Wednesday, June 22, 2011

House Envy

I went and hung out with one of the other postdocs the other day. I am jealous of the place they are renting, which is all big and spacious and decorated up all shabby-chic cute. And they have a covered porch. Although in the few minutes I took to get from my car to inside I was devoured by mosquitoes.

Look up ---- tree! Cool, huh? This is in the decaying neighborhood right by campus, where the other postdocs live. The house is about a hundred years old, which is about what the rest of the places around there are, but it is very well kept up and updated nicely. Most of the places around there, if they are rentals, do not look this nice. But if you are partnered with someone who has a full-time regular-person paycheck, and no kids, you can pay a lot more for rent than I do. Though this place is less than what I paid for my one-bedroom in CA, which is so laughable when you think about it. Just crazy.

Anyway, none of the places available down by school have been this nice --- the floors are bowed and the overall building frames seem warped. But, still. Le sigh.

Not much else to report except that I might go stir crazy in the next few hours, having been home working, and then "working," for a couple days now. I was supposed to be writing the end of my last section and then the conclusion, but I glanced at my ILL book pile and realized I was going to have to send stuff back pretty soon, and I know I need these. So I have been in an orgy of reading until my eyeballs fall out of my head. You would be shocked at how quickly reading shit gets old. Clearly I have burned out all my intellectual circuits, or my persistence-circuits, or something. I intend to pack up all my stuff and drive out to Starbucks tomorrow, come hell or high water, just to have a new location and maybe talk to some people. Unless, of course, I go stark raving mad first. Gotta keep my options open.

2 comments:

Feminist Avatar said...

I find that if in a rush photographing ILL books is a good way to keep a copy, without creating piles of photocopies.

Earnest English said...

As a brilliant grad school colleague shared with me when she was doing her comps (which included reading a ton of material, natch): it's amazing what you can learn about a book in an hour.

I too do the photocopying thing. Sometimes the last minute rush to turn the ILL book back in is the first time I look at it, I'm sorry to say.