negotiations

last weekend, my body went on strike. and rightly so. it started late on friday afternoon with a tummy ache and rapidly developed into acute gastrointestinal distress friday evening. for most of saturday and sunday, i could barely choke down the blandest of foods and the thought of anything with even a smidgen of fat made me want to toss my cookies.

all weekend, while taking a brief respite at a friend's cottage, i guzzled ginger ale like nobody's business. i easily slept 9+ hours each night (unusual for me) but still awoke exhausted.

for most of the following week, i was still a little shaky, and i was more tired than i've been in a long time (i mean we're bordering on post-comps exhaustion here). resolutions to get in even the shortest workout fizzled and i spent my down time curled up either on the living room sofa or in bed with an elizabeth gaskell novel that has absolutely nothing to do with my dissertation. in passing, just let me say: how much do i love mr gibson? at least i'll love him until he goes and marries that ridiculous clare.

obviously i haven't been listening all that well to my body the past couple of months. i think it's trying to tell me something. something along the lines of "hey, you! you can't feed me crap and call it dinner. you can't just stop working out and expect me to sleep soundly and not tie myself into a giant knot o'stress. you can't party it up and not give me time to recover!" (yes, i realize that trying to go in to the office for 8:45 am the morning after a rather crazy hallowe'en party was not the best move on my part).

my body and i have entered negotiations.

these are the terms we have agreed to:

1. my body will get a minimum of three workouts a week (shhhh. quiet. it doesn't know about that 2k erg test it's pulling tomorrow night at 7:15 pm down at the boathouse. i'm working up the courage to tell it). in return, i will get lower stress levels and the pleasure of not waking up at 4 am, worrying about things i can't fix.

2. my body will get relatively decent, healthy food on a daily basis. and none of it will come from the convenience store across the street or the local fast food emporium around the corner. none of it will be made by häagen dazs or ben and jerry. in return, i will be free of gastrointestinal distress, and hell, i may even lose some of the 10lbs i've put on since the rowing season ended!

3. my body will be allowed to go out and have fun, most definitely. but i will respect its limits. it has never been a 5-martini kinda body. in return, i will have, at the very least, manageable hangovers.

4. my body will receive only limited amounts of caffeine. downing 4 or 5 cups of coffee in one day because i'm tired because i haven't worked out and therefore am not sleeping well is not fair. if it has never been a 5-martini kinda body, it has never been a 5-giant cups of starfucks crackcoffee kinda body either.

my body has agreed. let's see how well this contract thing works ...

new graduate student game show?

i think some of my fellow grad students and i could make a go of this schtick -- the clip is from a japanese game show called Silent Library -- in our campus humanities library. though where we would find a Slapping Machine and an Old Man (Who) Bites Tenderly, i dunno.

anticlimactic

on friday i submitted a draft of what, up to this point, has been one of the more difficult chapters of my dissertation to write, not only in terms of my relationship to the material, but also in terms of my relationship to what i often affectionately refer to as my bag of neuroses.

it's done. it's not exactly pretty -- those parts where i bled onto the page really need to be cleaned up -- but, as i've been saying to those who inquire about the product: that's what revisions errrr ferrrrr, right?

what has surprised me is that following the initial rush of dissertation submission euphoria (which included a rather embarrassing "i've just finished my chapter" victory dance, which along with the chapter also needs to be revised) a sort of writer's adrenaline rush, if you will, it hasn't taken much time for me to arrive at the point where i'm shrugging my shoulders and dismissing it all with a cynical "meh, but i've still got so much more to write ... and revise."

maybe the the 58 undergrad assignments that i'm spending the weekend grading are a contributing factor, but still, my blasé attitude necessitates my deploying one of my much used, and therefore terribly hackneyed, interrogatory colloquialisms (helloooo uncle ted!): what the flying fuck is wrong with me?

please limit your answers to the situation at hand.