New Kid on the Hallway

Sales! Yay!

Thank you for the birthday wishes, everyone! I had to run an errand at the local mall this morning, so I took advantage of the early hour and no crowds to do a little birthday shopping. And it makes it a VERY happy birthday to find things I like, that are ON SALE! So I bought a linen blouse (in brown) and a short-sleeved cardigan (in black) from Eddie Bauer for ~ $70 instead of ~ $110, and I bought two pairs of cropped pants at JJill (these, in black and stone) for $48!! (Total!) The Eddie Bauer stuff was cute and not ultra-cheap, just cheaper than it would be usually; but the pants were a total steal, especially since I have the hardest time finding pants I like. I'm trying to pare down my wardrobe (she says, having just bought more clothes) and only have things I really like that all pretty much go with each other, so I'm trying to go with simple classics, that kind of thing. The going-back-to-school thing is a bit weird, wardrobe-wise, because most of my closet consists of teaching clothes: many of these are a bit dressier than I'll probably enjoy wearing to class all day, but they're not quite dressy enough to be lawyer clothes (or perhaps a wee bit too boho). Anyway, finding clothes you like and that fit you is always a mood-booster.

Yet again, of course, I was confronted with the insanity that is the sizing of women's clothes - size [redacted] in one store fit fine but was too small in the next store and too big in the one after that. And even in the same store, I can try on three tops in the same size and one will be too big, one too small, and one juuuuuuust right. Craziness.

And I received a final birthday present - the scheduling of my gall bladder surgery: a week from Wednesday. Wheeee.

Still here

And still trying to post - the new and "improved" Typepad has eaten this post three times already! It gets shorter and shorter each time, for which I'd apologize, but I don't think you're missing much.

Still have my gall bladder; surgery yet to be scheduled. The good thing is that this means it won't be tomorrow, which is my birthday. The bad thing is, I still have to avoid fatty foods, so no birthday cake and ice cream!

For your amusement: a woman I've known since kindergarden recently e-mailed me to say that when she was at her mom's house, she found an old picture of us in elementary school. (I think it's second grade. I think. If so, that would be 32 years ago.) She stuck it in her purse, went to work, and it fell out of her purse and prey to the engineers she worked with, who scanned it and made up rude captions for it. Apparently they were most amused by the "fancy" jeans on the second figure from the right in the front row, whom they dubbed my friend's "boyfriend," despite the fact that said figure is a girl. As my friend wrote, "I tried to explain that many of the girls in this shot had the 'Dorothy Hamil' hair cut and that’s why they look like boys – but my words fell on empty ears as these guys were all born just when we were graduating high school and they have no idea who Dorothy Hamil is – how depressing!!"

I can definitely name three of these girls (including me), and have a guess at four of them (though one of those I know I don't know her last name). The other two, I have no idea. What's particularly funny is that if I have one of the guesses right, it's a girl who disliked me and gave me a hard time all through elementary school - I remember her as this tough, mean, scary person, and to look back at this picture and see her as a little girl is kind of shocking - why was I scared of THAT? But at the time, I was very scared...

Don't you just dig the 70s clothes? Any guesses as to which one's me?

Hot times, pity partysummer in the city

jo(e) has a post lauding summertime, with a lovely picture from her time at the monastery that she visits (which I envy). It's a lovely post, and I know exactly what she means about the unreality of summer in the midst of snowbound winters; we'd look at summer photos in the winter when I was a kid, and marvel that the world had ever been that soft and warm cacophony of gold and green. (Conversely, looking at pictures of 12 inches of snow in the middle of summer was equally mind-blowing.) But I also had to laugh, reading jo(e)'s post, because just yesterday I was being exceedingly grumpy about summer, and rehearsing in my head all the reasons why I hate it.

I should explain, first, that there was a specific trigger for this hatred. Our new apartment building is still undergoing renovation; almost everything is done but they've been replacing the windows. At the moment, I think NLLDH and I are two of maybe four people actually living here, and there's no one else on our floor. While I was waiting for the elevator yesterday afternoon, I realized the door to the apartment next to ours was ajar, and I thought I'd take a quick look.

I really shouldn't have, because the result was dissatisfaction. It was one of the two-bedroom apartments, and while we're fitting in to our one-bedroom pretty well, the two-bedroom is just bigger enough to make it the perfect size for us. There's more drawer space in the kitchen, there are two more closets than we have, and of course, the second bedroom would be nice (while I really don't work at home very much any more, it would be nice to have a separate room to study; plus, my sister could sleep on an air mattress if she comes to visit. There is literally no space to roll out an air mattress in our current apartment). But worst of all (in my self-centered view), I discovered that the two-bedroom apartments have actual CENTRAL AIR, with their own thermostat and everything. Our apartment, in contrast, has a cooler/heater, which, it turns out, is a radiator: in the winter the building people turn on the boiler so hot water runs through it and it heats the apartment; with the boiler turned off, cold water runs through it, and so the fan blows air that is cool, but not what I would call chilled.

Now, I should also note that I LOVE air-conditioning. My time in the south has changed my view of what counts as "hot" a little (I no longer flip out over temps in the 80s; it has to hit 90 for it to count as "really" hot). But living in the south definitely didn't wean me off A/C; it's EVERYWHERE there. And one of the draws of this apartment was that it has "A/C." (So they said when we were looking at it.) And yeah, the cooler is better than nothing, and yeah, when I thought all the apartments had coolers, I was pretty blase about it: oh, this building has coolers, okay, that's fine. But now that I know some of the units have REAL A/C, for some reason, it really annoys me that we don't.

Anyway, that started me grumbling about stupid summer and stupid heat and what the hell is summer good for, anyway? And then I really started thinking, and I realized: I don't do any of the things that traditionally make summer fun.

I can't tell you the last time I went to the beach or went swimming. (Actually, I can; it was at a gathering of friends from grad school, when I still worked at Rural Utopia. So it was at least four years ago, probably five. It was the only swimming I did that summer, and I had to buy a new swimsuit, because it was the first time I'd needed one in ages - at least since moving to Rural Utopia, which I did in 2000.)

The only barbeques I've been to since leaving Rural Utopia have been faculty-student ones on campus.

Because we've lived in apartments and have no outdoor space, I can't garden (if I were so inclined). I can't sit out in the backyard and sip lemonade, or watch the fireflies and gaze at the stars.

I can't tell you when NLLDH and I last took a vacation together, just going someplace fun to see what it's like, that wasn't to visit family. (Not that family vacations aren't nice. But NLLDH and I haven't taken one of those together for a while, either.) I think it might have been in 2003, when we drove up to one of the Twin Ports in the great white north and stayed overnight.

This is a pretty damn self-pitying list, isn't it? As an academic, the summer has been nice because it's meant a break from teaching, but it's also the time in which one is supposed to make up for all the things that one doesn't get to do during the year. So honestly, all summer seems to bring is the heat I don't like, without any of the fun things that are supposed to go with it.

In a fit of self-pity I confessed this to NLLDH, and within hours he had suggested that we take the day on Tuesday (his next day off) and check out one the national parks nearby. We probably won't actually hike-hike, but we might stroll one of the "accessible trails," and check it all out so we can try some of the easier hikes later in the summer. Yay for NLLDH! How much more sensible than wallowing in self-pity, to come up with a solution!

But if I'm completely honest with myself, one of the problems is not so much summer, but missing having a group of friends with which to do any of these summery things. I recently read a blogger talking about having friends over to her new house, grilling in the backyard and just hanging out on the deck in the warmth of an evening. And I was so envious that I could hardly stand it. I have all sorts of wonderful friends. But none of them are HERE.

Small triumphs

I recently heard back from the editor of a collection of essays in which I have a piece, and the reader for the press liked my essay a lot! Ze called it an "excellent study" and only had a couple of reasonable (and easy to address) comments.

It's funny how happy this makes me. Well, maybe not that funny - but I do feel proud, because this was very much a post-grad school, post-dissertation, has-nothing-at-ALL-to-do-with-the-dissertation project. I did it all by my own little self, thank you very much, and it's lovely to get a positive response to it.

Planet Law School: Not worth the visit

Atticus Falcon, Planet Law School II: What You Need to Know Before You Go, But Didn't Know to Ask...And No One Else Will Tell You, rev. and updated ed. (Fine Print Press, 2003). 858 pp.

I linked to this book in my previous post, as an example of the view that one should undertake a pretty significant course of study prior to starting law school. From what I'd read about this book (on some blogs and in the Amazon reviews, which are interestingly divided between really high and really low), I didn't think I'd like it, so I got it out of the library rather than spending money on it... and I was right, I don't like it.

Falcon's central message reads pretty much like this (he doesn't write in italics but he might as well): Law schools want you to fail!!! Professors don't want to teach you the law!!! They're all out to get you...and only **I** have the secrets to your success! As you might have guessed, Atticus Falcon is a pseudonym, and while I realize it's the grossest form of pot-calling-kettle-black for me to criticize someone for using a pseudonym, in this case it seems designed only to emphasize the alleged importance and value of the secrets he's offering: They're so secret, I can't even TELL YOU MY NAME!!! because of the reprisals!! but only *I* am brave enough to tell you these things!! (I promise you now that should I ever publish a book, even if it were based on stuff I've written here pseudonymously - which is extremely unlikely, but if I did? - I'd publish it under my own name.)

Falcon's message is probably appealing to a lot of people (as the Amazon reviews suggest), but I am not one of them. I don't buy conspiracy theories, generally because they tend to violate Occam's Razor pretty severely, and in this case, because I just can't believe that law schools and law profs have nothing better to do than design a system SOLELY for the purpose of tricking unwary students. So from the beginning, Falcon's tone puts me off.

But what seals the deal for me is that in support of his theory, he spends a great deal of time talking about how law professors have SUCH a cushy job, how they only work 6 hours a week, but somehow they're always "too busy" actually to deal with students, and they do nothing but play "hide the ball" and try to make you figure out things on your own rather than actually teach you anything. Now, I've never taught law and I know law school is a different culture from regular college/university. I know there are things about law school pedagogy I'm not going to agree with (your whole grade determined by your performance on one exam, grading on a curve). But Falcon's complaints are WAY too close to the kind of bullshit people spout about non-law profs on a far-too-frequent basis for me to take them seriously. Academia has a lot of things going for it, but not because it is the kind of cushy, pulling-the-wool-over-ordinary-people's-eyes gig that a lot of anti-academic people make it out to be. Anyway, Falcon's arguments about law professors are central to his general conspiracy theory - professors want to keep their cushy gigs and don't want to admit they don't know very much; when you finish your 1l year, you will have 1/3 the knowledge that your law professors do!!; so who are these people to be telling you anything, anyway?? - and since I don't buy the one, I can't buy the other. 

By saying this, I don't mean to suggest that law schools, and other institutions of higher education, are altruistic establishments focused only on the Life of The Mind or anything like that. I know that schools stay afloat only if they convince potential students that their services are worth the price, that marketing and branding are HUGE elements of higher education (of whatever variety), and that higher education, while billed as a way to improve oneself intellectually AND materially, is crucially involved in replicating structures of power in society (a la Bourdieu). Faculty are invested in this system. I get it. That being said, Atticus Falcon so fundamentally misunderstands the role and obligations of faculty that I find it hard to take his critiques at all seriously.

His dissatisfaction leads him to make some really dumb claims - the most egregious, in my opinion, being the idea that going to class and taking notes is really not necessary (in fact, you don't even have to buy your own casebooks - just buy a zillion published study aids and learn them!) [The law school study aid industry is a fascinating thing I'll probably say more about, and these things aren't quite like Cliffs Notes - they're substantial textbooks.] On the one hand, this claim is in service of his point that the most important thing in law school is the exams - it doesn't matter how you perform in class if you do badly on the exams; the all-mighty exam is king. That's absolutely correct (in first year classes, anyway, in which grades are based basically entirely on exams), and it's probably important for people to realize that they can't base their sense of success in a course on any feelings of understanding or well-being generated in class. On the other hand, I don't think that's the same as saying attending class is pointless. I know I haven't set foot in a law class yet, but the (recovering) academic in me just revolts at that one. I'm not going to say that every single class session in every single course taught by every single faculty member is equally valuable. You get useless profs, and you get good profs who have bad days. Nonetheless, to then make a blanket statement about the value of going to class seems ridiculous to me. If nothing else, I know that I learn material better when I attend class then when I don't. I knew someone in college who attended two days of his art history survey and ended up with an A- or B+ in the class. If you can do that? Great. But I don't believe that I can. (Maybe I'll be back here in six months reporting that I never go to class because it's pointless, but I really doubt it!)

I also found the book poorly organized and, at 800+ pages, self-indulgent - Falcon needs a better editor. There are way too many digressions into examples of individual professors or lawyers who are evil! and bad! and therefore they all are!

In short, Falcon displays a distressing anti-intellectualism that makes his book distasteful to me. Interestingly, I've also seen similar anti-intellectualism - mostly to a lesser degree, but it's out there - on some of the law student blogs I read, and it reminds me that my own take on this is (as some of you pointed out a couple of posts ago) fairly unusual. For the many people who view law solely as a trade, law school purely as licensure, and have no real intellectual interest in the law, this book might be useful. But if you believe professors might actually care about how their students do and might actually be involved in some valuable endeavors, you probably won't like this book.

Now, I'll admit that not having started law school yet, I may not know enough to judge what he's saying; I may come back here six, twelve, eighteen months from now and take back much of this review; experience may convince me that he had it right. I promise that if I change my mind, I'll let you know. But I still believe his view of academia is so distorted that it skews all the rest of his book, as well.

The reviews on Amazon are interesting - positives outweigh negatives, but there are significant numbers of each. Some of the positive reviews claim that the negative reviewers didn't follow the book's advice and are blaming it for their poor performance, which may be true. But I found it interesting that there were a number of positive reviews from people (like me) who had not yet started law school, but praised the book for helping them "feel prepared." I can understand how the book might do that; it is incredibly long, very detailed and comprehensive, and lays out a course of study for you to undertake in the months preceding law school (12 months, if you're that organized!). I can see how these details, combined with the "I'm the ONLY one who will tell you this stuff" vibe, would make someone feel reassured that they're prepared. But I don't know that "feeling prepared" is the same as being prepared for school.

Finally, I suspect the context for the book has changed since it was first written. The first edition of the book appeared in 1998. My sense is that many of the online resources for law students, especially the forums for discussion among students, weren't around back then (AutoAdmit, which I won't link to as it's pretty vile, began in 2004; LawSchoolDiscussion.org doesn't say, but its founder graduated law school 2004; nontradlaw.net seems to go back to 2001). Falcon's book probably had a bigger impact, and, frankly, offered more value in the absence of online discussions that provide a great deal of valuable advice directly from students. My sense is that you can get a lot of useful information about how to approach law school online, without wading through Atticus Falcon's rants about the evils of lazy professors and nasty lawyers. (He'd probably say that there's no way of judging how useful their advice is, they're just names on the internet!!! but he's just a pseudonym with a book.)

Hmm, I could have saved myself a year

That is, if I could have gotten in to Northwestern University School of Law (which would have been a stretch with my LSAT).

They've just announced the creation of an accelerated JD program - earning your JD in two years, rather than three.* The idea is that you start taking classes the summer before you'd have traditionally matriculated, and then you take one more class per semester than students in the three-year program. I believe the summer between your first and second years is free, for the conventional summer associateship opportunities.

Northwestern is requiring students entering this program to have at least three years of work experience, claiming that students who've been in the work force already will be more likely to have the time management skills necessary for such a program than less-experienced students. The program also seems geared towards working people who would be more willing to give up two years of earning potential than three.

Northwestern's dean argues that many consider the third year of law school less useful than years one and two, and that eliminating it is part of a trend in legal education to move towards more practical or experiential training than is currently offered. Critics contend that such a program will shortchange students, providing them with less experience in some subjects than they should have.

The University of Dayton and Southwestern Law School (Los Angeles) are the only institutions that currently offer a two-year accelerated program; Northwestern is definitely the most prestigious school to offer one.

What do I think? At my age, it would be great to get through law school more quickly. I wouldn't feel comfortable going to Dayton or Southwestern, though, given their relatively low rankings (and that neither of them are in locations where I'd want to practice law); I'd worry that low rankings + 2 year program = red flag to employers, especially with my current lack of legal experience (this is not meant as a slam to people attending either one of those schools, mind you; just a gut response for my own experience). Northwestern, on the other hand, has the prestige to carry such a thing off - employers like Northwestern already. The acceleration doesn't save you money in that the tuition will be the same as for the three-year program, but it does get you earning money sooner to pay off those loans!

There's part of me that thinks I'll be better off in a three-year program, though; given that I'm changing gears completely and know very little about the legal profession at the moment, chances are that I'll benefit from the longer immersion before entering the legal working world. Plus, it sounds like the workload could be brutal in a shorter program (can't comment on that until I find out for myself what the regular workload is like!).

If I were someone who was already working in a law-related field, though, and trying to decide whether it was worth it to take the time off to earn a JD? I think Northwestern's program would look mighty appealing. In fact, I think it'll look appealing to a LOT of people. However much good three years might do me, getting done in two does sound pretty sweet. The big question, I'd imagine, is whether other law schools - prestigious or otherwise - will be inspired to follow in Northwestern's footsteps. (Washington & Lee recently announced that they were getting rid of traditional courses for the third year, in favor of entirely experiential learning. Here, again, critics argued that such a program shortchanges students, but there seems to be quite a difference between how law professors view the value of third-year courses, and what students think of them. Perhaps the final arbiter will be employers - do they consider the third year necessary, or not?)

*There's also a bit on this in The Chronicle, but it's behind the for-pay-only firewall.

Rudderless

That's how I feel at the moment, anyway - it's a very strange feeling not having anything specific to do.

My grading is done; my teaching responsibilities are over.

Classes don't start until August 25, and while there are some people who argue for a rigorous course of study in the months leading up to law school, the general consensus is that such prep isn't really going to help and that since it's your last summer off for a while, you should probably relax and enjoy it. There are a few things I'd like to read before the fall (including an intro to the constitution, because it dawned on me that I don't think I've ever actually read the whole thing, and I just might want a better grasp on that before starting a class on constitutional law!), but I have no fixed timetable for such reading.

There are more things to do to get the apartment in shape, but some of them (taking empty boxes etc. to storage, buying and installing blinds) need to wait until NLLDH's next day off, and others (organizing a shelving unit) require buying stuff, which I'm trying to avoid doing every single day. I could probably hang some artwork, though I'm not positive we have everything in place yet to be sure of where the artwork will go. (Though some of these reactions are, I realize, excuses for laziness. Plus, it's kind of hot out these days.)

There are a variety of other random things that I need to do at some point, but can be done whenever:
- talk to the financial aid person at my school (though first NLLDH and I have to work out exactly how much of the loan money we want to take)
- get the case of my laptop fixed AGAIN
- take Eldest Cat to the vet to get his bloodwork done (this I am procrastinating on because I was supposed to do it months ago and I feel like a bad cat mama not to have done so yet - so, of course, I will be a worse cat mama and let it go longer because I'm embarrassed - I know, sensible)
- complete a craft project I owe someone
- revise an article I owe for a festschrift
- sort through my/NLLDH's books and sell/give them away

I am finding it VERY hard to do much of ANYTHING, though. What I guess this means is that I really benefit from structure in my life, which is what I pretty much thought, but I suppose it's useful to have it confirmed, because this means I should thrive taking classes again (let's hope!). Until then, though, I sit on the couch and read mystery novels. Kind of pathetic.

Partly, I think, this is because I know that at some point soonish I'm going to have that gallbladder surgery, and there's a weird (stupid) feeling like my life has to be put on pause until that's done. Because, you know, I'm SICK. Even though I feel fairly normal at the moment (thank God, no more gallstone attacks yet - touch wood!), there's part of me that feels fragile and vulnerable, like I should stay in a protective cocoon until I get the gallbladder out. I don't think that part of me is right, but it's definitely part of what's keeping me on the couch. (That, and inherent sloth.)

So. How do manage to get things done when there's nothing structuring your time for you??

If I'm a blogger, there must be navel-gazing

Hilaire at Clashing Hats recently wrote about her current feelings of ambivalence about her blog (prompting an interesting response from Dr. Crazy), which got me thinking about how to articulate my own thoughts about blogging these days (oh no! meta-blogging! run now while you still can!).

First, I should say that I have no real plans to stop blogging. I've found an amazing community of friends and colleagues and also garnered some interesting professional opportunities through this activity, and I don't want to give those things up. I like having an audience. I love comments. And most of all, I really like writing, and blogging is fun. (It's also taught me some really important lessons about audience and, perhaps just a teeny bit, how professional writers cope with readers - not professional peers reading your writing because you might provide some information/research they find important/useful, but just good old readers.)

That said, I do feel like I'm undergoing an identity crisis of sorts due to my decision to ditch academia and go to law school. While this blog is not academic in the sense that it is not scholarly work (as I've said approximately 1,692 times before), it's always been an academic blog in that it has been about my life as an academic. I started it when beginning my second tenure-track job at Former College, as part of the process of coping with a new job and a long-distance marriage - which, yes, makes it blogging-as-therapy, but in the spirit of the political being personal and vice versa, it's therapy that the academic profession needs as much as I do. It's not therapy because I'm somehow singularly ill-adjusted; it's therapy because, I firmly believe, many academic settings are hostile to women (and men who wish to challenge traditional gender roles) and there is a fundamental problem with maintaining a balance between the personal and the professional in academia. (That's not to say that academia is the only gig with these problems, nor that academia doesn't at the same time offer advantages that other professions may not, but academia is what I know, so it's what I talk about.)

I'm not sure that in my "real" life identity I have that much authority to speak on academic matters - I consider myself under-published compared to many of my peers, for instance, and there are a lot of people out there who are better teachers than I - but I've had enough academic experience to acquire, somehow, it seems, some kind of authority here on this blog. By no means are people waiting with bated breath for my pronouncements on the latest academic developments, nor am I offering any scholarly insights here, but if we're talking about academic life? Well, that's what I've been living! And by the time I started blogging I'd made it through grad school and 4 years in a tenure-track position, so I had some experience that might be useful to others who hadn't gone through that yet (if only of the cautionary variety).

And now I'm tossing away that professional position. I'm starting over again to become a student in an entirely new field. What the hell do I know about law school? Why would anyone remotely care about what I have to say about it? This is NOT to say that students (law or other) shouldn't blog, mind you; I do NOT think that. But in the same way that Hilaire worries that writing about personal stuff on her own blog is self-indulgent even though she never ever reads other people's personal posts as self-indulgent, I worry that blogging as a student robs my writing of any authority or interest, even though I completely DON'T see other students' blogs that way.

Part of the problem is just one of deciding what kind of blog I want to have in the first place. I think the personal stuff out there in the blogosphere is crucially important. I want people to post that stuff. I really value the personal connections I make by posting about personal stuff (and I value the sympathy on my gallstones!).

And yet, I'm happier with my own writing when I can connect that personal stuff to broader professional issues. I've never blogged specifically about the content of my research here (the process yes, but the content/conclusions, no), and I've never really wanted to, because while I enjoy research writing, it's work in a way that blogging is not, and perhaps more importantly, it's specialized in a way that blogging is not, and therefore it excludes people in a way the non-research posts do not. If you don't already care about medieval [country] in the [x-th] century, I don't feel confident that I can make you care (nor do I feel a burning need to do so. I have never felt the need to undertake medieval outreach - probably a serious flaw, but, eh). By changing careers, though, I feel like I'm losing the ability to make those broader connections.

I've said before that one of the things I like about blogging is how it breaks down hierarchies. And I still believe that, but perhaps not as strongly as I once did. Writing as the pseudonymous tenure-track person, it didn't matter where I worked or how much I had/hadn't published - I could address issues relevant especially to junior faculty and be judged (mostly) on the merits of what I said, not the professional identity I occupied within junior faculty generally. But it still mattered that I was a tenure-track person. Because blogging as a lecturer was different. Being a lecturer presents the opportunity to address a whole range of issues in academia, from a different professional position, but I'll confess that I didn't feel as comfortable delving deeply into those issues - partly because my mind was elsewhere (applying to law school), partly because my position did feel more precarious and I felt a little bit more paranoid about speaking my mind, and partly because digging into the inequities facing contingent faculty felt like whining (to be clear: that's not meant as a comment about the lectureship I held last year. As VAPs go, it was extremely humane, the department was congenial, and I have no complaints at all). Again, other people writing about contingent faculty issues most definitely are NOT whining; but when I do, it feels like I am.

And now I'm a student again (or soon to be one). I've dropped even further on the authority scale, both because students are low-person-on-the-totem, professionally speaking, so who wants to listen to one? and because I really don't know anything much about the legal profession, so what the hell do I have to say about it? I worry that I am going to turn into the law student equivalent of those incredibly naive Chronicle First Person columnists who write about their experience on the job market and say things like, "You really have to research the schools you're interviewing with!"

All of which is a long preface to my main point: I don't really have any idea where this blog is going at the moment or what it will look like over the next few years. As I've said, I don't plan on giving it up, but I also want it to continue to be something of which I'm proud, so there may be periods of neglect when I don't feel like I have something of substance to say. Those of you who've become personal friends may very well stick around to see what's going on in with my life regardless of my loss of authority. Please do! I enjoy having you around! Those of you who read for commentary on matters academic may well grow bored and drop away. If so, thanks for sticking around this long! I've appreciated your comments, conversation, and/or silent presence.

Random update

Thank you again to everyone for your sympathy and support about the gallstones - especially those of you who've had the surgery; it's great to hear about how easy it is! I'm crossing my fingers that it will be just as easy for me (once I can get it scheduled).

Janice asked about diet restrictions; yes, I have to forgo fatty foods, because the gall bladder is involved with processing fat and hence eating fat is likely to cause another attack. In fact, I suspected it might be gallstones before my doctor mentioned them, because the ultrasound technician (a very nice lady of Russian/Slavic origin - she'd been telling me to take a deep breath and hold it, that kind of thing, and when she said, "Small breaths this time," at first I thought she said "Small breasts this time"! Which is true enough, but I wondered what it had to do with the ultrasound...) warned me against eating fatty foods herself when I was leaving.

I mentioned this in my last comment, but the fear of having another gallstone attack is almost enough to make avoiding fat easy. Not quite - I find myself hankering after gooey cheese (mmmm, cheeeeeese) - but I do NOT want another attack, so I'll stick with my bread and fruit and vegetables. Thankfully, sugar is fat free. (Seriously, I have a killer sweet tooth and sweet = comfort to me, so at least I can eat things like sorbet and jelly beans. Of course, then I want something salty and fatty for contrast, but too bad.) I think it's easier - for me, at least - to avoid fat than it would be to avoid sugar; my mom had to go on a no-carb diet for 48 hours once prior to a medical test for something, and she said it was VERY hard. (And I know the empty calories of sugar aren't any good for you either, so I try not to eat too much of it, but at least I can have SOMETHING treat-like!)

So, along these lines: anyone have great low-fat or fat-free recipes they feel like sharing? Ideally something quick and easy? (Why is it that quick, easy, good-tasting, healthy, and cheap are so hard to find all in the same food?) I've been weaning myself off meat so veggie is preferred, but I don't eat tofu (I'm allergic to soy).

Now I need to get my act together and unpack some more boxes. I've reached that stage in unpacking where you have everything you really NEED set up, and so the incentive to make a mess digging into more boxes is much less, because while you know there's stuff you'd really like in there somewhere (ex: the speakers for my iPod), you also know you can get by without it for a little longer. And so I've spent some quality time this morning browsing through all the online sales at my favorite clothing stores instead. I have to keep reminding myself that just because something that I like is on sale, doesn't mean I need it. And I really don't need any interesting summer clothes, because I'm not working or doing anything else that requires looking professional in any way. But I still waaaaaaaaaant them...

Gallstones FTW!

I have them. Woo hoo. I get to have surgery to get rid of them.

(Can I confess to being a huge chicken about this? I've never had surgery before, except getting my wisdom teeth out. And I realize that makes me lucky and gall bladder surgery is really very minor. But I'm stlll a great big chicken.)