Freight Train Runnin' thru the Middle of My Head

On the road again...
Once again, headed back toward Kentucky, this time Jason's parents' house in Olive Hill. We'll be going to a Cincinnati Reds game with his family. Hopefully I'll also get some hiking in at Carter Caves State Park. There should be some great picture taking opportunities there, since it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited. And Jason is going fishing with his dad. It should be a nice, slow, relaxing time. I'm a little afraid of all the heavy foods, though! Don't get me wrong, KY cooking is TASTY! But man, does it make an impression on your stomach. Jason's mom makes the best breakfast you can imagine: the best gravy I've ever tasted, biscuits, bacon, sausage, eggs, you get the picture. But you feel that stuff for about three days. We always run back to Chapel Hill and eat sushi to cleanse ourselves after a KY gorge-fest. Well, we're off. Away from the blog yet again (so sorry, my dear blog!). Have fun this weekend, everybody.

My latest and greatest treasure
Jason came back from GenCon with an amazing gift for me. Check it out: an autograph from my schoolgirl crush! And just a few days ago, I was told that I am like his current LOTR character, Sam. I'm still saying that was the best compliment ever. Isn't this cool? I'm going to put it in my office...if nothing else, it'll be a conversation starter.


Not that Sean Astin has achieved icon status, but did anybody see the travesty that was VH1's so-called "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons"? Ok, I'm sorry. Oprah is important and all that, but does she really deserve the #1 ranking?? Ahead of Elvis??? And, btw, Jim Morrison came in a paltry #171. ??????? He reeks of icon. He was born to be an icon. Bruce Willis is listed way ahead of him!! And for the record, my man Springsteen comes in at #76, which I think is a bit low as well. But I'm a bit biased.

Their list is so majorly screwed up I can't even get into it. Maybe VH1's definition of cultural icon is all screwy. At the very least, different from the one I've painstakingly poured over. But that's too involved for a blog post. For my definition of icon, all you out there in blogworld, you'll have to read my dissertation when it arrives, freshly bound, to the library. Have fun! Meanwhile, any thoughts on VH1's list? Email me!

You're a Teacher
My niece Kelsi likes to ask questions, like a lot of 6-year-old kids. She wants to know how things work, what things are made of, how things are in the world outside her own experience. Whenever I would tell her that I didn't know the answer, she would always reply, incredulously, "Yes you do. You're a teacher."

Remember when you thought teachers knew everything?

The local newspaper came around to her kindergarten class a few months ago and asked each student what they wanted to be when they grow up. Kelsi, according to the newspaper, said that she wants to be a scientist "So I can learn how to do things." She told me over the weekend that now she has decided to be a scientist and a teacher.

Going to the Chapel...
My brother's wedding went amazingly well, despite the typical Sandlin family drama and chaos that swirled all around it. I'm not a crier at weddings, but I did get a little teary. They looked so amazingly happy, which did my heart good since the adjective I would usually use to describe my brother would be "weary." But he truly glowed Saturday.

It was a cool wedding, all done on a shoestring budget. Everything was home-made, except the cake. We made invitations, programs, the flowers, prepared the reception food, the whole nine yards. So Friday night was spent working like a dog, followed by an old-fashioned slumber party just for "the girls" (me, my mom, the bride, her mom and aunt, my cousin, and all my nieces). The kids got a kick out of staying up super late--eating pizza rolls, dancing to really loud Elvis tunes, and falling asleep all together.

Saturday morning was a total zoo trying to get all the kids dressed and ready, setting things up, taking pictures, etc. The ceremony was beautiful, and afterwards we all collapsed.

Meanwhile, over the course of the weekend, my 4-year-old cousin Alex (aka Alby) became my new best friend. His older brother was gone for the weekend, so he and I got to spend lots of quality time together. Alone together on the swings, he told me his plan to grow up, move to New York, buy a blue Corvette that can fly at the touch of a button, and become a firefighter/police officer who also races cars. He also told me about his amazing recent discovery that when he moves, the sun moves with him. And when he stops, the sun stops. He's pretty sure he must have some secret power. He says the sun is his little friend. Finally, he gave me his birthday wishlist: baseball glove (black), baseball (white), baseball helmet (gray), and baseball bat (silver). Alby wouldn't let me out of his sight, and he wouldn't go outside without me. I miss him already.

Oh, and the older nieces never tired of asking me to tell them how to say things in Spanish. Their favorite was caca, a slang word equivalent to "poop." Being Aunt Betsy is exhausting business. I'm ready for some sleep.

Been busy, so sue me
Oops. Been a while. I've been stressed out a bit lately, trying to prepare for my upcoming voyage back home. I'm going to Nancy, KY tomorrow for my brother's wedding, which has meant that I've had to do a lot of pre-preparation for class, etc. Anything I would've normally done this upcoming weekend had to get pushed to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

So, blogging had to be put on hold. In the last few days, I've finished my website (finally!), written an abstract for a book essay, sent an article to a journal, written a quiz, and started writing a final exam.

I'll be away from blog-land for a while, since no one that I know in my neck of the Kentucky woods has any sort of computer, let alone internet. We live so far out that we can't even get cable or "city water." Well water and a satellite dish, that's what we have. My parents don't even have a DVD player. And I think the VCR is broken. It's a different world than here, where things are wireless and there are surround sound speakers, DVD players, game systems, PDA's, 2 TV's (there's one at home), MP3 players (my mom still has an old cabinet-style record player/stereo complete with 8-track). At home, we still sit at the table and have dinner without TV or radio. At home, evening entertainment used to be sitting on the porch in the "night air" talking and watching lightning bugs go by. It's often to hot to sit in the house; not everyone at home has AC and certainly not central air. It has changed somewhat from when I was a kid, but I remember most nights were spent this way at my grandma's house. It's a different world, a place where time seems to stand still.

A weekend full of fun
Friday started off with a wine tasting at DeGustibus in Durham with some friends. We bought a very tasty bottle of Reisling. After several small glasses of wine, we drove to one of the friend's houses for a delicious cookout. We feasted on incredible burgers and something called "Peasant's Salad" in Greek cuisine. It's a salad with no lettuce, which suited Jason just fine. We played Taboo and Fluxx, drank coffee, ate ice cream, and caught up with some great folks whom we hadn't seen in a while. In the midst of all this fun, we found out that our friend Tacia is capable of guessing "almanac" from the following clue: "It's a thing with all of these." I'm not kidding. I was also given what might be the compliment of a lifetime: I was told that I am like Samwise Gamgee. I haven't read the books (shameful, I know!), but I take it from the movies and from what I've heard that being considered a Sam is a very, very good thing.

Saturday was half-spent with sleeping (it seems), followed by Finding Nemo at Southpoint. Then CPK where we got to sit in the section of another friend who is a server there. The wild mushroom pizza is unbelievable.

Today we do laundry, start packing for trips this week, and catch up on some email. I have to write a final exam and grade some compositions. Time is flying.

Extremely sad news: Celia Cruz, the Queen of Salsa, has died of brain cancer at the age of 77.

Has anyone seen the new show on Bravo, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? The jury is still out, but I was thoroughly entertained by the episode I accidentally bumped into while channel surfing yesterday. I know, it's another makeover show, another reality show. Do we really need another one? But I'm telling you, the banter between these guys was totally funny. And it really was amazing, the transformation they did of the straight guy. Just mind boggling.

On to more academic news, the author whose work I studied in the article I just finished emailed me back today and said she really liked it. So, with her blessing giving me that extra boost of confidence, I'm sending it out next week to one of the major journals in my field. Keep your fingers crossed!

Adios
Goodbyes are hard. It is one of those things about the academic life that you have to come to terms with. People come in and flow out again so quickly. The turnstiles turn and turn, and sometimes you're just left watching them. I have seen so many people come and go...my students, fellow grad students, professors with better job offers...the list goes on and on.

I am in my 6th year here at Carolina, which means that most of my closest friends have graduated, quit, gotten jobs, gone through major familial changes, or moved on for other reasons. One more left today for a tenure-track job at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD.

Unlike so many of those who entered with me or just before me, I will be here again in the fall. Yes, I graduated too, but my journey will be a short one. Downstairs in fact: from an overcrowded TA office to that of a faculty member. I'm still here, while they have started new lives. But the hardest part, honestly, will be missing them.

One more reminder of my upcoming switch from grad student to faculty member came today. I was just asked by the Interim Chair of Romance Languages to be an undergraduate advisor. Of course I accepted. I love undergrads. I love helping them. I will be assigned 50 juniors and seniors who will come to me every semester to choose their classes. It's a daunting responsibility, but an important one and one that I will take very seriously. There's nothing worse than a bad advisor.

I just hope I don't get so chained down to my office that I can't get to the library for research. I've been missing the smell of the library. I haven't really rolled up my sleeves and dug into some reference works for a while now. I need to. It's like spa treatment for me, which I guess is why I have become an academic lifer. The library is a womb. I know it well, I am a part of it, and it a part of me. I complain about research requirements for tenure, but the naked truth is, I love the idea that one day I will get paid partially to think my thoughts and read interesting books. And to write, a dream come true.

Today in class I did one of my favorite activities of all time: collective short stories. Sometimes I call them "round robin" stories. They are used to practice narrating in the past, since Spanish has two past tenses that are used differently. The procedure: I give each group a different beginning of a story (like "It was a dark and stormy night..."). I play a bit of music while they write in their groups. When the music stops, everyone passes their story to the group on their right. They have to stop no matter where they are (even in mid-sentence!) when the music stops. The pattern continues. Each time, the groups have to read what was already written and then continue. By the end of the exercise, we have 5 crazy stories that we all wrote together. Students always love this!

As an experiment, I've also been putting my students' names into everything we've done. They have become the protagonists of our conversations, our exams, quizzes, even those collective stories we did today. I think it has given them a sense of ownership of the class, and it has definitely drawn us all closer together. We have created our own community, which makes the hard work so much more fun. I'll miss these folks when the summer is over. I can't believe I only have 8 classes left.

Time Flies...
It is still July, right? I am starting to get work-related emails again. Today's was a lengthy schedule of orientation for Graduate Teaching Fellows and faculty. It was a harsh reminder that the summer is going to come screeching to a halt sooner than I would care to admit. And there are still syllabi to write, web pages to fix, books to read, articles to send, job search materials to update and perfect. Why does my summer to-do list seem so manageable in May and so daunting in July? Happens every single year. HR forms still needing to be filled out. Books of literary theory I promised myself I would read. Upcoming conferences that accepting my abstracts for papers I haven't written yet but promised I would deliver while I'm there. Home improvement projects that I had dreamed up that haven't been planned out. And, even more sadly, lots of fun things that I planned to do that I haven't yet done! But there is still time, correct? Meanwhile, it seems that I am buying tons of gifts lately. Wedding gift for my brother, birthday gifts for my niece Kelsi, birthday gifts for a friend of mine from undergrad, still more wedding gifts for another friend, a baby gift for another friend. Needless to say, I can't wait to get my first real paycheck of the summer (soon!!!).

List of things left by the office supply fairy
Found this morning, beautifully arranged on my new desk in the Dept. of Romance Languages. All brand new and all for me! Like Christmas!
1 stapler
1 box of staples
1 packet of post-it notes (yellow)
1 blue pen
1 black pen
1 pair of big red scissors
1 box of paper clips (small)
1 paper clip holder (magnetic!)
1 roll of Scotch tape
1 small all-purpose caddy to put some of the above items in

Defying Barthes's death of the author theory
I just re-read and re-edited an article that I've written on Luz Maria Umpierre's The Margarita Poems. Before I send it to a literary journal (possibly MELUS or Letras femeninas), I've decided to send her a copy. Yes, to Umpierre herself. She and I have exchanged a few emails, and she is a close friend of a former professor of mine from Ohio University. She is also a fantastic literary critic in her own right, and so I'm thinking that she will be able to give me some good advice. It is completely nerve-wracking, though, the idea of getting feedback from the author whose very work you have picked apart, been presumptious enough to interpret, and pretended to be an "expert" on, even though you didn't write it yourself. What if she thinks my ideas are misdirected, unfounded, unsubstantiated, written poorly? This is the thrilling yet frightening aspect of studying the work of living authors. Not only do you have to deal with other critics who might disagree with your ideas, but you have to worry about how the author herself will judge them. Sometimes I am jealous of my friends who study long-dead medieval and Renaissance poets. Then again, for literary geeks, meeting and exchanging ideas with your favorite authors is a thrill equivalent to meeting rock stars for some people. So in that sense, I'm quite lucky.

ET would have been proud
The birthday officially concluded last night with the Durham Bulls, defeated in the last few innings by the Buffalo Bisons. It was fun anyway, and the fireworks after the game were cool. Had a great time, despite the rain delay and the showers that came on and off (luckily our seats were covered). After the game, got some Reese's Pieces gelato at Francesca's in Durham (GREAT stuff) and chatted it up with Jason, Justin, and Cheryl 'til about midnight. The rest of the weekend has to be dedicated to some work, although there is still some fun to be had. My friend Jen is headed over from Winston-Salem, and we'll hang out a bit this afternoon. She's a big shopper, and although I have no extra money to spend, it's still fun to tag along. We are the Oscar and Felix of the shopping set, though. She goes into all the stores I would never dare go in. She skips past the stores that I frequent. She has no interest in the CD's and DVD's, but she wants to go into the most expensive shoe store around. She looks at the Coach bags seriously, thinking about what outfit they might match, whereas I pick them up, see the price tag, and make fun of them. Sales people fawn all over her. They just kind of let me wander around, undisturbed. I've determined that it's partly due to the fact that Jen dresses up to go shopping, whereas I dress very comfortably. She looks like she really loves clothes (which she does), whereas I just look like I sort of wear them because I have to cover my body somehow. And the Reebok's aren't quite as fashionable as Jen's chunky slides. So she gets the attention, which is perfectly fine by me. I'd rather have it that way.

Missing My Kids
An update on my 8-year-old niece that had a goiter removed on my birthday. Apparently everything went fine. She woke up yesterday morning "starving to death" (she said) and proceeded to scarf down an omelet, hash browns, a biscuit, and a bunch of other stuff that they put in front of her at Kosair Children's Hospital in Lousiville, KY. If you're hungry enough to woof down hospital food, you're either crazy or getting your strength back. We all took it to be a good sign.

Signs that, in the words of Huey Lewis, you are indeed workin' for a livin'
Ah yes. It's time for my HR training, where I will learn about all the possibilities for socking my money away for a retirement someday in the distant (I hope) future. Fitting that this comes on the day after my birthday, two signs in one week that I am getting older. Not that it bothers me, mind you. In fact, I like myself now a whole lot more than I did when I was younger! So ha! Age be damned! The job stuff is a little overwhelming, though, all those letters and numbers and talk of death and retirement, stocks and bonds, dotted lines to be signed. It is, unbelievably, only my 2nd "real job" ever, in which retirement plans were even available to me. The first one was a while back, so I don't remember anything about this process. Being a life-time grad student, or at least it seems that way, I've never had to deal with it. So I get to go and sit for three hours while someone shows me charts and graphs and shoves scary-looking papers in my face that must be signed or else. Cool, yes, in a way. Freaky, too. And a little frightening.

Gonna drink Bacardi like its your birthday
Okay, so we didn't live up to the 50 cent song. But it was a cool b-day, nonetheless. After a crazy long day of work, since I couldn't abandon my students in favor of a birthday off, there were presents followed by dinner with Jason at Brixx. The Margherita pizza is quite tasty and definitely recommended. And a nice Newcastle to wash it down. Then it was on to the Inside Scoop, that house of mirth (and homemade icecream), where we frolicked and welcomed wonderful sugar highs, took photos of me with funny hats, and Justin made sculptures out of plastic dinosaurs. Also present at the festivities were Trish, Yeri, and my friends Karen, Stefan, and Cheryl. Another recommended treat is the Inside Scoop's Belgian Butta Finga flavor (yep, chocolate with Butterfinger bits). The regular Butta Finga (based on vanilla) is better, but the Belgian is good, too. And luckily, there were waffle cones. The ice cream is interchangeable, but there absolutely must be waffle cones. A great time, and now I'm exhausted!

A list of birthday gifts:
2 DVD's: High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank (hmmm...can you see the link???)
2 CD's: Annie Lennox-Bare and John Mellencamp-Trouble No More
1 fabulous Springsteen CD box set!!!!
1 t-shirt plus 1 pair of shorts
lots of funny cards

Without further ado, I will now explain the "birthday week" concept. At some point over the last 8 or so years, Jason and I realized that instead of celebrating each other's birthdays just on the birthDAY itself, we wanted to extend the fun. Now, we do "birthday weeks." What this basically means is a week full of fun that you would normally not allow yourself to have. The person whose week it is gets to make all the choices: what movie to watch, where to go out to eat, what to cook, what to watch on TV, etc. He/she also gets unlimited "lazy" time (and being a workaholic, I need some sort of logical justification to chill out sometimes). And, there are always neat little activities planned throughout the week. So instead of having all the celebration on my birthday, we get to drag out the fun and make it last. Like savoring a Hershey's Kiss, letting it melt in your mouth instead of chewing it. Sort of. So, this year my birthday week is from Friday, 7/4 until Friday, 7/11. Mine always includes the 4th of July, which is a pretty cool holiday to have your birthday around. Everyone is in a great mood, since they are typically off from work, and it's not a big enough holiday to totally overshadow the birthday itself (like Christmas can be). Plus, there are fireworks. So far, the week has included dinner and a great movie out, fireworks, a concert, grilled peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches (YUM), and a movie rented just for me. Still to come? Another dinner out with Jason, icecream at my favorite place with some friends, and a Durham Bulls baseball game. Who said getting old was a bad thing??

I find it odd that the Chronicle of Higher Education, after publishing an article on academic blogging , isn't looking for blogs instead of/in addition to people to keep traditional job search diaries. These are articles that 10 or so folks on the academic market write every year to be published in the Chronicle's "First Person" section. Doesn't this seem like an obvious use for blogs? Job search blogs--a daily or nearly daily account, instead of 3-4 articles per person? I wrote the person in charge and suggested it, but so far, I've gotten no response. I've even volunteered to keep one. I might do it anyway, just to see what kind of response I get. I'll be begrudgingly going back on the market this fall, after an unsuccessful (albeit very limited on my part) search last year.

When decades meet
Surely I don't need to justify my attendance at last night's Matchbox Twenty show to you people. All I can say is this: that Rob Thomas sure can sing his heart out (not to mention his butt off). Lots of tunes from their latest album, More Than You Think You Are, their crunchiest to date--lots of straight ahead rock, some pop, and some country- and soul-inspired flavor, seasoned just to taste. But I digress. One of the best moments from last night was when Rob fulfilled a teenage fantasty, singing "Don't You (Forget About Me)," that fabulous Simple Minds single that most of us know and think of as The Breakfast Club song (or as THE 80's song). He also took a crack at U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name," and the 80's were alive again. A great, great show. Look for their next single, "Bright Lights," which I think is just a brilliantly written song. To get to the Matchbox, though, unfortunately I had to suffer through some Sugar Ray. Don't get me started on Sugar Ray. Just trust me. Don't get me started. But all in all, this birthday week has gotten off to a fantastic start! More on the birthday week concept in a later post. But now, it's time to work.

Transfixed. t-r-a-n-s-f-i-x-ed. Transfixed. That was me at the movie Spellbound yesterday. I tend to really get into documentaries, and this one was wonderfully put together. I fell in love with almost all of those kids, but I identified the most with April. If you see this film and you know me, you won't be surprised by this. I was in one major spelling bee. I think it was a county-wide, but I don't remember it very well. I got out in one of the early rounds, and I never wanted to do it again. Even if you've never done the hardcore spelling bee circuit, I think all sorts of geeks everywhere will feel a connection to at least some of the amazing kids that were profiled. I also admire the wide cross-section of our country that was represented: a diverse range of social classes, geographical regions, and ethnic backgrounds.

As holidays go, yesterday was a good one. Great movie with Jason, dinner out, coffee out, and fireworks with a huge group of Jason's SILS mates (which Abe smartly called a "stack" of SILS people).

Boots and sandals take on a whole new meaning
Started looking forward to the weekend as soon as I heard myself talking about "boot verbs" and "sandal verbs" in class today. If you've had high school Spanish, you probably know what I'm talking about. Those lovely stem-changes that everyone adores. Somehow I managed to take a two hour nap today, but instead of feeling refreshed, I just feel sort of dazed and confused. I can't seem to focus my eyes, and I'm still exhausted.

To do this weekend:
start reading Nickel and Dimed, taking notes since I am leading one of the discussion groups for UNC's summer reading program
work on my webpage (finally!)
write the midterm for my summer class
Matchbox Twenty concert Saturday!

What's on my mind
Gotten a lot of response from the last post, revealing my fears of being exposed as a blogger, so to speak. The public vs. private issue is a big one here. Yes, I believe in breaking down those barriers, and I am generally very me, very real in the classroom. But at the same time...I think that, as a professor, the power of blogging could be harnessed in an amazing way that my current blog hasn't tapped into. I think it could be an amazing tool for teaching, as well as a great space for scholarship. These thoughts all come to mind because I've been invited by Anton to be a part of the UNC weblog group. We had our first meeting yesterday, and I came away with lots of ideas, thoughts, and questions. I'm extremely excited by the whole discussion.

On the other hand, I am so sleepy today. I want to curl up and listen to the rain. Why, oh why, do I have to plan tomorrow's lesson and grade quizzes?

To blog or not to blog?
Today I'm going to metablog, which I generally really dislike. But I need some advice, or at least, I need to work out some thoughts. I love my blog, honestly I do. But, I'm re-thinking it a bit. I mean, when I started this whole blog thing, it was because "everyone else was doing it." Well, Jason and some of his friends were doing it. So I checked it out, realized how easy, therapeutic, and addictive it was, and gave the link to a few people. Now, as it turns out, I'm realizing that once your blog is out there, it's out there and you have no control. It has a life of its own. People find it and read it. Normally, I think I'd be okay with that. But I'm thinking about some of the personal content on my blog and realizing that I would never want my students to read it, nor my colleagues. So, should I stop Freight Train completely? Keep Freight Train and only give the link to friends, while doing another, more public, blog that I will put on my webpage and give to people in the blog community, in my department, and so forth? I definitely want to have a blog that everyone at UNC can see, and I definitely want to be a member of the blog community at large. But I think Freight Train isn't the way to go. I'll give it some more thought, but I think I'll probably start a new one with a different tone. No more highly personal drivel (the gut-wrenching stuff), no more ranting. Any thoughts? Email me and let me know.