• has done away with the last outstanding annoyances; now nothing’s in the way of the big project. Of course, that means no excuses. Hmm. #
• has just answered her first two telephone calls in French, and only butchered the first one. C’est un peu terrifiant! #

The peer review chapter that I’ve mentioned a few times of late is a key element of the big project I’ve been working on since January (or more accurately, given the last couple of months, gearing up to work like crazy on this summer). I’ve said several times that I want to start blogging some pieces of the project, both to get some of the ideas into preliminary circulation and to get some early feedback. I’ve held off on doing so, though, partially out of an ongoing nervousness about putting unfinished material out into the world — a deep irony, I recognize, given that I’ve been at this blogging thing for nearly six years now, not to mention all the talk I’ve done at MediaCommons about shifting the center of gravity in scholarly publishing at least slightly away from finished products and toward process.

Another part of my hesitation, however, has to do with my ongoing uncertainty about the mode of production of the project itself. On the one hand, I have some strategic reasons for wanting the project to have a print existence, not least among them that the argument I’m making could otherwise very easily fall into the trap of preaching to the choir; the argument, about the institutional change that will be required in order for the academy to move into the digital publishing future, has to reach those most resistant to that change, and they’re unlikely to read it online. On the other hand, I want the text to have a primary existence online, to put its metaphoric money where its mouth is, to show what that digital future might look like.

But there’s the $64,000 question: what might it look like? I don’t want the digital version to simply replicate the printed page online: no paper under glass! The text needs to be networked and commentable, but beyond that, I’m not yet clear what I want it to look like or how I want to release it. For instance, I could, as Siva is doing, blog bits and pieces of the research and the ideas as they come together, while working on a separately produced linear text, or I could, as Noah did, release the text in chunks for comment and discussion after it’s fully drafted. Or, I imagine, I could do something inbetween, something more akin to drafting online.

I’m going to post the project proposal in the next few days, I think, so that I can start talking about the argument and its structure. For now, though I’d really like to hear some opinions about the structural possibilities for a project like this in general, as distinct from the structure of this particular project. Some of how this goes will likely be determined by the press with which I hope to be working, but I think I’ll have a pretty significant role in shaping the process, so I’d love have some discussion here about the kinds of things I should be thinking about as I move forward.

It’s the amorphousness of all this that has me unable to refer to the project as anything other than a “project” to this point: it’s not a book, or at least not only a book, but I don’t really have another word for it as yet. As Bob Stein recently told me, it’s a blob — a book-like object. And at the moment, it certainly feels all-consuming enough to qualify, even if it isn’t made out of strawberry jam.

A colleague of mine recently sent me a link to the Summer 2008 issue of Kairos, guest edited by Scott Lloyd DeWitt and Cheryl Ball, entitled “The Manifesto Issue.” The manifesto as a form is near and dear to my heart, and particularly those that have to do with new media composition and publishing, so I was happy to dive in — but even more thrilled to discover a reference to MediaCommons in Catherine C. Braun and Kenneth L. Gilbert’s fantastic video, “This Is Scholarship,” which should be required viewing for every tenure and promotion committee. I haven’t read the entire issue yet, but it’s clearly filled with compelling pieces that do not simply make arguments on behalf of new digital modalities but that manage to enact those arguments in their form as well. This has long been the métier of Kairos, and in turning the journal’s attention explicitly to the manifesto, the editors have produced a most important kind of scholarship, both rigorous and experimental, clearing the way for others to follow.

The transition to life in Paris has gone amazingly smoothly thus far; we’ve found the perfect boulangerie, a great local cafe, and even managed to find our way back to the best falafel place ever, which we were taken to once last year. We’re both sleeping, and quite soundly, and work has begun to click into place.

The transition out of life in Claremont — well, not so much. I’m a pretty compulsive keeper of lists, and a real creature of habit, and I discovered last night precisely why: when I deviate from the script, I can really make a mess. I now owe a significant number of people for helping me clean it up.

Part of the issue this time out was how I went about getting someone to stay in our place while we’re gone. My first impulse, since we’re gone all summer (and since the incredible shrinking dollar is making this trip more expensive by the day), was to attempt to sublet the place, so I spent a couple of months advertising for a summer renter, and only in the last few weeks of the semester, when I realized that renting the place out was unlikely to work, did I start thinking about a housesitter.

I got extremely lucky right off the bat, and was given a reference for a very trusted and responsible student who is staying in town this summer, and so everything was set. Except that she was going home for the first few weeks of the summer, and so I needed a second, interim housesitter. And again, I got a good reference, and so everything was again set.

Except the the interim housesitter was also going home, but would be arriving back in town two days after we left. No problem; the cats really can manage on their own for two days. I’d leave enough food, and the interim housesitter would be back in plenty of time.

The problem was that I did two condo-orientation walkthroughs in a period of three days, and hastily pulled together all the things that the housesitters needed. Including keys: I had a spare house key and a spare key to the pool area, but no spare mailbox key. R. offered to get one made, but it wasn’t ready by the time of the walkthroughs. And so for some reason that I cannot begin to fathom now, rather than handing the interim housesitter the house key and the pool key during her walkthrough, and telling her that the mailbox key would be waiting on the counter, I handed her the house key only, and told her the pool key and the mailbox key would be waiting on the counter.

Do you see where this is going?

Even so, the disaster could have been averted had I remembered to do the thing which I have done with every single other housesitter I have ever had, which is to say, as we head outside to find the dumpsters and the mailbox, “let’s try your key and make sure it works.” Perhaps I felt a bit too pleased with myself for having solved the housesitter crisis in such an inventive way. Or perhaps I was just too overwhelmed by the millions of details on my ever-lengthening list.

So when I got the email message last night, at about 11.30 pm Paris time, saying that the interim housesitter had been trying unsuccessfully to get into the condo since the night before, and didn’t know what to do now — well, not to put too fine a point on it, I kinda lost it. It wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that:

1. I left the cats enough food to see them through to midday on Sunday, in case the interim housesitter was delayed, but not much more than that, and my piglet male cat has been known to consume way more food than he ought to, so it’s all too possible that their bowls are currently empty, and that a Donner party type phenomenon might soon unfold.

2. My first line of defense in an I’m-out-of-town-please-help emergency is herself out of town. The good news, however, is that the key I was going to send her to get is stored safely in the closet in my department’s office.

3. And it’s Sunday. But my first line of defense calls my department’s administrator to get her on the case, knowing that, being the best person ever, she’ll take care of it.

4. But the department administrator says — and given the apparent state of my brain, I completely believe her — that at some point in the recent past I took that key back from her and never returned it.

5. So no one anywhere has my key. Except possibly the maintenance guys who previously handled the warranty-type repairs for my condo’s builder. And while I don’t have their telephone number, my friend who lives in the same complex probably does, so via a frantic series of back-and-forth emails, I ask the interim housesitter to call that friend, and ask her to call the maintenance guys.

6. Of course, that friend isn’t home. But I’ve remembered one other person in the world has my key: the woman who cleans my house every other week. Who lives near San Bernadino.

By the time we hit this point, it was about 1.30 am here in Paris, and I was rapidly nearing delirium. I told the interim housesitter that if the house cleaner could get her into the condo, she should try the key sitting on the counter to see whether it would open the door. And if not, to ask to keep the house cleaner’s key for the time being, until a copy could be made. And, worse come to worst, if the house cleaner couldn’t get her into the condo, she should call a 24-hour locksmith and send me the bill.

But the house cleaner did drive out and get her into the condo. And the key on the counter did work. And while I’m feeling about twelve different kinds of stupid, there is an all’s well that ends well aspect to the story, at least.

So I’m adding some serious present shopping to my list of things to do here. And distributing more emergency keys amongst friends to the list of things to do on my return.

I’m back at work on the peer review chapter this morning; I started re-reading it yesterday, but was unable to make much sense of what I’d done during the spring. Yesterday, at least, I was still firmly in the scrambled-eggs-for-brains stage, in which I was pretty sure that the sentences that I was reading were written in English, but wouldn’t have been willing to swear to their meaning in court. Today’s a bit better — a second full night’s sleep! — and so I’m re-re-reading, and have a better sense of what’s going on in the draft, I think.

In the meantime, though, Miriam has pointed to a number of conversations and issues with which this chapter (and the larger project) crosses paths, all of which reminds me that I really need to get cracking — and need to get some of the material I’m working with blogged sooner rather than later. I’m hoping to sketch out a plan for the project as a whole, and the blog’s relationship to it, in the next few days.

• After a pretty amazing first night’s sleep, sitting down at the computer with a cup of coffee and getting to work. The summer has begun! #

The most amazing thing thus far about our return to Paris is the immediacy of our immersion; having landed yesterday at CDG, taxied to the apartment we’re renting this summer, unpacked, and ventured out for our first bière, we both felt as if the nine months since we were last here had simply evaporated. We’ve always been here. We never really left.

That said, we’re both a bit groggy with jet lag and general exhaustion. It’s now 3.12 am in California, and I’m not at all sure where my brain is. I’m trying to get back into the chapter that I spent the early part of the spring drafting, but I’m having a hard time right now telling whether the sentences make any sense.

The apartment, however, is fantastic, and the neighborhood amazing, and the arm and/or leg that it’s costing for us to be here will no doubt be worth it.

Now to stay awake for another ten hours.

• What am I forgetting? What am I forgetting? What am I forgetting? #
• Sitting on the plane, waiting for takeoff for Paris. Au revoir, Etats-Unis! #

• Recovering from two days of graduation festivities spent in 100-degree heat. Happily, ice-cold beverages are just what I want. #

That summer is here is pretty undeniable — in fact, unseasonably so: as we venture into graduation weekend, we’re beset by severe heat advisories and a serious fire in the mountains just to our north. All of that’s far more August than May, which might help explain some of the mild panic I feel; how can the summer feel this close to over even before it’s gotten started?

The rest of the panic, though, is pretty easily explicable: we’re leaving town for the entirety of the summer in six days, and the list of stuff I have to do before we go just keeps growing. I’m at the point now where I’m fairly confident it’ll all get done, but also beset by that peripheral sense that I’m forgetting something, that there’s some key thing that I’ll remember nine days from now, something only I can do, and in person at that.

Which is the point at which I tell myself to draw a deep breath, to burn that bridge when I come to it, and to keep my gaze fixed on what’s ahead: twelve weeks of writing in Paris. With that as a prospect, nothing else the summer can dish out can really be all that bad.