I'm sure he had a point...

Man nearly dies downing vodka at airport
Wed Dec 12
Associate Press
BERLIN - A man nearly died from alcohol poisoning after quaffing two pints of vodka at an airport security check instead of handing it over to comply with new rules about carrying liquids aboard a plane, police said Wednesday.
...
New airport rules prohibit passengers from carrying larger quantities of liquid onto planes, and he was told at a security check he would have to either throw out the bottle of vodka or pay a fee to have his carry-on bag checked.

Instead, he chugged the vodka — and was quickly unable to stand or otherwise function, police said.

chip

I'm listening to my fella chip the ice off our cars. I just sat back down after a big fat cleaning fit. The place looks good, except for the kitchen which will soon be the site of pie making and food prep so I figured why bother with the heavy cleaning in advance? I've graded all but four papers from my students, alternately horrified and delighted by their writing. And now it's time to relax for a bit, clean myself up, eat, and then go pick up the siblings from the train station an hour up the interstate.

I know it's late November, but still it was something of a shock to wake up to find white stuff dusting the ground, the bushes, and the mostly bare tree branches. Oh and the cars. I looked at the weather... "Ice Pellets" is on the menu for today. That and black ice, freezing drizzle, and fog. Yeah, I guess it's winter.

I fell asleep in pain and woke up in pain, so this was a lot of work to get done on top of that and despite the fact that I pulled some muscle or something in my shoulder vacuuming, I feel like I got a hell of a lot accomplished. I'm still not used to the fact that my body and my mind are not exactly on the best of terms. When I can manage to get a lot of shit done in one day, it makes me happy. I'm looking forward to resting this evening, watching movies, and eating. We still have the drive up in not great weather but we'll take it slow.

a libran decision making paradigm

Here is the question. Do I finish my PhD or do I leave by Spring 08 with a master's?

Here is a brief and highly simplified overview of my decision factors.
Pros:
Finishing what I've started.
Get to have people call me "Doctor".
Get a chance to hold a professorship.

Cons:
Coordinating good faith and timely reading and review of various drafts of both my proposal and dissertation by a group of faculty who have demonstrated serious failings in time management and coordination abilities.
With loans + a half time GAship, I will run out of money to live on by March 2008.
I am borrowing money that I will be paying off at a rate of:
- nearly $600 a month if I can pay off the debt within ten years
- nearly $400 a month if I can pay off the debt within twenty years
- just under $330 a month if I can pay off the debt within thirty years
(And that's assuming a maximum fixed interest rate of 6.8%, which not all of these loans have)
Permanent, stable faculty positions are far less easily come by now than they had been for the past generation of scholars.
Permanent, stable faculty positions entail average teaching loads of 4/3.
Many of the lower teaching load tenure track positions give preference to candidates with post-doctoral training and who come with their own active grant (or strong "extramural funding" history).
Trying for such a position would require at the least a willingness and ability to uproot every one or two years for anywhere from 3 to 10 years post PhD.

Realities:
I cannot get a more than half time GAship because I have been taking too long in this program since my second year in it.
I have good reason to doubt I will be healthy enough to hold a job after I leave my program (with or without PhD) which will pay enough for me to afford both my education debt payments and my other monthly costs of living.
I am certain I am not healthy enough to go through what is becoming the standard post PhD employment scramble and make ends meet, do a yearly tenure track job search, and bounce around following the promise of a tenure track job as if it were the damned holy grail.
I do not like the academic work culture/climate. The hypocrisies wear on my nerves, stress me out, and make me loathe nearly all aspects of the interpersonal interactions and even sometimes the impersonal experiences I have as a researcher and instructor.
I quite strongly feel the trends in higher education employment are socially irresponsible.
I quite strongly feel the trends in undergraduate education are socially irresponsible and socio-economically unjust.
I find it hard to reconcile both my principles and my physical abilities with how I would need to behave and act in order to be a functional part of this socially irresponsible, socio-economically unjust, hypocrisy laden, pretense riddled system.
Having some license to insist that people call you "Doctor" is, as I see it, not a sufficient reason to do anything.

One day to go!

I did four hours of lecture today - back to back - covering my fella's class which is right after mine. And I was still standing, or at least talking and presenting, by the end of it. I'm impressed. It helps that his students seem like a pretty good bunch, they actually thanked me today. How's that for a nice group?

My fella's going to be coming back to the U.S. tomorrow! Yay! Yippeee! And woo-hoo! It's been a long two weeks. His flight gets in late to NYC, so he might stay at his brother's place down there to catch some sleep before driving back to beautiful bucolic CT - but knowing I'll be seeing him soon makes me very, super, extremely happy.