Carburetion Day 2007

Yesterday, a black ant bit my face. Also, I bought an MP3 player.

Our trip to Fort Wayne last weekend reminded me that I'm generally in favor of people named Beth. Well, really, any variation on Elizabeth is probably fine--I'm not sure I've ever met a Beth, Liz, Lizzie, Eliza, Bess or Izzie that I haven't liked.










Ray is four, and as charming as he ever was. Maggie is eleven months, and the cutest cute thing I've ever seen. Much like my experience with Dana's kids, I kept expecting a fight to break out between the two kids all weekend, but Ray seems to really like having a sister. Whenever she cried, he jumped up and tried to make her laugh, instead of clubbing her on the head, which is what I thought brothers were supposed to do in that situation.

Really nice to see Beth for a few days--we missed the last two Thanksgivings in Valparaiso (my fault), so it's been two years since we've talked in person. That's okay, because whenever we get together, it's like we're just picking up a conversation from the day before. Maybe it's because we spent so many hours in the car together going back and forth to hockey practice, but I forget to be quiet and awkward when we're together.

We had a nice visit to the Lincoln Museum--I really recommend it, and it has a nice "conservators' area" for the kids to play in. We also went to the botanical gardens to see the butterflies. No sporting events, but we totally need to go back in the winter for a hockey game, or maybe to watch some baseball if they get the new stadium built. I like a town that has lots of sports opportunities. Beth just got a tenure-track job at St. Francis, a Division II school that apparently has an awesome football team. Lucky woman.

We take running water for granted. Even though I went to junior high and high school with several people who had neither running water nor electricity on their properties, I have come to expect running water wherever I am in the U.S. Especially in my own house. It's not until you don't have it that you realize how convenient it is to turn on a faucet and not have to wonder if you're ever going to get anything out of it.

It's not like we've been living totally without water, but we lost 1/2 of our water pressure overnight about eight years ago after the City did some work on the water main in front of our house. A couple of months ago, our front yard got hit by lightning, and at that point, we lost what little pressure we had until then. The hot water still worked because it was being slowly accumulated overnight in the water heater, but we had no cold water in the kitchen, and the water in the bathroom was just a weak stream.

All this is to say that over the past two days we've had our house entirely re-plumbed. I hadn't realized how deprived we'd been until I turned on the kitchen faucet yesterday and WATER CAME OUT OF THE SPOUT. How did the plumber make that happen? We have water in our kitchen sink AND our bathroom sink AND even in our toilet. Do you realize it's not supposed to take 10 minutes for the tank to fill, or 30 minutes to fill the washing machine? For the past eight years, we've been wasting all this time waiting, waiting, waiting on water, and it turns out a couple of thousand bucks and a good plumber could have fixed it for us in 48 hours.

Well, I was going to write out a long post about a few of the misassumptions in this blog entry. For instance, Kinsey may have developed a personal fascination with sex by the end of his career, but it hardly motivated his original choice of research topics. Anyone who has spent time with his gall wasp collection would probably back me up on this. When someone says "it makes sense," that usually means "well, I have no evidence, but I will infer based on my own experience." Based on my own experience, I can say that I do the research that I do not because it's personally fascinating, but because it's convenient and reasonably not boring. That's all.

Anyway, there was some other stuff I wanted to comment on, but in the end, what I've decided to say is this:

My wife is not matronly. If you can't recognize a hot, lesbian chick when you see one, well, that's your problem. Please use the proper adjective next time.

A long, long time ago, I lived in Los Angeles. A lifetime ago. Barely remember it. One thing I do remember, however, was scraping together enough money to eat at the California Pizza Kitchen in the Wells Fargo Center downtown. Back then, I wasn't a vegetarian, and I was all about the barbeque chicken pizza. I think I only managed to save up enough money twice to eat there, but I remember how great the pizza was. That may have been the only thing I was sad to leave behind when I left. Well, and the museums, but that's about it. Anyway, I'm here to tell you--that cardboard garbage California Pizza Kitchen is selling in the frozen food aisle isn't worth whatever spare change I could scrape together. This is twice now that I have succumbed to the temptation of the shiny yellow box, and both times, I have had a completely dismal meal. So, knock it off, CPK. Next time, I might as well just spend 99 cents on the storebrand cardboard frozen pizza.

Well. Do you think I'll come back in five years and read that last post and remember exactly what it was that had me so embittered? I'm not going to enlighten anyone, but I will say as a future memory prompt: today I drove some friends to the airport in Chicago, and while I was glad to do it (and really, I was, I don't know how they would have managed six pieces of luggage, a baby, a stroller, a dog in a carrier, two laptops, a diaper bag and a purse on the bus), I had to give up something else to do it. Obviously, giving up that something else made for an angry and disappointed Susan yesterday. It was worth giving up, seeing Ayse, Olivier and Sinan off today, but it didn't seem like it last night. And maybe it won't seem like it later, but in the meantime, I'll take it as a good trade off.

I feel like I should type some sort of wrap up post, maybe something demonstrating either a) giving up everything you value in life to earn a Ph.D. is well worth it; or b) there is no point in giving up everything you value in life to earn a Ph.D. because it will never be worth it. There's probably a middle ground between those two points, but I haven't been able to find it. It's like the manic-depressive version of graduate school: "Everything's great! Everything sucks! Everything's great! Everything sucks!"

One thing I know for sure: agreeing to a 3-hour one-way commute so your wife can keep her job is in no way a good idea. In the last month, I have driven not hundreds, but thousands, of miles trying to keep everything in balance: home, work, school, professional obligations, personal obligations, friendships, family, etc. I have done a horrible, horrible job of balancing things this past year. I had less academic stress this year, but the personal stress levels skyrocketed. I think I became more integrated socially in my Illinois home, which made it hard to leave behind everytime I needed to go back to Indiana. It was much easier to just pack up and leave last year when I didn't have any friends in Urbana-Champaign. Now, I feel like I have two homes pulling at me all the time, and I can never be in the right place at the right time. And that's without even considering the large magnet pull of family from the west coast.

I desperately want to live in only one place, or god, if I have to commute, can't it take place all in one time zone? Because I'm really, really tired of not knowing what time it is. Have you ever spent two years not knowing what time it is, two years during which it is fairly essential to show up on time to class, meetings and lunch dates?

Hm...so, this reads mostly as an elaboration of point "b" as stated above.

Academically? Things are fine. Completed papers weren't as polished as I would have wished, and I know I didn't perform very well on my final exam (although I only needed a 75% to get a 96% in the class, so I can't really care about that too much). My final presentation in my Rajput Architecture class was actually quite awesome, too bad the paper didn't live up to its promise. Doesn't matter, it's over, can't change it now. Well, yes, I can, and I will, because it will make a very nice article, two drafts from now.

I have to write one conference paper over the summer, that's not too worrisome, but I need to go to Ujjain before I can write it. I also have a rather more serious paper to write before October 20, and I'd like to get some of that out of the way this summer. I want a preliminary draft (advisor's eyes only) of my dissertation proposal written by August 18. Also, I'd like a preliminary bibliography for both my major and minor field exams completed by the same date. Oh, yeah, I'm also supposed to pass Advanced Hindi this summer. I need to go to Varanasi. I need to go to Ujjain. I need to go to Delhi. It would be nice if I could stop in Mathura. I'd like to go back to Agra. I'd like to go to Bikaner and Udaipur. I've only got ten weeks, and yeah, there's that whole go-to-class-every-day-and-do-your-homework thing that I also have to do.

So, that's the semester wrap up. At home in Illinois until Thursday a.m., drive home to Indiana Thursday p.m., in Ft. Wayne Friday and Saturday, drive home to Indiana on Sunday. Try to relax for four days. Up to the Speedway for Carb Day on Friday, over to Illinois on Saturday, drive home to Indiana on Sunday. Try to relax for a few days. See some friends? Do I have any left in Indiana?

I only have one more thing to buy before I go to India (an inflatable pillow), but at some point, I should think more seriously about packing. My visa came back FIVE DAYS AFTER I MAILED IT TO CHICAGO. That must be some sort of bureaucratic record. Not that I'm complaining.

Oh, yeah. I bought a telescope with some of the prize money. I ordered it on Friday, it was supposed to arrive this coming Wednesday, then I got a notice saying it was backordered. Oh, yeah? Then how come your stupid website said there were still 2 in stock? Last time I order anything from you people, let me tell you. So, maybe, or maybe not, I will have a new telescope to use for a few days before I leave for India. Catherine has permission to use it while I'm gone.

done
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donedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedonedone.

Exhausted.

But done.

I would just to draw everyone's attention to the last section of this news article. $*#*! monkeys.

I'll just try and capture a few random thoughts before I go underground for the rest of the semester.

I'm exhausted, having arisen at 4:00 a.m. to give me enough time to get back to Illinois for the last meeting of my postcolonial queer seminar. I've been at home "taking care" of the cats since Catherine has been in out of town. Our tenth wedding anniversary was last Thursday, but our plans to get together and celebrate over the weekend were thwarted by a death in the family. We're not scheduled to see each other again until May 7. I'm not even sure I remember what she looks like. But, hopefully, we should have a full month (almost, anyway) together before I leave for India.

Speaking of, I spent a huge amount of time yesterday filling out visa paperwork, etc. I haven't really started thinking about the trip, but abruptly realized that I need to take care of all the formalities or I may not ever get out the door. Note to self: turn in fellowship acceptance tomorrow. As I told Beth, I'm pretty much not packing before I go. If I forget anything, well, there's always Big Shopper.

Anyway, I've got one more paper to write, one more project to complete, about 20 more exams to grade, final grades to calculate, and then one last teaching meeting. Then I'm taking a few days off before trying to organize my research for the summer. Paper writing went pretty well this semester (so far). The paper I turned into today (all 47 pages of it, but that includes illustrations) is probably the first draft of my first dissertation chapter. The paper I turned in a few weeks ago isn't nearly as developed, but is probably going to work into my second dissertation chapter. The paper I'm going to turn in on Friday is related to my dissertation, but probably won't lead directly into the third chapter. Still, it's been useful. Chapter four first draft will be written this summer, and presented at a conference in October. Chapter five...don't know. It would be a better idea to take my exams and actually defend my dissertation proposal before doing this, but this is what happens when your advisor is out of the country for a year. I'm going to have an incredibly well-developed proposal, that's all I can say. Three of my committee members have been reading all of this stuff I'm writing, so I'm hoping they will red flag anything they think won't work in the long run. I've got a good research agenda worked out for the summer, so I think things are going as well as they could be doing at this point.

Really, compared to fall and spring semesters last year, everything has been going pretty well. I haven't been to the counseling center even once, although I admit that's mostly because of lack of time in which to have a nervous breakdown. It looks like I forgot to mention below that one of my papers was well-received on campus (look now because I'm sure the web page will change soon). I found out last night that a second paper was well-received in the Department of Landscape Architecture, but I don't have a fancy link for that. I figure I'm getting paid about $50 an hour in prize money to do work I would have been doing, anyway. That's good incentive to keep writing. That, and the fellowship money I was already getting, I guess.

Okay, I'm completely exhausted, it's been a long week. Catch you on the flip-flop.

Today's activities in the TBH atrium perfectly demonstrate why you shouldn't stand up in front of a group of architecture students and try to fake your way through a lecture on trusswork. It also explains why you see kids running around with packs of uncooked spaghetti on the last weekend before final critiques. The studio is a competition: who can build the strongest, most stable structure out of uncooked pasta and glue? I'm not sure what the design parameters were, other than it needed to have four feet and a central space from which to suspend blocks (a basic version of the experiment is described on Science Buddies). I only got to watch a few, but I think the last one I saw was up to 28 lbs. before it crashed to the ground. Good stuff, that spaghetti.

Beth: It was Francis Drake. Next time we forget, we can just look at this post:

The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580.

Dear obnoxious business students in the Undergraduate Library:

See those doors over there? They lead into rooms specially designed for group work. Next time, start your project early enough to reserve one of those rooms ahead of time because you know what? None of us give a damn about your stupid Barnes and Noble coffee shop project. None of us care that you think you know everything there is to know about centralization v. decentralization models. None of us want to listen to you yell at each other because you're too stupid and too arrogant to stop and listen to what your teammates are trying to say before you express your own half-baked idea. Hey, I get that this is a convenient place to do group work. Look around--there are many groups here working on their final projects, but why do you think yours is the only group getting dirty looks from everybody else in the library? Didn't your parents teach you about "inside voices"? No? Well, here's a hint: it doesn't involve yelling just to make yourself heard over the rest of your babbling idiot classmates. You know why you're yelling? Because you all keep making dumbass mistakes with your PowerPoint presentation, and you keep making more every time you try to fix them. You know why? Because you tried to do all the work an hour before your final presentation. So, because you all didn't get your act together and plan ahead, we have to sit here for 45 minutes and listen to you behave like children. She didn't save the PowerPoint after printing? Well, maybe she was flustered because you'd just spent ten minutes yelling at her. Can't find it even after you saved it? Maybe you should shut the fuck up and let the guy at the keyboard look for it, instead of contradicting everything he's trying to tell you. You know what I really want? The e-mail address for your professor. I'd like to tell him just how bad you all are at group work, and I'd like to tell him that you all deserve to fail for disrupting the entire south side of the UGL for an hour because each one of you has the MOST IMPORTANT VIEWPOINT THAT MUST BE EXPRESSED and god forbid any of us should try not to listen to you. Morons.

No time to write, but can you imagine what Ray Bradbury could do with this story?

I'm about to leave town for just a few hours short of an entire week. That would almost qualify as a vacation if it didn't involve going to the SAH annual meeting. I have to say, I'm not highly excited about the program (sorry to all those who worked very hard putting the panels, etc. together, but...I'm just not). I know there are tons of people out there not studying European or American architectural history, but apparently they are not proposing sessions for SAH. Give me a year, and I'll have something to say myself.

Anyway, we're taking a road trip. Has anyone else noticed that the only time I get to spend time with my wife, we're on our way somewhere else? She's taking time off work at a very horrible time to be doing so because this may be our last "vacation" together until Thanksgiving. We've got tickets to see two houses by Frank Wright (doesn't he sound just *normal* when you don't use his middle name), Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, on Saturday. That may be the most interesting part of the week, we'll see.

Then it's back here for one final push on those four research projects. I'm stalled on project two right now. I need to stop thinking of it as potential dissertation material and think of it as just one last seminar paper to knock out and finish. But it's for one of the smartest people I've ever met, and I don't want her to think it sucks. I psyched myself out this same way last semester, and I've got to just stop obsessing about quality and write the damn thing.

Still and all, it's looking like I might get through the program. I'm worried about exams--less about the historiographical/methodological exam questions and more about my basic lack of knowledge of South Asian architecture. I don't even have a Master's level competency in the built environment of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka. It would have helped if I'd actually had a class on say, oh, Indian Architecture, at some point in my endless years of education. But, no. I had a ten week class on Indian art in 1990, and a ten week class on "humanities of India" in 1986. Can I be expected to remember the content of a class I took 17 and 21 years ago? No.

I am taking a seminar on Rajput architecture this semester, and it's helped immensely. I'm learning tons, but mostly it all predates my time period, so it's not directly related to my exams. I'm trying not to get too anxious about it all because it does seem as if the dissertation is already taking shape. At least, I turned in a rough draft of a seminar paper on the colonial historiography of my site, and the professor thought I was well on my way to having the first chapter. That's putting the cart before the horse, I need to actually defend the proposal before writing the chapter, but at least I now know what to propose for my first chapter--something slightly different than the expected literature review, but still demonstrating that I know my postcolonial theory. I have a date of January 15 for my minor field exam. I'd still like to take the two major field exams in November, but we'll see.

Did I say site? I meant sites. This is the first time I've ever tried to work on multiple sites simultaneously. Try coming up with a filing system for a literature that covers five observatories. Thank god for bibliographic software. As long as I note on the computer which article is stored in which manila folder, I don't have to obsess quite so much. "This article covers both the Varanasi observatory and the Ujjain one. Where do I file it? If I file it by author's last name, how will I know by looking at the file label which observatories it covers?" and so on. Anyway, thank you Endnote, you've made my life much easier even if you hard-coded the Ibid. record wrong for the Turabian output style (idiots).

So, yes, I am guardedly optimistic that I will finish the program. My dissertation committee is in place. I have two architectural historians, one landscape historian, and two "regular" historians. I am spending a lot of time with a third historian, reading interesting books together and just generally working my way toward friendship (keeping in mind that I have an abysmal track record in that area). I'm hoping that between these six people, someone will keep me from dropping out again. If I quit, it will clearly be because of exams--they seem dark, mysterious and terror-inducing. If I can get through those, I think I'll be fine.

Not sure how much typing will get done in this little box between now and May 14. My one goal for the summer is to write more--I did a horrible job posting about India last summer. This summer, I will do better. Wait, what? I forgot to mention I was going to be in India this summer? I guess I did forget. I leave June 7, get back August 18. Catherine is being an amazingly good sport about it. I'm horribly sad about missing YET ANOTHER SUMMER AT HOME, but also looking forward to being in Jaipur again. I am a conflicted individual, no doubt about it.

Okay, people, yes, I am the reason your RSS feed is going crazy. Those aren't new posts. Those are old and boring and whiny posts. But I found a backup that seems to have most of the stuff I lost when I deleted my blog in a panic once long ago, so I'm transferring it over. Because it's more important to do that than write the paper that might form the basis of the second chapter of my dissertation. Really. It is.

Okay, this seems like the quickest way to handle this for now. We finally got tired of having our mail stolen--well, okay, they stole the mailbox, too, this time, so we've finally subscribed to a post office box. To those of you who put pen to paper to write to me, the post office box is 1603. But you need to change the last number of my zipcode to 2. If you don't know my zipcode, well then, you probably haven't ever written me a letter, so you don't care about my mailbox, anyway.

ETA: Yeah. Next time, I should double-check the box number for before writing in the blog. It's correct now, anyway.

I'll tell you what. I can't keep up with my life, that's for sure. It's not the big things that are killing me (although, yeah, now that you mention it, four research projects in one semester is at least one too many), it's the little stuff. It's been an incredibly social day, for one thing. I had coffee with Dana so we could discuss the Diana Paton book (wow, by the way. It doesn't take long to discuss a book you really like; it's much more work to try and figure what doesn't work in a book than what does), and after an hour-and-a-half of non-stop conversation with her, I ran into Chuo just as we were leaving the library. Haven't talked to Chuo since last semester, so that took me into another rapid fire conversation. Then Luke-Jim e-mailed me--another person I haven't seen since last semester. And then I ran into Martin, and we discussed the travails of being a T.A. And then I even had a short exchange with Ellen. And I also talked to Gary in the graduate office.

Who are all these people, and what do they want from me?!?!

I cranked out a draft for the first unit of my course proposal (roughly four weeks worth of lecture outlines for a course on South Asian architecture), turned that in. Wrote and re-wrote a conference proposal, sent that in this evening. Registered for that conference (it's required, I'm not that much of an optimist). Finished the last two corrections of an article I want to send out for review, realized this computer can't produce .pdf files, downloaded a .pdf maker. Made a .pdf, tried to upload it to the journal submission website, but the server refused to recognize it as a .pdf. Sent an e-mail about that. Sent an e-mail about T.A. stuff. Sent an e-mail apologizing for not turning in my annual report today, promised to turn it in tomorrow. Uploaded it to the server so I wouldn't have to remember it tomorrow. Started to answer a personal e-mail, ran out of energy (sorry, Lizzie, you're in draft mode right now). Did a load of laundry, skipped dinner.

Sent some e-mails about my fellowship for the summer/next year. And, yes, it's official, I received a FLAS Fellowship, and for many reasons, this makes me happy. If I understand this all correctly, I only need to be on campus for my language and area studies courses next year, which means my presence in Illinois will only be required from 4:00 on Monday to 5:30 on Wednesday. Also, it covers my work in India this summer, so that's all to the good. Thank you very much, FLAS awarding committee (otherwise known as "Center for Global Studies")--I appreciate it.

Played the guitar for an hour. Because I have tons of free time.

You know, I also had a class today, so it's not like I was just wandering around jabbering and e-mailing. And you know what else? I also had an hour long meeting with Valeri at the Center for Teaching Excellence. All I need to do is write my essays and then I can submit my GTC application. Talking with her is always useful because she helps me pull together the disparate threads of teaching experience into one cohesive skein of knowledge.

How many people did I talk to today? Since I usually talk to....hm...no one, any number above one is remarkable.

Spring break roundup:

Good things about the last week (or two):

Social stuff: Beth got back from Europe. This is good for me not only because she is good company, but because I like to eat tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch on Thursdays. Also this Thursday we had dinner with Dana and Craig (and Evie and Jonah, who charmed our socks off). Evie informed me that she is very brave, and I have to say that I agree. It is nice to occasionally escape the stupidity of academic life with people who don't give a damn about my academic progress. Catherine finally met Ayse on Friday, and although we were all tired and a couple of us were angry (see below), we had a nice talk.

Academic stuff: I was unofficially notified about a fellowship for both the summer and upcoming academic year earlier this week. If the award letter appears in hard copy, I'll say more. A bit of unofficial celebrating (and no, I don't mean that in the UIUC sense of the word "Unofficial") has been happening at our house. One side-effect of this is, even if this unofficial notification never turns into an official notification, one professor on the awards committee who didn't think much of me in the past has suddenly changed his opinion about me. Hopefully, this will work in my favor in the future.

I was officially notified that a paper I proposed for a conference was accepted. This doesn't sound like such a big deal, but it counts as an invited paper, which means more in my field. Also, it comes with round trip airfare and travel expenses attached. Now...I just have to write the paper. I should have paid more attention when I was writing the proposal.

Domestic stuff: The good news is prefaced by bad. The bad news was having our front yard hit by lightning a couple of weeks ago, frying our GFCI outlets along with our television. The good news is that I had just received a payment from an editing job I did for my advisor, so we could buy a new TV. That bad news about that is that I wanted to put it toward a new, more portable telescope. The good news about that is that Catherine got the kind of TV she really wanted but would never buy as long as our old TV worked. The goods news is that we bought and installed the TV with about 30 seconds to spare for second-round NCAA basketball. The bad news is that IU lost the game in large part due to two horrible in-bounds plays in the last few seconds of the game. Probably the other bad news is that we only buy TVs when our basketball vision is threatened. Priorities = scary.

Bad news about the last week (or two):

Social stuff: I can't think of any except that I suffered with my tomato soup for two weeks.

Academic stuff: See earlier posts about having a difficult time transitioning from instructor-of-record to T.A. Things came to a head about three hours before I was due to leave town for spring break. I've lost a lot of sleep over this problem, and I can't decide what to do at this point. Trying to just suffer silently through the semester doesn't seem to have worked.

Domestic stuff: I'd rather not talk about it. Life just seems hard sometimes.

I actually got spam today with the subject heading of "The British Library." How many people outside of academia are going to be at all interested in that subject? "The British Library of Sex," maybe, but "The British Library"? Come on.

• The wind on I-74 was cracking today. Almost lost control of the car at one point, which would have meant joining the other wrecked automobiles in the median. Four cars, buried in snow. Nice.
  
• My afternoon class was cancelled due to a wreck on I-57. Slow down, people!
• Also: the pedestrian has the right of way when hu is in the crosswalk. And then I have the right of way, because the light is green and I'm turning right. You only get to turn left *after* the pedestrian has safely crossed the slippery street, and I've made my right turn. *After*, not before.
  
• I'm not going to comment on the whole retired mascot issue, except to say that if you ever start a sentence with "I'm not a racist, but..." you seriously need to shut up.
• This weekend we watched Jaan-e-Mann. Not sure what to say about it; some person over at imdb claims Preity Zinta "breaths fresh air in her role." Was she being all breathy when she was being played by a cardboard cut out? 'Cause I think that was the strongest part of role as written for her. Seeing Salman Khan in a dress almost made me not hate him...almost.
• Catherine bought me Jon Auer's latest CD, Songs from the Year of Our Demise, as well as David Einmo's new Head Like a Kite CD, Random Portraits of the Home Movie (which I would have called "Random Portraits of the Social Hygiene Filmstrip" but no one asked me). I shouldn't say that I like them, because it can only hurt their images to have middle-aged scholarly fans from the Midwest. Still. I've always wanted to say to one particular person, "Dude. Whatever. I'll call you when your dead." but never had the guts. Jon Auer says it better, anyway.
• No one ever bought me Too Loud for the Snowman, which rips me. I may need to game my Amazon.com list to get what I want.
• I need a new blog layout. The fact that my basic layout has remained the same for the past five years is indicative of how little I care about the web, web design, and web technology these days. I wish someone would redesign my blog template in such an extraordinary way that I would suddenly find myself caring about it all again.
• More important than a new blog, however, is a new website. I like the aesthetic of my old freelancing site, but it's impossible to update, and I need something with my current academic info in place of my professional info. Send me your bids, and maybe I'll hire you to redesign my life.
  

Okay, these are not my photos, I stole them from some people nearby. Still, this is what it life looks like in Rantoul:






































Wow...does the new interface for blogger really suck when it comes to images. I mean...really suck.

Well, seriously, I can do better than that. Things I considered writing about:

1. A funny conversation about long underwear I had in the women's locker room at CRCE with a retired school teacher. Funny because it demonstrated that no matter how old you are, you still worry about looking like a dork in front of undergrads.

2. The fact that the soundtrack from Pardes has been banging into the back of my head all week. It wasn't until I listened to it that I remembered all the scenes in the movie that were filmed in Fatehpur Sikri. We've been looking at FS in my Rajput Palaces seminar.

3. My hate-love-hate relationship with the ice rink. Spent three hours there on Saturday night watching a so-so game of hockey (didn't check out the heavily advertised wireless networking capabilities); spent a couple of hours there on Sunday watching a short-track competition. Why am I wasting my time?

4. The general sense of depression and confusion I go through every Wednesday after my a.m. seminar.

5. The weather.

6. Reactions to various movies I've seen lately. All I can say is that the movie we're watching in Hindi class better turn out to be telling me something other than "men suck," because I didn't need to watch all this stupidity to come to that opinion. I've pretty much got that one covered on my own.

6a. The fan letter I should be writing to Preity Zinta to thank her for her crystal-clear Hindi. SRK, no letter for you.

7. My own arrogance and the way it interferes with my academic career.

7a. The difficult transition from being in charge of your classroom to becoming a T.A.

8. Various opinions on various people with whom I spend my time. Not that I would write about that in my blog even if I was writing a lot, but it's still a potential topic, I suppose.

9. My research. Again, nothing I would ever write about in my blog, but again, that could be a potential topic.

10. The fact that the pipe underneath our back parking lot has broken three times in the last week. This should probably be topic 5-sub-a.

11. Sports. Genetically encoded in my DNA. Ask my wife.

12. And, no, I am not against gay marriage. That point should be probably be 4-sub-a.

13. Lucky number.

You know, I think to myself some two or three times a day, "Oh, I should put that in my blog." And often I actually type an entry, only to delete it before I hit the "publish" button. In case you're wondering, that has already happened three times with this entry. I just can't be bothered to finish what I've started. I sat down here intending to make a list of all the things I considered writing about this week, but then didn't. It would have been an interesting list, I think, but again, I just can't be bothered. If you're really creative, you can probably make a better list of potential topics, anyway, so really, I don't need to go through the effort, right?

You know...I think if you have to lie to other people to cover up a behavior--any behavior, it doesn't really matter, I don't think--that means there's a problem. Anybody knows this. You know it. So, knock it off. Do something about it. I mean, do something other than lying about it, you know?

One of the most awesome architecture films, ever.

Mickey's Trailer

You'd think since I used the phrase "read more" three times in my last post, that would indeed be what I was doing these days. You'd think.

This weekend I watched one basketball game on TV (IU men beat UConn), went to one basketball game (IU women got stomped by Purdue due to an ABYSMAL LACK OF EFFORT AND HUSTLE AND THE ENTIRE TEAM WOULD STILL BE RUNNING LINES IF I WAS THE COACH), watched one and a quarter football games on TV (didn't think the Colts had it in them, wouldn't a Saints/Patriots game be awesome? Which is more god-loving American, a Patriot or a Saint? I think Patriot, because hu wouldn't be tainted by French Catholicism), and one quarter of another basketball game on TV (at least Tennessee women didn't lose to Duke through LACK OF EFFORT AND HUSTLE).

Unfortunately, none of this had to do with the work I was really supposed to be doing, and neither does this post. In my defense, in the past couple of weeks, I've actually been pretty productive. Finished my AIIS application, finished most of the FLAS application, sent out one article for review, worked on a second article that should be ready to go by Monday, read two books for review, sent out an abstract for a conference paper, renewed two professional memberships, located another conference (abstract due April 1), read two books for an informal study group, paid my bills, did my homework, and basically showed up everywhere I was supposed to show up, on time, even.

What I did not do is type up the two-page essay about my classroom observation that I've been meaning to do since October 6. I also did not type up the two-page essay about the IEF that I did before that date, even. I didn't write the review for Material Culture (hey, it's not due for another week), nor did I finish my FLAS essay. I did not sort out the horribly tall stacks of paper on my office floor. Well, I sorted one, but that leaves three to be sorted and put into binders. That reminds me...I did not buy binders. My "to do" list on the whiteboard in my office has eleven items, not including work for classes in which I'm currently enrolled. So, while I started writing this post thinking "Hey, I have time to watch TV," I'm concluding with the thought, "Time to disconnect the cable." That would be number twelve on the "to do" list, then.

Okay, yes, sorry, I am home.

I installed a rather aggressive junkmail program before leaving, and it emptied two weeks' worth of mail out of my inbox and into the junkmail folder. A better person than I would sort through the 500 or so pieces of junkmail to save the holiday greetings from friends and family. A better person than I, I am not, so if you meant for me to read that e-mail, you might consider sending it again.

Things to remember for next time:

Don't take a coat, you'll never use it.
Do take snowboots, you will use them (and try to make your wife take hers, too).
Don't let the car rental place replace your SUV with a sedan. Remember you need to get out of the driveway in the snow.
Rent from somewhere else but Budget next time, even though the nice agent in Sacramento almost made up for the horrendous agent in Seattle.
Visit California first, then Washington. It will make a difference on the return trip.
Don't take too many sweaters, you'll only wear one or two (just like you do at home, moron).
Buy a new travel pillow and chain it to your bag (who would steal a worn-out pillow?).
Make the phone call north, even if you're tired.
Nine-year-old children don't always understand life the way you do: deal with it.
Just because you forget your gay doesn't mean everyone else will: deal with that, too.
Remember that it's always winter in high school.
Corollary: Don't travel in the winter.
Sleep before you leave.
Read more, talk less.
Read more, eat less.
Read more.

One more paper. Just one more. I desperately want this semester to end. I am so over coursework, really, I am. I just don't need this kind of practice anymore. That sounds arrogant, as if I think I'm oh-so-much-better than everyone around me (all of whom need this kind of practice, of course), but seriously, how many years of coursework does any one person need? Let's see...one year at USC. Transfer to UOregon, two years to finish the M.A. Two more years for a second M.A. On to IU, one year of coursework. On to UIUC, 1.5 years of coursework (minus a couple of days). Are you doing the math? Throw a 2 year A.A.S. in there, too, since I did that between IU and UIUC. And don't forget, I already did the four years of undergrad for the first B.A., then added 1.6666666 more years on for a second B.A. Still doing the math? 1+2+2+1+2+1.5+4+1.6666=over the fifteen year mark of higher education. Shouldn't I have a Ph.D. by now, just by default? I mean, seriously. Just....seriously.

Tonight, for the first time in thirty-nine years (or eighteen, if you want to date it from the point I reached the age of majority), I purchased alcohol at the gas station. Is this a bad thing? I suppose other people do it all the time, but I don't usually buy alcohol to begin with, so this gives me pause. Maybe I should do this more? Maybe I should never do this again? Maybe I should actually drink it, instead of just putting it in the refrigerator? Maybe I shouldn't drink it until I have someone to share it with? (And, yes, I know that's not a grammatical sentence, but "with whom to share it" sounds stupid when you're thinking about drinking.)

Well. I find it odd that I am relieved that someone is still making at least a half-hearted attempt to keep track of asg-xers. Some day I will do a websearch on asg-x and find no trace of our history, and even knowing that I did a lot toward erasing my part of our history, it will still make me sad.

ETA: Shortly after I wrote this, Leslie Harpold passed away. I'd link to something about her, but she was involved in so much, that I can't decide which one site to select. A google search on her name would probably represent her more fairly. Follow that, and you can see all of her projects, and all the ways she helped people. This is the huge difference between Leslie and me: if you start with her name, it will lead you to so many asg-xers (and to so many other good people, too, I'm sure); if you start with my name, however, it will only lead back to me, because I eventually turn away from everything and everyone. I wish I was more like her, and I wish I had had it in me to tell her that before it was too late.

On the other hand, it is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and I AM NOT CRYING. Does anyone remember me at this time last year? What a bloody, sobbing, stupid mess I was. Crying in the therapist's office, my god. And I've already made it farther in this Ph.D. program than I did in my last one (okay, only twelve weeks farther, but still).

While looking for the link to place above, I read the entry directly below it. Does anyone remember what the hell book I'm talking about in that post? Because I sure can't, and I'd really like to know what I was trying to say in that secret message. ETA: Never mind, I remember.

How much would I regret it if I just blew off my last semester of course work? I mean, yes, of course, I would go to class, but what would it hurt to register for classes in which I have no emotional investment? Do I have to actually CARE about my work? I wonder if I could find a dissertation topic that didn't matter to the world (or to me) at all, but was still palatable enough to my dissertation committee that they would approve of it. It just seems that it would be a lot easier to get through this process if I didn't care about the outcome of any given conversation, or if the matter under debate was something meaningless both socially and politically.

I don't think this is an unobtainable position, it seems like a lot of people around me don't connect their work to the world around them. They focus on one little slice of the historical archive with little regard to how that sliver is related to any greater issue. Or, at least, they regard the connection only insofar as they have to do a literature review--they would see no political motivation behind their work, and, of course, where I would argue that their "value neutral" position is, in fact, a political position, they don't consider that to be at all the case.

Because, really, despite the scholarship modelled for me by someone who (in her own words) revels in the challenge, I fail to see how someone like me can sustain this kind of politically and socially engaged work. While many people would characterize me as one of those women with "strong personalities," I think what they don't realize is that my assertiveness and determined inflexibility is actually a way of combatting an inherent fragility. I don't bend, I break. I either withstand the challenge completely, or I shatter into a million pieces. In this, I think one of my professors was correct in her assessment that I am not the "middle of the road" person that I sometimes claim to be. I find I am not able to give just a little ground, I give up the entire piece of property, then wonder where I'm supposed to live afterwards.

Schedule:

Monday
9:30-11:00 Seminar, Plantation Landscapes
2:00-3:00 Lecture, Arch 210 (T.A.)
3:00-4:00 Lecture, Heritage Management
4:00-5:00 Third-year Hindi

Tuesday
Supposedly free. Not.

Wednesday
9:30-11:00 Seminar, Plantation Landscapes
1:00-3:00 Seminar, Britain in the Global 18th C.
3:00-4:00 Lecture, Heritage Management
4:00-5:00 Third-year Hindi

Thursday
11:00 Third-year Hindi tutorial
3:00 Teaching meeting

Friday
11:00 Teach (Arch 210 discussion)
1:00 Teach (Arch 210 discussion)
3:00-4:00 Lecture, Heritage Management
4:00-5:00 Third-year Hindi

This semester's research assignments:

Historiographical essay/annotated bibliography, topic: Celestial Cartography and Imperialism

Historiographical essay/annotated bibliography, topic: Contemporary consumption/tourism of plantation landscapes in the American South

Seminar paper, topic: Something or other to do with the history of the Archaeological Survey of India (yes, I'm taking suggestions)

Research paper, topic: Jawahar Kala Kendra, written in (broken) Hindi

State of the semester:

Tired, but hanging in there. Still trying to maintain my "Indiana every other weekend" routine, but I have a feeling it's about to fall apart. Last time I drove home, it was dark, rainy, foggy, and the roadways were covered with frogs. The last 25 minutes of the three-hour drive were all me trying not to cry. Getting up many hours early to make it back for a 9:30 class on Monday a.m. is not working for me, either.

Pulled a dissertation committee together, mostly in an attempt to make me focus on my site more and my golf game less. Still, I'm pretty happy with my committee, surprised by the people who said, yes, they would be on my committee, and wondering if I just set myself up for failure. If I could add someone to my committee, it would be someone from the History and Philsophy of Science, or from SSK, but where do I find those people? I don't know. Committee chair likes the site, but has few suggestions on where to go from here. Starting to feel ill about the whole thing.

Trying to come up with a plan to read for exams. Outside minor field (Heritage Management) feels the best right now. Major field is so broad (Architecture of Northern India, 1700-1947) that it contributes to that "starting to feel ill" state. Worrying about the dissertation proposal seems stupid when I won't even pass my major field or methodological exams.

H.C. Look at the time. Gotta quit whining and get some Zzzzs.

I will eventually get around to filling in my movie reviews. Really.

Everything seems to be moving very quickly now. I barely remember India, although in a definitely strange coincidence, in looking on the web for the e-mail address of a professor whom I needed to e-mail, I discovered said professor stayed in the same house I did when she was in Jaipur. Yes, we're in generally the same field (she "does" the history of mathematics and India), but still, the odds are not good we'd end up in the same place, or even that I would need to e-mail her at some point.

Anyway. School is, of course, eating up my life. I'm not completely happy with having to go back to the life of a commuter, especially when I wasn't home at all during the summer. This is one of those things that comes under heading "the things I sacrificed for my Ph.D." when I'm writing my memoirs some day. Classes sort of even out. One seems good, one seems bad. The third one hasn't met yet, so it could be the deciding factor in how my semester is going to go. Hindi is incredibly intense, but I'm trying to just disassociate from myself when I'm in the classroom.

Fun things--over the past few weeks I managed to see all six of our friends, some of them for more than a few minutes. It will probably be Christmas before I see any of them again. I managed to pick up the phone and call one other friend I seem to fall out touch with often despite my continual pledges not to do so. Also, we made a new friend, unless she was secretly desperate to escape our company. If that's the case, it would seem she's a fairly good actress. At any rate, she has to suffer our company at least one more time, otherwise she won't get her DVDs back. And with whom else well she discuss real, live India?

In other amazing news, I have both high-speed internet access *and* cable TV at home. When has this ever happened in my life? Never. At home, yes, we have basic cable, but we use the free dial-up through the university. Last year here in Illinois, I had neither internet access nor television of any kind. However, last Friday while I was out corrupt^H^H^H^Hteaching my new crop of students, Catherine managed to get both digital cable and internet installed in the new apartment for roughly half the price it would cost had I stayed in Chambana. Rantoul is nice. I'm just saying.

I need to start a new movie post because I'm tired of digging back to January to add to the original movie post. We had to watch a movie every week, and although some of them were repeat views for me, a few were new. Saw a few movies at Raj Mandir, EP, Golcha, and...hm...Space? Can't remember. I'll add my comments sometime when I'm trying to avoid studying.

Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.
Earth
Armaan
Paheli
Masoom
Mirch Masala
Sholay
Krrish!
ChupChupke
Fanaa
Iqbal

Omkara--Hope your Bhojpuri is strong because you'll need it for this movie. SAK puts in a really strong performance. Actually, all performances were good (even Vivek Oberoi's, if you can believe that), and the majority were great. Kareena Kapoor once again fails to impress, but she was adequate. She got good reviews, so maybe it's just a flaw in me that I can't appreciate her dramatic work. Konkona Sensharma, on the other hand, was awesome. Great soundtrack, solid interpretation of Othello. I just read the play last March, but I read The Tempest simultaneously, so I found myself confusing them. Looking forward to seeing this with subtitles.

Mr. and Mrs. Iyer--For awhile, I thought this would be added to my "really good movie I'm never going to watch" list (right behind Hey Ram) because I can't seem to sit through movies on communal violence. Not even for Konkona Sensharma. I did miss quite a bit of the movie, moving back and forth between the living room and the office when I thought something unpleasant was about to happen. Catherine assures me the violence was all off screen, but that doesn't necessarily make it more palatable for me. Anyway, Beth was at one point wondering what she would say if someone came onto a bus and demanded her to identify her religion. I'm not sure how I'd answer that question (aside from saying what I always say, "I have no religion, and doubt I ever will,"), but I do know what I hope I would have said in the exact same situation as depicted in the movie. If someone boarded my bus and I understood that they were specifically looking for Muslims (or Hindus or whomever) to kill them, and they picked out the elderly Muslim couple in front of me to kill, hopefully I would have the courage to stand up and say, "Even I am a Muslim." Because, damn, if I had to sit in a bus and know that I did absolutely nothing to stop the execution of two innocent people, I would kill myself afterward, anyway. I could not live with that knowledge, so I might as well go down fighting.

Home again. An incredibly long flight, sandwiched between two short flights. All uneventful, I'm happy to report, and thank goodness I flew home on the 9th and not the 10th, or I'd probably still be in the airport in Chicago.

In case you're wondering how to be treated well in the airports of Jaipur and Delhi: tuck your ticket inside a copy of Prem Chand (in Hindi), and set it on the counter while the desk agent is doing the paper work. People will notice, and people will be happy. The same works at security. Have the book in your hand, and send it through the scanner separately. It may be missing at the other end because the security officers will have picked it up to look at it and show it to each other. Answer the security questions in Hindi, and you will be golden.

So, arrived home Wednesday, spent Thursday and Friday in Illinois moving to a new apartment. Everythign went remarkably smoothly, especially considering that I was all but comatose with exhaustion. And I was driving a car while sleeping, so think about that the next time you're on the road and be very frightened of the drivers around you. Anyway, new address, boxes moved to the new apartment, furniture to be delivered next week, utitilies turned on, renter's insurance purchased, mailbox re-keyed, everything seems to be working out. I'm again not looking forward to living in two cities simultaneously, but it could be worse, I could be commuting between here and India on a weekly basis.

In just a few hours, I will start the incredibly long journey home. I'm not sure if I mean that literally, in that it will take a lot of time, or metaphorically, in that it will take a major psychological adjustment to slip back into life in the U.S. Both, I guess.

The program ended on something of a low note for me. The last week of classes and testing were depressing, demoralizing, devastating, all those de- words in English apply to the situation. What was already a bad situation was made worse on Friday when one of the teachers said something to me that just confirmed that my summer was a failure. I had to go up to the roof of the Institute and sit and cry for awhile before I could sit down with my classmates for the final lunch. Only yesterday did I realize that the whole thing was probably a misunderstanding--the teacher answered the question I asked, not the question beneath the question. Well, that makes sense to me, anyway, and I'm sorry I didn't see that last Friday.

Andyji, too, took the testing pretty hard, so we two went to Agra on Sunday to try and jolt ourselves out of our depressed states. Andyji bounces back much more quickly than I do, of course, so he was really okay before the train even left the Jaipur station, but I took awhile longer. It didn't help that two different people in Agra told me my Hindi was bad. Anyway, the Tajmahal is everything you might hope it would be. I'm not sure I even complained about the $17 admission fee once I'd parted with it. I'd even pay $20 if they'd consider lighting the Tajmahal at night. We had an awesome, unobstructed view from the rooftop of our hotel, but once darkness fell, that was kind of it. Still, sitting on the rooftop drinking Mirinda at sunset was a fantastic experience. Some neighbors were flying kites (we were so schooled, Andyji), and when it got dark, bats much bigger than breadboxes began flying overhead. The call to prayers came at sunset, and even I had to take a moment to gather my emotions.

I was kind of hoping my shoes would get stolen when we were wandering about the Tajmahal complex barefoot, because that would have been a good story: "My shoes got stolen at the Tajmahal! I had to walk back to the hotel with no shoes!" but that didn't happen. I did, however, get thoroughly and firmly groped during the security search. There's no way you need to squeeze my breasts that hard to find out if I'm carrying explosives. I'm just saying.

Andyji stayed on in Agra, planning to take a public bus to Mathura and then Delhi. I took the train back to Jaipur alone. At first I was a little nervous about it, and indeed, 15 seconds into the train station, a man made an inappropriate gesture toward me. I very nearly clocked him, but at the last second turned my fist into one of those "wtf?" twisty-hand gestures that are hard to stop once you start them, and sneered "Kya hua? Aap kaun hain?" He just stared, which made me wish even more that I'd just slugged him. Anyway, I spent some time in the ladies' waiting room, then caught my train 2 hours late. It was a little confusing because the # and name of the train changed, but luckily I am capable of asking for the Jaipur jaanewalla train. This old guy in the seat next to me basically watched out for me, and he understood everything I tried to say, which was reassuring.

Once back in Jaipur, I got the best rickshaw price I've ever gotten, I couldn't even in good conscience try to bargain it down. When I said so, the tout said, "Yes, madam, I know you are a local, that is why I said pachchis (25) and not pachas (50)." And when I got in the rickshaw and told the driver where I wanted to go, he turned around and said (in English), "Oh, you are a local." And later in the day, a rickshaw driver actually gave me a free ride for a couple of blocks. I expected him to try and get R20 out of me, but he said no, he just wanted to make sure I left Jaipur with a good experience. Coming back here from Agra felt like coming home, and that was nice.

I'm so ready to go to my real home, though. I wish I could fold a few people up and take them with me in my pocket, but otherwise, I need to go back to where I understand the rules better and am in charge of my own life. I'll be back, but not until I've had time to regather my self-esteem and energy.

So, the whole "blogging the trip to India" thing didn't work out very well. It isn't that I don't have time to blog, and it isn't that I can't afford the R10/hour fee for internet access. It's that I just don't have anything to say. Some of the silence is due to the fact that every day life is just that...every day and pedestrian. I get up at 7:00, shower, study for 30 minutes, have breakfast at 8:00, walk to the Institute with Andy and Andrew at 8:45, spend the next five hours learning Hindi through various means and media, then go home, bathe (because by then I seriously need it, even if the water in the bath bucket is dirty), try to get out of eating dinner, study, sleep. There's a lot of variety in the afternoon, but not so much that I feel like writing about it.

Yesterday, for instance, I stayed in the Institute until 5:00 p.m. reading my book, after which I went to a coffee shop at Gaurav Tower and read some more. Took an autorickshaw home, and who's to say the driver wasn't intoxicated? Not me. The day before, Andy and I wandered around the marble-cutting area of the old city, watching men work on life-size sculptures of Krishna and Ram. We watched two different groups of women make bangles. Some kids threw rocks at us. Some kids asked us for money. I bought a marble turtle that reminded me of Saidji ("Yeh aapka face hey!").

I guess I could have written something about my trip to Himachal Pradesh. A group of us went up to Shimla for mid-term break. The nicest thing about Shimla (except, of course, for the cool, wet weather), was the shower. This is the first shower I have had since arriving in Jaipur. That is a big deal, given how much we sweat here. I also liked Shimla because no one hassled me. When people are complaining about how Indian men behave on the streets? Don't roll your eyes, because it's all true, except probably worse.

We went to Pushkar for "Hindi Camp." I followed Walterji and one of our teachers, Upmaji, around a lot, and tried to figure out what they were saying. Unfortunately, they were speaking Hindi, so that was a total loss. Not much connecting with my teachers. In class, they are the kindest, most patient "koi bat nahin" kind of people. Outside of class, I grope for things to say that a) I can say in Hindi and b) don't make me sound like a kindergarten student. This is always a failure.

The biggest challenge here has been living with a host family--or host person, since there is only one woman who owns our house. I feel constantly watched and monitored, because that's how it works here. Unfortunately, being just short of 39 years old, I am used to making my own decisions. I am becoming a master at deception, inventing friends with whom to eat at the drop of a hat, just so I can leave the house without hassle. There is no real privacy, and after awhile, that wears on you. Also, the upper classes of India eat a lot of food. People are constantly trying to shove food down my throat, and there is no protocol for refusing, you are always supposed to accept. I am often faced with the choice of being openly and confrontationally rude, or eating more and throwing up at the table. This is the big challenge for me. So, I guess the message there is that if I come back to do research, I need my own apartment.

I also need a scooter, washing machine and iron, but that is something to be covered in another post, another time.

How many weeks? I've lost track. I think only four tomorrow, but I never have any good idea about the date here. I'm out of the loop with news, too. I try to read the paper every morning, but I usually just end up looking at the pictures because the words are too hard. Sometimes someone brings in an English newspaper, but the only American news comes from the entertainment world. So, we know about Ashley (sp?) Simpson, but not about George Bush.

Yesterday, I ended the day feeling like classes were going pretty well. Today, I am really depressed and tired of the whole endeavor. Can I drop out of school? No. I just have to climb the wall, I guess, instead of beating my head over it.

Maybe it's just that I've seen too many movies this week. Tuesday we went to see Krrish!, the second half of which I liked. Overall, I'm afraid that Krrish! once again proved my argument that all films are better when they include Preity Zinta. Last night, we went to see Superman Returns, dubbed in Hindi. Junk. It's interesting how all the American students were saying, "Oh, Krrish! what a stupid movie, who believes anyone could do that?" yet somehow managed to accept that Superman can stop an airplane from crashing into a baseball field. Stupid. Superman Returns definitely needed more songs and dancing.

On a slightly but not completely related note, I'd just like to point out that Beth and I are definitely not existing in the same India. Not that I'm complaining, but I could use a little time in that luxury hotel right now. Well, not really. I like what I've got. A cold Limca, though, I could do with that.

Three weeks, celebrated last night by Andrew, Priya and I at Mocha, where we watched Argentina play Brazil in the World Cup.

Right now I'm suffering from what can only be heat exhaustion. I know I've got a good sunburn going on, despite a head covering and sunblock. I am generally all about our field trips, but I have to say that running around the old city in 100 degree weather is not the smartest idea anyone has ever had. Still, we finally got to the City Palace and the Hawa Mahal today. I am planning a return trip to the Hawa Mahal after monsoon season arrives to take pictures of the jantar mantar.

Today we had a great thali dinner at Surya Mahal--the bean dal was great. I have to say the food has been really good. I complain about it all the time because it's simply too much to eat and there is no (polite) way to refuse more, but it's really quite good. I wouldn't say no to a good pizza or pasta situation, but so far, I've manage to cope with all the vegetables except bitter melon. Mango season is supposed to end in something like 8 days, and then hopefully we will move on to another fruit.

I'm making progress in Hindi (slowly slowly--that's a Hindi construction for you to contemplate), and doing quite a bit out on my own. I've had a couple of unfortunate encounters with rickshaw drivers (I kind of thought one was going to end up with people pulling out sticks and beating on me), but overall am doing pretty good with them. It's good to be somewhat independent, even if my host person doesn't encourage it. We got a really good rickshaw price back from Gaurav Tower last night, which means we're all making progress in our cultural assimilation. I'll never fall for that "As you wish, Madam," line, let me tell you.

So, yes, I'm in India. Internet access can be pretty sketchy, but I finally found an I-way internet cafe that seems to be okay (4 hours for 50 rupees, that's roughly 4 hours for a dollar). Of course, they could be siphoning off my passwords, but I'll never know until something bad happens.

I've been in India for a little over two weeks now, and I feel as if I've lived a thousand lifetimes. I have a greater admiration for travel writers now--how do you possibly sum up a place like this in words? I could write about the dead dog I saw on my way to the Institute today, but that would not tell you how charming the stray dogs can really be when they dig their homes in the ever-present piles of sand. Today, a little boy simultaneously emptied his bowels on the sidewalk and yelled out "Hello!" to me. What to make of such efficient multi-tasking?

We are all anxiously awaiting the monsoon. I've been through 2 pre-monsoon storms and they were pretty impressive. Wading home after the torrential rains made me very glad for all of my immunizations. I am so investing in Dettol stock when I get home.

My Hindi is improving, but I'm still absolutely non-functional and illiterate, which demonstrates how bad my Hindi was to begin with. Jaipur deals in tourism, though, so there is a lot of English spoken, enough that when I mess up the numbers for 50 and 25 I can revert to English to re-bargain the price of an autorickshaw. I have mixed feelings about taking a cycle rickshaw. On one hand, they are much better for the pollution problem. On the other, what human should have to drag a rickshaw behind them? On the other, if they weren't pedaling rickshaws, wouldn't they be out of the only job they're ever going to get? It's hard to say.

Two weeks down, six and a half to go.

Well, I'm packed, well in advance of my departure date. Packing really wasn't on my schedule until tomorrow a.m., but I figured...why not get it over with? I don't have any wise words about packing for India--all I can say is that I'm not taking much in the way of clothes. I'm trying to decide if I need to bring my tennis shoes. Indiamike says no, and Indiamike has become my god, so...two fewer things to pack. I've got a lot of awkwardly shaped things (small toys for the host family, for instance) that just don't work well in a backpack, but I guess if they get crushed, that's life. My carry on is suspiciously light, making me wonder what I'm forgetting. I guess I have 40 hours or so to figure it out. I actually feel like I've overpacked, but it's hard to know what's superfluous when you've never visited a country before.

Since I'm packed, that means I'm free to spend the two nights watching Bollywood movies, right? I've still got Parineeta and Dil Ne Jise Apna Kahaa. I am way hoping I get to see Krrish! in Jaipur, even though I expect the movie to be horrible.

I guess I should catch up with my life. Mostly I've just been lounging around the house, alternating between a "JFC, I'm going to India!" panic and a "God, I'm bored" malaise. This morning was lost to the university bureaucracy as I tried to straighten out billing/insurance issues. Going to India w/out insurance? Probably not a good idea, and I don't intend to test that hypothesis.

Also a problem: my airline tickets arrived yesterday, and instead of returning right after my program ends, I'm in India for several additional days. Free vacation, sounds good, you might think. The problem is, my return flight lands me in Indianapolis just 3.5 hours before my lease in C-U expires. How do I get all of my stuff in a truck, moved to Rantoul, and get my old apartment cleaned by 2:30 August 9? This is a problem, and I haven't figured out what I'm going to do. We spent last weekend renting the new apartment, and I thought I had everything under control, but now I don't, so I'm not sure what is going to happen here.

Other than that, I'm just trying to chill ("Love, love is to chill."). We spent Friday at the Speedway, which was TOTALLY AWESOME. It is difficult to describe what a car looks like going 220 miles an hour. So fast your eyes can't track it. I thought stock cars were speedy little things--wrong. There was a lot to take away from the whole Carb Day experience, but I think what I really learned was that spotters aren't the safety net I once thought they were. Paul Dana's death makes a lot more sense now. I don't care what the spotters are saying, and how much evasive action you take--at those speeds, well...yeah. Too fast. But so cool. And thanks to Mr. Dana for the push to ethanol. I can enjoy the sport much more now.

So, I've finished all my jabs for India (Hep A booster, polio booster), and am halfway through my typhoid regimen, which is making me sick every other day. I start the anti-malarial meds the day before I leave. You'd think no one had ever traveled to India and lived to tell about it the way the travel clinic goes on about all the paths to death in South Asia ($500 for a preventative series of rabies shots? No thanks.). Part of me wanted to JUST SAY NO to the polio booster just because I was irritated at the doom-and-gloom tone of the nurse, but I'd probably be the one person to catch polio in Jaipur this year if I went through with that plan.

I have tons of stuff to do before I leave on June 8. Most importantly, I need to write a paper proposal and re-work said paper in case it gets accepted (the paper is due the week I get back if accepted. It's already written, but needs at least one more re-write). But I find myself endlessly distracted by this whole India thing. I visit Indiamike obsessively. I try not to visit Beth obsessively, but it seems possible that she is exactly as distracted as I am, and therefore good company. I've read the Ramayana. I've read travel advice from Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, and Footprints. I have watched every Hindi film within reach, and some. I even joined up at a local video store last weekend because neither the local libraries nor Netflix can keep up with my Bollywood demands. (As a side note, Netflix is starting to really, really suck. They are so not earning their money, and if they keep up this super slow service, I'm leaving).

I was trying to figure out how Beth managed to spend $600 to prepare for her trip to India. So far, I've spent about $70, and $25 of that was on clothes. I guess she's probably buying more clothes than I am since I will have a clothing stipend to spend on arrival. Also, I realized today that my $70 doesn't include the $200 or so I've spent at the stupid travel clinic. Nor does it include the $90 I spent on the visa ($60 for the visa, $30 for postage). I have to buy a few gifts for my host family (hard to buy when you have never met any of them), and I need to buy a notebook and pens/pencils for class. And some water purifying tabs (once I decide what kind I really want to use for two months). Other than that, I'm good. [ETA: I just spent $30 on water purifying tabs, so I'm quickly catching up to Beth. I don't really like the taste of purified water, but it's a lot more convenient--not to mention environmentally friendly--to purify water instead of chasing after bottled water every day. Also, a shout out to Grayson, whose last name I don't know, and about whom I had more or less forgotten until I re-read one of my old travel journals this weekend. Grayson, who had the room across from ours in the Dvorets Molodezhi in Leningrad (1988), taught me two important things: 1) never pack more than you're willing to carry; and 2) always take Kool-Aid for a break from that purified water taste.]

I am more or less following Travelling Tim's packing advice, leaving out a few things that seem specific to rambling. I have a mosquito net, but I'm not going to take it. Since I'm staying in one place for two months, I'll just have one made to fit whatever bed I'll be sleeping in after I get there. It doesn't have to be lightweight because I won't be carrying it around. Most of the things on his list I already have, though, purchased long ago either for our Thames Path ramble, our trip to Costa Rica, or one of our annual camping trips. In fact, I'm still re-using (for at least the sixth time) the gallon freezer bags we used for waterproofing on the Thames Path. Today I even tossed two things on the "take to India" pile that first traveled with me to the Soviet Union in 1988. Is that good or bad?

My last task is to put together my own guide book. Printing is free for Catherine at the university library, so we're going to print everything I might need, and bind it together with some stuff I've photocopied. I've made a six-page photo album of "life at home" to include, so my host family will have some idea what I've been up to over here. I've also copied a lot of pages out of books to bind into a research volume on the jantar mantar. Hindi text books will be purchased in Jaipur. I can't think of anything I've forgotten, but that is probably because...well...I've forgotten it.

Today a professor made me cry, but in a good way (finally!). Just six posts (but fifteen weeks) ago I was suggesting that I was woefully under-prepared for a seminar. This indeed turned out to be true, not just angst-ridden speculation on my part. I tanked the midterm essay, and while I can certainly point to things like travel and funerals that contributed to my overall sense of intellectual malaise at that point of the semester, that would really just be me trying to save face. I tanked, no real explanation needed. However, the professor let me re-write the essay, and I promised I would do better in the future. That mid-term was a one-time aberration, I promise! I did rewrite the essay, and she seemed genuinely pleased that on my second attempt, I did not sound like quite as big an idiot as I did on my first attempt.

Today I stuck my head in the door of said professor's door as I was passing by, and she said that although she hasn't graded my final paper, she was very pleased. The words "fantastic" and "beautifully written" were used, as was the phrase "you fulfilled your promise and more." So, good for me, I say. That might be the only time in my entire graduate career I hear that, so I'm writing it down for everybody to see.

I swear to god I saw a girl running laps in the Engineering Library this morning.

Well, the sign outside the conference hotel in Savannah heavily suggested that we would be seeing some alligators. Or, at least, that if we did see some alligators, we should not feed them. The trip was a failure in that we didn't see even a single alligator.

Just so everyone knows: driving on the interstate across Georgia in a rainstorm is a BAD IDEA. You remember the night the lights went out in Georgia? Well, apparently they stayed out, because it's the darkest damn state I've ever seen. I mean, the astronomer in me hates light pollution, right? But my god, would it kill you all to put a street light or two near the off-ramps? I think your road-side commerce numbers would take a dramatic leap upward if you did. I'm just saying that I'm not getting off the interstate during a rainstorm in the black of night if I can't see what might be waiting for me. Just saying.

We did eventually pull off into the great dark night and get Catherine some boiled peanuts.

The conference was fine, and I learned a thing or two. It was fun having Jim around even though we only attended one session together (and he was late and then left early). Catherine apparently had a good time learning the history of Savannah. That's another thing--you want to know how to tell when you're over-interpreting your town for tourists? When you feel compelled to put up a sign telling everyone where Oglethorpe pitched his tent, that's when. In case you're all wondering where that might be, the sign/bench is in front of Hyatt Regency Hotel on Bay Street (see the Oglethorpe Bench Monument here). I'm serious. I have been trying to think of a more intensely interpreted location, and I just can't think of one. Possibly Gettysburg, but a) you need all the signage you can get to understand troop movement at Gettysburg and b) I still think Savannah has more.

On the way home, we stopped at Chick/Chatt (although we only saw the Chick part of that relationship). I think this is our first Western Theater battlefield, and I liked it enough that I'm writing my heritage paper (due Friday!) on it. Well, Chickamauga and the nearby lost battlefield of Franklin, Tennessee. We couldn't quite force ourselves into the tourist hell of Lookout Mountain (SEE RUBY FALLS), but plan to do it before we leave the Midwest.

There's probably other stuff I could write about if I tried a little harder. Churchill's Pub serves a good beer (says Catherine), as does Moon River Brewing Company (acoustics aren't great at Moon River, but it's your chance to eat in a building that a) is directly adjacent to a demolition site and b) once lost its roof to Hurricane David. I ate two pralines in two days. Over-priced, but good. The shipping traffic on the river is awesome. There was a dead body found in a nearby hotel. Catherine met a nice guy named Mr. Duncan who has a map shop with his wife (conveniently named V & J Duncan Antique Maps, Prints & Books). She bought me two maps of India (one from 1906 and one from 1860) and an 1858 restrike of an engraving depicting a Holi festival. We found out that Nashville, TN is only a 5-hour drive from Bloomington. We found out that Savannah is more like a 15-hour drive from Bloomington (Mapquest lies).

Yesterday, the Hindu Student Council celebrated Holi. I discovered that it is a very nice way to pay back students who have exasperated me all semester. Unfortunately, not all of them attended, so I had to make do with focusing my super soaker on those who did show up, maybe they'll pass my message onto the rest. It was fun, and for some reason, out of all the people the reporter talked to, he chose to take a quote from the old, atheist white lady about the celebration for the article in the student newspaper (that is, me).

What I really discovered yesterday was that just because the doctor said, "It would be good for your knee if you try to move it around and use it," she did not mean "Run around Illini Grove with a group of people half your age." I think I mentioned to the three people who care that my knee was not broken, but it might as well have been, I think. The doctor was filling my ears with frightening speculations about "wiring the knee cap together" before I proved to her it wasn't broken by having negative X-rays. I figured it wasn't broken, and therefore put off going to the doctor for two weeks after I hurt myself, but it was in kind of a between stage with pain so I thought I should get it checked. It hurt less than my arm did the last time I broke it, but more than my arm did the last time I didn't break it. (That last sentence probably makes sense to no one but me.) Anyway, it isn't so much painful right now as just weird. I can press on my knee and feel the liquid trying to escape the pressure of my fingers. It makes me sick to my stomach, but it doesn't hurt.

Today, as I was driving up in Rantoul, I saw a billboard for McDonald's that said "Free Coffee Monkeys" and I thought, wow, gotta get me some of them. Then I realized it said "Free Coffee Mondays" and wasn't nearly so excited. I have no idea what a Coffee Monkey might be, but the moment someone invents one, I'm going to buy it. Maybe it can sit next to our Touchdown Monkey. Or, I guess, our Extrapoint Monkey, because we couldn't afford the Touchdown Monkey.

The real point of this post is this: how does fast food work? I haven't had fast food since...oh...some time in 2004, and this may be why I'm confused. Today I needed some quick caffeine (yeah, yeah, I know I should be finishing that project that drives my need for caffeine instead of writing this, but still), so I decided to get a Diet Coke at McDonald's. So, here's me sitting at the drive through, thinking this: "Do I need to sleep tonight at some point? Yes, so I should just get a small. *Do* I need to sleep tonight? Can I stay up all night and finish this? No, I need to sleep tonight. Maybe get a medium so I can stay up until 2 or 3 a.m."

OrderBox: Welcome to McDonald's, can I take your order?
Me: Can I have a Large Diet Coke? [Notice I screw up my own order.]
OrderBox: That will be 75 cents at the first window.
Me: [Look at OrderBox screen where it says "ExtraLarge Diet Coke 0.75" and think WTF? I ordered a Large, which should have cost $1.50. Drive to first window, wondering why I didn't say Medium.]
Me: Did you say 75 cents?
OrderBoy: You wanted a Large, right? I just gave you an ExtraLarge for half the price.
Me: Am I supposed to understand that?
OrderBoy: I just do what I'm told. I don't understand it, either.

What possible benefit can they can reap from spontaneously upgrading my order for 1/2 the price? If I'd ordered a small for 75 cents, would I have still gotten an ExtraLarge?

Okay, kidlings, this seems like news worthy of an update (although the observant among you have noticed that there is recurrent activity just two posts down):

Yesterday I got word that not only am I going to India for the summer, I'm going to India *for free*. I found out over spring break that I was accepted into the AIIS Summer Language Program (I'm thinking that my exam was so horrible that they thought, "Oh, bhagvan, we must send this girl to India so quickly because she needs more help than we can give her here!"), but I was trying not to think about it because I really couldn't afford to go. Yesterday, they let me know that I got a Critical Languages Scholarship (possibly proving that the U.S. State Department is good for something?) that covers all my expenses for the summer, including airfare (running around $1500 right now).

We now return you to your regularly scheduled silence.

Well, that didn't take long. Last semester, my crisis in confidence didn't happen until Week 13. This semester, it's happening in Week 2. Does that mean next time it will happen three weeks before the session even starts?

How do I get out of this class? I told myself after last week's seminar that I should just hold on, it will get better, but that's not happening. I don't understand even half of what's being said by my classmates, and I understand even less of what the professor's saying. I thought I was reasonably well-prepared to take the course, but god, was I ever wrong. I spent most of today's class trying not to throw up. I feel like I have an ulcer, and it's only going to get worse since I'm supposed to present next week's readings and run the seminar. How can I run a seminar when I don't even understand what's going on around me?

I wish I would get hit by a car.