my car is dead, long live my car

I am entering into a new era in my Los Angeles dwelling: the carless era. However, this will differ from my first time around, when I was locked in Westwood. Now, I'm in a nice central location where I can walk about, on a busline that is currently quite efficient (knock on the lucky wood, people) and access to Michael's car occasionally. The first borrowing took place this past sunday when I had to go down to Santa Monica for a little gathering at a professor's house: even after adjusting the seat, the mirrors and all, I was seriously white-knuckling it all the way there. I'm not accustomed to how the Taurus handles and it has this nasty little habit of bucking and kicking like an unruly pony when you jam on the accelerator. So I think I'll also be looking into a Flexcar membership to occasionally scoot around.

Otherwise, things are fine. I'm having much difficulty trying to translate my project synopsis, or even write one that differs from my cover letters, and since I have not heard a peep from the marketing powers that be, I'm not very inclined too motivated to do so.

I did go through a blogreading extravaganza the other day: I tend to read an entire blog in a go, which is not the best plan because you start to hear the same complaints about the desire for weight loss and lack of productivity. This is not meant as a viable criticism of the writers of these blogs because they're wonderful and thoughtful, but more as a commentary on the appropriate ways to read blogs. In any case, the academic blogs, they are a mountain of insecurities and a goldmine of helpful teaching advice:

A teaching carnival hosted by new kid, some of the links no longer work but much of it is still up, i should really put it into a more permanent form, in case more of the links disappear.
http://newkidonthehallway.typepad.com/new_kid_on_the_hallway/
2006/11/another_damned_.html

Some lit teaching group work strategies.
http://reassignedtime.blogspot.com/2006/03/we-interrupt-your-
scheduled-boy.html

And for much much later in my potential career. Ah what the hell, even if academia doesn't work out, being a good adviser is like being a good mentor, useful in other careers, no?
http://bardiac.blogspot.com/2005/11/trying-to-be-better-advisor-
part-i.html

Netflixed
James and the Giant Peach

Cute movie with stop-action animation, musical numbers, and a rather large and bountiful fruit. I used to be obsessed with Roald Dahl books. Their mixed tones seem now like a precursor to the Lemony Snickets genre. It was a nice way to spend the time while grading exams.