0 out of 40 people found this image helpful

in my hollywood version of the last day of my summer break, i saw myself getting groceries and cleaning the house in the am and then spending the better part of the day watching the third season of the l-word. no go, as the video store i can actually drive to only carries 2 of the 4 disks and both of them are currently checked out.

so, back in my maryland version of the last day of summer break, i came home, unpacked the groceries and checked online to see how much it would run me to buy the third season. 39.99 which wouldn't be bad if not for willy's teeth, the tax bill, the dental bills, and on and on and on. and this customer image posted on the page didn't really persuade me to spring for the season. make that 0 out of 41 people found this image helpful.

the opposite of wellness

i will preface this post by saying that i really, really like my vet. the place itself is in a location i can actually drive to (big plus), the waiting area and exam rooms are clean (unlike the first place i visited after moving here) and my vet is kind, knowledgeable, patient, and perhaps most importantly, he wears shoes. (the first vet i met after moving her was not kind or patient but the real deal-breaker was that she didn't wear shoes. blech!)

so i bring willy in for his wellness visit and learn (not a huge surprise) that he needs dental work. (he also needs his cataracts fixed but i'm already living paycheck to paycheck here so i'm not guessing that will happen anytime soon.) before i leave i learn that the tech needs to take a little more blood for one of the tests so they take willy back into the back again. and i wait, and wait, and wait. when the tech finally brings him back to me, she says, "well, he's definitely not happy now."

i take the pet taxi back from her and i stand there, smilingly dumbly, thinking this is just another thing they say here, a way of stating the obvious, like "gee pets are never really happy when they have to go to the vet, are they?" but then she is still standing there looking at me so i go "huh?"

tech: part of his toenail came off and it was bleeding but i stopped the bleeding.
me: huh?
tech: it should be okay, but you'll want to keep an eye on it.
me: huh? (looking at willy in the pet taxi. willy looks back at me)
willy: what the f---?
me: huh?
tech: do you cut his nails?
me: huh?
tech: do you cut his back nails?
me: did the whole nail come out? (i start to feel really, really woozy)
tech: no, it just got stuck on something. (she points at the pet taxi)
me: huh?
tech: it got caught. it was bleeding but i stopped it.
me: huh?
tech: do you cut his nails?
me: huh? no.
tech: well, we could do that for you if you want.
me: huh?
willy: what the f---?
tech: (thinking) hmmm. well, maybe he wouldn't really be up to it today but you could come back next week and then we could check the nail and see how it's doing.
me: huh? is it still bleeding? (thinking that if it is i will faint)
tech: no, but you'll want to watch it tonight.
me: watch it for what? (at this point i start wondering if i will find the broken off piece in the taxi and then i start wondering if it is possible for me to faint while driving home)
tech: bleeding.

it's been three hours now and i've been watching him and he seems to be okay. i haven't seen any blood (which is good cause i forgot to ask what to do in that case), haven't come across the broken off piece but willy is refusing to keep his shoes on so i'm guessing that toe might still be a little sore.

only two days. . .

and then I'll have to come up with another label (or maybe more than one) since the "time off" phase will have officially ended.

i finally finished a draft of the assessment and even had time to play around with shutter speed and exposure. if nothing else, getting back on campus will provide me with new people and new things to photograph.

production junction

it's been a pretty productive day but one that could have been far more happy had i had time to play around with the new camera. still, i'm a paragraph away from (finally) having a full draft of my third-year assessment and (what's even better) the floors have been mopped. i hate the idea of starting the semester with a dirty or cluttered living space.

i've been thinking a lot about a post i did awhile ago that dealt with the study and use of models. more specifically still, i've been thinking about models as they relate to task parameters. when faced with what the prospect of composing a type of text that i am not familiar with--that i don't have a lot of experience reading or writing (like third-year review self-assessments produced by people at this particular institution) or that i consider to be particularly high-stakes (i.e., no assessment, no job)--i tend to go model-hungry-nuts. i mean, i want to see what others have done, i want to see models (successful or not). . .bottom line, i want to know how to be an A student where As (at least in this context) translate into increased chances for contract renewal. What I look to the models for are not, of course, right answers but parameters: trends, tendencies, indications of what must be there, what's non-negotiable and where there might be room for play, tailoring and variation.

since this (by "this" i mean parameters) is what my tasks mainly provide students with, i often wonder what, exactly, students really want, mean, or hope to get from me when they ask me to share with them models, samples, or examples of the ways former students have taken up a particular task. when i show them, say, a scrapbook and/or a videogame that someone has produced in response to a particular task, does this automatically translate into something like, "oh, she wants a scrapbook OR a webpage--those kinds of text are okay/safe." given that many students with whom i've worked have worked in academic contexts where final products tend to all look more or less the same (i.e., are roughly of the same "type"--memos, webpages, essays), i can certainly understand (and have learned to anticipate) the "this-kind-of-text-is-safe-to-compose" response. to this end, i try to head things off by saying something like, "okay--i'll share with you the various ways others have approached this task, now your job is to think of still other ways to satisfy the non-negotiable aspects of the task." and these, dare i say, rarely have to do with determining for students what their final products should look like--what those texts must specifically be or do.

to be sure, with the the self-assessment, there are certain things i know i must absolutely achieve, especially when it comes to the physical appearance or visual design of my final product, and i know this mainly because i was the first one in the workshop to ask about formating, asking single or double spaced, what size font, are we to use section headers? etc. still, as i look at the few examples i have to hand, i am mainly tracking other people's rhetorical moves, trying to figure out, firstly, what i must accomplish in this document and then spending the bulk of my time trying to figure out how best to accomplish what i need and want to do with this particular piece of writing.

my other 97 model

the cost of wellness

"yipes!" that said, i guess it's hardly surprising that phone calls during which one's pet is referred to by his model year might be followed by another call during which one receives an estimate for her 1997 model's wellness visit and learns she's looking at 240 bucks, give or take a shot and/or blood test or two. double yipes. meanwhile, the oil change for my 1993 model only cost me 25 bucks.

my 1997 model

poor, poor willy.

with less than a week left before the semester starts, i've been going through my summer to-do list, seeing what i can do by way of getting as much of the left-over, fallen-by-the-wayside stuff crossed off the list as i can. last week's oil change was part of this to-do frenzy. i had actually planned to take the car in as soon as i got back from c and w. oops.

bracketing off the completed book manuscript (item #2 on the to-do list, listed right after the oil change), the only thing left on the summer to-do list was willy's summer fructosamine test. so i call the vet's office and learn that my account (i.e., willy's account) has been flagged for a "wellness visit." when i ask what, specifically, the wellness visit will involve, what it cost, etc. the person i am speaking to check's willy's record and refers to him as a "1997 model." "oh" she says. "yours is a 1997 model, right? we want to make sure everything looks and feels okay, especially since he's getting up there." had she known about my issues about pets, aging, and death, she might have thought twice about suggesting that i have an old cat. yikes. that's the way to set me off. (as an aside--i'm not sure what happens in maryland but in the midwest cats often live to be 18 or 25.) and had she known how much i dislike driving, cars and/or, more generally, anything (including analogies) that brings to mind cars or driving, she might not have said that. i mean, asking what model year cat i had was a bit kinder, i suppose, than asking when i anticipate willy will pass on, but still. man, wait till i pull up for tuesday's appointment in a 1993 model saturn with no a/c.

clearly not rocking the pagination principle

okay, so this struck me as pretty odd. (but alas not really as a sign of/for anything.) i received another copy of fashion rocks--a text that came bundled with the latest issue of wired and that refers to itself as a "supplement to wired."

if it hadn't been for the photo of sean lennon on the table of contents page, i might have pitched the supplement or (what's more likely) stuck in on the shelves with all the other issues of magazines that i've been telling myself, for the past two years now, that i will soon (maybe) finally get around to reading and then disposing of.

to be fair, if not for my having watched the linda mccartney story yesterday i wouldn't have taken note of and/or been interested in the pic of lennon in the first place and would likely have pitched the supplement. as it was, i began to wonder if the lennon connection was a kind of sign (not sure a sign of what though--a sign that i should read or view those pages before tossing the supplement out?) and i decided that i'd take a look at the lennon feature to see if it referred, in turn, to the linda mccartney movie. this, to my mind, would be proof positive that this whole thing was indeed a sign. though i'm still not sure of what.

oh--and i should clarify this point: i'm not really a beatles or sean lennon fan. the whole linda mccartney thing only came up because i think having a good cry would do me well at this point, so i was searching for movies that i thought might make me cry. her story seemed to me to be a good choice.

eager to test my sign hypothesis, i decided i would check out the lennon "feature" before dumping the supplement and this is when i realized the folks at fashion rocks don't use page numbers of their table of contents page, or for that matter, anywhere in their (however many page long) supplement. if my biorhythms weren't still flatlining, i might have had read the editor's letter to see if the lack of pagination was discussed there. in the meantime, i'm wondering how many other magazines or print-based texts have done away with pagination. and it's not like the folks at fashion rocks are employing another navigational device here, like color coding pages, changing the texture of pages, or whatever. strange.

although it's not something i'm proud to admit, i have taken the pagination thing personally (i.e., i feel like they have set out to trick me and succeeded in doing so), so i may never learn if the lennon feature makes reference to the linda mccartney story. i should mention that while confirming that the pages of the supplement did, in fact, lack page numbers, i happened to note that many of the rocking fashionable people featured on these unnumbered pages had been photographed wearing stella mccartney fashions. this too struck me as having sign potential.

as for my interest in biorhythms. well, it continues. i called my mom last night to see what she remembered and she seemed to think that my grandfather did the charts himself. importantly (and i say this only because it's in keeping with my memory of the man), my mom said that he probably never did his own charts but he did do them for almost everyone he knew. she wasn't sure how he learned about biorhythms, how or where he did the charts (i.e., what books or tools he might have used, how long it took him to do one), so she suggested i ask my uncle--who, in turn, seemed to recall that my grandfather had picked up a paperback on biorhythms and used that for the charts. man, what i'd give to get my hands on that book, on the paper he used, on one (or better yet several) of the charts he did for others in the 70s or late 80s.

though unable to share with me one of my grandfather's old charts, my uncle did pass along a photo of my grandfather taken during one of his, well, more emotive/expressive moments--a pic taken at the 49th academy awards the year john won the oscar for directing rocky. confirms for me that my taste in eyewear is, indeed, inherited.

that 'splains it

growing up, i recall that my grandfather would routinely have biorhythms done for everyone in the family. growing up, bad, stupid, tired, lazy, cranky, etc. days were often explained with "oh, my biorhythms must be low." (actually, i still explain away bad days this way.) it didn't occur to me till this morning to wonder where or how he had our charts done, how much he paid, etc. since this all happened way before the internet. over the years, i've thought about biorhythms (again, mainly on bad days)--wondering if anyone still creates them, believes in them, etc.

i don't know that i've ever heard the term used by anyone outside my own family so there have been times when i questioned whether i made the term or even the memory up especially since my grandfather (at least in my memory) was not a person who would ever take seriously the idea of biorhythms. that said, i don't recall that his having our biorhythms done was ever done in the spirit of his poking fun at a new age-y idea.

it was only because i was feeling mildly bothered that the suntimes hadn't posted today's horoscopes when i got up this morning that it even occurred to me to do an online search for biorhythms. i saw my chart and was like, "duh--no wonder. so that explains why it's been really difficult to get much of anything done the past few days." the bad news is that it seems i've still got a few more days of flat-lining ahead of me. rather than fight the uphill battle again today (though in fairness, i had been chugging along with my assessment), i decided that i would spend the day--and we are talking pretty much the whole day--from about 7 am on--sitting on the couch watching tv. i got caught up with weeds, and big love, took a look at one episode of chelsea lately, and then topped that all off with the most excellent linda mccartney story and an ed norton movie called down in the valley.

when i wasn't embracing my rhythms and watching tv, i took many pictures of myself pointing at the cats. willy, as usual, was only mildly interested in this task. io, by contrast, wasn't having any of it and tended to walk out of frame as soon as i got things in focus.

picking up pace (and increasing word counts)

i have to say, this working out of order thing seems to be working, at least in this case, for me. i started working on the teaching section this a.m. and i've roughly 2/3 of it drafted. the doc word count is currently at 1359 (i have to bring this in under 2000 words) which means that i'll likely get to move into the cutting, shifting, tweaking and condensing mode before too long.

to my mind, that is the fun part of writing anything--having compiled enough stuff, composed enough pieces, to be able to move them around, adding and subtracting pieces, and more generally speaking, playing with the various ways those pieces might fit together to do slightly different kinds of work in different ways.

by the by, the image of the lamp is not meant to convey anything like a light bulb or eureka moment. i simply liked the color the light from the bulb coming through the shade made against the wall. if nothing else, i am getting more experience taking pictures without the help of the sunlight, direct of otherwise. it's felt like fall lately--only much gloomier and with way more moisture in the air. perfect weather, actually, for staying inside and reading fiction or watching tv.

still slow going

it's still slowing going (hence the image of the less-than-energized sunflower) but i did draft a pretty decent version of the service section today. 412 words. not that i'm counting. as much as i hate not working in an orderly top-down fashion, and as much as i hate not finishing up with whatever i've started the previous day (i.e., in this case, the research section), i am hoping that working out of order, skipping back and forth from section to section if need be, will, at least in this case, help me pick up the pace a bit. there's nothing worse than starting an a.m. work session by opening a file with, say, 285 words in it and finding that you are left with a file containing 230 words by the end of that same work session. especially when you've not yet gone into revising/tweaking/rearranging mode.

slow going

thank goodness i've given myself about a month to compose the self-assessment for my third-year review. it's been really, really slow going. i only managed to draft 285 words today (not that i'm counting) and i'm not even sure these ideas/words will make the final cut. depressing. i'm trying to approach this as i approach writing articles , something i tend to really enjoy: "okay--your goals is to take a pass at drafting this chunk today, tackling that chunk on wednesday, and that piece on friday" and so on. problem is, it's hard to let words remain on screen for long as i find myself too much distracted by the various reception scenarios that play out in my mind. in other words, i put words down only to delete them, reasoning that they aren't right, aren't clear, won't be well-received and so on. to be sure, i think a lot about reception when i'm composing articles but it tends not to shut me down to the degree this has. and article writing--insofar as it feels a lot like puzzle-making/solving--is often fun, and at times, relaxing. this has kinda been the opposite. again, glad i gave myself a month to work this out.

shutter fun

i've been thinking, a lot lately in fact, about the process studies i did with pp. i've been thinking, in particular, about the kinds of routines or practices our interviewees reported engaging in to keep them focused on the task at hand. for me lately, it's been a lot of camera play.

a pair of willies

willy 11











willy 27

whoop. whoop.

my video teaching portfolio is finally done! well, i guess i should say that it's finally stable-for-now, meaning that there are still a lot of things i'd like to go back and tweak, adjust, re-do, etc. but i need to get getting on with assembling my other third-year review materials. since the portfolio took as much time, patience and attention as an article does, i've decided to celebrate its stable-for-now-ness by opening a bottle of cigar zin. i usually save this treat for times when i've finished and am ready to submit an article or chapter, but, as i said, this piece was as much--if not more--work than the mainly print-based articles have been.

pic du jour

i call this one "wood stepping" cause that's what i feel i've been doing for the past week or so. i'm still in a pretty major funk after learning of pb's accident and i'm still recovering from having read we need to talk about kevin. yipes. i may never read another novel.

i did manage to complete the introduction to the video portfolio. all that's left to do is the process component and then things will be more or less stable-for-now. not sure, however, how my mom will feel about being featured in the intro.

more sunflower

storm

almost time

hard to believe that the summer is almost over and that soon it will be time to get back to the business of the semester. to this end, i spent most of yesterday revamping the 324 and 407 courses, created the course descriptions and calendars of readings for both, created the Blackboard components, uploaded files, etc. all that's left to do, really, is to copy the first day materials--something i plan to do this wednesday before the digital storytelling get-together.

i finally got my new cable box for the downstairs tv. what was it my horoscope had said about not letting trivial things or people get to me? i should have thought about this last tuesday when--hours after the cable guy had come and gone, assuring me that i didn't need a new box (i repeatedly insisted i, in fact, did) and that everything was fixed--i'm sitting there once again, looking at a blank screen. though i'm still unsure as to why i had to wait till sunday to actually have the problem fixed (i.e., this should have been solved last tuesday), i gotta say that the new box is really quite remarkable. the old model was the size of a vcr and this one is the size of a cd player--the walkman kind of player. i'm guessing everything is good to go--didn't have much time to watch tv last night.

sunflower series