A few items of note

In no particular order.

• School is back in session! The students are no worse for the wear, thank goodness, but I did find out that one of my colleagues lost her house to flooding, and as of Friday around 20% of the teaching staff still didn’t have electricity. The school itself had some water damage, but all is well and we’re doing our best to get back to normal…and praying that the state doesn’t force us to make up all 9 missed days!
• Just in time to get back to teaching, I have completely lost my voice. Now, if you know me, you’re aware that this is a problem. I’m…a bit of a talker. Just a bit. And this SUCKS! I had just enough voice to teach on Thursday, but halfway through yesterday it just gave out, and I had to get a sub for the rest of the day. Today it’s coming and going, but the sound is more like a horn honking than anything else, and I think it’s scaring my nephew…
• It’s good movie season again! Today I’m off to see The Duchess with Vixen, tomorrow it’s Burn After Reading, and I’m already making plans to see The Lucky Ones and Lakeview Terrace within the next week or so.  Anybody seen any of them?  Were they good?  I love this time of year…
• Barack kicked ass in the debate last night, but then again, is anybody surprised?   And if you need a laugh, check this out…I’m so glad I watched Countdown that night, because I haven’t stayed up late enough to watch Letterman in ages.  But it was so worth it.

That’s about all I’ve got for the time being.  Off to enjoy the weekend, and pray fervently that my voice comes back soon…

Spring Fever

I can’t concentrate on anything today. The window is wide open and this amazing early-spring breeze is circulating through my office, making it seem obscene to pour my energy into things like end-of-year reports and budget balancing. Scantily clad students are lying in the sun all over campus today, and I can’t say I blame them. Spring in Ohio is a WAY bigger deal than it is down south. We bundle up in October and stay that way for the duration, spending as little time as possible outside, because we’ll be plagued with slush and salt and dirty snow (and besides, the sun’s only putting in a rare appearance). Those first few days of spring, when everything is melted and the trees are starting to flower and you can smell the green in the air, feel like manna from heaven.

Naturally I’m feeling pretty good these days–large doses of sunlight will do that to you. And I’m feeling restless. I blame spring for that, too–nature’s on a crazy frenzy to bloom and reproduce, so doesn’t it make sense that people start to feel the same way? It doesn’t help that people are pairing off left and right, and my sister is seriously pregnant, and my ambiguous relationship continues to get more and more confusing as I refuse to confront it. I hate it when I get like this, focusing too much on my state of singleness and ignoring everything else that’s great about my life.

OK, so I haven’t written about my Philip Seymour Hoffman obsession lately. This month in O magazine, they asked him what his favorite books were…and of course he and I have a shared favorite (A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley, in case anybody’s wondering). Peacegrrl Seymour Hoffman…I like the sound of that. I can’t wait to see him play a mean bastard in the new Mission Impossible movie, even if it means enduring a few hours of that crazy fucker Tom Cruise. And I’m extraordinarily pleased to see that PSH finally has a fan site , even if it’s a little lame. It’s a start.

Well, I’ve managed to successfuly kill about an hour and a half on this post, so I guess I’ll get back to today’s version of “work,” which basically entails listening to Interpol and pushing paperwork around my desk. Happy springtime!
-pg

The moodiest person I know

That would be me. I’m honestly starting to think I’m some kind of freak. Last week and the week before, I was a bundle of nerves, stress, and depression. This week, I’m a bundle of nerves, stress, and strange euphoria. I look back at journal entries from January, when I was on an optimism kick, and I wonder, who the hell was that? Then I look at stuff from last week, when I was doom-and-gloom and thoroughly obnoxious to all of my wonderful friends who are good enough to put up with me, and I think, well, who the hell was that?

Grr. My life is filled with uncertainties, and I deal with uncertainty as unproductively as possible. I worry about it, talk about it, write about it, obsess over it, and don’t do much about it. Cases in point: I need to finalize my degree plan so I can graduate in August…but instead of going through the somewhat tedious process, I simply COMPLAIN about it. I don’t sleep well, so I take sleeping medicine, but then I proceed to worry about the implications of taking it–will I get addicted? Do I really need it? Am I going to start sleeping too much? I need to confront a relationship that has gotten complicated and started to spill over the borders of a platonic friendship, but instead of having the talk, I worry about having the talk: have I been misinterpreting everything? Will I get rejected? Will I get depressed if I get rejected? How depressed? BLAH.

I am in a funk today. I slept without a sleeping pill last night, which means I had an actual dream (instead of the normal Ambien blackness). It was one that goes on forever, continues after you wake up, hit snooze, and doze back off; one that sticks with you all day. Super wierd, all about Casey (formerly The Guy, remember?), who I haven’t spoken to in forever, so I have absolutely no idea where the hell it came from. Don’t you hate it when you have a dream like that, that clings and leaves you with an anxious, confused feeling? At least I’m in a good mood. The semester is very quickly coming to a close, summer stretches out with at least the strong possibility that I will graduate, and the sun is out. Life could most certainly be worse.

Damn you, chocolatey goodness!

So I just ate a king-size Three Musketeers bar. It’s divided into two little bars, so that ideally you will eat one and save the other for later. As if. Three Musketeers is not a choice candy bar, it’s the one I get because it’s supposedly “big on chocolate, not on fat.” But that fluffy crap in the middle is SO not chocolate. All you’re really getting is the outside shell, and of course the miniscule amount of real chocolate in that little half-bar isn’t enough. The point is that now, having consumed the whole thing, I have both a sugar high and a mild stomach ache. Blah.

What else can I complain about? Well, I’m missing South by Southwest, a big film/music festival down in Austin this week. Who’s going to be there? Oh, nobody big. Just a whole crapload of famous people and under-appreciated indie bands…and NEIL YOUNG. Piss. But it’s ok–Death Cab for Cutie and Franz Ferdinand will be in Austin on March 29th. Definite possibilty for when I’m down in TX for spring break…provided islegavia is up for it. Speaking of whom, islegavia’s
window is famous! Immortalized forever on urbanohio.com! Who knew.

This week I am uncharacteristically happy because I’m off to Indy for a conference this weekend. Having never explored the great midwestern cities, this is kind of exciting. Actually, I’m more excited about escaping from the sea of drunken undergrads just in time for St. Patrick’s Day. Several of my favorite people are job searching this weekend. I wish them luck, but it’s a major downer because I don’t want them to leave. There are many “worst things” about working in higher ed, but I think one of them is the fact that there are no constants. Your student population obviously changes, but so do your coworkers. Most folks don’t stick around for longer than 3-5 years. For me, so dependant on my surrogate family of colleagues, this is a major drag. And yet another factor in my ongoing inner debate about whether or not to stay out in the world or go back to TX and be with my family.

Alrighty, an hour and a half left in the office and I need to have something to show for it, so I’m out. Safe St. Patrick’s Day to all…
-pg

Back

OK, I know it’s been a while. My readership is starting to drop off quite significantly. There are a few reasons for my delay in posting, so bear with me. First, I’ve been busy with work and training, and second, I’m sick, or getting sick, or something, with a sinus thing topped off by a headache that has made it really hard to spend any time in front of a computer screen. And thirdly and most importantly, I think Peacegrrl’s World may have to find a new home. One of the things I love to do on this blog is rant–about work, men, etc. Unfortunately, I’m starting to worry about sharing too much, due to early carelessness in making the URL available to those who might use it for evil instead of good. It might be time for an address change. Moving might be a pain in the ass, so I’ve been putting it off and in the meantime neglecting the half-dozen folks who actually keep up with this thing. Many, many apologies. I promise that if I do move, I’ll e-mail you where, and in the meantime I’ll keep posting, even if it means being a little vague.

I hope all that made sense. I’m a little spaced on Sudafed so who knows. Speaking of drugs, I just read this upsetting article on Slate. I read A Million Little Pieces a few months ago and was pretty taken by it, so therefore it’s kind of depressing to find out that a lot of it was probably bullshit. But you know what? I’m going to stand by my enjoyment of the book. True or not, it was still gritty and freaky and hard to put down, and the combination of growing up around an addict and reading James Frey’s “story” sure makes the point that addiction is a nightmare. I myself have a somewhat addictive personality, alcoholism in the genes, and a slight bend toward occasional over-emotionalism, so I’ve always been afraid of getting sucked into substance abuse of some kind. Maybe it’s good to scare ourselves every once in a while, just to make sure we watch our asses and the drunken episode at the friend’s birthday party doesn’t turn into a regular thing.

So moving on to something happier, I’m feeling pretty positive these days. Maybe it’s all the sinus medicine, or the unusually warm Ohio weather (it broke 50 today!), or the novelty of a new year. But I’m just feeling good. My propensity for worrying about everything just seems like a waste of time, and for a change I’m choosing to keep the doom-and-gloom to a minimum. Work? Eh, it’ll be fine, nothing I haven’t dealt with before. Scary end-of-grad-degree 50 page essay project? It’ll get done. Men? There’s bound to be SOMEBODY out there for me, and even if I don’t find him right away, at least a few people in the world think I’m pretty hot. See? This is SO unlike me! But really, it’s easier to smile than to bitch. Even for me! And I’m feeling like if I can just stay on this upward swing, things will really come together this year. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts. Send some positive vibes my way.