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“Seen your video |
I’m not exactly sure why, but these lyrics just seem appropriate lately.
today’s soundtrack
Category Archives: story of my life
wifi everywhere! or, history of the black crowes
Is it at all possible to find an independent coffee shop in downtown Kansas City that doesn’t have free wireless Internet access? Predictably, Starbucks charges for theirs, but it’s wide open just about everywhere else. If I want to support local coffeeshops, I have to contend with the lure of the Internet (or just leave the laptop at home); if I want to avoid that lure, I have to spend time with the Great Satan. So here I am at the Cup and Saucer, grading, and trying to avoid various online responsibilities.
I’m just stopping in, dear reader, to opine briefly on Atlanta’s Black Crowes. When I was a wee undergrad and local hack music writer, the Black Crowes were called Mr. Crowe’s Garden, and they were firmly part of the jangly southern bands on college radio crowd (see R.E.M., Let’s Active, the D.B.’s, and various Athens, GA: Inside/Out bands). Then they got a record deal, went into the studio, and came out a few months later with a new band name and sounding like a cross between early ’70s Rolling Stones and late ’70s Aerosmith. The cool thing to do, of course, was to lament how they had “sold out.” But I’ll let you in on a secret: I really like the Black Crowes. When you’re down in the dumps, crank up Shake Your Money Maker.
road trip with a friend
Kansas City to St. Louis. Taco Bell. American Whiskey. American Beer. The Pageant. Jessie Malin. Ryan Adams. Denny’s. Motel 6. Waffle House. St. Louis to Kansas City. Dairy Queen.
The best use of 24 hours in a long time.
my first book…
the story so far
During the last couple of weeks I’ve been staying downtown, where I live, on the days I don’t teach, rather than go in to school. This change in work habits seems to be working pretty well. I walk a couple of blocks to a coffee shop first thing, read and write for a few hours, then head to the downtown library and do some class prep.
There are only about 4 weeks left in the semester, and a bunch of grading is on the horizon. My classes are going pretty well, although since it’s been awhile since I taught composition, I had forgotten (not for long!) the dramatic difference between the student population that takes composition and the population that takes upper-division English classes. Although I am not a rhetoric/composition specialist, I would like to stay committed to teaching writing on a relatively regular basis. I’m rusty right now but getting better, I think. I teach the same course again next semester.
We’ll have a couple of friends over for American Thanksgiving next week (note that our neighbors to the north celebrated last month), which should be fun. The mini-break offered by this holiday is always welcome.
My health is pretty good. No hearing problems. I’m sleeping okay, and my energy level is not dragging. I eat the right kinds of things (lots of fruits, veggies, whole grains), but if someone brings candy into the office, I pretty much have to eat it all at one sitting until it is gone. I try to share to avoid this happening.
This afternoon, there’s an Honors Program colloquium to attend, and tonight, I give a guest talk in one of my colleagues’ classes on Alan Moore’s From Hell.