It went fine

Thanks a lot to everyone who wrote with "break a leg" messages in re my job talk and campus visit today -- much appreciated! I am now totally wiped out, so will make this brief and just say that I think it went fine. Long fancy dinner last night with the search committee, and then today my first meeting was at 10:15 and my last meeting (over dinner) ended at 8:15 and I had to force them to give me bathroom breaks at points in between, bathroom breaks that were my only alone/down/quiet time. Lots of pleasant interactions with faculty members and grad students, lots of positive feedback on the talk (both during and after). I wore a nice professional-type outfit that I thought looked pretty ok (knee-length black fancy blazer/shirt and grey tweedy pants with fancy Turkish glass necklace), and I wasn't even nervous until the cab ride home (what's that about?). Now I just have to avoid the department on Thursday and Tuesday when Candidates 2 and 3 arrive for the same treatment and hold office hours in the coffee shop in the student center instead. I should know decision-wise by the end of next week or beginning of the week after that; if I have good news, I'll post it here.

I can no longer sit upright, so will succumb to gravity's pull...

Highlight reel

Well, I've been back from my conference trip to California for about 44 hours now and even though I'm headed out to New York on Thursday morning for my fifth trip of the last five weeks, I'm actually feeling surprisingly calm and rested. Now that today's lecture is over and done with, I actually don't have that much to do for the next few days. (In today's lecture, btw, I taught my students about some experiments run by the Maye Queen a few years ago, and at one point I said something like, "So, do you think the babies are learning X way? Or are they abstracting to the higher level category and learning Y way, after just 2.5 minutes of training input?" One of my most perceptive students said, "You know, I would think it's that lower-level X way, it makes more sense, but you're so excited about this that it has to be the higher-level Y way." I didn't realize I was so enthused by the Maye Queen's experimental findings that students could deduce answers from my demeanor alone. But apparently I was. Should I be teaching with a poker face?) (Oh, and I did all this while wearing a shirt that Queenie snagged for me at a recent Chicago clothing swap - how fitting!)

Sure, I'm giving a job talk a week from today, and have to spend time tweaking it and doing all kinds of net-based research on the department so I can suck up more effectively in the day-long shmoozefest that is the campus visit. But that's my only intellectual task for the next few days, which feels like such a relief. Article for journal issue I'm co-editing? Sent off last week to my co-editor to be anonymized and off to the reviewer. Remaining articles from contributors for said issue? No point in hassling them before the T-day weekend, so I won't bother. Article that I need to revise and resubmit? Just learned that the earliest it might be published in the journal I'm resending to is December 2007, so I'm not feeling too pressed for time. Conference interviews? Over and done with this past Saturday. They seemed to go fine, and I didn't make any obvious errors. So I'm not going to worry too much about either of them, especially as I left one interview feeling not that enthused about the job (which I had previously thought I wanted), despite the chance to work with a super-prestigious and cool colleague (who is, however, what looks like seconds from retirement), and left the other knowing that they're not going to decide who they're flying in for campus visits until the second week of January. (I know, second week of January! After interviewing in mid-November! Academia is so insane.) Plus, instead of leaving this conference feeling hyper-stimulated and overly anxious the way I usually do, due to both the barrage of information and the endless potentially awkward social interactions with people higher than you on the academic totem pole, where you feel like you're constantly being evaluated and also reminded of all the knowledge you somehow haven't managed to acquire yet, I actually left feeling okay. This is in part because I didn't present this year, for the first time in a few years, and in part because lots of the potentially socially awkward conversations this year were in fact quite positive and not awkward at all (for example, three different super-top-level people said that they had told or would tell people on the search committee for my next-week job interview that I was the person they should hire, which was incredibly nice and made me feel really, really happy and, I don't know, like people who I really respect might actually think well of me, which is not what I usually walk around thinking). And it's entertaining to be a step up on the totem pole and have graduate students hesitantly approach and say, "Do you remember me? I'm ..." Earlier this year I resolved that if I didn't get a tenure-track job in this job search cycle, I wasn't going to put myself through this wringer again -- now I'm starting to think that it might be because I won't have to. And finally, of course, I can't underestimate the benefits of my pre- and post-conference visits with Zen Boy, who has a calming, beneficial, and overall positive effect on me and my feeling of well-being. It's such a shame that it looks like we have no real chance of a future together (especially as he says things like "we're really a perfect match, aren't we?" and also turns out to be Pangeo, my counterpart who is ethnically misrecognized as Jewish even though he's Spanish and Hispanic) -- and that's only partially because he's only halfway through his year of retreat and devotion to intensive Buddhist practice (and mostly because of his non-attachment orientation leading to thoughts of not so much long-term commitment). Although Stovie thinks the problem is that Zen Boy is Zen (oriented toward retreating from life) and not Tantric (oriented toward embracing and engaging with life), and is apparently going to work on converting him for my sake. What's a brother for?

Anyway, the whole point of starting this posting was because after my nap and the conclusion of my (English-language) Russian detective novel, I found myself in the mood to play some blog catch-up and post some pictures that, for whatever reason, I hadn't put up in a timely fashion earlier this year. So with no further ado, some highlights from the last few months (where few, I suddenly see, is like 5?).

1. Unlike most cats, the Giklet likes napping in the sun.
2. For some reason, in 1930 the denizens of Spookytown living on the border of HippyDippyville decided to recreate a Civil War fort/battle site where Lincoln came under fire in 1864.
3. Ok, so Pesach = Passover, right? But this picture was taken (in a religious part of Brooklyn where I'd never been before) like two months after Passover ended. Mmmm, stale matzah...
4. I didn't find the signage of this Brooklyn eatery compelling enough to go into it either.
5. These huevos rancheros were sad that I was going to eat them. But it didn't stop me.
6. How did I live in Chicago for two whole years and yet only learn from an excursion during an unexpectedly long delay at O'Hare this past May that there was a cop store way out west?



7. While Dad sees Battery Park as a viable performance venue, I apparently do not.

8. Prairie Landing is a fan of the turtle, which admittedly is much cuter than an awkward teen gosling.

I think her favorite part of our walk in the park was this sign, though, maybe because there's just so much action going on.
8. Kayaking with Stovie and Rosenboig in Monterey involved lots of seal spotting, and even more pelicans.
9. Hellraiser got married! And I was a secret bridesmaid (the secret unbeknownst to even me...).


10. Given 5 minutes, Wethead can find the bathroom sink in any new apartment.
11. Although hiking with someone you have (what seems to be) a not-entirely unrequited crush on is somewhat less fun when his girlfriend comes along, it definitely helps if there are inland sand dunes involved.
12.Even mundane Dutch traffic tunnels are enlivened by good design, but it doesn't mean that their spelling is as hip as they think it is.

Phew! I think I'm all caught up, except for a few Halloween shots from the gala at the Bronzeville Manor. My camera is actually on the fritz all of the sudden -- maybe if I get this job I'll treat myself to something a little fancier. (Those of you with digital cameras you like, feel free to pass along recommendations!)

Rethinking cliches

Saturday night in downtown San Jose. Zen Boy (recently arrived from the SF-based monastic retreat where he's wintering) and I were discussing where to have dinner. I realized I had almost no idea what his food preferences or limitations were, since we had met and interacted almost entirely at a retreat/Buddhist monastery that provided nearly endless quantities of gourmet vegetarian food. (Wistful sigh here, both at the food and at the interaction.)

"Hey, so, what's your absolutely favorite kind of food?" I asked, realizing as soon as the words came out of my mouth that not only was this was not going to be useful information in the limited restaurant environs of downtown San Jose, but that it also kind of sounded like one of those awkward getting-to-know-you dating conversational moves. Which at this point I was pretty sure we were past.

"Well, if I was stranded on a desert island with only one kind of chef, I think it would definitely have to be Indian," he replied.

Yeah, so it turns out that Zen Boy doesn't cook. At all. But I find myself enamored of the idea of being stranded on a desert island with a cuisine-specific chef -- this certainly would change all those desert-island cartoons.

How many ways can I say "small world" already?

Oh, I am still in "running around like headless chicken" mode -- between teaching on top of my "research" job, doing job applications (Fedexed out the last set today! also, see below), editing a special issue of a journal (this week marks the beginning of the "hassling contributors" phase), finishing revisions to my own article for said special issue, doing mundane apartment and I-just-moved-to-Spookytown logistical stuff, and travelling to the Netherlands, Chicago, and Philadelphia all within the last 2 1/2 weeks, I've been a little, um, busy. But not too busy to troll Craigslist for a tv stand so I can get my television off the dresser where the day laborers helping me move placed it and hidden behind the door where it belongs. Finally found a right size/right price stand yesterday and went down to southern Spookytown outskirts earlier this evening to assess and purchase it.

During the course of my "making pleasantries" conversation with the now former owner of the tv stand, it turned out he was from Delaware. "Really?" I said, "I have friends who grew up there. In a town that I guess is known for growing [unexpectedly smelly agricultural product]." "Hmm," he said, "are they from [Massacred Indian Place Name]?" (Massacred as in it is surely not pronounced the way it was in the original language, but now that I mention it, I'm guessing some literal massacres were involved as well.) "I don't know, let's see," I said, and promptly dialed Colliculus's number. Unfortunately he didn't answer until the second try, at which point I was already crossing the bridge back into S-town. But yes, people, my tv stand seller and Colliculus (and Prairie Landing, and several of my summertime beach house companions) are from the very same mid-Atlantic small-town paradise.

In other news, today I had a phone interview with the department where I am currently teaching (in addition to my "research" job) -- it's been suggested by friends that my teaching a class there this fall and there being a job opening in exactly my area of specialization perhaps not so much of a coincidence. This conspiracy theory was lent some credence by the day's events: the phone interview was from 3:00-3:30, and by 5:15 I'd already been called back and invited for a campus visit, making me one of three finalists. (I really should say "campus visit", since I'm there twice a freaking week already, but this is the special kind.) Looks like it'll be November 28th, so think good thoughts my way that day, ok? I have to say that I DO NOT LIKE THE JOB SEARCH PROCESS. Which is unsettling and upsetting and stressful in many ways. But nu, if I end up with a nice job at the end of it? Perhaps the pain will fade...