Slouching Towards Extimacy

I failed an Old English quiz today.  (I would like to blame Peter Baker, whose table 7.2 in the verbs chapter of the new edition of Introduction to Old English transposes the strong and weak labels for the past indicative.  However, I failed for other reasons entirely, so Professor Baker is off the hook.)

My back is going out.

I have a presentation on Beckett’s Trilogy due Monday, with secondary sources, and I am only sixty pages into Molloy.

I’ve had a low-grade headache for five days now.

Also, I am getting fat due to not having had time to get any cardio in.

So, in the spirit of “let’s laugh about it all while we still can,” I give you…

Beckett For Babies

Silly me, I thought the job as the Med Studies program assistant person thing would involve collecting information to give to some tech savvy person who could update the website.  Looks like they want me to update the website.  I don’t think the IT guy I met with today quite took me seriously when I said I know nothing about websites.  However, it appears I will learn the mysteries of something called DreamWeaver.  When, I don’t know.

Post “job talk” lunch today with potential faculty member.  I am noticing that I am the only person at anything like this that ever gets asked, “[field of interest], huh?  And why do you want to do that?”  I mean, my mother asks me that all the time, but nobody in the department asks the Victorian Lit folks, “So why Victorian Lit?”  But at least once a week (twice, today, in fact) I’ve had to answer the question, “So why do you want to be a medievalist?”  Nobody laughed when I said, “’cause that’s where the money is!” so I guess I’m going to have to work on a better answer.

So far, being at this new school is like riding a rollercoaster — the kind that I don’t actually ride in amusement parks because I usually vomit caramel apples everywhere after I do.

When it’s good, it’s really pretty good.  We have some nice facsimile manuscripts in the rare book room that I am going to go look at one of these days — probably not this week because I’m so sleep deprived I’ve forgotten how to use the elevator — and most of the other students in the department are really friendly.  The medievalists here are fabulous. And I got into the Folger Institute workshop I applied to (with a seriously revised research statement, of course).

But the lows… well, typical first year fare I guess.

My sister, who picked up my MA thesis from Old School today, wrote, “Did you know they printed your birth date wrong?”  I checked my copy and no, actually, they printed it exactly like I gave it to them.  Wrong day, wrong month.  Yeah.  It’s been that kind of week (even though the birthate snafu happened several months ago, still kind of fits the week).

This past weekend, my daughter was looking over my shoulder as I was reading Levinas.  She picked up a pencil and wrote in the margin, “What are U meanin’?”  That pretty much sums up my class participation so far this semester.