Reaching Out

- First unit test today! Apparently many students did not know the word "vindication" which my professor thinks should be a university-level word. We also discussed grading parameters for the short answer questions. I still don't have a grading key for the rest of it.

- Skedaddled to a talk by a prospective spousal hire and I am excited by her potentially joining our department!! She's an Africanist, researching Igbo storytelling narratives surrounding the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. As far as I can tell this department has never had an Africanist, which is frustrating and ridiculous, and practically no Black people in faculty ranks, which is even more ridiculous. As a result we don't have any Black grads either. I'm hoping this will change.

- Started reading Matt Hill's FAN CULTURES and it begins with a critique of a moralistic dualist approach to studying fan cultures, namely, the "productive" fan versus the "consumer" fan, also "fan-community" vs. "fan-commodity". Hill is trying to trouble this, and also the idea of the "fan vs academic" and the terrible positions academic fans like to take in being a fan but trying to hang onto institutional authority. It has no discussion on how basic gender and race analysis might affect this (although there is a single mention that most of current theories are out there written by white dudes). IDK if I should continue reading this or if I should read the Consumer Culture Reader first.

- I also set out a buncha cue cards listing some things I'd like to talk about in my dissertation. I feel I'm missing out one more thing that I want to talk about, but I don't have a name for it. In order: Gears, Goggles, Corset/Vest, Tea, Mad Science, Adventure, Promenade. None of them touch very deeply on the Maker aspect which is the last thing I want to talk about but I don't have the right word to talk about it.

- I finished stitching my rank braids! Wow, that was really fun and I really want to get back into hand-stitching stuff now. I bought an embroidery hoop a while back so I'm thinking of getting into that. I doodle some stuff while listening to Night Vale:
* Feminist Killjoy (got some dark navy blue fabric and lime green threads for a pinafore, and was planning on stitching this on the front or back)
* some phoenixes
* random pretty flowers (which thus far is my favourite doodle; I haven't decided what colours yet, but I'm going to try some satin stitches)

My OKCupid Adventures Tumblr tag is updated with the latest and greatest from my month in Malaysia!

Also, a prospective name for a hypothetical SEAsian SFF regional con.

Also I feel the need to let people know that the Octavia Butler Legacy Network is looking to hold a conference commemorating ten years of her passing in February 2016.

I woke up at a decent hour but only got out of the house around 10am. Bad idea. Anyway, I got a check for my Mothership reprint and went to deposit it, then went to get more eyedrops. I stopped in AT&T for a new phone and the guy was so intent on selling me a new plan he spent around forty minutes trying to get me a thing with data even though I don't use data that much. I'm looking at this phone, the LG Xpression 2, mostly because it has a QWERTY keyboard and who can get enough of things to write with. The thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't have an FM radio in it. (I don't really care for loading a phone with my own music and prefer to listen to the radio.)

Then I walked to campus to get my office key, check my mailbox (I have a box of books, yay!), check out my office. I'm back in 2414, which is smaller than the last one I was in. My officemate has been using it over the summer and practically colonized the whole place, so I told her to move her crap off the table I'm using and clear half the shelves. She's got the bigger table so I'm moving mine closer to the computer table so I can move between my workstation and the computer station more easily.

I then wandered over to the Health Center to make my appointment for my follow-up pap smear (among my many letters was a printed letter from my doctor stating very firmly I needed to come in for my pap) and then because it was too hot to be real, I went to the sub place nearby for a sandwich. Then I skedaddled home and haven't been back out since. It is aggressively hot out.

I'm gonna be at the International Student Orientation all day tomorrow. It's for the Masters students and apparently they didn't have enough Masters students to be on the peer panel so I volunteered. Good thing, I think, because the PhD orientation was today and I kind of was not in any shape to do it.