Downtime Update

Hi, internet friends. It's been a long time, hasn't it? I turned into a doctor and then I abandoned you. I'm sorry about that.

The main reason I've been so scarce is that the boyfriend and I got ourselves the best puppy in the history of puppies. Her name is Angela, and she loves you. She loves everyone and everything. Even her erstwhile nemesis, the dustbuster, is now a treasured companion. If you are a dog person and are in the DC area, come meet her!

The other reason I've missed so many months is that I took an involuntary break from reading and writing anything of any length. Grad school seems to have burned out my internal word processor for a while; I have only recently replaced the battery.

In my absence, I've been busily getting rejected by jobs and fellowships, from one-year research fellowships to two-year teaching gigs to a tenure-track position. I want to thank the institutions that have bothered to actually tell me that I was rejected: Duke, CUNY Baruch, Princeton, the Smithsonian. I want to shame the institutions that decided all us rejects could find out on our own: Virginia Commonwealth, Tufts, and presumably Western Michigan, since it's been a very long time since applications closed there. Honorable Mention to a job that I applied for that pre-rejected my application because my PhD won't be officially conferred until UCLA wraps up in June—they didn't care that my dissertation is defended and submitted and accepted and that there is literally nothing else I need to do to obtain the degree. I already bought the silly hat and the wizard robes, for crying out loud.

On to better news: I have secured myself a part-time research job. It's not enough to live on, but it's enough to quell my worries when I watch my bank account slowly collapsing like a flan in a cupboard, as Eddie Izzard would put it. I'm hoping it leads to more work in the future, and I'm working on supplementing it with other things.

To that end, I've decided to start amassing some theater and movie reviews. I've never done reviews before, at least not officially, so it's going to be a bit of a rough start. Hopefully they will eventually be solid enough that I can get work as a critic on the internet. My first attempt is a review of Buyer & Cellar, which I saw on Friday night; I'll post that here soon, and take comments from anyone who has feedback (I'm looking at you, Dr. Ellis). Collaborative writing is always better than writing in a vacuum. And less dusty.