Merry Christmas

9:01 AM at 9:01 AM

So my dog trainer emailed this picture of her 6 dogs as a Christmas card...they were waiting by the front door for Santa.




I thought if she can do it with 6 dogs, then I can try with our 5....
As you can see the Chordas dogs are not as "refined"






It was impossible to get them to all look at the camera at the same time...so I stuck with 3 dogs versus 5



Holday Prep

3:39 PM at 3:39 PM

It's hard to believe how busy and fast time goes. I have had one and a half weeks off and managed to not look at my thesis edits nor turn my resume into a CV. Somehow I keep incredibly busy doing everything but school or work related stuff. I wash dishes, bake cookies, play with dogs, do holiday prep. For the first time in my life I feel like a housewife of sorts and I like it. I am enjoying avoiding the rest of life and look forward to the holiday fun tomorrow.

Time flies in every aspect of my life but one: the holidays are taking forever to get here...as a housewife it feels like you are continuously prepping for the celebration. At least by the time it comes you are good and ready and excited.
The dogs are even ready:


PC to Mac

8:12 AM at 8:12 AM

I never never thought I would say this...

but I think I am ready for my first mac computer.
It has been a long battle: mac or pc, pc or mac...and I kept going with windows because that is what I have always used and I am comfortable with it. Anytime I sat down to use a mac I would become highly irritable and flip out because my mouse wouldn't right click or I can't just click the X to exit a program. I've worked with this though and am now used to all the mac shortcuts. Since September I have only been using a mac at work on campus (they have choices but I forced myself to try the mac). I also watched and read hours of tutorials of switching from a PC to a mac. All of my family members own macbooks. I'm the last one who has been holding on strong to my PC roots. I've talked to people about switching. People who can't stand macs are the ones who don't switch. People who do switch tell me they don't even think about PCs anymore.
After this long computer therapy I now find myself highly irritated at my dell pc. It is five years old and is having major issues, but I think there are things I have picked up using on a mac that I now miss when using my PC. I also hate the virus thing. My PC had 60 viruses on it. I blame my students and all their emailed attachments. My computer is just so slow though. The other day I wanted to throw it out the window...instead I walked into an apply store and found my next computer:
It is the new macbook that is the most environmental computer out there. It is light like a feather and the keyboard clicks softly under my fingers. I dream of this computer...but then I think how expensive it is. I don't understand why I can get a Dell for $500 and this computer costs double if not more: $1218.00.
Why are macs so expensive?
For Christmas I don't really want any gifts. I would like some funds to go into my macbook savings. Perhaps I can combine xmas and graduation gifts and buy me a new macbook in May.
My dell better not crap-out before then...I've got a thesis to write.

"Kayak to Japan"

8:17 PM at 8:17 PM

I am officially done with this quarter. I finished grading a big stack of finals today and yesterday I had my last creative writing workshop. After workshop Yiyun Li took us out to a bar and bought us all drinks. It was epic. This is the professor who told us we are in grad school not to party. Somehow it was a good ending to hard working writing quarter.

Plus after yesterdays workshop I feel like I am never going to be good enough to be a published writer. I go through phases and I guess I am in the discouraged phase at the moment. Maybe I should be a teacher. I really did like teaching this quarter. But then I think- no my heart isn't in teaching, its in giving advice and being there for the students. I like talking to people and I like talking plans. Regardless. Plans about studying for the final, plans about future classes, plans about traveling? You name it. Perhaps my life goal is professional planner of all marvelous things. I can make my own business card.

This was my last week working at the Davis Humanities institute. Everyone there surprised me with a pizza party and delicious cake. I felt really appreciated and loved. It made me sad leaving. There are some amazing people working there that really have been a HUGE part in making grad school survivable. These next two qrts. it will be tough without their daily guidance and support.

Tomorrow I drive to pick-up Palina and bring her back home. I was looking up directions on google maps and forgot to type in the city and state. Somehow the directions landed me in Japan. So I was curious and wondered how google maps would tell you to get to Japan. I wondered to myself before scrolling down the page and imagined directions to the air port and directions to board a plane. But oh no- google maps tells me to: "Kayak across the Pacific Ocean, Entering Japan 3,879 miles"

Perhaps this is a coded meaningful message to me: about my future life. But how the heck would someone kayak over 3000 miles...is this even possible?

If my students learned something from me....

1:47 PM at 1:47 PM

So this week is finals week and I have been grading and grading and grading. The professor assigned my students this silly reflection paper. They had to pretty much write what was meaningful for them this quarter and why. I disagree with the assignment, especially for a huge lecture english lit. class. And grading them is a nightmare- how can you put a grade on a reflection????? This paper might make more sense for a small small writing class or workshop class, but not for a lecture class. I mean all you are going to get is a bunch of BS papers were students don't care and are just sugar-coating things that they think the professor wants to hear. This is exactly what happened. Except for one paper. This is part of the paper that I actually appreciated:

"As for my prose, I am an arrogant child, who, just out of puberty, is finally learning how to shave. I use too much fluff. Frankly, I just enjoyed reading my own writing. I also enjoyed looking at myself in shiny objects. I maybe exaggerating. The point is, I really noticed improvement from my first essay to my second, and I think I owe a lot of that to the discussion section. My TA was instrumental in gently suggesting that I stop bullshitting as much as I did (I do), especially when it mattered. Great Advice.
As to this reflective essay: it was cathartic, after writing seriously for a quarter. I am not sure what you expected to get out of college students when presented with a purely opinion-based essay, but I tried to give, as candidly as I very possibly could, my answers to your questions."

So I guess my first quarter teaching (TA'ing for two discussion sections) is complete. I enjoyed my students and liked helping them, even it all I taught them was when is the right time to bullshit.

It's starting to feel like the holidays

8:54 PM at 8:54 PM

The Thanksgiving holiday sped by. I had all these plans to write my syllabus for next qrt., work on my thesis, work on my CV for job applications. Really I needed the time to relax and spend time with family, who doesn't? I didn't want to feel completely slacker like so I did do the syllabus, well most of it. But everything else was left unattended. It was so much fun to see Palina. This has been the longest I have gone without seeing her so we hung out pretty much everyday. We watched movies, drank, played video games, ate tons of sushi, and went shopping. Palina was extremely sick this weekend, in her own words- "This is the worst sickness I have had for years." We didn't let it get in the way of our fun though and now I pay the price. These last two days I have had the worst sickness I have had for years. My body aches and my collarbones too. It sucks. Especially since this is the last week of the quarter. I had my last discussion section last night and I had to drag myself to teach. It was terrible. And on top of it all my students had to write evaluations of me- while I sat there dying and being a very unresponsive teacher.





This weekend I also spent tons of time letting Jaime and Sam run wild in nature. On Sunday Jaime busted his leg open on something- glass, barb-wire, who knows. I have been treating it these last few days but it isn't healing and was still bleeding today. Thoughts of infection and him loosing his leg scared me so I took him to the vet. $100 dollars later he now has four stitches, no infection, and a cone head: