Barely tenured

Continuing the procrastination theme

... Like Jody (? I think? I'm assuming based on her links?) I'm going try to pull of this NaNoBloMo thing. But, I'm not going to "join," and I'm going to let myself post to either the knitblog or the regular blog to satisfy the daily requirement.

(And to let myself pile up entries in advance, too, including this one. Bwa ha ha. That feature was the real reason I upgraded from Typepad's el cheapo service -- was it free? I can't even remember -- waaaaaaaaaaay back in the day.)

So that's what's wrong with my work habits

The last post over at Female Science Professor was comforting, in its own odd way. Excerpts:

Several recent commenters asked me for more information about how I manage to be so ‘efficient’. Just to be clear about where I am on the efficiency spectrum: I do tend to get things done in a timely way (= efficient) but I am not a neat or extremely organized person (= less efficient than I could be).

...

- I don’t procrastinate.

...

- I don’t get distracted by things or wallow in negative emotions; ‘things’ includes unimportant things (e.g., obsessing over my rude and patronizing colleague) and important things (e.g., major life events that might be depressing or upsetting). That is, I don’t shut down in the face of obstacles.

No, really, it is sort of comforting. Comforting to see that someone successful, and comfortable with her success, does genuinely run her life differently than I do.

I do procrastinate, and I do wallow. I like to think that some of the "crises" that stop me are real. But there was a day recently where I caught precisely the drop in affect that followed a minor piece of e-mail that told me that something bureaucratic and very small was going wrong, and the consequent complete derailment of my work plans for the day -- which happened to be the only day in the week when I have time for non-teaching-related things. (I do have a particularly horrible schedule this semester.)

In other news

I. Friday morning, our second car -- the one I was supposed to use to drive myself to the airport -- wouldn't start. Beaker cajoled it into motion half an hour after I left to teach. But, I have exactly zero desire to be stuck at the airport on Sunday night, so I'm making him drive me up and back. Miss T. will be strapped in the back seat, of course. Fun!

II. Thursday I managed to finally get the giant bump on the back of my head removed. It had taken me years to admit there was a problem, and months to get an appointment with a dermatologist who was willing to operate (the first one I went to just wanted to recruit me for his psoriasis study, no, really, it was very odd), and damnit, I kept the appointment. Sadly the dermatologist was two hours late, so I missed everything else I was supposed to do in that afternoon.

III. Friday morning between classes, I noticed that the scalp incision felt damp. Moving my face pulls on my scalp, and apparently I overemoted badly enough at the end of lecture that I popped the scab open. Wheeeee! I asked a secretary to check that I didn't have a river of blood dripping through my hair and down my back, and went to my second class.

IV. For a few moments last week, it seemed like I might be able to get the Cornell-kickoff day 3 bloodwork done at Cornell live. So I called up and told them, and got a call back from Dr. Data himself. Of course that cycle ended up being short again, too short for me to double-purpose my trip -- but now there's a list of testing for me to do locally, and a plan to go for it in January.

An oddly disconcerting thing: so, since 2004 they've gotten a new building. Lots of new staff. A new area code, even. But the hold music on the voice mail system is still the same.

Most of a phone call

[Answering machine picks up. Outbound message recorded years ago, back when he was drinking, and a little drunk. Many, many beeps.]

E: Ray, are you there?

[Horrible feedback screech as he picks up the phone.]

R: Yes. I just had to pull my head out of the shredder.

[His voice is quavering. Tired? Tearful?]

E: Can you tell me what kind of shredder you got?

R: It's a Xerox.

E: Can you tell me the model number?

[Shuffle, rattle, rattle.]

R: It's a 24 sheet shredder.

E: Oh dear. So that hasn't been good enough?

R: No. It's only 8 inches wide, so you have to fold the pictures... horizontally? no, you have to fold them...

E: Vertically?

R: Yes, vertically. They're all 11 by 14's.

E: What about the mattes?

R: I haven't gotten to those yet.

E: Does it overheat?

R: Yes, and it's slow. It's making my back hurt doing this. I'll have to stop soon today.

E: You can leave all of this for me to do. I know it's terribly difficult for you. I'll have two full days this weekend. Ken and I agreed. He'll pack, and I'll deal with this.

R: Yes. [choking snuffle] Yes, there were some very difficult things in there today. Including pictures of you.

E: Don't shred any pictures of me. Those I'm going to take home. I'm willing to FedEx them to myself.

R: Really?

E: Yes. I can't do that for pictures of anyone else. But I want the pictures of me.

R: Why didn't you tell me that a long time ago? ... well, perhaps there are duplicates of some of them. I printed duplicates.

An ending

I'm going to New York this weekend to help Ken move my foster father Ray out of his apartment. They're flying off to sunny California on Monday evening. There's an apartment rented there, a couple of blocks away from Ken's. He sent me pictures of it, and of the playground across the street and of the hills off in the distance.

Ken does not disappoint over the phone: "I saw the listing on Craigslist on, let me see, the autumn equinox, and by the next full moon I had the keys!"

They're planning to leave most of Ray's stuff at the apartment. No rent was paid for October; they'll send the keys back, but without a forwarding address. It's hard to believe that the landlord will do anything other than jump for joy: it's on the border of the Village and Chelsea and hasn't changed occupant since 1977. (Well, aside from my moving out in 1980.)

My duties will include making sense of any paperwork I can find -- bills, bank statements, figuring out who Ray's doctors are and how to get his records sent on -- and deciding which photographs must be destroyed, and to carry out the destruction.

I'll stay out in Weatherwood at Nanna's.