Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Post-Midnight Oil and Snow

I have been up late working again. It's after 1 AM, and the apartment is very quiet. I am listening to soft piano music on Pandora. Pocket of Bolts has been asleep for hours.

Today all day it snowed, with heavy accumulation starting around noon. Snow plows and snow blowing machines and shapeless men with shovels have all been struggling against it, but they mostly gave up around midnight.

In the early evening I took the train down to the nearest post office, sending Christmas presents to the dear ones I will not be able to see this holiday. The sun (I assume) had already set, but the twilight sky was an improbable shade of purple. Snow was swirling through the high intensity lights over Wrigley Field, bright and silver like cold flying sparks. The world seemed strange and quiet. The sound of the train when it came was muted too.

I hope the snow does not prevent me from flying tomorrow. I am going back to grad school town for a practice interview. I am in no sense prepared for this, and have been putting off the preparation very assiduously. Given that my greatest fear is being unprepared, why don't I take steps to ensure that I am properly prepared? I have no idea.

In any case, I've spent the last two hours working on a syllabus. It's not easy making a syllabus. Clearly potential tinkering is endless. I have to come up with a dissertation spiel as well, a five minute summary/description. I haven't done that yet, probably because it's the thing I'm most anxious and insecure about. Or maybe second most--the job talk really takes the cake, but it's hard to say if I'll even need one of those. I know for sure I'll need the dissertation spiel.

Well, enough babbling. Back to work I think, or perhaps to sleep.

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