Random paragraphs, end of summer edition

Island hopping

I step back to the classroom tomorrow to teach two courses with ridiculously sweeping titles: U.S. History to 1877 and Women in America: Colonial Era to the Present.  Fortunately, I’m not one to fret about coverage.  As I’m sure I’ve explained somewhere on this blog or its predecessor, I take the islands-in-an-archipelago approach to teaching history.

My dad asked if I would be covering the relationship of Prohibition to women’s suffrage in the latter. He said in his day, women’s history wasn’t included at all, and this seemed a good topic.  I reminded him that I am, ahem, me, and thus the course would cover instead reproductive health in the Revolutionary era, women’s Transatlantic abolitionism, adolescent sexuality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American Indian Movement activists, Chicana feminism, and Asian American popular culture.

There’s a hole in mommy’s car where all the money goes

It’s been quite a summer.

The Big Dog needed a new knee.

He won’t stop licking the damn leg, and he won’t wear an Elizabethan collar (“Cone of Shame”) or doughnut (“Life Preserver of Shame”), and he doesn’t seem to mind bitter apple, so we’ve been forced to keep the wound covered, sedate him, and keep an eye on him at all times.  I’m happy to report, however, that tonight he took me on an honest-to-goodness pull around the block, only two weeks after surgery, using all four legs, including one that is technically broken:

The rear-ended car that the insurance company said they’d be able to repair ended up being totalled.  Because of this massive damage:

Of course we didn’t get sufficient cash back to buy a decent car, but our friendly credit union gave us a little loan to make up the difference, so now we have this:

. . .which is basically the same car we had before, only six years newer, and with all the styling my inner 60-year-old woman appreciates, like automotive-primer-gray leather seats, a prominent digital display of the cardinal direction the car is pointed, and a faux wood burl dash:

But hey, I can’t complain.  It’s the third time I’ve bought the first car I test drove (and I’ve only bought three cars).  I’m one of those research-research-research-OK-let’s-get-this-DONE buyers.  (It’s the academic writer in me.)

Second grade

The boy heads to second grade next week, and a couple days later turns eight.

I’m a bit worried about the whole second-grade thing.  In 18 months, he’s gone from struggling with Hop on Pop to blazing through Eragon.  Phonics is going to seem reeeeeeallllllly boring.  He’s also drawing and filling out multiplication tables for fun.  I need to budget for a math tutor, as he’ll soon be surpassing my meager knowledge–once letters and numbers begin to mingle, I’m pretty useless.

Meanwhile, I’m keeping him busy.

Program prioritization

Idaho universities must prioritize all their programs.  Our administrators are tossing around words like “metrics” and “analytics,” terms that typically elicit two responses from faculty in the humanities and social sciences: (a) tuning out or (b) anxiety.  I’m gathering some metrics I think should be included in the discussion; expect a blog post on the topic soon.

To do (fall semester edition)

• Finish (finally, for realz) the prison artifact article
• Revise zoo director article
• Give feedback on WordPress plugin
• Finish wolf essay
• Launch Stories of Idaho
• Support fellow interns as they launch that neat thing we built this summer
• Get LLC and insurance for launch of side hustle

Whew! I have a fellowship in the spring to work on one (!!!) project and forgo teaching and service (!!!!!!!!), but I’ll be occupied as well with pulling together a tenure portfolio, as I’m eligible to submit it fall 2014.

What’s keeping you busy or anxious at the moment?