except Allison Shell, but I’ve never met her). It is about as unsexy as early modern English literature gets: it’s not even in English! I take refuge in the fact that (these particular plays) were written by Englishmen, or rather one Englishman.
My plan is to get this paper out of the way as quickly as I can (ha ha) so I can focus exclusively on my exam prep (and my teaching and my family and my responsibilities at church which are not inconsiderable and my health). Right now, Simons’ plays take up too much of my brain; they block my view of everything else. I wish at least that I had a way of working them into my dissertation but it looks like a (for now) dead end. Someday I’ll polish up my completed (from my mouth to God’s ears!) paper and submit it for publication. For now I just need to submit it to Chris Highley.
Chris, if you stumble across here: I’m sorry.
3 There are only a few benefits to the quarter system, but a late start to Fall quarter is one of them.
4 The other two were the new collected works and companion to the collected works of Thomas Middleton. If anyone is feeling unjustifiably generous, those would make a wonderful gift. For me, I mean.
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26 August 2008¶ Website: a final apology (for now)
If you subscribe to the feed for 12 Easy Pieces, you’ve seen some ugly stuff, like posts being repeated three times (and lame posts at that). I was trying to get my Twitter posts integrated into this site and, obviously, it didn’t work as I’d hoped. So I’m dropping the quest. I you want to read my (occasional though thankfully short) twitter posts, my username there is “jeffreywindsor.” Creative, yes.
23 August 2008
Cough until you heave, get dizzy, fall down. Stand up, wobble, repeat. That’s what I do.
23 August 2008¶ Website funkiness
I apologize for any funkiness that’s occurring on the site or especially with the feed. I’m trying to get everything fixed and I’m trying to work my Twitter posts and Google Reader shares automagically into this site, but it’s kicking my butt.
Thanks for your patience; everything should be resolved (and working faster!) soon.
18 August 2008
Shared by Jeffrey Windsor
Golly, I think I might need to purchase one of these. Right? It might be downright irresponsible to NOT buy one.
The price per-pixel of flat-screen computer display…
16 August 2008¶ Money update: success!
We just got back from our trip out west and I have here an envelope from Google with a check for $104. I feel that I have accomplished something mighty: it’s the first actual cash I’ve seen from my writing ever.
Funny that this slop should be worth anything.
Now I need to decide what to do with all this cash? Dinner, perhaps?
30 July 2008
"I deceived my friends, and I had millions of them"
It hasn’t made much of a blip in the news cycle, but Charles Van Doren, the onetime Columbia professor notorious for having cheated on the 1950s quiz show Twenty-One, has broken his…
25 July 2008
This toilet seat’s plastic hinges are equipped with seat anchors that allow the seat to be removed for toilet cleaning. A simple twist of two locking knobs and the seat lifts off; reversing the…
24 July 2008Dumb drugs
24 July 2008Sleeptracker Pro
23 July 2008First time for everything
9 July 2008Google Docs, an appreciation
3 July 2008Lost and --
30 June 2008Money update
27 June 2008People in your neighborhood
26 June 2008Make Money on the Web
25 June 2008Writing on the bus
25 June 2008Macs and the Church
24 June 2008Paradise Lost in Three Easy Lines
23 June 2008Security Garbage
21 June 2008Heaven? Heavens.
15 June 2008Happy Father's Day
4 June 2008On Allergies
In which I whine about my head, because it’s Spring and apparently that’s what I do.