 |
|
|
|
|
T hanks to McSweeney's, I came up with the perfect holiday gift for my nephews.
I n case I do need one of them (for research and related work-tasks), if I went ahead and picked one up now, got up to snap with how it works, then I would be fully prepared when the time comes that I actually have to use it. Maybe?
As you can see, there are the great challenges involved when predicting the future (while frittering away a few minutes before the next WC consulting session).
T oday Ph. and I cobbled this together:
It's a yard game. Goes by ladder golf, bolo toss, or, as it's named on some web sites, hillbilly horseshoes or Polish horseshoes. I like to think of it as the Ladder of Abstraction yard game. See, on top of buying the PVC pipe, fittings, and golf balls, drilling holes in the balls and running rope through them, cutting the PVC, and joining it all together, I also drafted another 600 words (a sketchy 2 pages) on the diss. I'm making a crooked path through the second chapter (all of the others are more or less planned but not yet written), the chapter that does some lit-reviewy groundwork in four concept-areas. And today's bit got me up to the point where, tomorrow, I will begin writing about visual models and distant reading methods in terms of abstraction and speculative instruments. Yes, among other things, this means Ann Berthoff and the Ladder of Abstraction. I'll try to say more about the dissertation progress in another entry. For now I only meant to register that the our yard game is so-named because it is expected to be a generative digression from the summer workload.
For anyone eager to build a Ladder of Abstraction Yard Game set of one's own, I followed this plan. We also score the game a bit differently. Each rung from the top on down gets four, three, and two points, respectively. Landing at least one of the balls from the tossing thingamabob inside the rectangular footing area wins a point. Play to 21. Going over 21 brings the frown-faced thrower back to 17. In other words, you must his 21 exactly to win, just like the basketball game of 21. Also, the wikiHow plan calls for 14" ropes for the golf balls. This seems a bit short, but they work decently if the ladders are set up 20' apart. Longer connective ropes (16"?) would be better for a slightly longer throwing lane of, say, 30'.
C oincidentally, Is.'s eleven-mos.-day fell on our moving day last Sunday. Out front, the new place has a healthy flower bed, grown thick with daisies, and, well other plants and things (I'd name them all, but why? when you can see them for yourself).
Is.'s eleven-mos.-day photo was pushed back to today. Would you believe me if I said there are others of us who are even happier to be almost settled again?
T he bubbles shift each time the level is moved.
T he garage temporary houses piles of containers, stacked desks (listed at Craigslist, on the cheap!), mattresses (Ph. has gone with a futon), a jogging baby stroller (uh...would require jogging?), a decorative artificial tree (listed at Craigslist, cheap! cheap!), a travel crate for Y., etc. This list, continued to its limits, would become so long as to be unreadable.
This is a shot of our holding bay (i.e., in-house storage unit) from yesterday. Today it does not look so piled up as this. Relocation involves a series of temporary storage spaces--relay stations. Ideally, the distance between such stations is short enough that carrying items from one to the next is not back-breaking.
W here we live now the office has new Pella windows. Lalo explained to me that they have ties to Iowa and were, on that basis alone, compelled to order and install Pella windows from Pella, Iowa.
All of the other surfaces in the office are new, too: walls, flooring, lights, outlets, wall plates, and so on. There are two windows. One looks toward the house next door; the other faces the back yard--a marvelous double lot overgrown with blackberries, wild garlic, wild grapes, choke cherries, and so on. What we've gained in yard, however, we have compromised in the kitchen and eating area. The office is a newly finished walk-in attic. Neither of the windows is positioned such that a desk would sit comfortably in front of it. This means that the pleasure of staring out through a Pella window must be indulged on breaks, on intermittent standing stretching book-retrieving breaks from whatever is happening at the wall-facing desk-table. Like the fancy windows, this work space is, compared to all of the places we've lived in Syracuse, "viewed to be the best."
T hree days after the transfer of goods, the books remain in boxes. The three bookcases in the office are bare. Well, not entirely bare. Altogether they support just one small box of books, an odd assortment: The Rhetorical Tradition, a couple of textbooks, a copy of Social Text 71, Collision Course, What Writing Does and How It Does It, Sams Teach Yourself Macromedia Flash 5 in 24 Hours, a 4th ed. MLA Handbook, Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies: Questions for the 1990s, and a few others.
In the 30 minutes it took me to set up Ph.'s computer and reconfigure his wireless connection, he toted a major portion of the boxed books from living room floor (where we'd jointly relocated them from the garage) to the upstairs office. In the photograph, Is. appears to be asking whether the books should be brought upstairs or down (but we all knew where they went and that she could be setting us up). This means that the books are now piled next to the empty shelves, within arms reach. Tomorrow, I will unpack them, give them their independence, and restore the piecemeal collection to its "mild boredom of order."
Postied by