lunabee34

1. I only have one outstanding task to complete as Senate Chair, and it will take me less than an hour to complete (just compiling a list of things). Then I will be well and truly done with the position, and I am so relieved.

My transition document for the next chair was 9 pages single-spaced (divided into bullets and with white space between categories for readability). It broke everything down step-by-step, including time frames and boilerplate for emails he'll need to send. We were supposed to meet to discuss the handover, and it lasted less than five minutes because the document was so thorough. LOL

2. Approaches to Teaching Harriet Jacobs (MLA) is finally in fucking print after only 5 years since the submission process. Really looking forward to seeing my chapter in print.

3. A Carolina wren is nesting in the mailbox, and the babies are cheeping! I also saw a raccoon in the side yard nosing around all the trees, standing up on its hind legs and then digging through the straw. So, so cute.

1. I got the cutest cat mug with some lovely tea to brew in it from amejisuto! <3 <3

And a postcard from oracne! <3 <3


2. I finally signed the contract with MLA for that book chapter they accepted on teaching Harriet Jacobs literally years ago before the pandemic, so looks like that is actually coming out this year. I'll believe it when I hold it in my hot little hands. LOL


3. We spent a great day searching out a new cologne for Josh since his beloved Fresh Cannabis Santal has been discontinued. I think he has settled on Atkinsons 41 Burlington Arcade. It has some of the same notes as his beloved scent (patchouli, musk, vetiver), but introduces some new notes that he really likes (me, too LOL).

I'm digging the new perfume lines that Dillards is carrying; the flagship in Atlanta has even more brands that I wanted to smell. I was disappointed that Jo Malone and Van Cleef and Arpels, for example, are only stocked there.



4.

Quarterly Review of Literature by T. Weiss

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So, apparently the Quarterly Review of Literature once held an international poetry book competition, and they would publish the winners (4-6) in one volume; I can't tell how often the competition ran (yearly?) or if it still runs, but the winners got a chapbook of poetry published, a thousand dollar prize, and a hundred books, which is a pretty sweet deal.

This volume contains Dissolving Borders by Lynne Knight, Moondog by Jean Hollander, The Weight of the Heart by David Citino, Is This the Way to Athens? by Barbara D. Holender, and Across Bucharest after Rain by Maria 'Banus in translation by Diana Der-Hovanessian and Mary Mattfield.

Really enjoy Knight's collection (although the preponderance of seed for semen gets tedious), Citino's collection, and Holender's collection. Do not care for Hollander's collection at all and am mostly neutral to 'Banus's collection.



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1. ( things what I have read, including Paterson and the second Escape to the Chateau book )

2. I belong to a reading group sponsored by the Victorian Popular Fiction Association called the Third Sex Reading Group; it reads books from the long 19th century about LGBTQA+ issues. I attended for the first time this September, and it was a fantastic experience. One of the editors of this book, Margaret Breen, participated in the session and talked about her experience tracking down biographical details of Duc and the process of translating the work.

Are They Women?: A Novel Concerning the Third Sex by Aimée Duc

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As a novel, this is pretty terrible. Not much plot to speak of. Everyone just sits around and pontificates about the nature of women and same-sex attraction. However, as a window into 19th-century arguments about gender, marriage, and sexuality, it is invaluable and utterly fascinating.



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3. Go read Romancing the Beast: Embracing Monstrousness in Romantic SFF by Victoria Janssen, an excellent essay about writing romance into speculative fiction.

4. Go read I've seen your face before, my friend, but I don't know if you know who I am by HMSLusitania
Stranger Things
26952 words
Time travel fix-it fic
Eddie/Steve

1. Emma has left for college. It has been a tangle of emotions. Fiona cried every day in the lead up to Emma leaving, and then after Emma actually left, she's been okay. I think it helps that I framed it as Emma going on a series of trips. We're really only going to go about six weeks or so in between seeing her. We'll see her at Labor Day weekend, and at some point in October, and for Thanksgiving week, and for a long time over December and into January, etc.

I have mostly been okay. It's just been little things, like going into her room and seeing it largely bare. We're not big knickknack people, so other than two full bookcases, Emma doesn't have a lot of stuff. Most of her belongings she took with her. So her room is empty now. Or like the day she left when I realized that I should take her placemat and napkin off the dinner table.

But she has called and texted every day since she left of her volition, and while I expect that will die down as she gets more comfortable and busy, it is comforting. When I left for college, I didn't let the door hit my ass on the way out, and I had as little to do with my parents as possible for a long time. I have a lot of guilt for that now even though I think they are to blame for raising me in an oppressive, repressive, conservative environment that I longed to escape. I have to remind myself that Emma actually likes us, is not trying to escape from us, and isn't going to go no contact with us at the first opportunity. LOL

None of her roommates has arrived yet, but the roomie that she's been in contact with over the summer is supposed to arrive today, so she's really excited about that. She's doing good so far, and I'm really proud of her and happy for her.

2. My contributor copy of the McFarland book is on its way to me now! I am so excited to read everyone else's essays.

3. My classes are fantastic this semester. I have grown pretty meh on teaching comp 1 in person because it is so hard to get any sort of enthusiasm out of freshman anymore. They just stare silently at me with the dead eyes, and nobody wants to discuss or participate. It can be excruciating. But this year, all my comp classes are very into it, very participatory, all with good energy. I'm really digging it. I've done some course redesign that I think is working out pretty well, too.

4. * Backstory for post title: years ago, Josh and I were at my parents' church before we had discovered the pro-tip of always scheduling our departure for a Sunday, and they had a guest speaker who proceeded to tell the most nonsensical story about going to New Orleans with a friend and getting lost. This story was punctuated throughout with the exclamation, "He's gone! Ricky's gone!" which we now randomly yell at each other to spice up life. You had to be there, my friends, but maybe you can share just a small bit of the sheer wtfery of a sweaty man hollering into the mic about his lost friend who maybe died that day in New Orleans in the streets of vice and sin. Or possibly it was a metaphor. All I know is that Josh and I clutched each other's hands hard enough to bruise and resolutely did not look at each other and heroically waited to laugh until we were safely behind closed door at my parents' house.

1. My friends M&M came over yesterday and brought some of their extensive pen collection for me to play with. It was very, very illuminating in ways that I hadn't expected.

( so much pen talk )

2. We watched the first episode of Lucifer, finally!, and it was good, but also it was weird? ( spoilers )

3. She-Ra watch continues! Almost done. ( spoilers for final season beginning with episode one )

4.

Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene M. Pepperberg

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is interesting. I didn't realize that recognition of animal cognition was such a hard fought battle. I think we just take it for granted in the 21st century that animals have intelligence.

Alex was clearly a remarkable animal, and so is Dr. Pepperberg.

The memoir elements of this book make me really sad. Pepperberg was neglected and unloved by her parents and intensely lonely as a child. She was subject to a great deal of sexism throughout her career. She was not treated well by her colleagues at various institutions. She divorced a husband who did not see her work as being as valuable as his and demanded she stop to support his work. And then at the end of the book her bird dies. :(



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1. OMG, She-Ra. Why you do this to me? ( spoilers )

2. Lovecraft Country was good. ( spoilers )

Looking forward to the next episodes.

3.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was a fun read. It's so interesting to see how much of vampire lore is a recent addition (like vampires not being able to be in the sun). In this text, Carmilla is not bothered by the sun. The explanation for her becoming a vampire is also one that I hadn't heard before (that suicides sometimes become vampires after death and then become spirits that turn other dead into vampires).

I really appreciated how femslashy this is. It is not even subtextual. It is pretty much textual. LOL

It's also a nice, quick read.

I'm really curious about who the woman masquerading as her mother really is. Is she a vampire, too? Is she a human in Carmilla's employ?



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4. I finally got a chance to work on my Harriet Jacob's article, and I feel so relieved. I meant to finish it the week I got sick, and that was totally derailed for what feels like forever. So I have felt like it's hanging over me. I worked on it this morning and am almost finished. I have to write a concluding paragraph and expand/tweak two other paragraphs, and then I'm done. I always get so anxious and paralyzed before writing, and then I do it, and it's totally fine. I wish I could hang on to the totally fine instead of getting tripped up by the paralyzed every time. LOL

1. I finished out 2019 by reading 210 books including books read multiple times (193 distinct books).

2. First book of 2020!

( The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective )

3. After leaving my article alone for a week and a half, I went into the office today and revised/edited. I was pleased with what I found, thank goodness, and content revisions went really quickly. :) What took so much time was meticulously checking every parenthetical citation, creating the Works Cited list (which all needed to be checked against the copy of the text I'm using now and converted to the latest edition of MLA), and checking every single quote to be sure of punctuation and etc. I'm glad I did all that even though it took hours because I found one transposed number in a citation, one misspelling in a quote, one quote I'd incorrectly attributed to the wrong book, and several citations for which I was using a different edition in this article than I'd used in my dissertation. When I was writing my thesis and dissertation, I used a lot of my director's books, but a couple of the ones I downloaded later and subsequently used in this article were published in different years, etc. I'm going to read through it one more time tomorrow and then send it on its way. Cross your fingers for me, everyone.

4. It has been such a joy to receive comments from all the Yuletide writers after reveals. I always love discovering who has written the fic I enjoyed. Since I was home and able to read and comment more than usual, I have been getting more replies than usual, and I love it.

1. I hit 5400 words today, so word count is no longer a consideration for the chapter. I just need to finish the damn thing. Cross your fingers for me that I can finish it tomorrow!

2. We put up the tree and wrapped all the presents, and I think we're going to watch Love Actually tonight. Let the merriment begin! Thank you for all your encouragement.

3. We are eating London broil with chimichurri, brussel sprouts, and roasted butternut squash for dinner tonight.

4. I have started running again in the last week, and I've been gradually increasing intensity and duration. Today I ran 2.5 miles straight at high intensity (shaving a minute off my previous time) and then another mile much more slowly. I am feeling good about my progress. I hope I can be back up to 5 miles straight at high intensity by the new year.

5. Tomorrow we are having friends over for ham, asparagus, green bean casserole, cacio e pepe potatoes, and green salad.

6. ETA: I JUST SAW THAT I GOT A TREAT FOR YULETIDE! I CAN'T WAIT!!!!

1. At noon today, I stopped reading and researching and going through my files and compiling this and that AND I STARTED WRITING. In about two hours, I wrote 1500 words. If I can sustain this writing pace, I'll have a solid first draft by the end of the week!! I am doing a lot of quilting (thanks to umadoshi for that term)--using a paragraph here, a section there that I'd already written for my dissertation, but I'm having to write a fair amount of new material as well. The article has to be 5,000-10,000 words, and the anthology editor specified that the closer to 10,000 the better. If I can write at least 2000 words tomorrow, I will be over the moon.

2. My Yuletide treat is entirely finished (even the title!) except for the last couple sentences, and my treat recipient already has a gift, so if I can finish the last little bit, I can upload the damn thing. Why are endings so hard? But still yay for almost being done.

3. I got Christmas cards from misbegotten, spikedluv, talitha78, and leesa_perrie!

4. I was so sad to hear of Rene Auberjonois passing. The interplay between Odo and Quark is one of my favorite things about DS9. I love that while their relationship is always antagonistic, they often manage to find moments of connection and genuine feeling between them. Auberjonois will be greatly missed.

5. Emma is 17 today! I am a crone!

So much going on, y'all. I am in a whirl.

I am going to teach a second overload through our system-wide online delivery platform. Yay! Except it's going to be a new prep. And it starts on Monday. But I can do this! (This gives me three simultaneous second session, 8 week, online courses; and, yes, I have done it to myself, and it is going to be grueling because I have to grade and give feedback in short session classes immediately so that it can be useful for students as they complete subsequent assignments, but that money is going to be so, so sweet.)

My research study which involves a camp for high school students is finally getting a piece of the university web page to host the anthologies of student work! I am so stoked. It looks so good. It's going to be such a great recruiting tool, and it's going to be something our graduates can point to as examples of their design work. And it has my name all over it, which is utterly yayness!

I submitted a rather lengthy response to one of those surveys MLA is forever sending out; this one was about teaching Harriet Jacobs. The survey generators are putting together a volume about teaching her, and it was gathering info about how professors generally do that. Well, I got an email from the editor of the collection asking me to submit a proposal for the book based on my answers, and I can't tell if it's a form letter or not. I'm inclined to think it probably is, but I also don't think they'd be sending out form letters for a November 1 abstract deadline if they didn't have fewer submissions than they believed they'd have at this point. And there's just enough wiggle room to make me wonder if maybe it's not a form letter. IDK I'm seriously considering putting together an abstract, though. Have any of you ever contributed to one of those volumes? I've never even read one of them. I suppose that's the first step. I think I could easily write an essay about how I teach Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, but I do not have the time or spoons to put together a really heavily researched essay. I need to gauge the level of scholarship in those volumes. Are they really teaching and classroom practice-centric which = easyish to write or are they super research heavy, etc?

I'm still waiting to hear back about the proposal I submitted to the CFP for technology in 19th century literature. Fully expecting a rejection because Ouida's really not a good fit for that topic, but I wish I'd go ahead and get rejected already. LOL

Whew.