Because I wrote a lot.

Wednesday, July 30
Got up early this morning. Went to Mindi’s hotel. She wasn’t there yet, though she arrived fairly quickly after I did.

They let her in her room and we walked all around the entire floor looking for her room. Turns out there are fire doors between where the main square is and where her room is. Two of them, I think.

Then we left. We went to the British Museum. We looked around. My leg was giving out, so we went to get tea at 2.50 and stayed till 4. Then we got up and walked to the Gourmet Burger Kitchen. We were really too early so we walked around, saw the Covent Garden shops, and then went back.

Food was good. We chatted for a while and then we both headed home.

I got home about 7 pm and worked on my t&p till after midnight. So I got 5 hours in today.

Thursday, July 31

Got up early today since I was supposed to meet Mindi at the British Library. Right before it was time to leave I read my email. She wrote and told me to meet her at the British Museum, since London had so many libraries.

So I went to the Museum. For the first time the buses were running behind and I was 10 minutes late when I got there, but I figured she would wait that long. I looked around, went inside, came back out, stood around. Then about 10:16 I texted her that I was getting on a bus to go to the Library and hopefully she was there.

Right as I was leaving a HUGE crowd came galloping up and it was so loud I could barely think. Very strange.

Then I caught the bus going the wrong way. Went out of my way by about 20 minutes.

By the time I got to the British Library it was after 11. I asked where the illuminated manuscripts were, since I figured that is where she would be, and they said the Treasures Room. So that is where I went. I went to the Treasures Room. I saw the manuscript that Christine de Pizan’s images are in and her book that she wrote with the Ladies in it.

I wandered around a bit but didn’t ask for any other directions. The library appeared to be a small shop, several cafes, and then reading rooms.

I sat around inside in case I saw Mindi and I sat around outside in case I saw Mindi. But I didn’t.

As I was leaving some ladies started waving at me like they knew me. I knew they didn’t know me, so I just ignored them—figuring they would realize I wasn’t whoever they thought I was. However, they were still waving so I took off my sun glasses so they could see I wasn’t her, whoever she was. One of them chased me down, which I hadn’t noticed, and said, “Charlotte!” I turned and said, “Excuse me?” and she said, “Are you Charlotte?” with a very British accent. I said I wasn’t and we parted ways. Apparently I have a British doppleganger too, not just a Welsh one.

I saw from my phone that I missed a call from Mindi. She called at 10:20, as the crowd came galloping in. She was at the library and would stay and look at stuff and then go off on her own.

So, at 11:30 I headed home.

I got home about noon, ate a sandwich, and then sat down to work on my t&p… For 13 hours.

Turns out that what I didn’t see, which is at the British library, is the Beowulf Manuscript. The Beowulf Manuscript is in a gallery. I wonder if it is pages—can I read Judith? We are going on Monday, August 4th to the Comics Unmasked. I NEED to see the Beowulf manuscript.

 
Friday, August 1
Got up at 8. Worked all day. I think Ron and I went out about 6 and took a walk for a while, but then we went in and worked again. I went to bed at 1 am.

What did I do? T&P stuff.

I emailed Deb about Director of Composition. She says she isn’t planning on stepping down. I emailed Laura about WAC; she said the same.

Got emails from Cole in response to my questions. Told me to think about “working toward” those. But Laura is younger than I am by a country mile. She’ll be chair eventually and I doubt she’ll give up WAC till then.

Hopefully the “fit” I stuck in there will work. Who knows?

I intended to go through all my emails today. All of them. In suanna@suanna.org I had almost 3,000. Now I have about 2,300.

I only managed to get through 800 of the ACU emails. I have over 10,000 of those saved. Really I probably need to go through more, but a. I don’t really see all of them when I am reading and b. They are dad-gum annoying. So I don’t think I am going to. At least not until I figure I have to.

Received an email today from the Science Fiction Research Association saying that my article in FemSpec was considered for the Pioneer Award. Wish it had won. That would have been cool. But it does feel like I’ve made the right decision to work with science fiction/fantasy… if I can just pull the rhetoric together/off.

Why, yes, I still feel like an imposter even though I’m not.

I haven’t eaten a lot the last few days, but mostly it’s because I sit at the computer and type all day. I hope my brain is working because if it’s not I’ll have wasted all this work on the t&p.

When I wrote Karen Cukrowski to ask if she would write me a little I was silly, very silly, and I realized how much I miss being silly. Ron’s not particularly silly. Maybe I need to be silly a bit more. … But I don’t see how I could be silly at work, so maybe not.

Read some research (it was related to t&p, I promise) on standing up, walking around, and touching the upper torso—but not the head—all relate positively to good reviews at the end of the semester. So does smiling and nodding your head. There. That’s my plan for linguistics. (Okay, maybe not.)

I did lose my 432 evaluations, because I don’t have them and Cole said in the evaluation that they weren’t good. (2014 one.) … So I guess I need to either look for them or do without them. I hope I can do without them because the others are not great anyway.

I looked at Lynette’s t&p and she’s got scores of like 4.8 in all her classes. Yes, I think she’s an amazing teacher.

While I’m not sure what exactly I need to do to get better, surely there is something. Less work? That would probably help. And really, if what they think of the class is what they think of it years later, then don’t I just need to stop being “you need to write” and start being “what do you need?” –Okay, probably not going to go that far, but I seriously need to reconsider. Maybe sit it on other folks’ classes to see what they are doing? I really should have gone to Nancy’s linguistics class.

Getting in a downward spiral here so I’m going to stop.

 
Saturday, August 2
Worked from 6 am till 4. That’s 12 hours of work on my t&p portfolio. I don’t know what I got done, but it must have been something.

At 4 we walked up to catch 17 (just at the end of the corner) and it came 2 minutes later. We walked about .5 miles from where it let us out and then we were in a shopping mall with a small flea market in the middle. Not really upscale, but not downscale either.

We met Bob and M for dinner at Gourmet Burger Kitchen. Bob had his camera. I don’t know what he was taking pictures of and we barely talked. M’s Meniere’s has come back—dang it! And she goes deaf when the pipe in the building makes noise, which hopefully it doesn’t very often.

I told her I thought I was going to focus on science fiction and rhetoric (a decision I made at some point this summer—yes, I know it is late in the career to be deciding that) and she thought it was a good idea.

ACU has apparently asked her to come to Oxford every other year. She said she thinks she has one more trip in her and that is probably about it. I think she is feeling very vulnerable with her illness. She is 64, which is hard to believe as much energy as she has. And when I typed that I realized she is the same age as my mom when she died and GOD, don’t let that happen.

She said the students go non-stop and think she should too but that she has to tell them she can’t. I guess I thought she was invincible and could do all they were doing too as I was a tick shocked at that.

She is collecting “pilgrim badges” or pins from everywhere she goes and she is going to get a hat and stick them on it. That’s kind of cool. I like it.

After we got back from eating, at 7:30, Ron wanted to go to bed, but it was too early. He was in bed by 9:30 though. I went to bed right at midnight, so I worked on the t&p today for 16 hours.
 

Sunday, August 3
I got up late today, not till 9. I said I would go for a walk but I sat down to work. I worked until 3:10. Then Ron and I took a walk to the Odeon Theatre. Guardians of the Galaxy is on there. It’s £10 each, so we definitely aren’t doing the 3D, which is even more.

Here in the UK it is rated 12A which means that anyone under 12 has to be accompanied by an adult.

We decided we would go back to the 18.10 showing (6:10) and Ron set an alarm for 10 to 5. Then we walked home and went back to work.

Today I began working on the writing part of the collegiality section. That means that I took all the snippets of emails from the 3200 I skimmed through and put them in a single blog post. If it were a real blog post, I probably would have cut it up into at least 2 sections and probably 7 or 8. It’s that long… I still may change it.

I can’t believe I spent 8 hours working and I only finished one post—that may need more work. But I do think it looks fairly decent. I told Steve Sherwood they basically gave us examples and said, “Go thou and do likewise,” which feels like I’m out dancing in the street. I was going to say naked but it doesn’t feel that bad.

–I vaguely remember that I didn’t just finish one post. I also went and added my Creative Works to the scholarship section. It counts. I think it should be written down. However, I don’t like the title Poetry for the page, so I called it Poetry where it was a subheading and Creative Works on its own page. Oh well. Not consistent. Think hobgoblins. (Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.)

I have tried to be consistent in most things and I have gone back and fixed things to be consistent, but mostly I’m trying to get it done and be done with it.

I’ve asked 16 people for letters. Four are from outside ACU. Three are from our department (maybe five if they count Nancy and Karen). Three are library. Two are grad school (or department, Amelia). I also asked Lynette Austin and Jeanene Reese. Or maybe I just meant to ask Jeanene because her name isn’t on my list. I’ll have to check. –I also need to find the Bible guy, at least the email I sent. Took me hours to write.

Ron mentioned it’s the first day we haven’t gotten on the bus. I asked if we needed to get on the bus to stave off illness. He didn’t think it was funny.

We stopped by the grocery store and bought chips, Nutella, and ice cream (Mars bars).

I think I’m going to have to stop at 8 hours for working today. That will be different.

Guardians of the Galaxy started off very dark. I thought it might turn out to be horrible, even though Darlene Beaman said on Facebook that she has a new hero instead of the Ents—Groot. I’m pretty sure Groot is an Ent. I also want to know why they didn’t pot every stick from Groot if it will make babies.

Anyway the movie ended up fairly well. I cried once.

–I got back and checked email. I had a second email from Linda Boyd. I was glad to hear from her. She is not teaching this year. They’ve been in Colorado visiting the grands. I think that is cool. I’m glad she’s still alive. I don’t write her often enough. Maybe I should stick a reminder on my phone or calendar or something.

She asked if I was keeping a journal of the trip, which reminded me I should keep up with this. So I came and updated. We’ll see how far back I can go and how much I can remember.

I’ve been typing for about an hour and I really feel like I should get back to work! However, I don’t just have t&p. I have to finish the second article for CEA Forum –and what happened to the one article they accepted? It seems to have disappeared. It’s not listed, which is odd. I wonder if I will have troubles with that.

Google Cache doesn’t have it but the WayBack Machine has it 4 times between September 2009 and June 2011. I took a screen capture of a piece of it. I have NO IDEA why it disappeared and whether they ever intend to put it back up. Why wouldn’t they have this on their site still? I mean, yes, they changed their site, but did someone just pull it down?

I need to contribute to the WayBack Machine, since it had it. $25. It’s probably worth more than that, but $25 they got.

Dr. Kent Brantly (ACU ’03) was brought back to the US (to Atlanta). He’s the first patient with ebola ever to enter the Western Hemisphere. Hopefully he will get well. Thank you, God, that he was well enough to be transported.

It’s now 11 pm. I worked for 2 hours on email, Facebook, and catching up the last 5 days of notes here.

One thing that would good is if I worked on the article for CEA Forum –even if they did lose my last one—and sent it out so that my CV isn’t lying. Also I need to put together the testing information for the iBook classes.

M recommended last night contacting and perhaps working with her and getting it published (or also published) in an education journal.