Seriously pissed.

Remember this?

It just broke again.

And it’s got the disc we were watching last night—disk 3 of 6 of season 3 of 24—stuck inside it.

I’m about to take the fucker apart to see if I can get the disk out.  The cursing you hear is probably me.

[UPDATE, 8.34pm:  Unbelievably enough, I fixed it.  With my very own screwdriver.  The disk changer was stuck in an eject-loop, trying to get rid of the disk in slot 2—except there was no disk in slot 2, and it couldn’t figure that out on its own.  And poor Jack Bauer was stuck in slot 1, waiting.  I took the thing apart and found a way to slip that disk down into slot 2 while it was in eject mode, and voila.  The amazing thing is that now it seems to believe everything is hunky-dory.  I’m still pissed, but I can at least feel righteous in my indignation, as I apparently fucking rule.  Sony still sucks, and it’s clear to me now that this thing need replacing, post haste.  But for now:  on to what remains of the evening of Veronica Mars I had planned.]

Of institutions with which I will no longer do business, that is:  FTD.com.  I will so no longer do business with them that I’m not even going to throw them the link.  Anyone who wants to ignore my boycott recommendation can type it in for themselves.

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Migraineur.  One who has migraines.

Every time I hear this word, my brain jumps to connoisseur and flaneur, and it just pisses me off.  As though having migraines was some kind of lifestyle choice.  As though their victims compare notes about their finer qualities.  As though there were some masochistic pleasure to be had in the delectation of the experience of the migraine.

Also, it just sounds dumb.

Every semester for the last two and a half years, I’ve arranged things such that my scheduled commitments for the week all fall between Monday and Wednesday.  The good news in this is that generally speaking, by Wednesday at 5.00 pm, I’m free to operate by weekend guidelines (that is, appointment-free:  working with the door closed, if in the office; working at home, if I feel like it; working in the most comfortable clothes possible, in any case).  It would be hard to call the Thursday-to-Sunday stretch a “long weekend,” given that I usually take no more than one day of it “off,” and that one’s only spent not-working in order to take care of all the details of my non-work life that are utterly neglected six of seven days out of the week.  Nonetheless, the absence of scheduled commitments during those four days creates a feeling of freedom that, if illusory, is nonetheless damned nice.*

That’s the up side.  The down side is that Monday, not to put too fine a point on it, sucks.  The intensity of the Monday-to-Wednesday stretch is such that I’m left feeling pretty battered by Wednesday at 5.00 pm, and it all begins with Monday.  I get whatever work done in the morning I can manage, zip to the gym if there’s an hour to spare, run to the noon department meeting, rush off to teach my two afternoon classes, and conclude with a just shy of two-hour long committee meeting.  After which I usually end up in the office, cleaning up details and answering neglected email, until nearly 8.00 pm.  The result is that I wake up every Monday morning absolutely dreading what’s ahead.

I’m not sure that the alternative—spreading the commitments out over five days—would be any better.  But I have fantasies of this leisured professorial life I keep hearing about, and wish somebody could help me figure out how to get it.

—

*Not to mention that it’s the only tenable way I’ve found to maintain a long-distance relationship.  But that’s another story.

Somebody somewhere apparently crossed the streams earlier today, and everything around here went kerflooey.  Not in Claremont, at least not as far as I know; I’ve been at school all day, where the energy crisis of some years ago resulted in our being outfitted with mondo generators that we move seamlessly to in time of blackout.  But my otherwise fabulous and enormously reliable hosting provider went down sometime in the 1.15 pm vicinity, and the site only just came up moments ago.

Sigh.  And I was having such a good blog day.

I am frequently plagued by earworms.  You know earworms, right—the songs that get stuck in your head?  They seem inevitably to be the most annoying songs possible, and though their origins are often mysterious, for me at least, they can usually be traced back to some specific point of infection (muzak in the drugstore, commercial on the television, passing car stereo).  And some percentage of the time, at least, recurring earworms are found to be connected to odd phrases of thoughts that trigger connections that link to lyrics that just won’t go away.

For instance, a couple of years ago I was plagued with an infestation of the theme song from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.  This, amazingly, I was able to trace back to the prescription for a certain pain medication, the thought of whose name inevitably tripped me into “chillin’ out, maxin’, relaxin’ all cool and all” for weeks on end.

Some, however, remain mysterious.  Such is the current status of my most recent earworm.  I find myself at the oddest moments—staring into the refrigerator trying to figure out what’s for dinner is a prime example—with Dope’s “You Spin Me Round” on repeat in my brain.  And I’m clueless as to why.  I inevitably come in right on the downbeat of the chorus—you spin me right round, baby, right round, like a record, baby, right round round round—as nothing in my thoughts seems to lead me there.  And I’m at least not conscious of having heard the song of late, even in sampled or otherwise doctored form.

All I can hope is that going public with the infection will result in its rapid retreat.

Remember the buying spree I had the luxury to go on this summer?  A quick recap: under the auspices of a collection of small grants, I got to purchase some new equipment and some software that I’d been meaning to pick up for a while.  All has arrived, all is installed, all is in beautiful working order.

Among the software packages I purchased was a copy of Macromedia Studio MX 2004.  I had been running a, um, borrowed copy of Studio MX for eons, and knew I needed to make an honest woman of myself, so I happily purchased the full (though academic) version, rather than an upgrade.  I installed Studio MX 2004 on July 5.

I’m a little behind on the news, apparently, but the day I left for Hawaii, Macromedia announced the imminent release of Studio 8, with what appear to be some fairly significant changes (not least, the dumping of Freehand, balanced by the inclusion of Contribute).  And they’ve simplified their pricing structure, particularly with regard to upgrades:  no matter which version you’re upgrading from, you pay the same price.  And they’ve included a free-upgrade policy for folks who’ve bought Studio MX 2004 recently.

Recently.  Meaning since July 8.

Grrrr.

Some days are destined to be expensive.  This, alas, is one of them.  I knew it was bound to be, because I had my appointment with Mike the blinds guy, but it didn’t quite go like I expected.

The morning began with $200 worth of dentistry, for a cleaning and exam plus a genuinely awful full-mouth set of x-rays.  This was followed by $450 worth of tires.  My rear-passenger side tire had developed a slow leak, which fact I failed to notice until much too late, due to my failure to approach the car from the passenger side, like, ever.  The result was that I stupidly ran on the tire while it was all but flat, resulting in severe damage to the sidewall.  I knew that I was going to need to replace at least two of the tires because of this, but thought it likely that I’d need all four.  I’m glad I prepared myself for the worst-case scenario here; the car only has 47,000 miles on it, but it’s seven years old (yes, I never drive anywhere at all), and the Firestones that came as original equipment on the car were showing their age.  The tire guy showed me significant crackage between the steel belt and the sidewall, and told me that Firestones have a bad tendency toward tread separation as they age.  I don’t drive an SUV, but would still prefer to drive with the treads attached to my tires; ergo, four new ones.

And all this was before the financial main event of the day, the visit from Mike the blinds guy.  I’ve been putting off getting the windows in the living room/dining room taken care of, but the heat of the last month (and, of course, an imminent visit from my parents, who will no doubt be horrified that I haven’t gotten my windows treated after six months) finally pressed me into action.  A couple of decisions, a little internet research, and a phone call later, and I had an appointment with Mike.  He arrived with a kit full of samples, and I thorougly surprised myself by actually liking the polywood better than the real wood, in the shade I wanted.  The polywood (a PVC/wood blend) is heavier, but super-durable, and 50% less expensive.  And honestly, from a distance of greater than a foot away, I’d have been hard pressed to tell that the sample wasn’t actually wood.  I’m hoping I haven’t let the expensiveness of my day affect my choice here, and I’m hoping that what was true of the sample turns out to be true of the finished blinds, but at the moment, at least, I’m feeling pretty confident about my choice.  And astonishingly, Mike the blinds guy is only charging me just under $700 for the nine windows I’m having him cover—and that includes installation.

Today, I really needed to be surprised by the lowness of a price.  Thanks, Mike.

Say, for reasons that are absolutely, positively, Nobody’s Fault, you find yourself in one seriously grouchy goddamn mood.  Like fight-picking grouchy.  Fight-picking with total strangers grouchy.  And say, for the sake of argument, that you find yourself in this mood in a place and at a time that are entirely inappropriate and wasteful—during your vacation, for instance, with a view of shockingly blue ocean from your balcony.  Say you want to get out of this mood, and into a more life-affirming and vacation-appreciating one Pee Dee Queue.  What’s your favorite mood changer?

Mine’s usually a hard run.  Just tried it.  Didn’t work.  Damnit.

So I managed to knock two major items off the mile-long to-do list, and it’s an accomplishment in no small part because (1) these were the two things that I most dreaded doing, and (2) they were the most pressing things on the list.  (1) + (2) = major guilt paralysis; my inability (or perhaps lack of desire, or flat-out refusal) to complete these two tasks prevented me from moving on to anything else on the list, because I knew that what I really ought to be working on were these two things, and if I wasn’t doing that…

But:  paralysis overcome.  Mood improving, at least slightly.  I still find myself pretty cheesed-off, however, at the fact that only productivity can make me feel any better.  I mean, for god’s sake, I’m Catholic; how did I get saddled with such a heaping helping of the Protestant work ethic?

And this brings me back to a chicken-or-egg conversation that my pal Tim and I had this weekend:  are people with quality x (in this case, an over-developed work ethic and a sense of self much too bound up in accomplishment) drawn to the profession, or is that quality something that is produced in them by the profession?  I suspect it’s a little of both:  something in my goal-oriented nature drew me into grad school, and then that part of me got fed by the culture I found there.  The end result is a severely stunted ability to be happy unless I feel like I’m accomplishing something.

All this is part of my annual (or perhaps semi-annual; I’d have to check the archives to be sure, and frankly, I don’t really want to know how frequently this has come up) grousing about how tired I am of being unable to enjoy my life apart from my work.  This is something I clearly need to work on, though, because while work can sustain me when it’s going well, I need another form of sustenance during the periods when it’s just not, when I just feel like chucking it all and running off to Tahiti…