jliedl.ca

Today, the three ladies of the household made a trip to the mall.

And there was no whining, no tripping, no howling, no flapping of hands, no running into other people and no upsets: all frequent possibilities with autistic youngest. In fact, we went to many more stores than we often do, but each with a very clear objective announced and left as soon as the mission was accomplished. Sometimes youngest and I sat on a bench while eldest shopped with her birthday money. But most of the time we went into other stores and fulfilled our mission, exiting the mall an hour or so later with a handful of new books, new sneakers, some CDs, toiletries, an umbrella, one new pair of pants and sundry other objects.

I count that quite a success.

Since I heard that some visitors were having problems reading the comment page, I’ve switched templates to see if that solves the problem. So, bye-bye, Zen. Hullo, Daisy!

The cool thing about this blog host? They do all the Wordpress upgrades so I don’t have to and the set-up features almost four hundred pre-installed templates with a request area to ask for others to be installed. Not so cool thing? Lack of behind-the-scenes access to tweak the pre-installed templates. Which, for an inveterate tweaker? Is kinda disappointing.

If you’re experiencing any technical problems with the site access, send me an email at jliedl.ca over at gmail dot com.

ETA: Am I the only one who gets an error message after posting a comment using this template? *sigh*

You know how summers are supposed to be the stress-free and relaxed time for academics to leisurely work on their research?

Hah! These and other lies trouble me greatly. Book orders piling up, course changes rejected by committees requiring extensive revision work, many more applicants and would-be applicants for our program (who all want to know the status of their application right now). Several committees are pushing for extra meetings as we coast to the season of summer holidays (when staff take their vacations, even if students and faculty do not). The administrative workload is at an all-time high for some of my responsibilities at the same time when 3/4 of my colleagues are off at the big scholarly conference out west. (Lucky ducks!)

Right now, the administrivia I’m dealing with literally makes me sick to my stomach. Off to get a Coke Zero to settle it back down. Urgh.

Last year we commemorated the 400th anniversary of the establishment of Jamestown in Virginia. And I was there to celebrate both the anniversary as well as my birthday. Neat!

This year? It’s Canada’s turn to mark 400 years since Champlain founded Quebec. There are celebrations aplenty underway on both sides of the Atlantic although these have not been without their problems.

What’s of interest to me in all of this is “Why 1608?” Why not, say, 1605 or 1606? Why is the foundation of Quebec more significant than the foundation of Port Royal? (Please to note that the oldest continuous European settlement in Canada is actually Port-Royal although I don’t remember hearing much fuss being made over the 400th anniversary in 2005 beyond issuing a commemorative stamp.)

Since 1992 brought lavish centenary celebrations of Columbus’s voyages to the New World, I’ve been fascinated by how we celebrate and commemorate Europeans’ coming to the Americas: what’s remembered and what’s forgotten. Both a century ago and today, the patterns seem much the same: the anniversary of 1492 drew much more attention than the remembrance of 1497 and John Cabot’s discovery of a New Found Land for Henry VII. Champlain’s involvement in Port Royal’s foundation in 1605 pales before the popular interest, at least in Canada, of his settlement of Quebec City in 1608. St. Augustine’s 1565 foundation merits hardly a mention compared to the hubbub over Jamestown’s settlement. And only the “Norsemaniacs” (and a few pathetic historians) paid much attention to the millennial commemoration of the Norse voyages to the New World. Read more »

I finally got the pictures up in my office. It’s only been, what?, ten months and, of course, when I got this done, I just snapped a few pictures with my cell phone.

It felt good to get the pictures up: a bit more of a Room of My Own. To further that end, I also took a huge load of unclaimed student papers and old exams down to the main office so the summer student workers can have fun with the shredder. That left enough room in the storage box for most of this year’s unclaimed papers and exams. Most, but not all. (How I can measure that I had a lot more teaching on my plate this 2007-8 than 2006-7 — the sheer volume of exam booklets that were used and which I have to retain for a year.)

Now if I could only dispell the stacks of filing that await my attention. Ah, well! I think I’ll just admire a few more shots of my office.
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My watch fell off the counter. It hit the floor with enough force that the back popped off.

I replaced the back only to notice the battery had dislodged as well.

You would think, in twenty minutes of attempts involving a miniature screwdriver, an exacto-knife and other implements of doom, that I could pop that back right off again, wouldn’t you?

However, you would be wrong. Damnit.

Got much more work added to my plate on Friday. Got a little writing done. Brought a lot of research home. Got some visiting squeezed in there.

I’m not sure if I should be happy that Monday’s a holiday (so no more work showing up at the office) or not (due to continued low prospects of getting work done).

Happy Victoria Day weekend, in any case!

So, it’s that time of year. Term is over and everything should be smooth sailing for the research agenda, no? Not exactly.

This week, I dropped off my latest, most polished, annual report and CV (with up to the minute “What I did at Kalamazoo” content). I submitted my expenses. I met with students. I dealt with a host of hassles coming out of committees and emails. I’m gearing up to chair a M.Sc. defense in the morning.

All good. But there’s one important thing missing from that list. Writing. Real, honest-to-gosh academic writing.

I have the next article lined up and waiting to go. I just need that push to go from two conference papers and a pile of research to the actual writing thereof. But there are so many other things that need to be done and NOW! — a response to a patient colleague about a shared responsibility; students to nominate for a scholarship; letters of reference to revise and copy; a review of another collaborative endeavour; sorting out of unclaimed papers and old exams to be shredded; book orders for the fall term, etc., etc.

I realize that I could let all of these obligations take up every bit of time for the rest of the week, the rest of the month, the rest of the summer. It’s happened before. It won’t happen again.

So, tomorrow? After that M.Sc. defense? I will go back to my office, close the door and write for an hour. It’ll take a few days to get through everything else on that list above. In the meanwhile, a few more items’ll get added to the list. I’ll just have to live with that because I can’t afford not to write.

I was chuffed for a while, but the bloom’s starting to fade from my daily sense of accomplishment. Today, at a long-delayed meeting of a high-level subcommittee, I helped to draft a new form to be used at the university.

It’s a fairly important form that will be useful in directing future growth of programs. Or, more truthfully, to avoid people trying to shoehorn through something without sufficient resources and consultation.

*sigh*

Yeah, I thought so. Not that impressive.

It’s a good thing that I walked the dogs, paid the bills, caught up on most of my emails, shepherded some other administrative stuff through another committee, submitted my expenses and started on my book orders, then. Otherwise I’d feel completely lame.

Yes, the conference was great. The book rooms were amazing and overwhelming. The panels were fun (and I have new blogs to add to my blogroll which is woefully behind on this new-ish blog o’ mine).

And, yay!, we even had a bit of an audience for our 8:30 Sunday presentation (and let me say how proud I was to have my student presenting beside me? He’s going on with his grad school training elsewhere, now, but it felt great to have helped to bring him this far).

But two days of driving to get home was plenty, yup. Tomorrow I go back into the office to put out all those fires that flared up in my week away and start back in on the endless round of meetings. While I’m at it, I might as well submit my expenses, no?