March: going out like a lion
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtThe last three weeks have been pretty much a dead loss, productivity-wise: I thought I was going through an epic dose of god-I-hate-this-job, but actually I think it's just stress, or possibly even grief. Stress apparently makes me vague, dissociated and subject to quite unreasonable levels of memory failure, which means that I've sat at my desk frittering away the time on actually I'm not sure what. This is quite apart from disruptions for wrapping up my dad's effects, a dose of sinus infection, the overseeing of various artisans for post-army-of-reconstruction reconstructions, and various doctor's appointments and tests. (The darned breast cyst filled up again and had to be re-syringed: it's currently violently bruised in a highly concentrated area, as though I've been punched smartly in the left boob by something very small, very focused and very intensely angry - I'm thinking an Oompa-Loompa version of the Hulk). This week has been further disrupted by panic and the visiting of my sister in hospital, but she's much better, visibly improving - thank you to everyone for their good wishes and reassuring anecdotes.
Memory loss can, however, work in your favour. Today I had to take Golux back to the vet for her second nose-freezing appointment. (Me to vet, wearily: "Have a box of complaint.") I am wise to Golux now: I grabbed her first go without having to chase her round the house, by dint of completely forgetting about the appointment until I tried to open the door to the cat-food cupboard and found the notice reading "DON'T FEED THE CATS!" which I cunningly left there for the Evil Landlord last night, and then promptly forgot about. Since there was about a nanosecond between me remembering and me grabbing her, with a concomitant lack of time for body language changes, it was all fairly painless, if more than somewhat Zen. I am also amused to note that she spends the trip to the vet lying peaceably on the floor of the catbox with her paws curled in, looking perfectly calm except for the ongoing yowling, which I am thus forced to conclude is more for my benefit than being about genuine distress.
Today's happy serendipity: an entertaining 20-minute discussion with my Masters student, who is writing on Frankenstein but hesitantly confessed in passing a geeky and shamefaced love for both Supernatural and Fringe. Foolish woman! An explosion of mutual fangirling later, we'd done a fairly solid deconstruction of Fringe's mad-scientist archetypes, and explored my off-the-cuff thesis that Walter is both Frankenstein (narcissistic genius unable to deal with consequences of his transgressive science) and monster (fragmented, damaged and trying to construct himself). Sadly, she reveals herself as a Dean girl, which means I shall have to scrutinise her writing extra-narrowly for flaws of insight. (I still skew Sam, although you could probably also describe me as Dean-curious). We were also able to subject Supernatural's Christian mythology to a searching analysis which found parallels with Shelley's critique of Milton, but I doubt you want to go there.
It's possibly the case that academics shouldn't also be fangirls. Under the spur of enthusiasm the verbiage gets particularly dense.
Memory loss can, however, work in your favour. Today I had to take Golux back to the vet for her second nose-freezing appointment. (Me to vet, wearily: "Have a box of complaint.") I am wise to Golux now: I grabbed her first go without having to chase her round the house, by dint of completely forgetting about the appointment until I tried to open the door to the cat-food cupboard and found the notice reading "DON'T FEED THE CATS!" which I cunningly left there for the Evil Landlord last night, and then promptly forgot about. Since there was about a nanosecond between me remembering and me grabbing her, with a concomitant lack of time for body language changes, it was all fairly painless, if more than somewhat Zen. I am also amused to note that she spends the trip to the vet lying peaceably on the floor of the catbox with her paws curled in, looking perfectly calm except for the ongoing yowling, which I am thus forced to conclude is more for my benefit than being about genuine distress.
Today's happy serendipity: an entertaining 20-minute discussion with my Masters student, who is writing on Frankenstein but hesitantly confessed in passing a geeky and shamefaced love for both Supernatural and Fringe. Foolish woman! An explosion of mutual fangirling later, we'd done a fairly solid deconstruction of Fringe's mad-scientist archetypes, and explored my off-the-cuff thesis that Walter is both Frankenstein (narcissistic genius unable to deal with consequences of his transgressive science) and monster (fragmented, damaged and trying to construct himself). Sadly, she reveals herself as a Dean girl, which means I shall have to scrutinise her writing extra-narrowly for flaws of insight. (I still skew Sam, although you could probably also describe me as Dean-curious). We were also able to subject Supernatural's Christian mythology to a searching analysis which found parallels with Shelley's critique of Milton, but I doubt you want to go there.
It's possibly the case that academics shouldn't also be fangirls. Under the spur of enthusiasm the verbiage gets particularly dense.
