Moving forward

So, the dissertation is (for now) done. That means it's time to move into job application world for the next few days, until the students turn in their last senior thesis drafts on Friday, and I go back into grading world. Since job applications are so soul sucking and demoralizing, I'm jumping at the chance to work in any other way, and I'm actually looking forward to grading world. Sad, isn't it? Right now I'm enthusiastically helping a former student with grad school applications because I'd rather help ease her soul-sucking demoralization than leap headlong into my own.

The next job application is pretty easy, since it's just a slightly different version of the only one I've done so far, a postdoc teaching first-year writing. The one after that is incredibly easy, since it's just emailing a CV. Once those are done, however, it's full-tilt musicology job applications until I weep blood.

Okay, that's obviously a melodramatic presentation of my situation. I have actually wept blood before, on three occasions (eye surgery is soooo not fun), and this will be far less physically uncomfortable. However, I think I would prefer physical pain and discomfort to this process. I'm not particularly good at competition or at telling people why they should want me. I'm much better at telling other people why they're awesome, and at coping with pain. Not really related skills normally, but both reasons why I don't wanna do this.

Anyway, time to dive in. Wish me luck. Listening to Turn of the Screw is going to keep me focused on the task, I hope, and not distract me like all the Audra McDonald I just listened to...

Completion

Yesterday, at 12:40 PM Eastern Standard Time, I submitted my dissertation to my committee. It feels very strange to be done with it. I celebrated by unpacking the kitchen stuff in the new apartment.

That's all I've got right now.

Changing planes

Just a quick hit to let y'all know that I have moved to DC. Thanks to heroic efforts by the boyfriend and some of the greatest friends in the world, my move out of the old place was a snap and my move into the new place is well underway and seems easily within reach—I got to skip the moving to Arlington step in my moving progression!

Right now I'm sitting in the delightful Coffy Café a few blocks from my lovely new home, grading students' rough drafts of their senior theses. I had to take a break to announce my arrival because Microsoft Word crashed just as I was saving one student's comments and edits and I got very irritated. I regraded her, and am about to start the next, because the sooner I finish the sooner I get to go to go to Smoke and Barrel for teatime lunch!

I'll post for real once the grading and dissertation are done.

Things

Internet friends, I have been absent from the blog for a while. Things have happened since then, things I intended to write about. Like a big national conference in my field that I went to. Like a really important election. A lot of things happened.

But now instead of writing about those things, I am writing about these things:

1. My dissertation needs to be done, edited, footnoted, coverpaged, signed, sealed, and delivered to my adviser by December the 7th.

2. I need to move out of my apartment and into the Mysterious X's apartment here in LA by December the 1st, out of her apartment and into the boyfriend's apartment in Arlington, VA by December the 4th, and out of his apartment and into the new apartment in Washington, DC that the boyfriend and I will share by December the 10th.

Those are the things. You will note that within the span of ten days, I have to move three times and finish the dissertation. There are no other things. Except that on the first of those ten days, I also am singing in a concert. And before, during, and after those ten days, I have a lot of grading to do. And for eight days before those ten days, I will be traveling to the east coast and cannot be packing up here.

This is why I have eaten a lot of Tootsie Rolls and have drunk a lot of tea and have not done a whole lot beyond writing dissertation in the last week. I'm about ten to twenty pages shy of a first draft, and I have about three weeks to get from there to done with a last draft.

Donations of brain cells and sanity gladly accepted. Also please take my furniture and household goods. They are free.

I'm here about the voting

I just got my official Sample Ballot in the mail. It made me think some things.

1. Why did nobody tell me that I can vote for ROSEANNE BARR for president!? Peace and Freedom Party, you just made my day.

2. Despite my worries about the new open primary system, my senator and representative are both in one-on-one Democrat v. Republican races. That is reassuring and also depressing.

3. Hooray, there are no judges to vote on! No hours of painful internet research!

4. BALLOT MEASURES OMG. We have eleven state measures and three county measures. I still don't understand how they label these: Propositions 30-40, A, B, and J. J is the confusing one; why not C? I haven't read through all of them in detail yet, but initial thoughts are:

30: Yes. Increased income taxes (and, sadly, some sales taxes) to fund public education? PLEASE!

31: I have no clue. It seems needlessly complicated. I'm guessing it's bad, since it includes the phrase "decreased...revenues of $200 million annually."

32: HELL FUCKING NO. This is the "unions can no longer make political contributions but everybody else can" measure. Do I even need to explain why that is a huge problem?

33: No. It reads like insurance companies saying "Let us charge you more money for your car insurance. We swear it'll be good for you."

34: YES, YES, YES. Repeal of the death penalty. I collected signatures for this one. There are so, so, so many reasons why the death penalty is morally indefensible, from racially biased sentencing to its inherent abandonment of the entire concept of rehabilitation and human improvement. I didn't support the assassination (without trial, no less) of Osama Bin Laden, and I don't support state-sanctioned assassination (with or without trial). There isn't even an actual God; there shouldn't be humans playing God in His infinite absence.

35: Yes...? Human trafficking is bad. That seems to be the point of this, but I can't quite tell what it claims to do about that fact.

36: Yes. Three strikes law applies only for serious or violent felonies. There are, again, many reasons to doubt the efficacy of the prison industry in "keeping us safe." It's all a question of who is included in, or excluded from, the word "us." I favor a more inclusive "us," and a less populated prison.

37: Yes/No? I have no idea the "specified ways" in which plant or animal genetic material needs to be changed for this law to come into effect. My friend the plant geneticist is highly skeptical of GMO labeling in general. My favorite LA restaurant is actively supporting this proposition. The use of the word "natural" in food marketing already nauseates me; restricting its use seems good, if only for my personal gastrointestinal equanimity. I need to look harder at this particular one.

38: No. This is the other version of Prop 30, but it excludes funding colleges, and doesn't specify the taxes it will use to raise the money. I am deeply suspicious.

39: Yes! Requires businesses in California to pay taxes in California! Uses that revenue for clean energy projects! Please, please yes!

40: Oh, who the fuck knows. Approve the redistricting maps of the entire state? What if I don't like the new 33rd district? Do I vote no, or do I decide that the other districts all look good and that outweighs one bad one, so I should vote yes? I will probably vote yes because I like maps, unless somebody can give me a compelling reason to vote no or abstain.

A: Should the county assessor be appointed instead of elected? I am asking honestly; I don't know what that job even does.

B: Better sexual health for porn actors? Sure! Condoms for everybody!

J: Sustain the sales tax already increased in 2008 to fund the expansion of subway and light rail? If I'm reading this right, YES PLEASE! I'm going to see my sister when she's in Pasadena next weekend solely because there is now the Gold Line that will get me home. I support the idea of turning the twenty-year project into a five-year project. That means it might be done within the next ten years!


Those are my thoughts. Please explain to me which ones need more work; most of them are only half baked right now.

Deadline

It is set. I am defending my dissertation on January 7th at 9 AM Pacific Standard Time. Now it feels real.

If you are free (and in Los Angeles) on the evening of January 7th, join me at Eleven in West Hollywood for Musical Mondays aka chapter three of my dissertation.

Eleven is the place, not the time. The time is something like 7 or 8. We can work out those details later.

Taking steps

Two big things.

1. I emailed my dissertation committee to schedule my defense. The date isn't set yet, but two of the four have already replied with their conflicts, so picking a date seems imminent. Yikes.

2. I emailed my landlady to tell her I'm moving out by December 1st. I'll still be in LA for a few days after that, visiting my dog friend Boomer and his human companions, but I have an official move out day. Yikes again.

I can see the next phase of my life looming in the distance, staring me down. I shouldn't have talked with my advisor about Westerns so much yesterday; I keep wondering who will shoot first. For now, I'm going to do what I need to do to prepare for leaving/defending, which means writing my last chapter and gradually sending things I don't need to Dad's house or to the boyfriend's apartment. And dealing with the irritation of someone hacking my debit card to buy protein supplements.

Whoever got my debit card number spent $277.55 at a nutritional supplement website. All I can think of is this. And some giant body builder in a tacky velvet jacket whispering sweet nothings to his Jay Robb brand strawberry flavored egg white protein (which is a real thing that website sells). I hope they're very happy together.