prod & ponder

Poker went very well at the Trop over the weekend. The photo shows my total poker winnings for the weekend (actually, a little bit more than that, plus comp credit for hours played).

Phoning it in (camera phone) from where I’m spending the day…

The plan was for dc flickr folks to all go bowling, but Lucky Strike is getting a bit too popular for its britches, and there weren’t any free lanes. So we headed over to Buffalo Billiards and had a great time of things.

You can see more of the photos I took here.

Technology marches on. Remember hamsterdance from a few years ago? Well,
look where we are now (note: having your computer’s volume turned up is vital to getting the full hamsterdance experience). Also, just in time for all your holiday package tracking needs, Google will now recognize UPS, FedEx, and USPS tracking number as search terms.

Small bit of holiday Google design fun:
Note the right-hand sponsored link border when you search for Christmas. And don’t worry, there’s also something special for those of us celebrating Chanukah. Sadly, nothing for Kwanza or Festivus.

I give students the option of submitting their final exam online, which most of them do, but I still show up during the scheduled exam period to collect papers from those who remain a bit techno-phobic. Three (of twenty-five) stopped by.

… and in bad need of a haircut.

And that was a week ago. Now I really, really have an unruly mop of hair on my head. But look, it’s not my fault. It because… well, it’s because the world is broken.

Broken world point #1:
I spent the final weeks of my dissertation work staying up late into crazy hours of the night, writing like mad to meet pressing deadlines. And now that I’m done with all that, how did I spend yesterday? I spent it staying up till 6am, writing out a two-year proposal for evaluation research on one of the largest mediation programs in the United States. I’m not really complaining, because despite the ludicrously short turnaround time the proposal required, the project would make for wonderful work if it panned out.

Still… aren’t I supposed to be reveling in obscene amounts of free time right about now? It’s not coming anytime soon. GMU requires a 48-hour turn around between final exam dates and end-of-semester grade reporting, which means that at noon tomorrow the clock starts ticking on me evaluating approximately 200 pages of student writing that’s going to be flowing in. And hey, I actually enjoy that work too. But my hair, it’s getting ridiculous. If I could just get a free hour… but I don’t have it.

Broken world point #2:
Here’s how my world works: if I don’t show up to work on time (to teach), then after 15 minutes everyone leaves. That’s reasonable. I’m just not late. Oh sure, there are all sorts of times I run behind schedule in life, but when it comes to my job: I show up on time. I guess barbers/hair stylists live in a profoundly different world, because boy do they seem shocked when, after I’ve sat around waiting for 15 minutes from my sheduled appointment, I do the same thing my students would do to me and I leave.

I’ve had to do this way too often. Really, I’m not that crotchety old guy demanding everything be neat and orderly… so very far from being “that guy”. But c’mon, don’t we have better things to be doing than sitting around in salons waiting for people to get their professional acts together?

And it happened to me again today. I didn’t really have the hour to spare, but like I said, the hair situation, it’s getting dire. I went in for my appointment and the guy was AWOL. The receptionist seemed to think that “I called him twice” should be as gratifying to me as getting the actual haircut. And so I left. And so I’m having to push hair out of my eyes to write this.

And I can’t pull off the hipster moppy hair look. Maybe I have a brief window of being able to pull off the cute dishelved look, but I’m way, way past that now. My hair is willfull and big, and I end up looking like some bizzaro Art Garfunkel coming off a month-long bender. It’s bad.

So today, returning home from my botched haircut appointment attempt, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, scissors in hand, and gave serious… I mean very serious… thought to trying to cut my own hair. Maybe that doesn’t seem like such a big deal to you. But look, here I am, a 30something guy, with professional work contexts to manuver though, contemplating hacking at my hair not because it might be fun, cool, or to save money, but because I’m just that desperately lacking the time for other alternative.

I didn’t do it. “Aww, hell no,” were my exact words I think. But there I was, seriously considering it, and it was a moment. And I realized something…

I need a vacation.

I’m fairly sure that diners are one of the better things in life. They mostly fit the bill of being a “third place,” and they do it without any of the smug airs that coffee shops and cafes seem to be reveling in these days. Yes, ok, they may not be strung out with power outlets, packed with couches, and blanketed by wifi, but they make up for it in their sincerity. There’s nothing faux about them. They just … are.

So here’s to diners. This one, the American City Movie Diner, is one of the better ones in the DC area. Good food, good service, and good movies shown every night.

I successfully defended my dissertation on Wednesday. It’s a good thing, and it’s still sort of setting in. I’m happy and proud of what I’ve accomplished, but it’s also disorienting and difficult. It’s not uncommon to hear the experience of wrapping up a dissertation likened to postpartum depression, and I get that now. And then there’s the fun of the postdoc job search.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy and proud and giddy-as-can-be as friends congratulate me and humor me (and themselves) by calling me Dr. or Ph.D. at every opportunity. But with all the changes afoot, right now I’m just enjoying throwing myself into the monotony and “comfort work” of making it through the usual end-of-semester stacks of papers and exams I have to grade.