Quick Medusa Update

• Tenure: I still do not know. All good on all fronts so far but I still do not know. You cannot imagine how frustrating this is. This has been the most stressful process and the most agonizing year, in this regard.
• Real Housewife of Atlanta: The Someone got a tenure-track job in the Southland. This is wonderful and exciting news and a brilliant coup in a market that is temperamental on its best days and was, as many of you know, downright beastly this year. This also means we'll be having a Mason-Dixon romance and maintaining residences in two cities. Yes, we need your advice and wisdom.
  
• Wardrobe: I have just over a month to make some very important fashion choices for my Grand European Tour. Actually, it's just a conference and then a few days in London and a few days in Paris. I'll take it! I have to a) look fabulous at all times; b) be comfortable; and c) pack lightly. This is going to be VERY DIFFICULT TO ACHIEVE. I will be posting two This Week's European Wardrobe posts: the fantasy one and the practical one. Maybe I'll come out somewhere in between.
  
• Random obsessions of these past months: The Someone, Facebook, Wii Fit, Leo Babauta's The Power of Less, trips to New York (and Uniqlo, Brooklyn Industries, cocktails with fabulous former students, too salty salt bagels on hungover mornings, missing the bus to drink Lambrusco in Little Italy), Sober House, Bon Iver, Tom Tykwer, cyborgs, and Marcuse.
  

Triumphant return to the blog and full post to follow soon.

Done and not done

Progress?

Last week's list:

1. Plan summer class
2. Work on Major Project due to publisher tentatively in June:
   
1. Email several people I want to be involved to ask them to be involved, including AB, AE, LE, and KC.
2. Look over some guidelines and sample thingies
   
3. Decide on several important details regarding format and content
   
4. Email some other people
5. Compile
6. Write proposal
   
7. Cross fingers
8. Send
3. Clean out study by: filing this year's course materials, move boxes to basement, moving big photo project somewhere, setting up sewing machine, cleaning out files, and getting S. to come over for an estimate on finishing shelves.
4. Meet with TDC
   
5. Scary medical test Not such a big deal at all, turns out
6. Insane Workout Plan 19/20 days; 5 lbs. lost

Things done instead:

1. Wrote last-minute proposal for grant (Very good money. Keep your fingers crossed for me.)
2. Partially cleaned out second closet and gathered shoes to take to Salvation Army
3. Corresponded with directed-study student about project
3. Watched Grey Gardens three times. It is a little distressing how much I find myself identifying with Little Edie.
4. Watched Tape twice. I can't believe Linky didn't write this movie, as he is the master of what I call the "what?-what?!-what! conversation"--those conversations you find yourself in that are contradictory and confusing in terms of what is being said but that keep you talking because you ARE certain you do not like the weird power dynamics of the conversation. The dialogue of such a conversation intermittently lapses into this:

Person A: What?
Person B: What do you mean, what?
Person A: What are you talking about?
Person B: What?!
Person A: What!

Nearly the whole of Tape is a brilliant example of the what?-what?!-what! conversation. It's dead realistic in terms of how conversations go (a Linklater hallmark, to my mind).
5. Upgraded my sad, old, dying cell phone to this one. It was cheap with my free upgrade, but I am not sure I like it. I am, however, apparently a sucker for a promotion involving the seven deadly sins.
6. Sent flowers to my awesome niece for her 7th grade graduation
7. Talked to my eight-year-old nephew about the potential scariness vs. the potential coolness of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (It's very important to him that the potential coolness outweigh the potential scariness, and he will often send me to a movie ahead of him so that I may determine the scariness-coolness ratio.)
8. Read Falling Man
9. Fretted