Belated Friday dog blogging: farewell to Wiley

[Updated to add a picture of a Portuguese Water Dog at Squadratomagico's request.]

I meant to post this yesterday, but for some strange reason my computer wouldn't connect to our wireless network. Poor Bullock had to redo the network from scratch -- new name, new channel, new key, etc. -- for my computer to connect. This is the second time this has happened and neither of us knows why. It's annoying as hell, too.

Anyway, Wiley left with the Pastry Pirate on Monday morning and we've missed him terribly since. If we get our own dog, it won't be until I get back from my London trip (word to the folks also in London this summer, I'll be there June 24 to July 21). I still don't know what kind of dog we'll get, though I have to say I met my first Portuguese Water Dog the other day and I'm still enamored, though the breed may be a little too energetic for our household. Bullock and I were in the living room and watching the neighbors across the street load tons of large size trash onto the curb -- we were trying to guess what was going on: remodelling? cleaning out the parents' house for a move to a retirement home? getting ready to sell? -- when a dog walker came down the street and Bullock said, "Hey, isnt't that a Portuguese Water Dog?" At which point I raced out the front door and asked to be introduced. The dog was a 2 1/2 year old male named Ghost, and still acted very puppy-like in his excitement to meet me (though he didn't jump on me -- good boy!). He was so sweet and eager to please, and once I stopped loving him up (what soft fur! what a sweet lovey-dovey personality!) and started asking his human about the breed, Ghost happily sat in the grass and waited for the humans to be done -- though he was clearly excited and eager to be on his way on his adventurous walk, since he was panting with anticipation.

If you've never seen a Portie, here's a picture of a young brown one named Dakota, copied from this site. Dakota was bred by Timber Oaks Portuguese Water Dogs of Traverse City, MI. Since the picture's not mine, if the Timber Oaks folks come by and ask me to take it down, I will, but I wanted to use it for illustrative purposes, since the Portie I met, Ghost, looked like a black version of Dakota.


*Anyway* since a Portie is a non-shedding breed, that would solve the thing we liked least about having a large shedding dog -- the hair, my god, the hair (which, as New Kid points out, will ALWAYS be with us). Here it is nearly a week later and though Wiley is gone, his hair reminds us of his 4+ months with us, and makes us all the more sad that he's not there. After all, it's depressing to still have some of the bad things about dog ownership -- the hair, the smelly vacuum cleaner (I have to change the bag and filter) -- and yet no soft and fuzzy and funny and fascinating creature to show for it. Wah!

So here are some final pictures of Wiley as a tribute, taken by the Pirate during her visit (I haven't uploaded mine yet). First, here's Mister Sister (one of Bullock's many names for Wiley other than, well, Wiley) hoping instensely that Bullock will give him some of that leftover chicken he's got (at least, I assume Wiley doesn't want a martini -- note glass):


And now here's Deputy Dog (another of Bullock's nicknames for him) on the family room floor, guarding one Bullock's favorite non-human-food treats to get for him, a jerky-coverd, marrow-filled bone:



I like this picture of Wiley. If you take out the week and a half of dizziness and hospital stays from the ear infection, this picture pretty much sums up his stay with us: contented and spoiled rotten. I think of it as having been our only chance to be grandparents of sorts, or the cool aunt and uncle. Sorry, Pirate!

And so long, Wiley! We'll miss you! I hope we see you again soon!

Love,
Aunt Virago and Uncle Bullock

PS -- I just noticed that the Pirate also has put up both of these pictures on her blog, plus the other one I thought about putting up, of Kittenheads (one of her many nicknames for him -- why does no one call him by his actuall name???) back at her place. Wiley's a star of the blogosphere!

Because I'm grading...

... a Bloglines survey/quiz is in order.

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Extremely Well Traveled in the Midwestern United States (100%) You Are Extremely Well Traveled in the United Kingdom (88%) You Are Well Traveled in Scandinavia (60%) You Are Well Traveled in the Northeastern United States (57%) You Are Well Traveled in the Western United States (47%) You Are Well Traveled in the Southern United States (46%) You Are Well Traveled in Western Europe (43%) You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Canada (40%) You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Southern Europe (40%) You Are Mostly Untraveled in Asia (13%) You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%) You Are Untraveled in Australia (0%) You Are Untraveled in Eastern Europe (0%) You Are Untraveled in Latin America (0%) You Are Untraveled in New Zealand (0%) You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

Yup, that looks about right (although I have to say I'm *mostly* untraveled in Latin America, since I've been to the Baja peninsula). But the rest makes sense to my life: grew up in the midwest; went to college in the northeast US; studied abroad in England, where I have friends in cities tourists don't often go to; traveled all over western Europe with family and on my own; went to grad school in the western US; went to China once with Mom; did a Scandinavia tour with Mom when a friend got married in Sweden; occasionally make it to Canada, but usually for things academic. Weird how sometimes these silly things seem so accurate!

Looking forward to student research papers

On Friday I will get a stack of research papers from my medieval literature students, and I'm actually looking forward to reading them.

[Dramatic pause as my readers take that sentence in.]

Yes, that's right: I'm actually looking forward to reading them. Say what??? Am I delusional? Overly optimistic? Idealistic? Will my dreams be crushed?

No, I don't think so. You see, a month before the papers were due, students turned in a proposal with an annotated bibliography of at least five secondary sources. And before that, I took three class periods to talk about how and why we do research, what a literary research paper looks like and how to write it, and how to use things like the MLA International Bibliography and other databases and library search engines. And because of all that, I got really good proposals. I'm sure the papers will have some of the usual problems, but if the proposals are any indication, they'll actually have theses and make arguments, and many of them will have fresh and interesting things to say about the texts.

I'm offering this here and now as a kind of preview and also a test. Maybe my dreams will be crushed and the promise held by the proposals will be left unfulfilled. I certainly hope not. At any rate, I want to write more about this project, in more detail and with more about my pedagogical methods and justifications, when I finally see the fruit of it. And then I can look back on the class as whole, in which I really pushed my students and they rose to the challenge, turning in the best work as a group that I've seen since coming to Rust Belt U. I think that may have as much to do with the pushing as with the luck of the draw of who was in the class, and the research project is part of that. We'll see.

More K'zoo blogger meet-up business

UPDATE: Moving this to the top AGAIN so everyone sees it. The operative question is still where? -- though some good suggestions have been made in the comments. Also, some people are rallying have rallied for a dorm breakfast, and I think I have a plan that might make that work for those folks who don't know what any of the rest of us folks look like. BUT, some people who are protective of their anonymity might be uncomfortable in that setting. (Don't let me speak for you -- I'm just guessing here.) And again, see the new suggestion at the end of the comments (made by Deeni and seconded by Tiruncula) and let me know if that works for you. So other proposals/ideas are still welcome. Also, some of the usual suspects haven't said anything -- perhaps you're not going this year?

OK, in the last post, the vast majority of you said you could make a Friday breakfast. (Apologies to The Swain, but it seems there's never a good time for everyone. And since my maternal grandmother was a Swain, I feel especially bad.) Some of you have 10 am sessions to chair, speak at, and attend (silly people!), but no one seems to mind missing out on the plenary. (Side note: I usually go for a run during the plenaries, but the one time I went to one I fell asleep!)

Last year, having a longish, drop in when you want meet-up seemed to work, so we could do something from 8:00 to 9:30, giving enough time for everyone to get where they need to be by 10. Or if you crazy people are *really* morning people, we could start at 7:30.

What say you all?

Next issue on the agenda: where????? Does anyone know if the University Roadhouse opens for breakfast? And if not, is there any other breakfast place within walking distance for those on campus without cars? If that's not the case, we may have to arrange caravans. I'll have my car.

I briefly thought that if we started at 7:30 we could meet at the dorm breakfast, but then I thought, "How on earth would we find each other in that crowd???" I can see it now: "Excuse me, are you a blogger? No? What about you folks? No?..."

So, any ideas?

Marathon Post #2 1/2: All praise Fast Fizzy

In response to the comments to marathon post #1, below, my brother, aka Fast Fizzy, wrote in to assert that he is not hyper-competitive, as I said in my response to Heo Cwaeth's question, "What's chasing the Virago family?" No, he insists, he's just damn good.

And then he e-mailed me the following evidence that others are able to recognize just how good he is:


OK, I take it back. Fast Fizzy is not hyper-competitive.

He's hyper-competitive AND damn good.

And he has weird running buddies.

Marathon Post #2: The numbers and technical stuff

This post is for the runners out there and for those who are really dedicated to reading my blog. The rest of you might fall asleep. If you have insomnia, read on; if not, consider yourself warned.

So people keep asking "How was Boston?" There are a couple of ways of answering that, and in the next post, I'll get to the more colorful and atmospheric and experiential answers. But some people actually want to know the hardcore statistics and technical stuff. Not most people, but some. This post is for you. I've also divided it up into sub-topics for easy reference, in case there's something in particular you want to know.

The basics
I qualified for Boston with a 3:43:13 (also my PR - an 8:30/mile pace), but I finished Boston in 4:18:57, my slowest time ever (in 6 marathons total, run between 2000 and the present).

My training and condition on race day
Even if we'd had perfect weather conditions for the race, I wouldn't have had a stellar race or finishing time. At the beginning of my 16-week training, I started out doing a three-day-a-week training plan called "FIRST" that promised to increase speed and finish times if you stuck to it. (If you want to know more about it, go here.) It was an intense plan with hard speed workouts, tempo runs, and race-pace+ long runs. As it turns out, I just didn't have the base miles or the cardio-vascular fitness to keep up with it. I hadn't really run much in the previous year, since finishing the 2005 Columbus Marathon in 3:43 to get my Boston qualifying time. So my inability to do what was asked (either in terms of speed or length) in the FIRST program got me down. I switched to the Runner's World 3-day/week Beginner Plan (see a four-day/week version here), modified with longer long runs, based on the FIRST program. In other words, I trained to finish, not for speed.

I did all runs, including the long runs, at a 8:45-9:00 minute pace, because I was still hoping to finish under 4 hours, at least. But I didn't get many hill workouts into my runs, other than a few gently sloping ones here and there, because Rust Belt is a flat place. So I knew that a sub-4-hour marathon on the very hilly Boston course might still be wishful thinking.

And then, on top of being undertrained, I came down with a bad head cold a week before the race. Usually when I get sick -- and I rarely do -- it goes by quickly. But I'm *still* getting over this one. On the Friday before race day, I thought I was going to show up at the race expo on Sunday and ask for a deferral to 2008, which you can get for injuries and I was hoping you could get for illness, too. But on Sunday I was feeling a lot better and the energy of tens of thousands of runners at the expo, in my hotel, and around town, was infectious in a different kind of way. So I said the hell with the cold and planned to run.

The night before the race my cold entered the nagging cough stage and I barely slept. During the race, I suffered from an almost unbearable dry-mouth from the decongestants, and a constant thirst. The coughing ceased as long as I was running, but I think a lot of the aches and pains in my back (see more below) might have been from the night and morning of coughing prior to the race. Plus, any time I tried to eat my Gu energy gels, my nose would run and I'd be unable to breathe. I had 6 Gu packets with me, and meant to eat at least 3 during the race and one at the end, but ended up using only 2. Drinking water was also hard, and sometimes I had to stop to do, which brought the coughing back on. Argh!

My gear and its problems
A couple of days before my last long training run, I tried to get new shoes to replace my worn out old ones. I hadn't kept track of their mileage, but I was starting to feel sore in my shins and knees, which only happens when I have old shoes. But my local running store -- and there's only one in Rust Belt -- didn't have my shoe in my size. And it was too late to switch to a new brand to get it thoroughly broken in and make sure it was right for me. Had I been able to get the exact same shoe, that wouldn't have been a problem to break in, but a new style or brand would have.

I wear a Saucony Trigon in the "Ride" version and I'm loyal to Saucony (I've been through various versions of this shoe) because they work for my narrow heels, wide fore-foot, and need for room for my blister and callous prone toes. I'm a heavy heel-striker with as perfectly neutral a gait as you can get, which means I land on my heel and roll forward straight down the center. Other people roll out or in and need a different kind of shoe. (If you're a runner or want to start running and have never been fitted by a professional at a specialty running store, do so. Running in the wrong shoe for your bio-mechanics can cause injury.) Those of us with neutral gaits, and especially those of us who are heel strikers, need cushioning to help absorb the impact. My worn down shoes were definitely not doing that.

So, as a result, by mile 14, my entire back was screaming in pain. My legs were fine, and in fact, I don't think I felt the build-up of lactic acid in them at all this race (in part because I slowed down so much in the second half -- see below) but it felt like I could barely carry myself upright in the last miles. (Plus, my cardio-vascular fitness was relatively low given the undertraining.) At mile 14 I made the command decision to slow down in order to guarantee that I would finish, especially since I've had recurring lower-back problems in the last few years. And as you'll see below, I really slowed down.

The weather
It turned out not to be quite as bad as predicted. The winds got up to a mere 20 mph, and by the time the second wave runners started (and that included me), the rain cleared up. I think it rained again on us, gently, once on the course, but by that time I was feeling a little hot in my thermal outer layer and Coolmax base layer, so it was actually welcome. It got colder as we approached Boston, though, so I was ultimately grateful for the layers, the full-length running tights, and the gloves.

The worst part was standing around before the race, getting my shoes wet from the rain and muddy from the fields where the porta-potties stood. I kept mostly warm and dry with a disposable clear parka (which I continued to wear for the first three miles of the race, ultimately ripping in off Superman style) and a mylar blanket. But the wind kept blowing the hood off, so my hat soaked through and my pony tail and neck got wet, which couldn't have been good for me. As you'll see below, I did feel the winds at many points -- annoying, mostly while going uphill! -- but in such a big race, when you're a "pack" runner like me, there are lots of bodies around you to block it.

Amazing -- no blisters!
I don't get this. Most runners worried about wet feet causing blisters, and so many of them had plastic bags wrapped around their shoes, at least until the start of the race, and others wore get-ups that kept the top dry but kept the sole free so that they could run in them. I didn't have either and so my feet got wet, mostly in the hours before the race. And never once in the race did my feet hurt, and when I took my shoes off at the end of the day there wasn't a single blister or black toe. Compare that to my Columbus experience in *perfect* weather, where my right little toe turned into a giant blood blister and I lost the nail. Back in 2000 I ran a rainy marathon and also had blister-free feet. What gives?

The split times
For those of you who've already done the math, I ended up with about a 9:53 pace, I think. But really, I ran two half-marathons, the first in 1:57:38, or just under 9 minutes/mile (my over-ambitious goal pace), and the second in 2:21:19, or about 10:50/mile, the slowest I've ever run anything. Like I said above, I decided to slow down at mile 14, and boy did I slow down in some of those subsequent miles! I meant to keep it under or around 10, but it just wasn't happening. (If you want a course map, complete with elevation info, go here. Warning: opens a PDF.) Here's the breakdown:

Mile 1: 9:07
(Letting the crowds hold me back for an easy start -- I'm actually proud of this, as it's the first time I didn't start too fast.)

Mile 2: 8:43
Mile 3: 8:45
Mile 4: 8:44
(Look how evenly paced I am for these three miles -- this is also a minor achievement, as pacing is still something I'm working on. This also makes me cocky. Running is easy and I'm having fun.)

Mile 5: 8:55 (a gently uphill mile)
Mile 6: 8:49
Mile 7: 8:52
Mile 8: 9:11 (We're spreading out and the winds are more noticeable.)

Mile 9: 9:04
(Getting back closer to pace in the next two miles, despite the winds across Lake Cochituate)

Mile 10: 9:09
Mile 11: 9:14
(The last mile and half have been gently uphill, and the effects are starting to show in my time.)

Mile12: 8:55 (Ah, back on track at last with the help of some downhill running)
Mile13: 9:05
(Nice -- might have been slower if I'd stopped to "Kiss a Wellesley Girl" as their sign demanded -- wouldn't she have been surprised!)

Mile 14: 9:18
(As we enter Wellesley's main drag, we start to turn NE and the wind really hits us. Plus my back is killing me, so I decide to slow it down, take it easy. I wouldn't realize how slow I'd really get until after this.)

Mile 15: 9:47 (Well, at least it's under 10.)
Mile 16: 9:47 (OK, I could stay here, I think...)
Mile 17: 10:46
(Really? Crap! But wait, it get worse as we start to climb up the hills of Newton. They tell you about Heartbreak Hill at Mile 21. Somehow, though, I wasn't prepared for the three miles of hills *before* that.)

Mile 18: 11:15
Mile 19: 11:04
Mile 20: 11:39
Mile 21: 13:11 (OK, so I walked up Heartbreak Hill. Sue me.)
Mile 22: 11:13
Mile 23: 11:55
Mile 24: 10:54
(My hotel is right across the street. Sooooooo tempting. But at least I nudged myself back under 11 minutes/mile.)

Mile 25: 10:10
(By this point, my new friend Jody, whom I met at the pasta party, has caught up with me and rallies my spirits back to a less embarrassing pace. She is also a 3:43 qualifier and running under bad physical conditions -- a sore tendon -- but she smartly maintained a 10 minute pace the whole way instead of being unrealistic like I was in the first half.)

Mile 26.2: 11:16
(Just over 9 minutes/mile from the "1 mile to go" point marked on the road -- hooray!)

I nearly throw up in the post-race melee for the crappy amount of food the BAA supplies (boo! worst. post-race food. EVER) but I did it! And now I can get on the T back to the hotel at mile 24 and take a shower. When I got back, I noticed that I certainly wasn't the last to finish, as the course is still full of runners, some of them now walking.

Next time -- the spirit and atmosphere and characters that made Boston actually the most fun I've ever had in a marathon, despite my crap time.

Take that, Ivan Tribble! Or Marathon Post #1: My Colleagues' Responses

The academic bloggers out there remember Ivan Tribble, the pseudonymous scribe of two essays in the Chronicle of Higher Education Careers section, back in aught-five, who argued in the first that "Bloggers Need Not Apply" for tenure-track jobs in academe, and in the second that the bloggers who responded critically to his article were all just shooting the messenger ("They Shoot Messengers, Don't They?"). But as I argued back then (god, that seems ages ago), it seemed that the trouble with Tribble wasn't only that he had a thing against bloggers specifically, but that he also didn't like or didn't want to know about academics who -- the horror! -- found time to do things other than the teaching, research, and service for which they were being hired. So what does this have to do with my recent run in the Boston Marathon? This juicy passage from Tribble's second article is where the connection lies:

A number of respondents worried they could be mistaken [in a Google search] for an unhirable doppelganger on the Web. I can't speak for every committee, but ours had no trouble distinguishing our candidates from the semi-pro hockey players, quilt-store owners, marathon runners, and grade schoolers that Google turned up.

Uh, hello? Why on earth would you assume marathon runners and academics are mutually exclusive categories? Or that a marathoning academic was unhirable? Witness not only me but ProfGrrrrl (link goes to her training blog). (And as for semi-pro hockey players, cf. Michael Berube.)

All of which brings me back to my experience running Boston and the responses of my colleagues, including those who will be voting on my tenure. All my colleagues know I run marathons, and as far as I can tell they don't have a problem with this. Witness their responses to my Boston experience (which, by the way, required training almost entirely during the school year):

• Awesome Supportive Chair said, "You're my hero!" and asked for pictures for the department newsletter.
• One senior colleague asked if I had run a local marathon that was close to Boston's date, and when I said no, because I ran Boston instead, he said, "Wow! Congratulations! That's impressive!"
• Fellow junior colleague Milton looked me up on the official marathon site during the race, tracked my performance, and sent me a congratulatory note -- all without my knowing until I got home. (I don't know why, but I thought that was really sweet.)
• Senior Rhet/Comp scholar e-mailed me after hearing the weather report that day and sent her sympathy (she runs and does triathalons).
  
• Another senior colleague routinely asked how my training was going, and his spouse saw me in the local park in the midst of one of my 20-mile runs and cheered me on. I told her I was thinking of calling it quits at 15 because I was aching, but she rallied my spirits and I completed the 20.

I could go on. But the point is, every department has a different atmosphere, and one of the ways I was wooed to this one was with the promise (by the senior colleague in the last bullet point) that people have lives here. And frankly, I think that's a good thing not only for faculty retention, but for the students, too. We can then model for them full, well-rounded, and healthy (physically or mentally) lives. (Besides, when my students know that I ran the Boston and graded their papers in the same weekend, there's less whining about deadlines and hard work. :) Te-hee!)

Of course, if I were doing poorly in publishing or meeting teaching and service expectations, my marathon running might then be a point against me. I think then my colleagues would have every right to be worried that I'm unnecessarily distracted and would be justified in saying in my annual reviews that I'm not meeting job expectations. But since I am meeting those expectations (at least at my university -- I don't know that I could do this at an R1) what I do with my free time is up to me.

That said, it was really hard fitting in even the most basic easy-level, three-day-a-week training this semester. And the training is starting to be a burden rather than something fun. I don't know if marathons are in my future or not. I may just run for fun and fitness for awhile and then maybe think about half-marathons and shorter races for the time being. The distance of the race doesn't scare me -- I'd still like to learn how to and train to keep my pace in those last four miles -- but fitting in those really long runs is hard. They just eat up so much of my weekend.

OK, future posts will detail the race itself, I promise. But I wanted to start with something that was more closely related to the character of this 'academic life' blog.

What I'll be saying to my classes tomorrow

As my regular readers know, I was very much away from news sources on Monday, April 16, until the early evening because I was running the Boston Marathon. I do intend to blog about that, but I really didn't want to come back to the blog with a triumphant post about the potential of the human spirit and body, as if nothing else happened in the world while I was away.

And I particularly wanted to write something about the horrifying shooting at Virginia Tech first, not because I think I have something terribly enlightening or wise to say about it, but because this tragedy is directly related to my world and to the subject and purpose of this blog, academic life in the fullest sense of that phrase, and I feel some sense of duty to say something. So I'll tell you what I'll say to my students tomorrow, whom I haven't seen since last Thursday. The following is more "writerly" and more lecture-like than what I'll actually say, but the substance is the same.

I want to start class by talking about Cho Seung-Hui and the death of 33 people at Virginia Tech University on Monday, because it matters to us. Cho Seung-Hui was an English major, but that's not the only reason this tragedy matters to us; had he been a business major I'd still be talking to you. He was a student, and his victims were students and faculty members, and so are we, but that's still not the only reason his acts and their consequences matter to us. Cho Seung-Hui and his victims were human beings, and for that reason, this matters to all of us, as does any act of violence, injustice, deprivation, and degredation, even the ones the news media doesn't cover.

Many people in Cho Seung-Hui's world saw the signs of his mental instability and illness, and they tried to do something to see that he was cared for. According to what I've read in the NY Times and heard on NPR -- generally reliable sources -- he was referred to and even escorted to professional mental health facilities; the police were alerted; his roommates and classmates were aware that something was wrong; his teachers alerted various authorities and people who could help. He even had a prescription for anti-depressants. So why didn't he get the help he needed? What went wrong? Was Cho Seung-Hui too far gone to look after himself?

I have no idea, really. What follows is pure speculation. I wonder if the stigma attached to regular pscyhological and psychiatric treatment, especially for Americans, especially for men, had something to do with Cho Seung-Hui's not getting the thorough treatment he needed. Americans, and American men especially, live in a "boot strap" culture that values individualism, will power, toughness, self-reliance, and emotional stoicism, and reacts negatively to anything that is perceived as showing weakness, "unmanliness," or a need for others. I think college students -- women as well as men -- are susceptible to buying into this culture. You know you are. You don't seek help when you need it because you fear looking idiotic, or wussy, or, god forbid, needy. You tell yourself "I can handle this," when this is a 35-hour work week and a full course load, or a terrible break-up, or even grief at the loss of a loved-one. You convince yourself that you don't have time to grieve or deal with your problems, because graduation is around the corner and you have to, must, will, and shall graduate on time with the GPA of your dreams, and if not, you're convinced your life is over.

Listen to me. I am the poster child of misguided detemination and will power. I got a PhD and tenure track job; I run marathons; on Monday I ran the Boston marathon in 20mph winds and rain, with this damn cold. All good and admirable, right? But when my sister died, I took one freakin day off from my classes. Heck, it runs in the family: two weeks before that she was deeply apologetic that she couldn't after all make it to watch me run my hometown marathon, but she wanted me to know that she tried -- while she was dying of cancer.

But see, eventually I realized that for all the planning and training and determination, there are things that are out of my control, as well as out of yours. Loss is one of them. It's inevitable. Death's another. We all die. And certain conditions of mental and physical health are also out of your control. When my mother died and I couldn't sleep, no matter how "hard" I "tried," and when I was tormented by nightmares, I saw a mental health professional. And I kept seeing her until she decided, as a mental health expert, with my input, that I was functioning more normally.

If people ever tell you you need to seek help for depression or something more serious, get it and stick with it. A depressed or addicted or otherwise ill person is in little or no position to decide for themselves that they're OK, that they can simple "deal with it." There is no shame for seeking help for mental illness, any more than there's shame for getting treatment for a broken leg or bronchitis. These things are out of your control and your expertise, and that's OK. Tell this to the people in your life, too, so that they get it. Say it over and over again until they do.

I'm saying this especially for those of you -- men and women -- really taken in by the idea that you have to "handle" things on your own, that extreme stress is "just a phase" or "natural" for college students. But I'm especially saying this for the men, especially you midwestern men, because, in general, you're the least likely to get the help you need. It's not a weakness to seek help; spin it differently. In a culture that expects men to be stoic superheroes, overcoming that stereotype and seeking help actually takes a lot of strength.

Sorry to go on and on, but it matters. Is there anything you would like to say?

Oh spite! Oh hell!

UPDATE: Make that wind gusts up to 50 mph and a wind-chill that makes it feel like 25-30 degrees. Oh, and did I mention I'm still getting over a bad cold?

So some of you may recall that I'm running the Boston Marathon for the first time on Monday. You may also know that I've had a busy semester and have only managed to squeeze in a beginner-level training plan and won't be setting any personal records (PRs) there. And many of you may know that Boston is a difficult marathon in the best of circumstances, so even if I were super-duper trained with speed and hill work as well as extra long runs, I might not come out with a PR.

As if all that weren't bad enough...have you checked the weather forecast for Boston on Monday? High temperature: 43 degrees. 70% chance of heavy rain. And winds -- my god, the winds -- from the East with predicted speeds up to 23 mph. And guess what general direction the point-to-point course runs? Yup, that's right -- East. (Well, OK, mostly NE, but still.)

Fuck. I'll be lucky to freakin' finish. My PR, the one that got me in this race, is 3:43. I'll be happy with 4:30 in this one, I swear.

Watch this space

To those of you who have added comments and preferences to the K'zoo blogger meet-up post below, I haven't forgotten about you. I just have to go back through all the comments, make some executive decisions, and then make a follow-up post, all of which I hope to do some time tomorrow night.

In the meantime, for your amusement: I just got an advertisement for online head shops posted in the comments to this ancient post (about my pot-smoking neighbors in my old apartment). It cracks me up, so for the first time I'm not going to delete the spam. But also, re-reading that post and its comments made me realize how much can change in a short while: Flavia was still La Lecturess, Bullock was still just the plain old "boyfriend" (and he commented on my blog! he never does that any more!), and I could refer to my parents in the plural and present tense (that one really made me sad). But one thing that never seems to change: my brother teasing me (in the comments or real life).

Learning a literary lesson for Good Friday

Yesterday I taught the York "Crucifixion" play from the York Corpus Christi play cycle, and one of my students (the one who came to office hours on Ash Wednesday with ashes on her forehead) asked me if I purposely assigned it during Holy Week. Nope, I didn't. In fact, two weeks ago I was looking up when Easter was this year, and until I saw a guy dressed as Jesus (and wearing an iPod!) walking across campus when I was on my way to class, I'd completely forgotten it was Easter week at all. And another student, in the midst of writing her paper for another of my clases, asked if I'd realized I'd appropriately assigned King Lear during Lent, given its bleak, penetential mood. No, again, I was unaware of the liturgical orientation of my syllabus. Apparently 12 years of Catholic school and over a decade of being a medievalist have not drilled the liturgical calendar into my head.

Part of my lack of awareness has to do with the simple fact that I'm not a practicing or believing Catholic (or Christian of any kind) anymore, and that the rhythms of my year are attuned to the academic calendar more than the liturgical one. (Though the historical correspondence between those two calendars has something to do with the coincidence of my fitting syllabus design.) But it also has to do with the rather narrowly focused, workaholic life I've had for the last month and a half. Today is the first day, including weekends, since late February that I didn't have to be up and working at 7:30 a.m., and that I got to sleep more than six hours. (That's a very good thing since I'm trying to fight off the cold that Bullock has so that I won't have it when I run the Boston Marathon a week from Monday.) In fact, I think last night's bedtime -- 11:30 -- was the earliest I'd had since late February as well. All I've been doing in that time is work, work, work, in that barely-keeping-on-top-of-things kind of way, where everything is getting done just in time, and some things that aren't absolutely necessary or deadline-oriented are slipping through the cracks (especially any of my research work not related to finishing the book production stuff). My only breaks from work have been my runs, and they've taken on the aspect of work, as well. (This is a subject for another post -- how to find running fun again.) It's not a lifestyle I want or recommend or receive my joy from. Though there is a kind of adrenaline rush from it, so much that's important and that matters -- or that's simply desirable -- gets sacraficed: a healthy diet, a social life, a clean house, even attention to my beloved Bullock and our dear Wiley. (Indeed I worry that I missed signs of his ear infection, though Bullock swears he also saw no scratching or shaking of his head or anything like that.)

So it's incredibly ironic that I taught the York "Crucifixion" the way I did yesterday. Because I know medieval drama so well I often go in to classes on any play without a detailed plan, just some ideas and activities rattling around my brain. With the "Crucifixion" there are two things that I always do, and I did them yesterday: 1) have students perform the section where the soldiers "struggle" to do their job nailing Jesus to the cross, lifting the cross up calvary (i.e., onto the pageant wagon stage), and raising and setting the cross into the mortice; and 2) draw students attention to the diction of "work" throughout the play (which also occurs throughout the cycle as a whole). In both cases, we discuss the meaning of what is seen and heard, as well as what is not seen and not heard. In the performance part I make the rest of the class get up and gather tightly around the performing space, as if on a narrow York street, and ask them to think about why it matters -- how it might be meaningful -- that most of the crowd can't see Jesus until the cross is raised, and that the soldiers describe their actions and assume what pain Jesus must feel, as opposed to having "Jesus" enact that pain and suffering visibly. And I usually draw a connection from this discussion of the visual elements to the discussion of the vocabulary of work by asking students to think of the people playing and producing this play and the rest of the cycle -- i.e., occupational guilds.

Almost always, through our discussion, students point out that the soldiers -- who speak and behave like craftsmen themselves -- are so focused on their "work" that they don't realize the consequences of their work. And they point out that the audience, because they can hear and see only the soldiers, and not Jesus, are in a similar position. And usually I move from there to the traditional V. A. Kolve reading of the dark humor of the play and its conjunction with the visual effects, how it potentially lulls the audience into identifying with the solider-craftsmen because they are men like them and their neighbors, and laugh with them as well as at them, only to be shocked into realization of their complicity in the Crucifixion at the moment of the raising of the cross. And then usually I talk about the meaning of that moment in theological terms, especially the idea that every sin atemporally participates in Christ's crucifixion, that although he is risen, he is also always being crucified, suffering for the sinners he redeems. Thus that complicity in the play's structure enacts a complicity in the historical crucifixion and in the theology of the necessity of penance and redemption.

But I didn't go that route this time. Instead, spontaneously, I turned away from the historically and theologically oriented reading of how a 14-16th century Christian audience might participate in this play and asked students to think about if there were any lessons here that might be more broadly applicable to someone who might not share the religious beliefs the original audience did. It took some leading -- and really, this was my reading more than theirs -- but ultimately I suggested that the play offers a lesson about work itself, one potentially as applicable to the original audiences of the play as to us. The solider-craftsmen are bumbling workers who do a terrible job in all senses of terrible: they do a poor job of things, they cause an extraordinary, almost ineffable pain that potentially provokes terror, and yet they also work part of God's plan, which is also terror-inducing in its awesomeness and ineffability. They do not know what they "wirke" in the York play's language.

But they are also intensely focused on the task at hand, at getting it done, to the extent that they can describe the pain it must cause without pausing to understand their role in that pain. (They are ironically well aware of their own "suffering" in the hard labor of lifting the cross, however.) They are blind to what the consequences -- both bad and good -- of their actions are, of what an obsessive attention to work, barring all else, might produce. And that's the meaning I thought this play might hold for readers and viewers who were themselves not Christians or not otherwise invested in the Christian penetential meaning of the play (or potentially a social meaning of the play for its original audience, in addition to its religious lessons). That's what I wrapped up class with, and I especially directed it to those students who felt otherwise alienated from such a religious play.

But it's not until later that I realized it was a lesson I still needed to consciously learn myself, that my lack of awareness of the fittingness of this play to the liturgical calendar is part of my own obsessive attention to the tasks at hand. The point is not that I should always be aware of the liturgical calendar, since, as I said, I'm not a practicing Christian, but rather that I really need to be more aware of the world around me, of major events that might be important to a lot of my students, colleagues, and neighbors (which also includes knowing when the big college football rivalry match-up is and avoiding wearing the wrong color on that day, and things like that). Heck, just remembering what day of the week it is and where we are on the academic calendar might be nice, too. And being able to deal with more than the task at hand, understanding what the consequences are of such hyper-focus, might also be nice. There are times when the work must be done and it's a little overwhelming, and March was definitely one of those times, but I can't let "when this is done..." become my mantra, or else I'll always be putting off the things that are just as or more important than work.

A wooly week

Please god, no more animal-related traumas and stress this week.

Beginning this past Friday (OK, so it hasn't been quite a week yet), the Virago-Bullock household has been struck with one hairy trauma after another, the first and the worst involving dear Wiley. As a result I've now been to the emergency vet four times and really never want to go back there again (no offense to the wonderful people there).

On early Friday morning, while I was in the bathroom, I heard Wiley follow me, excited to be let out for his morning pee, and then all of a sudden I heard what sounded like him falling, and when I came out, I found the poor thing collapsed on the floor in his own pee, unable to rise steadily. I thought it was a bad case of an arthritis flare-up and gave Wiley a peanut-butter coated aspirin. But as the morning progressed, and as Bullock and I tried to coax him to his feet to work the kinks out, Wiley didn't seem to get any more confident or better. At best, he stumbled, legs spread wide, to get from room to room or across the large bedroom. He wouldn't even attempt the stairs, which meant we had an 85-pound dog trapped on the second floor of our home, who was having multiple bathroom accidents from fear and an inability to control himself any longer, but who couldn't make it down the stairs on his own, and also wouldn't consent to being lifted. For some reason Bullock and I persisted in thinking it was arthritis, so we took turns staying with Wiley while the other saw to work-related obligations. But by the afternoon, I realized It was something else when I noticed Wiley's eyebrow twitching rapidly and his eyes darting back and forth from something more involuntary than fear. We had to get him downstairs and to the emergency vet.

By that time Wiley was freaked out enough -- and perhaps desperate enough to go out and pee and poop where he knew he was supposed to -- that he let Bullock carry him down the stairs, while I held Wiley's head steady and kept him calm. As soon as we got him downstairs, he stumbled wildly towards the backdoor, and once out, he peed and pooped immediately, but also walked in circles and arcs. Clearly this was no arthritis. But the good news was Wiley's brain function was fine, because as soon as I said, "Wiley, wanna go on a car trip?" he staggered over to the car and jumped right in, tail wagging. Later, when things were calmer, Bullock and I laughed at this.

To make a long story short, it turned out Wiley had an ear infection that had caused a sudden onset of vertigo. Hence the inability to walk and the staggering in circles. He's been on antibiotics since Friday night, and now he's much better. He still lists to one side a little bit, and when he shakes his head or looks up, he loses his balance a bit, but he's eating, playing, going for walkies, and barking at other dogs, so things are pretty much back to normal. It took a day to convince him he could walk normally again, however, and at first he'd only do it on the leash. I don't know if he'll ever again come up here on the second floor, though.

The second trauma in this wooly almost-week was far less dire, but still not exactly what we needed. Wiley was still in the vet hospital (they kept him for 24 hours) and Bullock and I were eating breakfast, when all of sudden Bullock exclaimed, "Oh god, a mouse!" I turned around and there in our kitchen, perched on the edge of a drawer like he didn't have a care in the world, was a fat -- and rather cute -- brown mouse with a white belly. As cute as it was, however, it was in our utensil drawer! Ew! So traps were purchased, drawers cleaned out, items washed and disinfected, and the very next day there was a dead mouse in the same drawer where we'd first seen it. We got the old-fashioned snap traps and it seems to have done its duty breaking the little creature's neck and, we hope, ending its life quickly and humanely. I felt bad though, because it was pretty cute for a home invader.

But I felt much, much worse tonight on my last trip to the emergency vet. The first three were for Wiley -- Friday and Saturday nights, then a follow-up visit on Monday -- but tonight's trip was for another poor creature. Wiley and I were out in the back yard when suddenly Wiley started off on a run towards the front (a run! see -- he *is* getting better!). I called for him to Stop! and Stay! because he's not supposed to leave the backyard and I had no idea what trouble he was headed for. He's a very good dog and did as he was told and that's when I saw the most heart-wrenching sight I'd ever seen of an animal in distress. Moving across our driveway was a buff-colored cat dragging himself by his front paws. I took Wiley inside, got a spare towel we use for Wiley-related things, and went after the cat. When I approached him, he stopped and looked pathetically and weakly up at me and then put his head down on the ground. Picking him up and wrapping him in the towel was no trouble. He didn't cry, hiss, or fuss, and when I had him wrapped up and cradled in my arms, he seemed, in a word, grateful. I've never met a sweeter, more compliant cat.

I pretty much knew the outcome of this story the minute I saw the creature up close, and the vet confirmed it. The poor little thing, a grown male cat weighing only 6.4 pounds, had a broken pelvis, massive dehydration, the signs of long-term neglect, and possibly also one of the three fatal but common feline diseases. He was already near death; I just saved him from a slower one in tonight's snow and cold and gave him a little human contact, compassion, and affection in the end. Poor thing.

When we took Wiley to the vet on Friday night I was terrified that it was something life-threatening and that I'd have to make a decision for him and his mama. But Bullock, Wiley, and I were lucky that night. Instead, tonight, I had to make a decision for a poor stray who might have once belonged to someone, although he wasn't one of the neighborhood cats, all of whom I know well. Or maybe he was always a stray and just happened to be unafraid of humans. I just hope someone isn't out there looking for their lost pet.

Yes, I'm still here

Sorry for the silence, folks. It's been a helluva a weekend/early week here in our crib in Rust Belt, involving a very sick Wiley (he's doing much better) and also a mouse in the house, on top of the usual work and stuff. I've got stories to tell and will get to them when I can.

In the meantime, for those of you going to K'zoo this year, keep weighing in on the K'zoo meet-up post below, if you haven't already. I'm reading the comments and will post on the subject again soon. Spread the word and link to that post so that everyone who's going gets to chime in.

K'zoo meet-up query - updated

I'm a little behind on blog reading, but Medieval Woman asked me if anyone has said anything about another blogger meet-up at K'zoo. If no one is already trying to organize one, I'm happy to do it again, but only if you all put in pre-orders for my book at the book exhibition.

Tehee! Just kidding on that last bit.

Seriously, though, two questions: 1) Has anyone started organizing this yet? And 2) If not, do you want to start thinking about it now?

UPDATE: OK, there's some stirring of interest in thinking about this now, and I'm happy to be the organizer again. First things first: Who's going to be there and who's interested? When would you like to meet up? Last year we did it late afternoon/early evening on Thursday, I think, and that conflicted with a least one group of people who always have a meeting then. (Oy, I should look this up. I will later.) Anyway, because of that, someone suggested that this year we think about a breakfast meeting. How do you feel about a breakfast meeting?

Students surprise me sometimes

Just checking in from 'grading jail' to tell a brief little story about something that intrigued me in class the other day.

I was taking class period to talk about why and how we do research, and how to judge secondary sources in doing research. (This is but one of three class sessions I devote to the "how to's" of research in a class where I'm having students write a research paper. This is the first time I'm doing this at the undergrad level. Keep you fingers crossed for me.) Anyway, I started talking about things like presses and journals and peer review, all rather dry stuff, especially on a day like that day, when the heating was still on in the windowless room even though temperatures outside had become spring-like. But for some reason, the students perked up when I talked about peer review. Frankly, a whole bunch of them seemed fascinated with the process. They asked all sorts of questions, including:

• How many reviewers does a book or article typically have?
• What happens if one reviewer likes it and the other doesn't?
• What happens if one person's advice contradicts the other's?

And so on and so forth. I think I missed a "teaching moment" there, because while I answered all their questions about peer review and more, I think what they were really fascinated by was the fact that we professors still get "graded." And those "grades" can have some of the same issues as their grades -- one reader/teacher might have different expectations/idiosyncracies/peccadillos from another. And then what do you do? I should have realized this at the moment, so that we might have had a desmystifying conversation about grades and assessment.

Then again, maybe they were actually fascinated by peer review. Maybe the students asking the questions were thinking about academic careers and wanted to know more "behind the scenes" information. I have no idea what their motivations were, frankly. But I have to say, it was kind of funny and cute that they were so fascinated. Even the lone grad student in the course noticed this and she thought it was odd, in a good way, too.

Remind me next time students become fascinated with some little detail of a lesson or text or conversation to ask why. Maybe then I'll learn something.

Dog tired

I know how you feel, Wiley. I know how you feel. It's hard sleeping on the floor of my study for days on end while I work non-stop from waking until sleep for week after week, isn't it?

OK, for those of you keeping track, here's what I've accomplished in the last two weeks. Note the passive voice -- I don't feel like I've been doing anything very actively:

• Book proofs have been corrected, FedEx'd to India, and received there.
• The book index has been written, e-mailed to India, and received there. It remains to be seen if they send it back to me, telling me it's an incompetent piece o' crap and that I might as well have said "see entire book" for most of the entries.
• 25 Shakespeare essays have been graded.
• 30 short close-reading exercises on Marie de France's Lais have been graded.
• Classes have been taught -- some well, some not so much.
• The Master's Exam has been written (1/2 by me; 1/2 by Victoria) and proctored (by me); all 11 exams have been carefully read; and as of today, the fates of these 11 souls have been determined.
• The graduate committee has met and decided on the major round of admissions and funding for graduate students next year.
• Offer letters have been drafted.
• Students with incomplete files have been contacted.
• Many miles have been run.
• Guidelines for student research projects in the medieval class have been written and distributed.
• Feedback on failed application for an NEH Summer Stipend has been requested and received. Grumbling has been done, followed by realization that the feedback is actually very useful, even if it doesn't come with $5000.

Things remaining to be done in the next week:

• Grade 30 essays on various medieval subjects turned in on the 15th.
  
• Grade 30 close-reading papers on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
• Contact and give feedback to 11 souls who did or did not pass Master's Exam.
• Send out offer letters to admitted grad students.
  
• Run 20 miles tomorrow.
• Celebrate 38th birthday on Saturday night or Sunday (the actual day) -- if there's time and energy to do so. At least open presents. Thank people.
  
• Buy cards and presents for April birthdays.
• Write to recommenders for NEH Stipend to tell them I didn't get it. Feel like loser even though the feedback was really useful.
• Dammit, reserve hotel for K'zoo already!
• Buy airline tickets for summer London trip before prices go up to $1500 instead of a mere $1200.
• Once again start pulling my weight on things like cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping.
• Take Wiley to the park on Sunday if weather is gloomy (because that means fewer other dogs and fewer instances of me having to restrain an insanely barking Wiley).
  
• Sleep. Maybe.
• Continue teaching classes, perhaps with more energy. Try not to let discussion of I Henry IV suck as much as discussion of King Lear did. Try not to let enthusiastic but odd dude dominate discussion with bizarre theories. Write blog post about such students and what to do about them.
• Watch final episodes of Rome (forever! boo-hoo!) and Battlestar Galactica (thank god it's just a season finale, not a series one).
• Shut down computer for entire day tomorrow for Shutdown Day.
• Catch up with blog reading. (OK, how on earth is it that Dr. Crazy has some 30-odd new posts that I haven't read yet? UPDATE: Good god, it's actually 40-almost-50-something new posts! 49 at the moment, in fact, and that's just in the last 20 days!)
  
• Drink lots of wine.
• Collapse.
  

But now I'm going to run out and buy some Gu energy gel for my run tomorrow, and *then* I'll get started on the rest of that list.

Attention! Important Announcements! Read This NOW!

OK, now that I have your attention...

First, sorry for the silence. Chatter will resume shortly.

In the meantime, here are the Very Important Announcements:

• The Pastry Pirate is blogging again! All hail the Pastry Pirate! And note that she's got a new URL.
• If you don't regularly read In the Middle, or, if you're like me and fall way behind on blog reading at regular intervals, then you may have missed this announcement about a Very Special Episode of In the Middle planned for April. You know, April, with his shoures soote... when longen folk to find out the secret identities of very popular and funny psuedonymous bloggers. I have a theory and evidence to go with it. I think I'm right. I should put some money on this. UPDATE: OK, I was doing some "wishful reading" here. GC is not revealing his secret identity. However, the writer behind GC's blogging persona is going to write in his 21st century guise, albeit anonymously. Still worth watching for (or adding In the Middle to your RSS feed so you don't miss it).
  

Substantive blogging will return shortly, probably with a post about what to do with that student who always derails discussion.

Endurance editing

It's a good thing I'm marathoner, used to pushing through exhaustion to get through that last stretch of miles, because that's how I feel about correcting my book proofs and writing my index. It's like I've got 3 miles left to go and it's all I can do to keep one foot moving in front of the other, or in this case, not to get all glassy-eyed.

• Miles 1-23 = Correcting the proofs and drafting the index -- DONE!
• Miles 24-26.2 = Editing, polishing, and formatting the index -- still chugging along.

Of course, a marathon only takes me 3 3/4 to 4 1/4 hours (depending on how well I've trained). I've been working on the damn book stuff for about a total of 50 hours now over the course of the last 7 days. And my back and legs are just about as sore as after a marathon as a result. (Or maybe that's the result of my 20-mile training run yesterday. Who can tell at this point?)

I've got until Friday to finish up, but I've also got teaching -- oh yeah, that! -- grading (sigh), and grad director stuff galore this week. So send me some virtual "You can do it!" and "Almost there!" and "Looking great!"* cheers this week. And be patient with me if blogging is light for about the next week.


*Yes, people really call this last one out to marathoners in the last few miles and it never sounds sincere. In a good race it makes me laugh [ETA: because I wouldn't call dried sweat-salt on my face, visible chafing, and a plodding run "looking great"]. If I'm having a bad race, it makes me want to punch whoever is saying it. [ETA: But I wouldn't do that, of course. I know they mean well, even if I look like crap and feel miserable. Though it would be funny if someone shouted, "You look like hell but hey, you've just run 23 miles!" Te-hee.]

Man, even the Library of Congress thinks I'm a historian

I'm back from my conference trip and hard at work on correcting my book's page proofs and writing my index. It's a good thing they left me 24 pages for it, because it's going to be close to that when it's done. I'ts ridiculously long because I went and wrote a book with overlapping categories of concepts that need separate lists as well as cross-listing. Damn me for being complicated. And can I just say that for some of the index entries I really, really want to say, "see the entire frakkin' book." Te-hee!

Anywho, now that I have the proofs, I can see the Library of Congress number I've been assigned. And it's an HQ number, putting me in the cultural history category that is indeed, a major subject of the book. But I think of it as first and foremost about a particular genre of medieval literature. That designation, according to the Library of Congress, however, comes second among all the categories listed. (Well, at least someone doing a search by LC subjects in literature will still be able to find it by the appropriate category.) Maybe being in the HQs will bring me readers I wouldn't already have -- people browsing the shelves in that subject of cultural history -- but I'm kind of bummed I'm not with my literature peeps in the PRs.

And I'm having an identity crises. Blog categorizing sites think this blog is a history blog, and now the Library of Congress thinks my book is primarily a work of cultural history. And meanwhile, I'm finding that a lot of what's been written relevant to my newest project on a certain manuscript and its owners is done by historians. (Hello, Dr. V., there's a reason why it's called the history of the book! Duh!) And at this weekend's conference, the two keynote speakers were both historians, but their work seems awfully close to the kind of stuff I do and think about. Hm. Sure, I do have a new historicist approach to literature, but I thought I was a literature person first.

Maybe I'm the academic equivalent of an adopted kid, and I'm now just realizing that my "parents" aren't really my parents! This is all rather shocking. I mean, I'm sure my "real" parents, historians, are great people and all -- heck, maybe they're cooler than the literary people I thought were my parents -- but who am I?

You know, next time our admins give lipservice to how it's the age of interdisciplinary work and we need to be doing it (without, of course, any institutional structures to support it), I'm going to pipe up and say, "Well, I'm in an English department, but everyone thinks I'm a historian, so there you go."

And PS -- Just out of curiosity, where do you fall in terms of the "a historian" vs. "an historian" usage?

PPS - This is my 300th post, just so you know.

Miscellaneous mentionables

I'll be away for the weekend at a conference and visiting with some friends, and I won't be back until Tuesday, so don't be alarmed by my silence here. Posting may be sketchy for the next few weeks after that, as well, since I'm getting the book proofs this weekend and have two weeks to write the index (and yes, I'm writing it myself -- there are good reasons why). The good news is that we're on break next week, so the index can be my full time job for the moment.

In the meantime, if you haven't already seen this announcement on other blogs, go check out News for Medievalists, a great compendium of recent news articles of interest to medievalists both academic and independent. The host of the site, Peter Konieczny, also edits the site for De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History.

And now you have the time to read my monstrous post on the process from dissertation to book!

Have a good weekend everyone.