One Tough vonCookie

Assiduously Avoidant Since 2005
  • .: vonCookie 2.0 :.

    A six-week mid-summer hiatus in 2009 allowed me to rediscover the essence of vonCookie and she is all paradox and contradiction and enigma. So I guess I don't really know her at all. Welcome back, vonCookie. Let's find out what you can do.
  • March 2010
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    ISO: Big, Fat, New Project

    Posted By voncookie on March 9, 2010

    As maria callas pointed out, there have been a lot of numbers floating around my blog lately.  And yesterday, TooBeaut drew my attention to the fact that all these numbers, plus tweets about NaNoWriMo and such sort of add up to something: I am in search of the Next Big Project.

    Now that The Market has succeeded in cowing me totally, I have been forced to retreat, regroup, and strategize about what my next step is for that big, gaping, yawning Unknown that is My Future.  (“No future, no future…” said one punk rock group, once upon a time, and sometimes, how I wish that were true.)

    Now that the Diss is written, formatted, and ready to be filed (signature page is in the works as we speak), I feel somewhat adrift in terms of FOCUS.  The Diss has dominated my life for… well… let’s just say “too many years” and leave the actual number unspoken.  And I almost feel now like I want ANOTHER dissertation to work on.

    But here’s the kicker.

    This unnamed project, while it should be academic in nature, by instinct, I feel it does not want to be academic in nature.

    Perhaps this Big, Fat, New Project is simply straightening up my apartment, my life, my finances, whathaveyou.  Dunno.

    But I am ISO a project.  Suggestions welcome.

    Day Zero Project: Starting Out

    Posted By voncookie on March 7, 2010

    I’m going to try to do 101 things in 1001 days.  Things that I really, really, deeply want to do, but have been putting on the back burner for some reason or another.  I’ll be tracking my progress here.  More soon, on what this week’s objectives are.

    First, sleep.

    You Win, Market.

    Posted By voncookie on March 7, 2010

    After much deliberation, and hemming and hawing, and, of course, feeling like utter crap about the whole thing, I have decided to STOP applying for any more academic jobs this season, unless, of course, they are what could be a *perfect* fit.  I’ve been having such a hell of a time coping with the cycle of self-examination, then the subsequent tweaking of the cover letter so that it conforms to the job description, and then the nausea that follows on the moment when I click “Check Out” on Interfolio’s web page and my materials are sent out into the ether…  All of it is taking too big a toll on me.  And so, I say, Market, you win.  You’ve got me over a barrel, and you win.  I refuse to play with you any longer.

    The decision to give up/give in/save myself is quite terrifying, but I fear it is the only decision that makes sense, if I want to even remotely accomplish all the other things I had lined up for this semester.  There is a life that I’m supposed to be living, and this ain’t it.

    Congratulations, Market.

    *places head on block

    Announcement: 1000th Comment is Nigh!

    Posted By voncookie on March 5, 2010

    … well, not *that* nigh…

    But I am getting within striking distance of comment number 1K, and I can’t believe it!

    I have also decided that whoever leaves the 1000th comment on my blog will receive a prize, some sort of dandy (probably knitted) prize.

    Don’t fret, I only knit cool stuff. ;)

    Let the games begin!  The race is on for Comment-1K!!!

    Noodles

    Posted By voncookie on March 4, 2010

    Lately, it seems the only thing I want to eat is noodles.  Thai noodles. Ramen noodles. Spaghetti. Chow Fun. Noodles noodles noodles.  All I want is noodles with noodles on top.

    What’s that about????

    Off to make some Ramen for breakfast.

    That’s How I Roll: How to Write a Tocho

    Posted By voncookie on March 2, 2010

    So, I think it’s time for a big, über-reflective post on my writing process, now that I’ve turned in my spiral-bound “tocho” that is my dissertation.  (For those of you not in the know — I certainly wasn’t, in spite my supposed fluency in Spanish — a “tocho” is a big fat tome of a book, usually boring and dry, although I’m sure when Overlord #2 referred to it as such, did not mean it in such a derogatory way.  I wrote a tocho, tocho, tocho of 205 pp. single-frickin’-spaced, as so requested by the Powers-That-Be at Big U.  It is indeed a tocho, and could have been even “toch-ier” if I had written it the way I originally intended.

    At any rate, here’s what I learned on this Voyage of Discovery which I will forever now refer to as “The Tocho.”

    1. Invest in EndNote software.  (www.endnote.com) Do this before you even remotely start to write. Document every item that you find, from start to finish. Guaranteed you will not regret this.  N.B. Also make sure you have the latest version of MS Office so that your integration with EndNote is seamless and smooth.  You *really* don’t want hiccups in the citation process when you finally go to write.  In other words: ALWAYS KEEP YOUR SOFTWARE UP-TO-DATE.  Don’t slack on this one, expensive as it may be.  As a student, you are entitled to software discounts.  See www.journeyed.com for *terrific* deals.  (Be forewarned: academic discounts require ample documentation with things like transcripts and photo IDs.  Still worth the effort, though.)
    2. Create a folder system on your computer that is easily navigable, logical, and specific.  Very specific. Branches and branches worth of specific.
    3. Create a system for naming your files that is not random at all, but that includes the precise information that you’ll be needing when you go to retrieve those documents of which I will speak in point number 4.  It follows, thus that…
    4. Take notes. Copious notes.  And when I say “notes,” I don’t mean “synthesize in your own words.”  Rather, type up huge sections of text from books and periodicals that are relevant to your research.  Chances are, you will type up much more than you will actually need for your dissertation.  But when you are done, not only will you have an easy cut-and-paste way to cite things when you’re writing, you will also have a wealth of information to draw on for your next (related) project, or for when you expand and rewrite the Diss for publication.  I CANNOT RECOMMEND THIS METHOD MORE HIGHLY.  Not to mention what it does for remembering what other people have said about your topic.  Yes, it’s time-consuming and monotonous.  Do it anyway.
    5. Invest in equipment that will allow you to maintain a healthy posture when you write.  I did not do this.  I got Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and had to have my wrist injected with cortisone right when I was down to the final chapter of my dissertation.  Luckily, I already had voice recognition software from when I broke my pinky a year before and couldn’t write at all.  But Carpal Tunnel can be avoided.  So buy the desktop computer instead of a laptop.  Buy the chair with lumbar support.  Make sure your wrists are supported when you write.  And get an ergonomic mouse.  I wish I had done all these things, because I swear I’m now a year or two older in Real-Age-Time just because I wrote the majority of my dissertation propped up in bed with my laptop on my knees.
    6. Start writing as soon as you feel you can.  Start sooner rather than later.  But be aware, all that you write during those beginning stages, you will probably have to go back and edit (if not rewrite altogether) when you get close to the end.  If you do your research thoroughly enough before you start, though, the rewriting may not be as prolonged as it could be.
    7. Know at all times that your writing will not be perfect.  But make it as good as it possibly can be.  The reason you have Overlords for your dissertation is so that they can point out your weaknesses and then you can fix them.
    8. Following on #7, do not take harsh critiques of your work personally.  Believe it or not, your Overlords always have your best interests at heart.  That said, sometimes those “best interests” and your personal vision of your dissertation will clash, and you have to be prepared to either listen intently or stand your ground.  I had occasion to do both, and the one time I stood my ground, it resulted in a much better chapter.
    9. Always update your research and keep an eye on what’s new in your field.  The last thing you want is to be trumped and/or redundant.  Do searches for new stuff even if you think you’re the only one working on your topic.  I learned this all too well with the Ch4 drama.  Be on the lookout, always, for recent publications, because citing them can only make you look like you’re “on top of it,” so to speak.
    10. Love your topic.  Hate your topic.  It doesn’t matter either way.  What matters is your level of passion.  My final words on the matter, and this is an order: CARE.  Care about your topic, your work, your style, your output.  Care about it and nurture it, and don’t ever become apathetic or dispassionate about what you do.  This is your tocho, and it *will* be a tocho if you let it, if you love it, if you’re down for the ride.

    And that said, it’s *your* dissertation.  Enjoy the ride.

    Independence: A Personal History

    Posted By voncookie on February 28, 2010

    Once upon a time, when I was a wee tot of almost thirteen, in the 8th grade, I was “going out” with a boy, a popular kid, a skate rat who wore jams and had long, long bangs that hung over his very blue eyes and round glasses.  We flirted for a while, and then he passed me a note in homeroom, folded into a neat triangle that said he needed to talk to me immediately.  I don’t remember the actual “asking out,” and God knows, “going out” when I was thirteen certainly did not imply that one was actually going anywhere, aside from maybe the skating rink or the rec field.

    When Skate Rat asked me out, I did not know the gf protocol.  I didn’t know what was to be done as part of a newly formed adolescent “couple.”  I knew we had nice conversations on the phone at night.  I also knew that we had NO classes together whatsoever, and that our schedules only coincided at lunch.  But did it occur to me to uproot from my traditional lunch table where I was surrounded by my best friends and go sit with My Man at his table with the other skate rats and popular girls?  No.

    Or maybe it did.

    Maybe I just didn’t want to.

    My friends have always been important to me, and perhaps in the case in the case of the Skate Rat fiasco, they were too important.  Why “fiasco”?  Because one day, at lunch, as I sat rebelliously at my usual table, Skate Rat’s best friend (who *my* best friend had an undying crush on) came over to me and crouched down beside me, gnawing on a sandwich.

    “Hey vonCookie,” he said, between large bites.

    “Yeah”

    “Skate Rat wants to break up with you.”

    This was three weeks into our “relationship” and I was stunned.  We had been getting along so well!  We had slow danced at a party, played Spin-the-Bottle and 7 Minutes in Heaven.  He was my first kiss.  And he wanted to break up with me?  Wha- wha- whaaaaaat?

    But I didn’t say any of that.  What I said was, “OK.”

    Skate Rat’s buddy looked at me kind of shocked and said, “OK?”  Big fat question mark on the end of that, as if he had been telling me a joke, and had expected me to laugh, get up, go to Skate Rat’s table and say, “Really, now. What’s this all about, cupcake?”

    I gulped.  “Yeah.”

    “Oooooookaaaaay, then.”  He said.

    And that was the end of that.  Skate Rat didn’t say a word to me for the rest of Middle AND High School, but that’s possibly because I was so infatuated with him that it was a little scary for him.  No, scratch that.  It was probably A LOT scary for him, such was the level of my obsession… ahem… read: devotion to him.

    I asked myself in the months following the break-up if it had been the fact that I had not sat with him at lunch that had caused the demise of our relationship. If it was my obstinate independence and loyalty to my friends that caused me to lose out on love.  One kiss — one seven-minute kiss — was all I got from it because I was not really down with the idea of giving up my laugh-a-minute friends for a shot at fleeting popularity as Skate Rat’s gf.

    To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “And so it goes…”

    My life since my tween years has been a sort of tireless repeat of this same theme.  Never wanting to give up my independence, I shy away from personal commitments and love affairs that require compromise and monogamy in the interest of preserving my freedom.  I like the fact that I don’t have to okay it with anyone if I want to take off for Spain or the Yukon or Mongolia if I so desire.  I refuse to move from my proverbial lunch table to be someone else’s, pardon the expression, bitch.

    I live alone.  I adore living alone.  I get lonely, sure, but I am– in so doing — gloriously unhampered by the needs/desires of others.  And the chaos of my apartment demonstrates the lawlessness that I feel in my own space.  MY SPACE.

    For these reasons, and for many others, I wonder if I’m not… what’s the word… doomed?  condemned?… no those are all too negative… ah, here we go… simply destined to be by myself for the rest of my life.

    I pity the fool — to quote the great Mr. T — who will have to deal with my relentless need for independence.

    And maybe I pity myself a bit, because this is one thing that I simply refuse to compromise in any way.

    Old maid?  Perhaps.  Spinster?  Likely.

    Free to be me, forever and ever?

    Indubitably.

    Delicious.

    Grading Again… ::SIGH::

    Posted By voncookie on February 27, 2010

    Well, I’ve got a pile of composition drafts upon which I must comment tonight and tomorrow so that I can hand them back on Monday.  They should have been handed back on Friday, but last week was akin to the Swan Song of my dissertation– long, beautiful, plaintive: FINISH ME.  FINISH ME… FIN. ISH. MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

    So I did.

    And now I have a ton of overdue grading to do, my reward for finishing the edits on my dissertation.  No good deed goes unpunished.
    ::sigh::

    … And now back to our regularly scheduled analysis of the characteristics of various narrators in Spanish and Latin American literature.

    The Footnote Chronicles, Part II

    Posted By voncookie on February 21, 2010

    11:25 a.m.

    Made it through 18 minutes of “A Prairie Home Companion” before I had to shut it off.  Working in silence while reformatting my footnotes is preferable to Garrison Keillor’s long-winded-ness, and the way they seem to talk over each other in the skits.  I hate that.

    Anyway!

    The footnotes are coming along fairly well, knock on wood.  I’m a little less than 40 pages from the end.  Terrific!  And it looks like in between the MLA footnote formatting and the single-spacing, my dissertation may come in at around 200 pages.  Not too bad.  Better than the over-300 that it was when it was double-spaced and all footnote-y.

    I just wish I had thought of it sooner, to check with the style guide.  Oh well.

    Reading over my chapters is a good review, too, in case, for some reason, I have to spout off about my dissertation again sometime in the near future.

    There’s a lot more stuff to do today than just footnotes, and I need to stay on-task, so I’m going to get back to work.  I’ll update again later.

    Ciao!

    12:15 p.m.

    HA! Done with the footnotes!!!!!!!!!!!

    To quote the great masters of funk, Kool and the Gang, “Celebrate good times, come on!”

    It’s a celebration…

    Sleep of the Damned: RBoC

    Posted By voncookie on February 21, 2010

    • Apolo Ohno won bronze to become the most decorated Winter Olympian tonight.  Go Apolo.
    • Dinner with maria callas the other night was *so* much fun… I really do need to socialize more. I’ve turned into an (almost) total recluse. Is no good.
    • TooBeaut is on his way back from a massive road trip through the snowy plains, currently sleeping in Barstow, one leg away from Liberal Paradise.  Welcome back, TooBeaut.
    • The floor of my apartment is an ungodly mess. With the futon gone, there’s no place to just throw stuff anymore.  :(
    • I’m sleeping horribly these days, waking up at 3 a.m. unable to get back to sleep for at least two hours.  At least that gives me time to blog, I suppose.
    • The Diss is shaping up just fine, but I’m getting particularly annoyed by the fact that I appear to have lost one of my EndNote libraries.  Foo. So much for the infallibility of transfer cables.
    • I’m freakin’ STARVING right now and HAVE NO FOOD TO EAT. I would go to the Safeway for something to nosh on, but I fear taking my car out of the garage at nearly 4 a.m. would be completely rude, especially to the neighbor whose apartment sits right over the garage door.
    • I wish I had a cat.  Or a dog.  Sort of.
    • Did you know that because of the way word processing software works these days, it is no longer standard to leave two spaces after a period?  So sayeth the MLA.  So let it be written, so let it be done.
    • Fascists.
    • “Not that I condone fascism. Or any ‘ism’ for that matter. One should not believe in an ‘ism’, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, ‘I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.’ Good point there. After all, he was the Walrus. *I* could be the Walrus, and I’d still have to bum rides off of people.” — Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
    • D’OH!  STILL NO FOOD!!!!

    Non-Carbonated Lent

    Posted By voncookie on February 20, 2010

    I’m giving up soda for Lent.  Not that I usually give up anything for Lent.  But it strikes me that I drink too many soft drinks, which leach your bones of calcium, and who needs that?

    So I’m giving up soda for Lent.

    Once I tried to give up cheese for Lent.  That was a miserable, miserable failure.  I lasted a day before I had to have my Cheddar fix.

    I think I can make it for 40 days without any Diet Pepsi Max or Sprite or Red Bull… as long as I’m still allowed to have my fizzy water.  Hail to Calistoga!

    Lent… made for still beverages.

    Sleep of the Damned: To-Do Edition

    Posted By voncookie on February 20, 2010

    I have so. much. to. do.!!!

    So much, that it’s keeping me awake tonight.  I got about 4 hours of sleep, and then I woke up after a strange dream — which of course I fail to remember now — and have been awake for an hour already, trying to organize the to-do list.

    I was informed on Twitter of a simple online task list called Teux Deux (teuxdeux.com), and I’ve been using that for the very basics.  Then there’s Google Tasks for a more detailed list.  And Outlook for an even more detailed list.  So everywhere I turn on my computer, I’m being reminded that there is ever more “teux deux.”

    I’m going to be extremely busy for the rest of February, so I apologize if my posts are even more sporadic than they have been of late.

    Teux teux teux busy!!!

    Report from the Catacombs

    Posted By voncookie on February 19, 2010

    Currently buried in the stacks at Big U– but not researching anything.  Just here for the sake of being here.  Here where it’s pretty silent, and I can put in my earbuds and listen to Bach, Mozart, or my current favorite, Debussy.  Here where I don’t have to listen to (or be around) the subtle panic of everyone who’s on the Market.  My panic, unfortunately, is not so subtle.  But that’s another issue.

    Being here in the library is calming.  I can sink myself into the academic world here — a world that appears not to want me so much, at the moment — and enjoy the fact that there is so much scholarship going on.  The amount of information stored here at Big U frequently astounds me…

    Not much to report, actually.  Just working out the final throes of my dissertation.  Hopefully, just one more week of that…

    More later.

    vC

    The Footnote Chronicles, Part I

    Posted By voncookie on February 17, 2010

    Blessed be EndNote that formatted my perfect footnotes all these many months of writing. And cursed be MLA style that demands I reformat nearly all of them so that they’re all parentheticals.  I have 326 pages of double spaced glory (now condensed to 207 as I’ve had to reformat that too so that it’s single spaced) with– get this– 471 footnotes requiring my attention.  471 footnotes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I must be a total masochist, because it was *my* stupid suggestion to Overlord #2 that I do the reformatting to MLA standards.  Overlord #2 said “MLA all the way!” creating a rhyme that was probably unintentional, but still funny, coming from him.

    My progress thus far: I have a reformatted Intro, Ch1, and most of Ch2 done.  That leaves 4 more sections to do.  Since I’m trying to file very soon, this requires immediate attention.

    Unfortunately, I also have other responsibilities that are equally pressing.

    Damn.

    It’s really awful reading over the early chapters of my dissertation, and seeing how flawed they are, IMHO.  But there’s no time for a massive rewrite.  It’s some consolation that Chs4 & 5 are particularly strong.  Ch1 ain’t so bad either.  It’s just Chs 2&3 that pain me… They’re the first ones I wrote.  And chances are, when I write the book version of this debacle, they will be the last ones I rewrite so that they’ll be that much stronger.

    I wish there were time to even them out a bit.

    They honestly feel like my children.  Little, imperfect children.

    Maybe not so little.

    My shortest chapter was 42 pages.

    And my bibliography… sheesh.

    Don’t even ask.

    Anyway, back to Ch2.

    100-Word Challenge: Thirty (View from My Bed)

    Posted By voncookie on February 16, 2010

    via velvetverbosity, the 100-word challenge, a little late… and a little racy… on the word “Thirty”

    *******

    “Does this make us lovers?” I ask, all second-date-timid.  I can see my own mascara, eyes half-closed, half-open, certainly not looking at him the way I should, the way a thirty-year-old would, with frank pleasure and bemusement.

    My birthday was three weeks ago.

    “In my mind it does,” he says.

    Not twenty-nine, not twenty-nine, I need to look past the cages of my eyelashes and see that he is here, miraculously, in my apartment, and that shyness is about as inappropriate now

    as immodesty was

    before I was thirty

    and finally came around to the idea of being a woman.