My Favorite Thing About NaPloPoMo...

... is having posts to read on the weekends!! Oh, how I enjoy that! Often people write in their blogs the most during the week when I'm busy and can't enjoy the reading calmly as I wish I could (I just squeeze blog reading in with the tons of other things I need to do).

Other favorite things: hearing almost as much from my SIL as I do in one whole year (after all, except for November, she's The Sporadic Post blogger :-) ). Since our blogs are one of our main forms of communication since we see each other so sparingly (once a year at most), I really enjoy reading her daily.

P.S. This shouldn't be my daily post for today, in fact, there might be a couple more.

Five Glorious Years!!

(laughing)
Right... five years of blogging. It's been wonderful, though, it truly has. I haven't really made a "mark" in the Blogosphere, or Blogland, or, should it be Blogville? I'm just a drop in an ocean, but blogging has made a huge difference in my life. The friendships I made are priceless and the things I learned cannot be measured. So, yeah, I'm glad to be celebrating this "milestone." :-p

And to continue a recent tradition (I guess this will be the third year) I'm supposed to post a nice recent photo of myself, only it's very hard to find one! I forgot to have my official photographer (Kelvin) take one. In fact, there are no photos of me -- except in the Christmas family photos -- to be found in the past two months, so I'll have to use one from September. I'm not crazy about it, but it'll have to do. Can you guess where I was?

P.S. I really have a good reason to be late today. We went out for dinner, K and I -- big "milestone" right there (we never do this, but today we left our sons with friends) -- then to our friends' house and only left around 11:30 and didn't get home past midnight. So, it wasn't really my fault that I couldn't blog earlier ;-).

I Can't Believe It!

1. I can hardly believe it, but I've had not one, but three or four Christmas cards ready (designed and saved at the photo site) for a week now. I just need to go and order my favorite. And it's November! No, that can't be true! And we had not one, but two "photo sessions"* since the first one turned out really bad. I may scan it and post it here if it turns out cute.

2. I am relieved to acknowledge that the leaf removal (only two thirds done so far) has been nearly painless and quick. In the past two years I had to take care of it all by my sorry self, but my dearest K took time from his busy days and nights sending out applications while trying to teach a class and work a tiny bit on his research to help me. I spent a day blowing the leaves last week (before we went to Canada) and K took the day off on Tuesday to bag them all. You know.. I think he needed a break from the applications. And besides, we were really ashamed to compare our yard with all the neighbors' -- our lawn hadn't been mowed in over a month and we had to get rid of the leaves and do it -- and K did! Oh, I love him.

3. This post was going to have only two items, but a third random one presented itself unexpectedly this evening. We're planning to start a singing group in church and while looking for a song online I found this site that sells old out of print music as well as tons of accompaniment tracks!! I couldn't find all songs I wanted, but many favorites, and I was thrilled, singing away with the demos. Now I can stop translating songs from Portuguese to sing with my Brazilian tracks. Phew!
Note: I'm not a great singer by any means, but I do OK. My range is tiny (lower F to the C above middle C -- it's not that great beyond that, it's not even two octaves), so it's really hard to find songs for me. I'm an alto/mezzo soprano. I'm great at singing bossa nova songs, I did so once at one of our department parties back in grad school.

So, yeah, one more random fact about me that perhaps you didn't know. I like to sing, in spite of not being really good at it. (and a rather lame post, but I really have to get ready to sing tomorrow and it' getting late -- I'm super happy about items #1 and 2, though, and I wanted to share).

* Asking a friend to take a few photos of our family, who's dressed with slightly matching outfits (same color schemes), right after church.

Whoa! Over 900 Posts!! (This is the 902nd)

I forgot to check this earlier so I could commemorate the event properly (I hope I remember to do it for the thousandth post), but it looks like The PhD Problem was my 900th post. How fitting, no?

900 posts in two years (minus 4 days, the blog's anniversary is coming up, hmmm, I better start looking for that photo of me)... it's not much, but quite a bit. Let's see... (thanks to the new blogger stats):

5 posts in 2004
91 posts in 2005
175 in 2006
235 in 2007
240 in 2008

and so far only
155 in 2009 :-(

So it looks like 2009 will have less posts than the previous years and mark a decline in my blog posting. I'll blame the depressive year -- you should be glad I didn't blog more, believe me. Even I am (because I'm a whiner, sorry about that). These numbers do make me feel a bit sad, though... since I'd been writing more and more every year. Should I try to write 85 posts in the 56 days left in 2009 so I can measure up?

Hmmm... Don't dare me, but probably not. Although I would like to be able to post 500+ photos to update my poor neglected 365 blog. Crazy me.

OK, enough fluff for today. Maybe more later (or some seriousness... it'll depend on my mood).

Tired...

This cyber schooling thing is tiresome. I do enjoy it (apart from having to nag my firstborn a lot), but it's still exhausting and all-consuming. So much so that I haven't had time and the energy to update the new blog I started. I guess I'll just abandon it, since I don't like the name anyway (I much prefer Mama to Mom, I don't know why I titled it Cyber Schooling Mom. I even like the silly "mommy" better than mom. Oh well).

I'm quite content with my life right now and I'm not really looking forward to the stressfulness and craziness of the trip to Brazil that will take place in short 26 days. I love spending my days with the boys and I'm even doing more things around the house (I want to write a post about that, let's see if I end up doing it or not). Traveling changes everything all of a sudden, although I'm quite used to it. Our lives are pretty chaotic and not very predictable, let me tell you. And that's how I like it.

That's why moving is not a big deal to me, really. For an expatriate, nothing will ever compare to the radical change of leaving your country, your family and friends, your whole life (even though it's a short life of only 25 years) to start again in another country. Of course after 13 years I'm finally feeling kind of "settled" (now that I have a dining room set and new bedroom furniture, I just wanted new living room furniture too ;-), but this "settling" is always shaken up by trips here and there, plans for the future and the feeling that perhaps the "definitive settling down" never happen... sigh.

OK, I'm just rambling here. I don't know why in the world I had to write two humongous posts on the same day (I guess I didn't realize that both were going up on the same day -- I could have changed the day of the second one for today so easily!). If with some small posts I barely get readers, now I'm doomed not to have anyone check those out! In any case, I needed to get them written. The first, because I wanted to finally have a decent "weekend/travel update" that was still immediately relevant, and the second because I just had to react to an article titled "The PhD Problem" -- how could I not? Given that I am a walking, breathing "PhD problem." :-p

So, dear, gentle readers... do check them out, will ya?

The Ph.D. Problem (as if there was only one...)

When I read Laura's well written and creatively titled post (which it departs from two smart "metaphors" before introducing the subject of this post in a comparative framework) mentioning Louis Renand's recent article in the Harvard Magazine (in pdf, if you so prefer) I felt almost sick to my stomach. This problem is just too close to home for comfort (well, it's not merely close, but inside my house and family, which has two PhD recipients either under or unemployed as current readers already know). I waited patiently for over 24h to find some time to read it carefully and to comment here. Let's see if I can manage to do so without shedding any tears or ending up trembling with rage/nervousness (you can see many of my previous "academic rants" here).

Note: This is not a coherently organized essay or review, but a collection of personal reactions to the article.

The first tidbit that effectively caught my attention:

the most important function of the system is not the production of knowledge. It is the reproduction of the system.

I'm quite sure that I actually produced knowledge with my dissertation, but that doesn't matter, because my topic/methodology is not something that fits in with the system at all, it's just a bit too unorthodox. So, the fact that I'm not reproducing the system means that I probably won't enter it. Neat, no?

This statement: "the median time to a doctoral degree in the humanities disciplines is nine years" [11 if one counts the stops] was truly a consolation to me, since it took me "ten years and two sons" to get done -- and I imagine those nine years on average don't generally involve two sons, right? [precisely -- I wrote that before reading the explanation about the 11.3 years average counting the breaks, which means that I actually beat the average!].

Next, I learned in no uncertain terms that independent scholars are "the strongest non-professional[s]," i.e. people who don't have a Ph.D. but still attempt to produce scholarship. Now, if one assumes that "independent scholars" necessarily do not have the degree, what happens when one does have the degree but not the professional affiliation and then has to be relegated to the despised rank of "independent scholar" as I was at my latest conference/fiasco (ironically in Harvard itself)? I guess they should create another term to define this pathetic "other" -- the credentialed researcher without the job (insert contemptuous snort here). Credentialed, but non-institutionalized, "profession-less."

The historical analysis of the problem, whose root lays in the disproportionate (to undergraduate enrollment) creation of doctoral programs, was common, logical knowledge to me from the times in graduate school. I was also aware of the problem with the humanities (my area, obviously...) -- less and less undergraduates enrolling, however, seeing the numbers was really scary.

Reinstating the obvious, but still worth articulating:

What is clear is that students who spend eight or nine years in graduate school are being seriously over-trained for the jobs that are available. The argument that they need the training to be qualified to teach undergraduates is belied by the fact that they are already teaching undergraduates.

And here's an interesting idea that would do away with dissertation troubles (and which could be adapted to fit in with different areas, say, two or three peer reviewed papers):

If every graduate student were required to publish a single peer-reviewed article instead of writing a thesis, the net result would probably be a plus for scholarship.

Now comes the part that Laura alludes to when comparing us -- maimed human beings with a Ph.D. -- to dogs formerly used in dog fighting and former football players:

One pressure on universities to reduce radically the time-to-degree is simple humanitarianism. Lives are warped because of the length and uncertainty of the doctoral education process. Many people drop in and drop out and then drop in again; a large proportion of students never finish; and some people have to retool at relatively advanced ages. Put in less personal terms, there is a huge social inefficiency in taking people of high intelligence and devoting resources to training them in programs that half will never complete and for jobs that most will not get. (italics mine)

The italicized part hits close to home again. My husband is weary that he still doesn't have a "real job" a year and a half shy of 40 years old. His job search feels like a race against the clock. Sigh.

The obvious (and very familiar -- this describes my life!) again:

Unfortunately, there is an institutional efficiency, which is that graduate students constitute a cheap labor force. There are not even search costs involved in appointing a graduate student to teach. The system works well from the institutional point of view not when it is producing Ph.D.s, but when it is producing ABDs. It is mainly ABDs who run sections for lecture courses and often offer courses of their own. The longer students remain in graduate school, the more people are available to staff undergraduate classes.

And here goes my shout out to "the graduate-student union movement" -- a consequence of this appalling problem -- which allowed me to have full health and dental care (and not pay a penny for each of my son's delivery) as well as almost decent wages. Lucky me that I went to a state school. Those graduate students in private universities are often barred from unionizing, in case you didn't know.

And, YES!!! That's just what I thought and felt, given my rather "iconoclastic" research: "The academic profession in some areas is not reproducing itself so much as cloning itself. " The biggest problem, Menand argues, is that because it's already so hard to pursue an academic career in the first place, there is a "self-sorting" process that goes on before students even enroll and only those who already fit in enter. "If it were easier and cheaper to get in and out of the doctoral motel, the disciplines would have a chance to get oxygenated by people who are much less invested in their paradigms."

NOW, here come the foreign graduate students/Ph.D. recipients like myself!!!

Some of us, perhaps many of us, do not fit in to begin with, but enter graduate school precisely because it's not that hard, really (at least for those of us who are/were well prepared by our education abroad -- WHICH WAS FREE to begin with, at least in Brazil at top state or federal universities) and thus, we could signify some change, if only we were given the chance to get TT jobs.

I don't feel I fit in with what Menand says here: "Students who go to graduate school already talk the talk, and they learn to walk the walk as well. There is less ferment from the bottom than is healthy in a field of intellectual inquiry." I don't already "talk the talk" or "walk the walk" thank-you-very-much! I long to be "ferment," if given the chance. And I most definitely was NOT and am NOT "neurotically invested in the academic intellectual status quo." I guess that's the main reason why I haven't yet given up on this whole academic idea!!

How interesting! Reading this essay and finding more about myself and my previously uncovered motivations to remain an academic. How refreshing! And I thought I would be depressing...

Anyhow, Laura, I don't think we need to be rescued, really, perhaps we just need to fight harder, particularly those of us who are slightly "misfits." I'm not saying that I'm changing my mind about not pursuing a tenure track job, I just want to recognize that I'm not done with academia just yet and that it feels comforting to have an insight into the reasons why I'll keep trying a bit longer.

The Sweet & Long Awaited Blogger Meet Up

The sweet part first, if you're wondering what it's about:Now that you're there drooling over those most amazingly delicious and gorgeous macarons from the suggestively named "boutique" Point G that the friendly blogger bought for us to share, I'll share the background story.

Many years ago (more precisely 15-13) K had a student (math in 7th, 8th and physics in the first half of 9th grade) named Keiko (her late dad was Japanese, thus the beautiful Japanese name, which is actually her middle name, but the one she was known for). Keiko -- who a few years earlier also happened to have been one of the lead singers in a children musical group from the institution where we worked -- I say that just to embarrass her ;-) -- is obviously well over 10 years younger than K and I, but little did we know that 10 years after we left Brazil to the U.S. she would be making the same trajectory and becoming one more rare kindred spirit in our circle of friends.

It is very rare and precious indeed to find people who understand K and I in all aspects of life: expatriate from Brazil in North America, doctoral student/researcher, parent of young kids, not to mention having grown up in the same place where I lived from 13-25 years old (in her case from 0-25, I guess). And to top it off, she and I have one more thing in common, which makes the connection even greater: she blogs!!! Unfortunately she does so in Portuguese or I'd recommend that you read her humorous, witty and well written posts about her life as an expatriate-doctoral-student-mother-of-young-children (not that she's having a lot of time to blog lately -- sadly). (A few more words about her blog. It's titled Tirando o Sapato-- Taking off the Shoe, which is a reference to the fact that in Canada everyone takes off their shoes when going into other people's houses. If you go visit over there, make sure to refresh the site a few times to see the several cute shoe pictures!!)

A meeting had been in our plans since she started blogging (and us interacting via blogs and email) back in 2006 and the idea of my brother-in-law and his wife emigrating to Canada was only that, a very abstract idea, almost a dream really for them. Three years later, BIL has been in Montreal for six months and we have visited him twice already. It so happens that during the first visit, Keiko had gone to Brazil for a few days with the, thus frustrating our plans of meeting. We even went to her house (with a bunch of other people) and her absence, as well as that of her children, was keenly felt.

Until last Friday, that is, when we finally managed to meet (albeit later than we had intended -- see lack of time mentioned above)!! Our children played together -- well, the baby girl mostly watched her brother and these two big boys play and be really noisy (particularly Linton and Zack, 5 and 3, who hit it right off). Here they are playing trains:
Oh, and last but not least, my friend lives in an awesome place, here (July photo):She lives in one of the buildings shaped like a triangle at the back of the photo which were part of the former Olympic Village from the Montreal 1976 Olympics. The buildings have a view to this place (which is were the photo above was taken -- from the inclined elevator):

The Olympic Stadium and the Biodome.

What about the macarons, you must be asking yourself? Well, there is an explanation. A while back, more precisely six months ago, Keiko posted about them here (scroll down for cute photos of her daughter). And ever since I saw those pictures I've been dying to eat them! So Keiko was kind enough to purchase some (the plan was to meet at Point G, but that didn't work out) so I could try them. Yummmm! We had to cut them all in four so the kids, and Keiko's sister-in-law (visiting from Brazil) could also have a taste! OK, here's Zack, ready to dive in (let me know if you're OK with the photo, Keiko, 'cause it shows both of your kids):Of course this post is missing something... a photo of the two bloggers. We forgot to take photos, though, because we were too busy talking away! Maybe next time. :-)

This Just In

Remember the "life changing possibilities"? Well, last night we found out via email that the concurso (competition for a tenure track position) has been scheduled for the Thanksgiving week (Wed-Fri).

Very convenient for K to travel (he won't miss teaching any classes), but quite sad for us to be without him for my favorite holiday as well as the 8th Thanksgiving in a row with his brother's family (this time with his mom and his youngest brother too - visiting on the weekend from Canada). In any case, he'll go and participate. You know I have very ambivalent feelings about going back to Brazil, but still, someone who doesn't have a job cannot waste any chances of getting one, right? I'll keep you posted.

The "Window Smile" Boy

So, this was the second biggest event of the weekend in Montreal (the first will be the subject of the next post) and it happened on Saturday morning -- although the photos were taken 24h later on Sunday morning (my apologies for the fuzzy photo, I wasn't using the flash):Yes, my "baby" is officially gone now that his first top tooth is out (the bottom don't really change their smiles that much) and has been replaced by a funny smile. I'm not looking forward to the big teeth that are likely going to come out of his gum :-). Yes, I wanted them to stay little forever, too bad we can't hold time still. Only in photographs.

8 Hours in a Car

That's what we'll be doing for the next 8+ hours, driving down home from Montreal... Sigh

So that's all I can post today, or else we'll get home later than we could.

We had a good time at the Science Center of Montreal, the boys, their uncle and I (K and auntie M had to work), courtesy of our membership at the Franklin Institute! There's nothing better than being able to visit other science museums for free all over the world! (Well, we've done Boston and Montreal, so I guess that counts as all over North America, at least... but there are other countries involved :-).

OK, I really have to go now... it's hard to keep up with NaBloPoMo while traveling, I tell ya!

In Precisely a Month...

... the boys and I will be inside a jet plane flying to Brazil. I'm glad we're going, but kind of sad that we'll spend so much time away from K. And traveling is a really stressful thing. Sigh.

I'm late again posting today, but it's not my fault!! Seriously, this may sound as the lamest excuse ever, but we were stuck in traffic for nearly an hour on the Pont Champlain -- the bridge that crosses the St. Lawrence River into Montreal. We had traveled a bit to visit some friends and encountered a huge traffic jam on the way back. Not fun.

It's been a lovely weekend so far. Long awaited blogger/friend meet up, some time with the brother- and sister-in-law... It's very tiring, but in the end it's so worth it! So now I have to go to bed because tomorrow we drive another 7+ hours back home. More posts and photos later...

Cute Netbook

I'm blogging from the cutest sleek white netbook and it's not that bad to type in its tiny keyboard after all! It's my husband's, he got it for his teaching and the consulting work that he's yet to start. As if researching, adjunct teaching and applying for jobs (which in and of itself is almost a full time job) were not enough, he found this consulting gig which hopefully will help pay some of our outstanding debt, if only he can finds the time to work on it. From midnight to 6 am, maybe?

In any case, I hope to be back with another post later (there's a much awaited blogger meet up coming up this evening!!), but I wanted to send this out just in case, since NaBloPoMo awaits my daily posting.

Our trip was OK (for me) -- we didn't leave until 7:30 pm and got hear close to 4 am. Poor K drove most of the time and at the end had to stop several times to take short naps. Yuck. He's napping now, poor guy. We should have stayed home for him to work on his applications and for me to work on out neverending piles of leaves, but we just came... oh well. More later then...

Ready to Move On

Late last night, when I was coming and going to partially fulfill my monthly (sometimes bimonthly) janitorial duties at our church* I thought that I am done with Pennsylvania. I mean, I'm done with living here and I am so ready to just move on. I like to feel this way because it makes what could possibly be difficult moves and changes in life so much easier to bear! I know it's going to be a pain and way too much work to move, but I'm used to this by now, having moved so many times.

I hope K does get a job in a nice place so we can move and start over again. Yesterday I spent most of the day blowing leaves and raking and I was thinking that I didn't want to do this again next year. "One more Spring," I thought, "it's all I want from this house." Which reminds me I wanted to have planted more bulbs, but the few perennials I added will have to do -- it would be a waste to spend money on bulbs at this point, even though they might possibly be my last tulips, crocuses, hyacinths and daffodils ever (if we return to Brazil or move way down South).

So, yeah, I'm done. I know it won't be easy to sell the house and that we'll have to redo the bathrooms anyhow as well as doing the whole staging thing again (blah! At least for twice in my life I can pretend I have a spotless house), but I'm even looking forward to perhaps renting for a year or two. Yes, I am out of my mind, I never thought I'd feel this way! By the time it's all said and done, however, we won't have enough down payment for a house, IF we end up with anything at all (probably not).

One last thing. Reflecting on this led me to the conclusion that I want to feel that I am done with the United States before we return to Brazil, but I don't feel that way at all right now, so it won't be easy to go back and I hope we don't. I want to give your country one more chance ;-).

P.S. This past Saturday (Oct. 31) marked the two year anniversary of the unraveling of our lives here (the day K lost his big pharma job) and I didn't even remember it! K, on the other hand said that he thought about it all day, but for some reason didn't mention in to me until Monday. The ability to forget and the fact that time does bring healing are surely great things!

* I still need to go finish cleaning before we travel to Canada this afternoon/evening. Things are crazy around here!

Invented

Just heard from my five-year-old:

Mommy, you're the bestest mommy that you invented.

Yeah, just as I was thinking that reinventing myself as a better mom would be a good idea ;-).

There have been a lot of spontaneous mommy-loving statements from him in the past weeks. I know it's a passing phase, like everything else in childhood, but I sure wish it would last forever!

The Existentialist

This afternoon my seven year old suddenly turned to me (at Target, of all places) and said:

I'm so glad that I exist! Can you imagine how I'd feel if I didn't exist?

He also said he was happy that he existed in our particular family (he says that quite often, which is reassuring). He is a confident child and he's bright, I just wish he would work harder in school. I'm often upset with the fact that I have lots of trouble to get him to work with certain things (mostly writing) at school and I feel extremely aggravated with him (and then guilty about it). It's somewhat of a relief to know that he had these problems at the other school, with me and the other teachers. Maybe I'll blog more about it some other time, but maybe I won't...

Meanwhile, I'm reassuring my son of my unconditional love and support and telling him that I'm also glad he exists!

Application Marathon (and a gratuitous sad reflective moment about academia)

I've been falling asleep with my sons several nights lately (which justifies being late half an hour for this daily posting) because K has been away at a conference or just "absent while present" working on his job applications day and night and I want to give the boys some needed extra attention at bedtime (daddy is usually the one to put them to bed every night).

No, I wasn't talking about my job applications there in the title. I've kind of given up on that entirely for the time being. Not only because with the cyber schooling I don't have the time and the mental/emotional energy for it, but because I'm entirely convinced of the fact that I do not want a tenure track job. I want to have a life, and my work is not my life right now, it's just on hold for a little while.

I think often of my dissertation and of various articles I want to write as well as research that I'd love to do. I even got accepted to present at a conference in Montreal (but just missed the deadline for the most important conference in specific area that will take place in NYC -- so close!). I miss my academic life, I do, and writing this makes me all sad and weepy all of a sudden, at least at this very moment, when I think of it.

Why do I have to feel so ambivalent about academia? Why all this angst? In the little poor earnest idealistic heart of mine I wish things were not the way they are... so involved in politics, in fashionable topics that come and go, in the rigidity of a system that you can only enter if you've been well prepared during your whole "training" (from college to grad school) -- and I am anything but prepared. Even though I can write pretty good cover letters that can almost or actually land me interviews...*

Even after years of being "slightly in," presenting at various conferences, trying to interact with peers, I continue to feel like an outsider. My unorthodox research and methodology coupled with my interest in a country/literature that very few care about in the United States are major deterrents.

Well, I don't like this defeatist (or, should I say overly realistic and not ambitious at all?) attitude of mine. Truth is, I'm saving all my bets for K and his job search, as usual. Then, after he accepts a job offer, I'll send out those letters offering my "services" as an adjunct something. Please BITE ME if I don't send them under those circumstances, OK? Thanks. So, yeah. I'm done. I'll have a full list of places of application soon. I want to keep tabs on those, just for my reference (and yours, if you care to follow one more job search in the Casa in Translation).

* I got one interview at the MLA, mind you, which is not really a big deal, of course -- and, OH, I had forgotten! This stupid MLA interviewing is one of the main reasons why I'm just not sending out any applications -- I will be in Brazil then and I know they will just pick their candidates at the "meat market" over there -- great! I can stop crying now... (sarcastic laugh).

NaBloPoMo -- Here We Go Again!!

My third year of "National Blog Posting Month" is starting today and I'm excited! I really enjoy writing every day and I have a backlog of posts to bring to light, several of which will have a bunch of photos. I hope you'll enjoy that! (I just wrote a post like that yesterday, do check it out).

I love the NaBloPoMo graphic above, it has some of my favorite colors. I saw it at American Family and copied it. Thanks A!

So, here we go... See you again tomorrow!

Soaking in the Fall

I've never seen a wettest fall... and a warmer one it's hard to come by as well. I'm not complaining -- I can take the rain, the constant drizzle and the wetness as long as it's comparably warm as it's been lately here in the Philadelphia area.
Last Tuesday we had a field trip with our cyber school to a local apple orchard. It was drizzling and muddy, but we still had a good time. It helped that they had covered hay(less) rides. And their apple cider... hmmm... I have to go back there again this week to buy some more! After stocking on cider and buying some more yummy cider donuts we headed for a wet afternoon of fun at one of our favorite places on earth, Longwood Gardens.*

Here are a bunch of photos for you...

At the orchard:

Puddles galore! (Linton's snow boots got soaked, he needs rain boots):Making a scarecrow (we got to bring it home):

"Making" apple cider (the orchard's is the best!):

At Longwood

The boys played for half an hour with these wheelbarrows and the pumpkins, they had a great (wet) time!This is the lovely display of gourds at the Heritage House:

We had a fun day, even if the boys got soaking wet!

* I was just thinking that I could have a photo blog titled Longwood through the seasons, or something. I have thousands and thousands of photos from that place since 2004. My boys literally grew up going there almost weekly (Linton was 2 months old when we went for the first time and got a season pass). I'll miss it intensely when we move! :-(

Someday I'll Want a Kindle/ Questions for Users + Possible Academic/Teaching Use

I just found out that I really want a Kindle, or "will want" as I say in the title. I'll have to wait quite a while, though... because I just cannot afford to buy the books right now, but hopefully someday I will.

It was a fun discovery to know that I want one, though! :-) I have NOT adopted the ipod because I can't stand ear plugs and I don't like the teenage-like isolation of listening to music privately anyway (I did plenty of that in the "Walkman era" ages ago). I'm an "ambient music" kind of gal and I'm trying to infuse that on my sons as well (they already have access to ipods, though and use them once in a while, but generally they prefer music blaring from the stereo and I don't mind one bit!).* And I don't care for smart phones either, but I think I'd really enjoy having a kindle.

How I found out about this newly discovered wish? I had never checked it out, but I get periodic emails from Amazon and they just sent one telling us that now the Kindle can download books wirelessly all over the world. Isn't that exciting? So I went on to read more about it and was fascinated by all its capacities.

Some random questions for any readers that have one (I know Anjali does, I don't know about anyone else):

• The Amazon description mentions that one can read blogs in the kindle -- how so? (I know they have a bare bones browser) I suppose it's only the most famous blogs... I wonder how one could make one's blog content available to Kindle.... Can one read any other sites? Is the content of newspapers and magazines paid? How so?

• Doesn't it feel kind of "wasteful" having to purchase every single book you want to read instead of borrowing it from the library or a friend? I don't think this is a concern just yet because only a very small and privileged portion of the population is adopting Kindle anyway (or maybe I'm wrong about that). I make this comment because I enjoy buying used books, for example, and there can't be such a thing with Kindle. UNLESS one were allowed to share a book with someone. I bet that's not the case. Booo.
  

(I know it's the "cheapo," the crazily thrifty personality in me that's thinking these thoughts or perhaps the anti-consumerist in me -- I'd love Dawn's perspective on this, I'm sure she'd have thought provoking things to say!)

I think that what pisses me off the most about Kindle is that if I already have a book (and I do have lots of books), I'd have to purchase it again to have in Kindle, right? That alone would deter me from wanting it. Unless older books were to be slightly cheaper.

• As an academic in a literary field who has to do close analysis of books and texts in general I can see endless possibilities in the use of Kindle -- I mean, you read the book and then if you can't remember a passage to read to your class you just search for it, it's fantastic!! Now, do they even give teacher's complimentary copies for professors who use Kindle? Probably not, although they should. Has anyone out there used Kindle for teaching?

• I wonder how much translated literature (into English) they have available for Kindle (probably next to nothing, particularly from Brazil). Given that this was the topic of my dissertation, I'd be very interesting in investigating that!
  

• Oh, and most importantly, do they have books for Kindle in other languages??
  

I'm sure I have tons of other questions, but these are enough for now. I guess I'm not totally into this gadget yet mostly because of my conflicting feelings about it. Gadgets are typical products of a wildly capitalistic society that wants to invent and market newer things all the time so that people spend, spend, spend, and a few lucky ones profit and profit. Blah. And one would think that literature was a "noble art" that had nothing to do with consuming, but that's not really the case. I guess it's the most consumer-oriented kind of art, literature and music too... But that's another story.

* K did give me a small portable loudspeaker/player for the ipod for my birthday, but it does not charge the player, which actually is attached inside the thing, so if you want to listen to something else you've got to get it out, oh, and it uses regular batteries. Needless to say I'm not using that either. :-) I need a real pluggable stereo with an ipod dock. I know we can't afford that either... blah. You know, I sound really really whiny (and I'm a terrible awful whiner) -- my sincere apologies for that -- but this not affording things IS getting on my nerves. I should be working, not staying home with the boys although I love it so much. BLAH!!!

The Cat, The Car, The... Can this please stop?

So our cat had been vomiting for three days and after worrying about him quite a bit, yesterday evening I just went and took him to the vet. Sigh. A thorough examination (including the removal of a huge tick on his neck -- yikes! -- it had only been there a day, I think, we had noticed it), IV fluids, penicilin (in the IV), antiacid shot, prescription antiacid to take home, and a hundred and twenty three dollars later, I brought him back home and he's been feeling much better since. When poor K saw the bill he said we have to give the cat away (I hope not!).

And the car (the old, but beloved and trusty Honda Odyssey minivan) needs four new tires plus some work in the rear brakes or something and it could be upwards of 500 dollars. We can't give the car away, though... we really need it :-(.

Needless to say, we don't have the money for any of these things but they still need(ed) to be taken care of. So, yeah, it's not just gloomy weather, but also gloomy thoughts of never being "financially healthy" again... And just this week K and I were talking again that if we put the house up for sale next year we will have to redo the remaining two bathrooms (sigh some more). Of course we still have credit card debt from the other renovations and we certainly cannot afford this, but it will have to be done somehow. We won't give the house back to the bank, that's for sure! And if we really need to sell it and move, hopefully we will!