I know what works (A month in writing, day three)

... I just need to actually do it.

Here's what works for me:

• Go to bed at a decent hour (before 11) so I can get up by 6:30.
• Meditate
• Make coffee, then go straight from there to the work that I have laid out from the night before
• Avoid internet and news until after my work session.

If I do these things, I knock out 90 minutes easy, and still have plenty of time to shower, have breakfast, and get to work on time.

Here's what I did instead::

• Stayed up until past midnight, waiting for election returns
• As a consequence, overslept by an hour
• Skipped meditation
• While coffee was brewing, thought, "Oh, I should check to see how [critical state ballot measure] did.  Yay! I should see what the news is saying about..."

Then, suddenly, it was 9:30, and I'd gotten nothing done, but had to get to a doctor's appointment.

The good news? I got in my 90 minutes -- a little more, in fact -- reading a single 30-page article (written in Blarg, no less).

The bad news? That was all I did.

So, with that in mind, I'm logging off now, laying out my work, and going to bed with good intentions for building more good habits.

I am here. (A month in writing, day two)

I am here.  But that's about all I can say for today. I'm almost too tired to update... though if I'd done it earlier while listening to election returns, I'd be done by now.

Today was... less than optimal, in terms of writing. I can blame having to go vote first thing (and you'll be relieved to know that I voted for the Good Guys, and the right ballot measures, but against the bad ones). But the fact is that I could have done better. 45 minutes of note-taking in the morning is sub-optimal.

But, as friend told me when trying to motivate me to exercise: No matter how slow you're going, you're still lapping everyone on the couch. So I'm going to lay out my books for tomorrow and take that as my inspiration.

Being here; that is the first step. Everything proceeds from that.

A "Month"* in "Writing"**

So, as many of you undoubtedly know, this is National Novel Writing Month (popularly known as NaNoWriMo), which people have transformed into "poetry writing" and "blogging" and "digital writing" and any other damn thing. And we academics... well, we're just trying to crank out an article or a conference paper or something.

And I swear, I've been working on it, but there have been obstacles, not the least of which is that I have no idea what I'm talking about. I started over at Dame Eleanor's with a goal to get an article draft hammered out. But considering that it took me three full weeks to meet the relatively modest one-week (ha!) goal of finishing one last book on Big Background and then write 300 words on that topic, I've decided to revise my goal.

To wit: I'm chucking the damn goal, and just working.

I'm going to try to observe NaNoWriMo in my own way, by working 90 minutes a day on this project. And if that translates into me writing 500 new words, then yippee!  If it translates into me reading an article and taking two pages of notes on them (which is what I did today), then that's also good.

Most of all, I'm going to try to be accountable for each of these days, for the next four weeks (And yes, I will insert some non-writing-content in here, too.). Of course, I said something about that back in my first-ever post on this blog, then realized it was a dumb thing to say. But since no one has the authority to fire me from my own blog, what have I got to lose?

Just lay out the damn pattern and follow it.

*Not really a full month, since I'm starting five days into it.
**Not always writing new words; just working on stuff that will become writing; rebuilding my writing habit.

In Which I Adopt a Contrary Position (updated with a Very Special Link)

[UPDATE: Anticipating the reactions coming from Comrade PhysioProf and others who may occasionally find my turn into the hippy-dippy a bit gag-inducing, I promise you that I have many sides to my personality and, as proof, invite you to click here while I put on "Free to Be You and Me" for those who wish to continue reading.]


You know what I love? The end of daylight savings time.

Okay, so everybody loves that "free hour" of sleep we get once a year (though we're also acutely conscious that it's gonna get taken back in another six months). But after that, it's all bitching and moaning about how it gets dark so early.

Except for me. Because, as I've mentioned, I am a lapsed but aspiring morning person. The big problem is that my body is more and more light-sensitive when it comes to waking up early. The body only wants to wake up once the sun is coming up. And since my bedroom windows face west, this makes things difficult.

Not so this morning.  Up at 6:15, and... well, I won't say I got right to work, but it's a start.

Oooh!  You know what's also cool? I got a tiny cash windfall and bought myself something that I've been wanting a long time: a zen chimes alarm clock:

Seriously, I've been longing for this ever since my friend Dr. S. got one. Can I tell you how nice it is to wake up to? The tone is wonderful, and I can use it as a meditation timer as well. Plus, it's small enough to travel with.

Mornings just got better for me.

In which I fact-check my own post

Pedantic Prof. weighs in:

I don't know what plans you perused, but one of our emeriti was on the original planning committee and he hates hearing the parking-garage story. According to said emeritus, the story of why the funds ran out and a new design had be sought (before the foundations were laid) is because an administrator had neglected to make a bid for matching federal funds for the project. This is sadder than the urban legend...

So, I went back to my source material. And it seems that there are bits and pieces of potential urban legend indeed mixed in with my recollection. So, for the first time, I'm fact-checking one of my own posts.

• The building, currently a nasty squat-looking thing, was meant to be a big (and probably equally ugly) skyscraper, a veritable brutalist beacon: True. There are extant drawings for the mega-skyscraper original, and for the slightly scaled-back skyscraper building. 
• The underground offices were originally supposed to be parking spaces: Uncertain, given the evidence at my disposal. There were indeed plans for 150 parking spaces in the originals. My source material doesn't note whether those spaces were the same as where the faculty offices are. But if you ever worked in one of these, you'd understand why anyone would come to that conclusion. 
• The tower project was abandoned because the whole thing was sliding down the hill under its own weight. False. The cap-off was, as Pedantic Prof. has heard, a result of underfunding. The rumor that it was due to a slipping building is a natural result, I think, of the fact that the floors and ceilings are so wildly canted (see previous post), and are more so the further you go underground. 

I think that covers it. And I maintain that the current building serves as an Ozymandias-like monument to hubris. One last question to Pedantic Prof., who appears to be on the ground: So, does your source say why everything is so twisted? Is there movement going on? And more importantly: have structural repairs been made?

Most importantly: Do you have a window?

A couple of pictures of that building

I really wish I could post pictures of the outside of this building, so you could see it in all its cheap faux-brutalist glory, but that would identify it.  Instead, I bring you a couple of interior pictures, snapped a few years back. Both of these come from the floor where I had my underground office for 5 years.

The floor:

 

...and the ceiling.

 

  

Grim, no?  I understand that some of this has been abated. One can only hope.

The Ugliest Building on Campus

Note: Prompted by a comment by Pedantic Prof, I have just fact-checked the holy hell out of my own post. Results are here.


Thesis statement: the ugliest building on campus is almost always the Humanities building.  And if it's not, then Humanities is usually in the top 3 ugliest.

Historiann mentions her building in her post today on why national reputation for scholarship may (::gasp!::) be even better than a winning team. Yet in spite of this, which gets the better facilities?  Here's her aside about her own building:

Let’s just say that although Clark is a notorious eyesore and menace to the health, safety, and comfort of its denizens (who include faculty, students, and staff, as it is a building with both classrooms and departmental offices), we didn’t get a $250 million renovation.  All we got was an exterior paint job (which helped to a surprising degree), a new HVAC system (because the old one kept flooding faculty offices!), and new carpeting in some corridors that looks like it was a remainder from the Carpet Barn.

 Yup, sounds about right. And it's not just Baa Ram U., is it? Humanities buildings seem to have been designed by someone conducting an experiment on how architecture can drain your will to live. Permit me to illustrate with a tale from the horrific humanities building where I was a grad student. It will sound like one of those academic urban legends, and that's what I thought it was, even though I was there... until I saw the actual historic documentation of the original plans.  Fer reals.  So, here goes:

Way back in the 60s, the University of State decided that they were going to build an impressive building according to the model of the time. It was going to be of the most modern concrete! It would have its own underground parking! There would be a plaza out front, and a skyscraper tower with commanding views of the town and beyond! Yay!!! So they dug the foundations, and the two underground garage floors, and built the plaza, and the mezzanine, and got to work on the first tier of the skyscraper above.

Except... they didn't consult a geologist, so it came as a huge surprise when the building began to twist and move down the hill because the rock below turned out to be not strong enough to support even one story of concrete skyscraper.

What to do?  Why, cap off the one-story "tower" and convert the underground levels into faculty and grad student offices, of course!

Now, capping off the tower helped, but it didn't completely solve the problem.  No, siree. See, the thing was already pretty heavy.  So ever since that time, it's been ever so slowly continuing to twist and move.  This has resulted in (among other things):

• Torqued elevator shafts: you could count on getting stuck between floors at least once during the course of the semester.
• Twisted supports for the acoustic tiling on the ceilings, and wildly canted floors, even two stories underground.
• Freakish plumbing: my office mate had a urinal shoot water outwards at him (right before class!), and one memorable summer, all the sprinklers on the T.A. floor turned on, soaking everything.
• One result of the soaking was that the threadbare carpet rotted away. Once it dried out, the cut away the rotten bits and patched it. No mold/mildew abatement was ever done.

And, of course, we all grew into pale troll-people.

And, of course, it continues to be ass-ugly.

So, how about you? Share your architectural horror stories in the comments below! And bonus points to people who don't know who I am who can identify (in code, please) the building I describe above.