RBOC: Planning and Griping Edition

Busy trying to clear things off my desk. Feels like the workload for my year (or maybe just the term) has been front-loaded.

But progress has been made. The following items are in the planning stages and need feedback:

• I'm planning the meal for the closing banquet of the conference we're helping with. Honestly, who left the guy from Texas in charge of a menu for a group that's guaranteed to have lots of vegetarians? Even worse, our caterer has just stopped giving prices with their catering guide so I'm going into this blind and well-aware that I'm going to have to negotiate. Anyway, how does this sound for a vegetarian menu:

1. ravioli porcini morel (the main course)
   
2. fresh mesclun salad
3. baked sweet potatoes
4. baby squash
5. angel food cake with seasonal berries

• I think I've got a widget/gadget/whatever the hell Blogger is calling it this week to help deal with the job search status questions (incidentally, there didn't seem to be a great counter for Blogger, but there was a spiffy one for WordPress). My question is what things would you like to see me track? I was thinking about the overall cost; the number of jobs found, applied for, contacted by, and various types of interviewed for; and maybe the number of requests for particular types of documents. Anything else?
• On a different note, one of my soon-to-be-graduating seniors said, in response to a discussion about Interlibrary loans, "Wait...so the library will give us a loan?" They were quite disappointed when a fellow student said "Yeah. Of books and magazine articles."
  
• My Mac is still softwareless. It's a $2600 web browser at the moment (oh, and it plays "Spore" - see the example at the right of one of my creations). I tried to request the software I'd need for it, and am now locked in a battle with IT over whether I should have to buy copies of software that the University has upgraded to and that I'm required to use in teaching for this computer.
  

And on that note, good night.

Signs of Intelligence in the Field

There may be some hope for my field after all.

I just sat down to put together my now-annual job application requirement spreadsheet that helps keep me up to date on what I need to send to each job. I'm hitting the market hard, it seems, as there are already 10 schools on the list. That does mean I'm being a little less selective, but not much. So far, every job is in or very near a place I feel like I could live (except one where the city is entirely too large, but the job was sent my way by my adviser, so...), and they range from SLACs to Research I's.

What gives me hope, though, is the number of schools who have reduced their requirements for an application. And nearly all of them - including places I've applied before - have gotten more specific when asking for things like "evidence of teaching effectiveness" (a phrase and requirement that are the bane of my job applying existence).

There are still a few that are insisting on interviewing at one of a number of conferences, and that's frustrating because there isn't the agreement in my field about which conference this should be and so it may well require applicants to attend multiple conferences in hopes of getting that first interview. Worse, I'm at a school that doesn't exactly hand out the travel funding, so getting to conferences becomes a giant expense that I have to take.

When I can find an application that I like for it, I'll add a section to the page to keep track of applications the way so many people do word counts in their manuscripts. I think it'll be interesting to see what the process looks like.

Let the buyer, like, beware and stuff...

I've been struggling with a post about the election, random gender-related events and how they reflect on the weird tug-of-war in society. Oh, it was going to be good. I was going to nail down all that was currently plaguing our country with all the wit and/or pathos you've come to expect from us here at Curmudgeon Labs.

And then I saw this, and it made me realize I could never even begin to explain social problems in a world where this line of thinking is possible.

Seriously? I'm supposed to think "If they fooled Paris, they could fool me too?" When did I miss Paris becoming the touchstone for intelligence and intelligent spending?

Political Phrases I'm Ready to Hear Retired

So I don't want to talk (much) about Palin, mostly because she seems placed as just about the worst part of every form of conservatism that's out there, wrapped up in a neat package. It seems to me, honestly, that there's not much she could have done wrong tonight - it was an introductory speech and as long as she didn't say anything openly inflammatory, spit on anyone, or have her pants come down, it would be viewed as a success.

But I would like to call time-out on a few phrases that have been overused in the recent political memory, the first one having just crossed the threshold for me tonight:

• "hockey moms"
• "NASCAR dads"
• "red meat"

And while we're at it, let's stop mentioning the importance of the women vote. If people can't figure out that 50 percent of the population is an important group to appeal to, nothing a commentator can say is going to make them realize it. That was, as I understand it, one of the outcomes of that whole suffrage thing.

Okay? Okay.

"My policy is up here, sir."

I can't decide what's funnier: the ring that seems to be constricting or the continued attempts to maintain six safe inches between candidates.

Just So I'm Clear

Okay, so I keep reading stuff about Sarah Palin's unfortunately named daughter being pregnant and about what a brave choice it is that she's having the baby.

And I seem to recall Palin having been an advocate for abstinence only sex education. And this made me curious. So curious that I dare to ask:

Maybe I Should Call Myself "Dr. Yossarian"

I do not know how I feel about this week. It should be cake, what with the holiday that wasn't really a holiday and all. But the first day back gave me the first taste of the term of what a back-to-back set of classes that were over-full felt like.

I. am. pooped.

And in weirder, oddly more exhausting news, somehow many people - read: seven - from high school found my Facebook profile, and now I'm interacting with them because it seems weird to decline their friend requests. Worse, though, this seems likely to bring a run-in with The Ex (you know, the one ex who defined what all ex's would be: the crazy one who appears year in and out to remind you why you broke up in the first place). I am not looking forward to this - and perhaps it won't happen.

Also, has anyone had any experience with The International Professor Exchange? It seems harmless and yet, my Curmudgeon-sense tingles. Perhaps it just seems like too good an idea to be true.

I'm in a rush to find a couple of good conferences, too, while trying to navigate my school's Byzantine system for helping with the conference we're presenting. I think Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 about academia and only later substituted in the Army. Today I was sent to electronic forms that aren't being used, told my request to another department on campus must be faxed, and found out that food must be delivered prior to the tables it will rest on.

Hooray.