A wonderful breath
This week Chris and I are on Spring Break. Since our breaks are tied to the religious calendar (Easter), I'm off at both universities I'm affiliated with. Blessings!!! We have fairly staggered into our break. It couldn't have come soon enough. Last week, I was home Wednesday and Chris on Thursday, for exhaustion/sickness.
I have a long list of things I want to get done over the break. Hopefully, I manage a fraction of them. They're mostly reading/papers/grading oriented. Drudgery. But I'll be glad to have some of them behind me. I usually skim books. In grad school there's no time to actually read a whole book. I hope to get through about 10-15 books this week in my skim method. But I'm reading one book carefully to get me started off on the right foot for my dissertation. I'm so glad that even though I'm griping and hating all the other stuff I have to do that I get totally excited and into the books that I read for my own work. It's kind of reassuring.
Sometimes I feel like I'm hating everything all the time, and I start to wonder if I should still be pursuing musicology. But I have to think long-term. I'll be glad when I'm 50 that I finished my PhD when was 30. Hey, I'll just be glad when I will have finished it. It's hard to think about life after that right now when there are so many more immediate pressing questions. But I know I'll be glad to write the diss. There's a lot of unfinished skills and information that I want to learn and to get out of my grad school experience, that I know writing the diss will help me acquire. It will be my finishing. I just need to persevere and get through some of the not-so-fun parts of coursework at the moment.
So anyway. That's one thing my brain is mulling around this week. I'm also thinking about the birthing stuff. I had hoped Barnes & Noble would have a shelf of birthing books, so that I could peruse, but nope. If they reduced the books on choosing a kid's name by half and supplemented that with birthin' books, they would have a start to a good collection. They had a couple I flipped through...more inspiring than actually containing helpful information. Got a couple of good ones on their way from Amazon thanks to my Mom2 aka Doula.
Last Saturday I went to a kid's clothing sale with my friend. I got a few more things for Elvis. I now have about 2-3 outfits for every growth stage up to 24 months. And I found the cutest little infant sandals for less than a dollar, so I was pretty excited.
So books and birthing are on my plate. And to make the week pretty, I bought a few annuals at Home Depot. We need some color around here, and by the time we move, it'll be too hot for them to live much longer anyway. They make life so much more pleasant. I'm going to plant them up this afternoon. I also bought a strawberry pot, and one of my friends is going to give me a couple of offshoots from her patch. Yay!
Also on the plate this week is a tune-up for my car. I need new brake pads and the air conditioner needs a little work before it gets too hot. Every once in a while Ol' Faithful needs a little massage.
Chris and I are definitely glad we have a week home together. These past couple of months have been the busiest ever in our life here; just non-stop. So it'll be nice to have a few moments to actually see eachother. Maybe we'll go canoeing one afternoon in the bayou.
Maybe I'll get time to blog a bit more, too. We'll see...
Comments
So, do you speed read? That's what Josh does. His eyes goes back and forth across a page faster than I read a sentence. I'm convinced you lose something in the process, but he says he doesn't... I can't do that--I have to say each word aloud in my head while I read. Such a waste of time says my husband...
Just wanted to say hi and add a little mundane comment!
Posted by: Bryonie | March 21, 2005 2:04 PM
No, I don't speed read. I've never really figured out how to do it. This is how I digest a book in a couple of hours. First, read the introduction, very carefully. It will tell you what the book is about and what each chapter will cover. Then I flip through the chapters, reading the beginnings and endings and often the first sentences of paragraphs until I have a general idea about each chapter. I usually jot down the main idea of a chapter in a few phrases or less. That's about it.
Unlike Josh, whose comment I'm still taking dubiously, I do lose something in the process. But when I'm only trying to get a general idea of the book, its main contents and arguments, I feel like this is all I have time for or need to do at the moment. There's just too much literature to get through!
Posted by: Jeannette | March 21, 2005 2:26 PM
Hey, congratulations! I've not read your blog ina while (haven't read blogs in a while), and so just now got news that you're pregnant. My wife is also pregnant. She's around 12 weeks along.
Are you having the baby at Tulane? FWIW, we had a horrible experience at Tulane - HORRIBLE. More horrible than I care to remember. I can tell you more about it if you like, or have my wife tell you about it, but it was bad enough to make me want to strongly discouarge anyone from having their baby there.
Posted by: scott cunningham | March 22, 2005 8:56 AM