Miscellany

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on July 2, 2008
in Cheese Sandwich, Paedagogy and Television
. 0 Comments

My plagiarizing student seems, as many others have seemed before, to be unaware of the fact that faculty also have access to the internet.  In fact, most of us are better at using it then they are.  S/he also seems to be sadly delusional. That’s all I’ll say on that subject (for now).

Despite dealing with that ugly situation, I have managed to turn in grades for my class, and am happy as ever to be well shut of it.  Now, on to research and writing.

The real news today, though, is that I have a lot of poorly expressed opinions about dance to give, and I’m seeking opinons about what my newest TV addiction should be.  Go and opine, why dontcha!

Tapered Pants, the Fruits of Evil

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on June 30, 2008
in Cheese Sandwich and Style
. 1 Comment

The plagiarism situation is seriously, like, stressing me out, dudes, but I can’t post anything about it for the moment.  I’m sure it will make an amusing story at some point in the future, however.

Which reminds me!  I had this ridiculously crazy and entertaining story last year which I refrained from writing here, and it occurs to me that now I can tell you all about it.  Not just now, though, because I am up late, drinking wine, watching America’s Best Dance Crew, and making sure that the play-fighting between the dachshund and the chihuahua doesn’t escalate into real fighting.  As such, I am equipped for light updates at best.

In that vein, I have finally caved.  You know what I’m talking about, right?  I have a lifelong (or at least a decade-long) aversion to short pants of any type: shorts, capris, pedal pushers, cropped trousers, etc.  I just do not do them.  I have been heard to proclaim, loudly and on many occasions, that any person over the age of 12 should not be wearing shorts or short pants.

Well, I finally had to buy some. It is fucking HOT down here, y’all, as I believe I have mentioned on many an occasion.  A few weeks ago, my friend B. and I took the dogs to the park on a get-acquainted mission, and I found myself rolling my jeans up to the knee just to get some relief from the horribly steamy air. At that point, I figured I may as well buy some pants that wouldn’t require such rolling measures.  I mean, in these conditions, it is only practical, right?

I tried to buy some on oldnavy.com, but they all wound up being longer and more tapered than the website had led me to believe, and I had to return them.  I didn’t want anything longer than knee length (few things are less flattering than pants or skirts that cut your leg off mid-calf, unless, of course, you like looking stumpy!) and I cannot deal with tapering, people, I just CANNOT.

[Incidentally there is some insaaaaane krumping happening on ABDC right now.]

Anyway, the tapered pants: not happening on the Vague figure.  They’re good for a stick-thin person who wants to create the illusion of having more curves than they really do, but on a person already well-equipped in curvature, they can be very unflattering.

All I managed to find in the various stores I frequent — both online and brick-and-mortar — were of the tapered variety.  I had spotted one pair of straighter-legged ones on gap.com, but the next day they were sold out.  Of course.

Anyway, I finally had success today!  And do you know where?  THE MEN’S DEPARTMENT.  Oh yes, that’s right.  I am wearing short pants designed for a dude.  And I am rocking them.  Maybe the pants are disappointed, since they expected to be encasing a dude’s equipment and now they’re confronted with mine.  Nonetheless, they seem resigned to their new and unexpected task, i.e. cradling my butt cheeks like a sleeping baby, all the while leaving my knees free in the breeze.  With no goddamned evil tapering.

I had forgotten how much better the men’s department can sometimes be.  Back in Zembla, I always used to go clothes-shopping with my friend Suomichris (a dude, who is very fashionable!), and we’d always peruse the ladies department for me and the men’s for him (duh), and when I got frustrated with, say, the prevalence of shrugs [OOPS IT'S A SHRUG] in the women’s sweater section, I could always find an equivalent, non-shrug sweater in the men’s.  Granted, a sweater from the men’s section might bag out a little in the waist, because if a woman buys one, she has to buy it to fit the boobs, and then the waist will be too big.  Still, cool sweaters, hoodies, and such can be had there.

I usually don’t look at the men’s pants and shorts these days, but back in high school and college, I clothed my lower half almost exclusively in men’s Levi 501s from the thrift store.  I can’t believe I have been looking for non-tapered short pants for this long and only now thought to check the men’s section. The day they start tapering men’s pants (again) it will be time for us all to just start running around town clad in garbage bags, because all hope will finally, truly, be lost.

Apparently, They Have a 7:00 a.m. on Saturdays, Too.

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on June 28, 2008
in Academia, Cheese Sandwich and Paedagogy
. 8 Comments

I am sitting in my classroom right this very minute, watching my students take their final exam.  The summer session class is finally over — all but for the grading.  It has gone, unpredictably, very very well.  Maybe it is something about summer classes that make the students either more amenable to working harder, or maybe the students who sign up for classes over the summer are just over-achievers.  Either way, I just graded possibly the best batch of essays I have ever had.  Like, new-and-refreshing-takes-on-my-favorite-novel good.  Like there-were-multiple-A-plusses good.  Good good.  Shocking, and quite lovely.

Unfortunately, I caught a plagiarizer, so I’ll have to deal with that, but, you know: ups and downs, strikes and gutters.

Despite all the good good stuff that went on in the classroom over the last several weeks, I am quite happy for it to be over.  It’s been mentally exhausting.  It’s not just the sheer number of hours spent in the classroom (although that is a factor), but it’s the intensity of compressing a 16-week course into five weeks.  It’s the necessity of moving on to the next text, the next movement, the next genre; of moving inexorably forward every single day with no time to reflect or revisit.  That and all the grading, of course.  I am ready for a break.

For a while there, though, it seemed like I wasn’t going to get one.  There was the possibility of my picking up another summer-session class (to start this coming Monday, good glaven!), and teaching for the rest of the summer.  It would have been a great boon for my tired, whimpering bank account, let me tell you.  On the other hand, I have plenty of research planned for the summer: two articles need to be submitted for publication, and I need to start writing (or at least thinking about writing) two conference papers that I’ll be too busy to work on once fall semester starts.  Oh yeah, and I have to update my job dossier so I can get my ass into a position (metaphorical ass, metaphorical position) with the possibility of tenure (not to mention more big fat Hamiltons).  I have a lot of work cut out for me, and the free time I’ll have for it without taking on a second class will be crucial to my success.  Frankly, I couldn’t imagine how I could jump into another intensive summer session like the one I just had and still eke out any time for writing, let alone the kind of time I will realistically need.

I’m trying to look at the positives here:  plenty of writing time!  Although, of course, without the additonal income, I will likely be subsisting on ramen noodles and hot dogs for most of August.  The struggle and general discontentment will fuel my creativity, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, come on, economic stimulus check!

In other news, I have more major excitement coming up.  I have hired myself out as a dog sitter for my friend who’ll be out of the country for two weeks.  I’ll be taking care of her aging black lab and obnoxious chihuahua.  Actually, I love both of her dogs, so I’m looking forward to spending plenty of time lounging around her house, playing with the dogs, and watching her cable.  Uh, after my writing for the day is done, of course.  My own dog is a fan of her little chihuahua, but hates all dogs larger than he is, and is terrified of the labrador.  My goal for the time will be to make them into friends.  Let’s hope my dog doesn’t manage to piss off the normally docile labrador, because she could take off his head with one slobbery bite.  Gripping, isn’t it?

Ugh, my students still have 90 minutes left on the final, and I just know at least one of them will take all that time.  I should have brought a book.

So, anyway, are you doing anything exciting this summer?

Less Bitching, More Twitching!

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on June 25, 2008
in Cheese Sandwich, Film and Television
. 2 Comments

Good evening to you, dudes and ladies of the internet!  It has been a long, stupid, sweaty day here in New Wye, but it is finishing on a good note.  Let me just tell you how it started, though, just for fun, before I get to the pleasant parts:

First off, may I mention that my alarm clock is exhibiting some seriously psychotic tendencies of late?  Sometimes, when I am up at night reading in bed, I notice it switch from displaying the time to displaying the FM frequency, even though the radio is off.  Then it starts whirring and whizzing through all the frequencies, all flickering and flashing.  This happens for about 2-3 minutes, then it goes back to normal.  Then it does it again.  Weird, right?

Last week, it started fucking with me in the mornings — instead of the snooze alarm going off every 10 minutes, it started going off every ONE minute.  Basically, you have time to hit the button, lay your head back on the pillow, get comfy, and then it starts beeping all over again.  I am so out of it in the mornings, though, that I have been just letting that happen for, like, half an hour.  That’s THIRTY snoozes, in this crazy scheme!

This morning, some extra excitement was thrown in, however, by the fact that the power to my building was cut off.  (This occasionally happens in the morning, why I do not know, but I will tell you that it is one of the many reasons why our local power company is on my shit list.)  The alarm still sounded due to its battery backup, but the number display remained dark — I suppose that’s to save power.  It was impossible to see what time it was, though, as the lighted numbers are, you know, kind of necessary for the telling of the time and all.  Anyway, let me again say how out of it I am in the mornings: just completely oblivious and really more in the realm of dream than that of reality.  As such, I am easily confused.  So, despite the alarm’s going off every one minute, I still didn’t manage to get up on time.

Worse than that, the alarm clock COULD NOT BE TURNED OFF.  I hit the “off” button, not just the snooze, and it wouldn’t stop snooze-beeping EVERY ONE MINUTE!  I unplugged the damned thing, and searched all over for the battery compartment, and it STILL KEPT BEEPING EVERY MINUTE.  God, it was awful.  I wound up wrapping it in a towel and burying it in my laundry basket just so the neighbors whose place abuts my bedroom wouldn’t decide to murder me.

My friend K. was there to witness the whole spectacle, as she had come by to give me a ride to school (my car was still in the shop).  And dog, what a spectacle it was!  I was running around trying to get ready, and I had no time to shower, meaning I probably looked like hell and smelled even worse, thanks to last night’s beers and cigarettes at Pub Trivia.  Thank goodness I have a huge supply of default clothes that can be worn like a uniform on mornings that I can’t come up with anything better (trouser-jeans, black tee shirt, black cardigan, black ballet flats, in case you are wondering).

The morning was off to a disastrous start, and I spent the hour of office prep time before class knocking back advils, laying my head on the desk, and occasionally looking up words from the DFW story I had assigned.  (Dude’s got a wicked arcane vocabulary, you feel me?)  Luckily, I was free to leave campus immediately after class, if by “free to leave” I mean “only able to leave because I had decided to shirk my grading duties for yet another day.”

I walked over to the garage where my car was being repaired and picked it up, and once again, the saintly mechanic there had found the problem, which was just another fuse that needed replacing, and had fixed it for free.  I swear, that man is my future husband (despite the fact that he is so country that I literally cannot understand him — this will mean we won’t have to bother with any meaningful conversations when we are wed, and we can thus just ignore each other, me doing my things and him fixing my car and stuff).

The day continued to get better when I got home, where I lounged around in the delicious air conditioning, which was much needed after my walk to the garage, and then took a nap on the couch with the dog.  Favorite afternoon activity ever.  And do you know what else?  Tonight was another fab episode of So You Think You Can Dance, and my favorite dancer, Twitch, got to do a hip-hop number that was completely fantastic.  Excellente, I say!

Ever Reaching New Levels of Botheration

Published
by
Alfina the Vague
on June 24, 2008
in Academia, Cheese Sandwich and Paedagogy
. 0 Comments

It’s the last week of classes, except for the inevitable crush of grading that will result after the final exam.  As usual, I can’t believe the summer class went by so quickly!  They always do, though.

I may be getting the chance to teach another class during the second summer session, but I won’t find out about that for a while. (Probably not until the day before the class starts, because they just like to take a long-ass time to do anything important here, such as notify people of their teaching loads and schedules.) It would be a great, great thing, financially, but it would also take away from the time I have slated for research and writing.  We will just have to see what happens!

You don’t care about any of that, though, do you?  I bet you came here to hear me bitch about the many nettlesome things going on in my life.  Well, Reader, I would never want to let you down.

Let’s just start with the fact that my car is having a(nother) weird electrical problem and the tail lights aren’t working, which led to me getting pulled over and getting a ticket.  The ticket wasn’t for the tail lights, oh no, but for not having my insurance card.  I can get it voided, though, by bringing my insurance info down to the courthouse, which I tried to do yesterday.  Because this is New Wye, Land of All That Is Completely Ass-Backwards, the ticket was not yet “in the system,” so I couldn’t do anything about it.  No doubt it will be weeks before I can.

You know what else is “not in the system”?  My New Wye state tax return, for which I am entitled a refund.  Apparently there is a long-ass “processing time,” which I can bet would be significantly shorter if I were required to make them a payment instead of the opposite.  No, you cannot file online in this state, believe me, I tried.

Currently, I am waiting for my mechanic to call me about my car — but I don’t know if he will even be calling today or if I may have to wait until tomorrow, or indefinitely.  Judging by the way things tend to unfold in New Wye, it could be months.  It’s no use asking, since the particular brand of English spoken by said mechanic is near unintelligible to me.

I will not even get into my ongoing feuds with both UPS and the people who write the clothing descriptions on oldnavy.com, except to say that, apparently, 10:00 is “between 10:30-2:00″ and “hemline hits above knee” can be translated as “hemline hits eight inches below knee.”  It’s hot here, man.  My knees just want to be FREE.

I hope you are having a better week, dudes.