Apt. 11D

Update

It's been a long day. I'm sipping the last drops of a decent Merlot and am thinking about bed. I just wanted to give you all an update on events around here. I had a job interview today for a full time teaching position at a lovely, local college. The job starts in January. I got it. The first semester should be crazy as I master three new classes and still have a toddler at home who needs to be driven to speech therapy, but if I can survive the first semester, things should be doable. Luckily, I have six months to do a lot of preparation for the classes and figure out all the childcare logistics. We're hoping to do as little childcare as possible. I'm sure that things will always be managed with a mixture of juggling, clever babysitters, and lots of sarcastic remarks, so we'll see how things go.

Weekend Journal

I've been working all weekend, something I had vowed to cut back on, but until we get the childcare system set up (daycare starts on Tuesday), that's the way it has to be. Okay, I didn't work all weekend. There was time for a trip to the mall to pick some gifts for my cousin's kids. So, this is a Lileks sort of post -- things that I bought at the mall. BTW, he did some excellent blogging about his high school reunion last week. Worth checking out.

Question of the Day

I'm in the midst of a crunch time here. Things got crazy in June when my family obligations suddenly increased. Now, it's all about work, and I'm making computer generated schedules of every minute of the day to make sure that everything gets done. I think I'm doing a pretty good job of keeping my sanity. It helps to take the time to eat and sleep. And I know that the world just isn't going to end if my bibliography isn't totally perfect. Actually the world isn't going to end, if nothing ends up happening. I've found that nihilism is a powerful ally during these times of stress.

I have a love-hate relationship with crunch times. Clearly, it sucks to be so stressed out. There's no time to write the daily blog post and the Times is still folded over neatly on the kitchen table. But, I'm an adrenaline freak; I kind of feed off of stress, too.

Question of the Day: Are you stressed out right now? What's freaking you out? What do you do to relax?

This Odd House

I'm rather swamped this week and next with work. We're finishing off one paper today and am knee deep in the research for a second paper. It's all good. As Russell Arben Fox frequently notes, I'm really lucky to be doing something that I like so much.

In an effort to reduce time spent monitoring comments, I'm avoiding posts that generate huge controversy, even though it's hard to predict what's going to draw the heat. Non-controversial topic #1 - My house.

When we first saw this house two years ago, we had been through nine months of house hunting. We had seen the house decorated in Elvis posters, the house with a pool for a backyard, and all the little boxes that were still out of our range. When we saw this house, we were able to see through the stinky carpet and wood paneling and immediately put a bid on the house. One of the reasons that we loved it was all the original molding that dates back to 1916.

There are a lot of old houses in our town. A house around the corner from us was a set for the TV show, Ed, which was all about the virtues in a sleepy, little town. Steve and I enjoy driving around and picking out our favorites homes; I'm a sucker for the houses built entirely of river rock.

I'm finally getting to know more people in the community, some of whom have old houses like ours. Their ideas about what to do with these old houses are so different from ours. They're ripping out the old moldings and plaster. They complain that their plaster is chipped and cold. They're completely reconfiguring the layout to make room for massive media rooms. It's killing me.

And, we're just trying to bring the house back to what it looked like before some guy in the 70s put in all those drop ceilings in the house. I'm refinishing a 100 year old mahogany door that the neighbors were throwing away and picking out years of polyurethane from its cracks.

Neighbor guy -- You want this door? Why?
Me -- It's, like, original. Man, look at that patina. [Not that I'm entirely sure what patina is, but I know that it's a good thing.]
Neighbor guy -- But it's got a big glass front.
Me -- I know. It's so Brooklyn. Look it's got beveled glass.
Neighbor guy -- But people are going to be able to see in your house.
Me -- I'll put up a little curtain. Can I have it?
Neighbor guy -- Sure.

Yeah, we're totally pretentious, but I'm having fun with it.

The Devil Wears Blue Socks

I learned last week that lots of women lay their kids clothes out the night before. I was completely floored. It never occured to me to do something like that. First of all, it's work. Avoid at all costs. Second, who knows what mood you'll be in the next morning? It could be a military mini-skirt sort of morning or a suburbs-meet-goth sort of morning. 'Ya never know. Third, my kids pick out their own clothes in about two seconds, and I could care less if it matches or not. It's self-expression and all.

Here's Jonah's outfit from this morning. An olive-ish green tank top, red soccer shorts, royal blue soccer socks (and no, he wasn't playing soccer today), red wrist guards, and a spider tattoo.

Academic-Blogging

As someone preparing to go back on the market for an academic job, this blog is making me increasingly nervous.

Like my son Jonah, I am constantly in battle with myself. I love to get the laugh and the applause, but the best jokes are sometimes the riskiest. People can get offended, meaning can get twisted, and just plain stupid things can get blurted out. Also, the personal posts that I do so enjoy writing can undermine professionalism. A voice that plays well on the Internet does not necessarily translate into the real world.

I have a lot more boundaries about things I write about than I used to -- no discussion of work other than logistical matters or broad generalities about the profession as a whole and no discussion of the neighbors. Still, those boundaries may not be enough.

Bloggers that are a lot more restrained than I am have gotten spanked by the academy this year -- Dan Drezner, Sean Carroll, Jacob Levy, and now Juan Cole was turned down for a job at Yale. There's a collection of essays in the Chronicle about the Cole affair. See the CT and Drezner for the links and commentary.

Spreadin' Love

Ianqui offers two good links: 1. Active Academic -- A blog for academics trying to lose a little bump in their hump. 2. An article in New York magazine about the wildness atUrban Baby.

The Latest Pew Study. Snore.

Last week, Steve and Allison sent me links to the latest Pew study before I had a chance to pop in my contacts. (Thanks, guys) I looked things over, but didn't comment on it, because we've got a few papers on blogging that need to be published first. I've been gagged.

Good thing that Dan Drezner trashed it for me. Dan writes,

The survey found that the overwhelming majority of people who blog do so for non-political reasons -- they function primarily as online personal diaries.

This would certainly be earth-shattering news -- if it was four years ago.

Heh. Dan's got all the links. He also points out that this finding was waved around by journalists to show that bloggers aren't to be taken seriously by political and media elites. Dan has an excellent response.

I also have to wonder if these Pew researchers really read the blogs. One of the appeals of blogging is the mixture of the personal and the political. Blog readers like to know the people that they turn to for political commentary. Bloggers like the freedom to write about a wide range of topics. Most bloggers aren't entirely political or personal. They fall somewhere on a range between those two variables. Pew should have asked bloggers what percentage of their blog posts were political.

Weekend Journal

Half awake on Saturday morning, I could hear Jonah in other room practicing some new words with Ian with the patience of a licensed speech therapist. "Poop. Pee. Ear Wax. Eye Wax. [??] Diarrhea. Vomit. Puke...." He pretty much hit all the bodily fluids and then started from the beginning again.

Lots of craziness in the past few days. It was good to have that early morning belly laugh.

Sleepover Camp

As I skimmed the editorial page over Corn Chex this morning, I caught yet another elitist Judith Warner column talking about sleepover camp. Why oh why are today's parents not sending their kids for eight weeks to camp, she moans? Because they're too uptight. Which is always Judith Warner's punch line.

And the response is always, "well, then, just chill out."

Growing up in a fairly wealthy town right outside of Manhattan, a lot of kids went to sleepover camp. And not the five day, girl scout variety that I did once or twice. The two month, horse-backing riding, scuba diving type of thing. Sure it gave the kids gained a little independence from that experience, but the parents were the ones who got the lion share of independence and immediately boarded the next cruise ship to Bermuda.

We never went to two month sleepover camp, because my parents could never have afforded the $10,000 ticket and because my Italian mother thought it was semi-barbaric to ship your kids off like that. Of course, if she had her way, I would have lived at home until I was married. So, my brother and sister and I hung out the cops' kids over the summer and had the town swim club to ourselves.

Right now, I've got the oldest kid in a town recreation program, which is cheap and no frills. He doesn't do all that much there. He doesn't even get swimming classes. But as we drove to his camp this morning, he told me all about his chats with the teenage counselors. He idolizes the big boys and that's amusing me to no end.

The camp experience, even the most cut rate version, does give kids a chance to kick back, meet new people, and learn corny songs. I'm a big fan. But Judith Warner's elitist whining about the demise of pricey sleepover camps is just ludicrous. Can we get a columnist for the Times who talks about parenting from a middle class perspective please?

Question of the Day -- What makes a good summer camp? What kind of camp did you attend as a kid? What kind of camp are your kids going to this summer?