Chit-chat Corner
Sorry to have disappeared for a while. I was in a distant Northern Land. Washburn county, as it happens. This was a brief and somewhat miserable anti-vacation, which my parents prevailed upon me to endure. Mostly we prepared our little northwoods cottage to be used as a rental property, since it doesn’t really make sense for this small lake cottage to sit empty the entire summer as it now does. So I was used to chop, paint, lay carpet, rototill, and move various heavy objects over the long memorial day weekend.
It was sort of pleasant, in a way. It did after-all cause me to entirely forget about my teaching and dissertation for a few days, which is no mean feat. At the same time, I accomplished zero work on the diss, which is somewhat worrying. Now that I’m back, I’m needing to work quickly and in earnest on my dissertation, which I need to have substantially complete by the end of the summer. This requires me to write-up a conclusion for chapter 4 and to write a complete fifth chapter.
Did I mention that my car died? I wanted to skip this, seeing as tdq has in the past contained far too many “car trouble” posts. But a couple months ago my well-beloved little Colt threw its timing belt, resulting in engine damage that I would have been foolish to pay to repair. So I’ve signed an agreement with a German grad student who’s leaving the US on June 20, saying that on that date I’ll buy from her her 1997 Ford Escort (want a picture?). In the meanwhile, I’m enjoying driving a Ford Taurus kindly loaned to me by V. This Taurus has 286,000 miles on it and looks (and sounds) like something out of The Road Warrior. Which makes it great fun to drive, imho. Would you have supposed it was even possible to put 286,000 miles on a Ford Taurus?
Well, ok, apologies for this chatty “what I’ve been up to” sort of post. I’m gonna go write a bit and then waste some time at the Virgina theater today, where it’s entirely possible that I’ll watch both Grapes of Wrath and The Wrong Man, perched in the upper balcony.
June 5th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
My money’s on a bent manifold. What do I win?
June 5th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Well, you both win and you don’t. The whole matter is in some sort of superposition I guess, since I never had the engine taken apart, after replacing the belt didn’t fix it. Opening it to diagnose things further would have added expense and required the head to be remachined, and it was clear that *something* inside was busted up. So, who knows.
Or, just as likely, the Kankakee mechanic just *told* me that the new belt didn’t fix the thing, and thus he ended up with perfectly good little hatchback to kick around town in, laughing all the while at the dupe from Champaign.
June 6th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
that’s a nice pic of the lake up north. it can’t have been all that bad, can it have?
June 8th, 2006 at 9:36 am
I like the picture too–the flash was accidentally on, leading to a strange illuminated green frame to the sunset. And, yes, the trip was nice in some ways, too. It really did get me to forget about academic life for a few days, which is no small feat. And of course there were sunsets and stars, and blessedly few mosquitoes. And I enjoyed a lake association meeting that we we able to attend, where the somebody from one of the old lake families did a slide-show talk on the lake in the late c19/early c20.
So I’ve gotta admit, there was some fun to be had. I may head up there again (maybe with a group) later in the summer.
June 10th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
I second Camilla’s compliments on the photo — very nice. So, um, how come you’ve been holding out on us all these years about this great place to which you had access up north? Just think what great getaways you could have been organizing for bored and overworked fellow grad students to go chill in the north woods! Ah, what might have been…
Sorry to hear ’bout the little car. You are the man who buys little old cars and drives them until they die. The Escort looks great, though. Perhaps it will also get 280-something-thousand miles like your miracle road warrior taurus. The taurus is the car least likely to be stolen, by the way. Just FYI and whatnot.
June 12th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
I guess I just never thought of going up there with grad students. Maybe I figured that most of ‘em would just complain, if they went up there, about the difficulty of finding decent sushi in upper Wisconsin. Or whine about mosquitoes. But yeah, that would have been fun.
I’m glad to hear about the low rate of theft for the Ford Taurus. This is especially felicitous for me, since the Taurus I’m now driving starts only with a screwdriver and doesn’t have locking doors.