A Week in the Life

It’s my plan every Saturday to post the essay portion of Teacher’s Lounge as a diary here.  So sometimes I’m going to mention Docudharma as if it is some other place.

Having no time…or a topic…this morning, I took the fall back position…

I’m exhausted…and the semester is just starting.  I woke up this morning and hoped that a topic for this essay would magically appear, but alas, it was not to be.  So I’m going with the tried and true:  if you can’t think of what to write about, write about why that is so.  Write about process.

So what’s been going on around here?

Well, the truth is I haven’t spent as much time at Daily Kos this past week or two as I usually do.  Some people may have noticed.  That’s because we were busy trying to get Docudharma up and running.  Some of you may have noticed that as well. 

I’m doing the morning stint.  Mostly I just came up with what I hope is a catchy name:  Muse in the Morning.  Here’s the current introduction:

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

I’m hoping it will gain following as time passes.  It already has some, but 6 am Eastern is 3 am Pacific, so time slot does matter.  I post one of my pieces (currently running is my State of the Onion collection and try to encourage others to join in in the comments.

I am not trying to compete with BiPM’s Cheers and Jeers.  If anything, I’m hoping that people will note that this is a smaller theater and can use it to post stuff that might get lost in the sea of comments in C & J.  I’m hoping people will participate in the spirit intended.

Won’t you share your words or art, your sounds or visions, your thoughts scientific or philosophic, the comedy or tragedy of your days, the stories of doing and making?

Meanwhile, life goes on…

Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da life goes on bra, la-la how the life goes on.

Debbie and I mailed out invitations to our uniting…except for the ones we didn’t have addresses for, which will be mailed on Monday (I hope).  And we hand-delivered some of the invitations on campus on Thursday.

Thursday was a tense day.  It was already one of my 3 two-hour classes days, but there was also the Faculty Meeting, which was bound to be contentious because we don’t have a contract yet and bargaining is not happening.  So into the only time I had for lunch and preparing classes was slipped a union exercise:  an informational picket.

So I was pretty darn befuddled when I arrived at the Faculty Meeting with a handful of invitations, not knowing how any of the folks we were inviting were going to react.  I’m hoping this isn’t going to be a disaster.

Anyway, the current academic dean is excited about being invited.  She was closeted at the place she was before she came here.  I’m hoping the union negotiations don’t get so bad that having her in attendance disrupts anything.

The former academic dean entered and sat behind me after the meeting started and I slipped her an invitation during a brief pause.  She wrote me a response on the back of a Xerox request form.  She chastized me for improper protocol (I didn’t include an RSVP card (Who knew?)), said she was planning to attend, and asked where we were registered.  Registered?  Yikes.

I managed to set up a meeting with the current dean on her next available Friday time (September 28 at 4 pm) so I can try to get some help with converting my words into books.  She wants to help in that process.

In my spare time (like there has been any), I’ve been trying to get my office computer in conformance with my classes.  I’m teaching Office 2007 (which is not installed on my office computer), Visual Studio 2005 (not on my office computer), and Director (not installed on my office computer).  Java is okay.  One out of 4 classes is not okay.  So the Office disk had the wrong serial number, disk 2 of the Visual Studio install disk had a corrupt file on it, and there is no sign of Director arriving any time soon.

Meanwhile, I’ve had arguments in the diaries about merit scholarships for smart, industrious students (some apparently think all scholarships should be need-based),  about “increasing productivity” of the college teaching process (some think this is some sort of assembly line, apparently), and about higher education being “a racket.”

Last night was my first FP story at Dd since the opening, entitled The Closet.  The rules are that the contributing editors publish one original, uncross-posted piece a week.  I’m not counting Muse in the Morning, since that is more an open thread set-up.  So it currently looks like I won’t be posting at DKos on Friday nights like I have been doing the past couple of months.  Then again, Friday evening wasn’t getting a whole lot of attention anyway.

Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da life goes on bra, la-la how the life goes on.