Long time, no write.
Apparently there are 200 million blogs that are no longer updated. I'm ashamed to admit that mine has been one of them.
It's not that I haven't had things to say—I've had all sorts of adventures, positive and negative. But somehow spending all day diddling with computers at work doesn't tranlate well into wanting to spend more time diddling with them at home.
I have been doing a lot of reading, both fiction and non. This year we managed to get to the V&A at the start of the summer for their fantastic exhibit on modernism and to New York for MOMA's exhibit on Dada.
I'm grateful that the Democrats were able to take back some seats in Congress, and that Bush seems to have gotten at least some of the message the election results were meant to send. But we're far from feeling sanguine about the overall state of the country and the world, with two years left in his reign, and the Democrats being, well, Democrats.
M has tenure now, subject to the rubber stamp of the trustees. Meanwhile, we have a new president at the college, who is a cool person and with whom I've had more opportunity to be involved with various aspects of the running of the college—in particular, I was invited (okay, dragged kicking and screaming) to participate in the planning process for the first strategic-planning session, and took a significant role in writing up the results of the workshop. I'm also keeping my hand in as the process moves forward—as with many similar projects I've been involved in, I have some worries about whether we'll actually get to implement anything that came up in the discussions, and, if we do, whether the final result will look anything like what we'd imagined. I'll do what I can.
What with tenure and all, it looks like we're likely to be in SoCal for the indefinite future. While I never would have chosen to come here on my own, we are gradually beginning to find aspects of the area that make it more attractive than we would have imagined when we arrived.
In particular, M has gotten quite enthusiastic about hiking, and there are lots of places around to explore. I'm less excited by the idea of poking around in nature these days, despite my teen experiences, but there are enough elements of industrialization (massive flood-prevention and water-retention structures; old power plants; etc.) to keep me at least a bit interested, and I certainly can't complain about the exercise, however much I'd prefer to be hiking across the hills in San Francisco, from one bookstore to another.
As the tentacles of Los Angeles slither through the suburbs and spawn more sprawl, we are beginning to see the benefits, with some shops that used to require a trip to Pasadena appearing in our immediate area, as well as changes to downtown Claremont that include plans for an “arthouse theater” showing films that would have required trips to Pasadena, downtown L.A., or even further afield. I'm not holding my breath in hopes of a cool bookstore, though you never know.
