I should have more self-control, but more likely than not I’m going to walk into the living room and pick up the third and final volume as soon as I’m finished writing this post. I have worked very very hard this semester and have read very very little that’s non-work related, which I suppose is the reason for this binge. And as far as binges go it’s certainly mild — there are few ill effects that one can suffer as a result of too much reading. But it’s still a binge, and still means that I’m essentially avoiding the other things I could be doing instead. Which will all be waiting for me when the last page is turned, right?

Wine: Lambrusco. Like grape soda for adults!

Appetizers: ravioli stuffed with beets in butter and poppyseeds, gnocchi made of chard + cheese in brown butter. (Mmm, buttery!)

Mains: rabbit with gravy on polenta with oil-cured black olives (I could eat that every weekend and not get bored); saltimbocca (pork with prosciutto and sage) with smashed roasted potatoes

Dessert: shared a pear cake with chocolate chunks and vanilla whipped cream

Also there were some fancy after dinner drinks, not tokaj but looks like it, don’t remember what they were called (hint: it was Italian). Very yummy.

I never knew what tokaj was until reading The Golden Compass, and now I have a very strong association of the book and the drink. We got a bottle once with a very thin long neck and a pretty scrolly gold label. Also Hungary! A very interesting country, not in the least because Hungarian is not an Indo-European language.

Thus ends tonight’s randomfest. Tune in tomorrow for tales of woe as I try to finish up all of my work before heading up north to the anthropology conference later this week!

My rules were:
- Check work email once/day (I get kind of anxious when the work email piles up so I rarely ignore it entirely, even when we’re on vacation. But I only answered the few that seemed like they couldn’t wait.)
- Check home email once/day (Since we had catsitters I felt like I couldn’t completely ignore home email. And I get much less email at my home account anyway.)
- No Twitter
- No RSS feeds
- No other internets reading/browsing, e.g., New York Times (If you can’t ignore the news for a week is it really even a vacation?)

I also promised myself that I wouldn’t feel bad about skipping all of that info, or try to catch up on it later. Which for the most part was successful: though I did end up reading a couple of things published last week in the early part of this week, I also went into my Google Reader when we got home Sunday night and pushed the magical Mark All As Read button to clear out the feeds. (Oh, the power!)

The results were hardly earth-shattering, but they were sort of interesting. In practice what happened is that I didn’t use my computer phone to fill in the gaps between activities. Usually I’ll check Twitter or read feeds or check email in the myriad little bits of time I encounter throughout the day: waiting in line or for the people I’m with to be ready to go do something, watching Gus (in this case while swimming in the pool or pond), sometimes while riding in the car (though this is dicey because it tends to tweak my carsickness).

Without the internets I spent those bits of time last week thinking, spacing out, watching the world go by, etc. It was relaxing in a way, kind of soothing and boring at the same time. I was happy to learn that it didn’t make me all twitchy, which I’d feared since I am definitely susceptible to the mini-endorphin rush of a new email alert or a pile of new tweets.

For the longer stretches of time I did lots of book readin’, just like in the olden days. I read one from start to finish, finished up another I’d started a while ago, and read parts of two others. It’s definitely easier to read while on vacation, and I appreciated having the stretches of time while Gus was happily splashing around to get some reading in.

Now that the experiment is over I’m back to the usual stuff at work and at home. Though I do think I’m interacting more thoughtfully with the internets than before. Of course, it’s still the slowish summer — I’m sure my internets serenity will go right out the window once the semester (and the course I’m teaching) begins in (eep!) 22 days.

The book is sort of a mashup of literary criticism of the Chronicles of Narnia and a biographical exploration of C.S. Lewis’s life and influences, with a hefty dose of Miller’s own history as a fan of the books, from her love of them as a child through her teenage disillusionment when she realizes that the books are full of Christian themes and on to adulthood. The whole book is a great read, but if you’re at all a Friend of Narnia it’s especially wonderful for her discussions of her own (and others’) childhood fascination with the books. In many ways the books are much more complex than they seem, and Miller is adept at exploring what makes them so compelling to so many children that those children continue to love Narnia as grown-ups. Our girl name was Lucy and our runner-up boy name was Eamonn (which is Irish for Edmund), so as you can imagine both Jonathan and I fit into that category.

It was also really interesting to read about her disillusionment with the books when she discovered their pervasive Christianity, which she realized after reading a piece of criticism of the Chronicles. In many ways Miller and I have similar backgrounds: I was also raised Catholic (though we weren’t the most devout by any means), went through all of the sacraments, and as an adult I am not Catholic. As far as I know there wasn’t a specific incident that drove me away from the church — I think that as a kid I just found Mass to be dull (though I did like the singing) and then as a teen I decided that all religions were hypocritical (as teens are wont to do). But as an adult I’m most comfortable as an agnostic, so that’s where I am now.

Unlike Miller, I don’t remember feeling betrayed when I reread the Chronicles as a teen. I think I was a bit older — late high school? — by which time it was readily apparent that Christianity ran through the whole series. But I don’t think the knowledge made me think negatively of the books.

It’s curious to think of it now. I’ve read them so often that I can’t actually remember when I read them for the first time, maybe age 10 or 11? A little late, if then. It’s been a while since I’ve read them as an adult, and reading this book makes me think it’s high time I started them again. We’ve tried to get Gus to read them but sometimes he’s really resistant to our book suggestions. Perhaps the best strategy is for me to read them to him?

In honor of this day I am doing no work at all. None! And also a couple of errandy things. And reading something for fun.* And I took a very small nap. Woo hoo!

* Just because I’m reading a book about plagiarism doesn’t mean it’s not fun!

Anyway, I have a couple of partially-written things to post here (or elsewhere) but I’m too tired from my day off to finish them now. Here’s some Twitter to tide you over.

RT @notjonathan My first iPhone app is live! http://cryptogram.com/tarot (iTunes http://bit.ly/bLLKH6) DM or @ me if you’d like a free promo code #tarot
1:22 PM Feb 11th from Tweetie Retweeted by you and 1 other

A brisk snowy walk, the quiet of the office before the library opens, taking some time to write. Happy Thursday!
8:40 AM Feb 11th from web

From the parent coordinator at my kid’s school: school is OPEN tomorrow. Best. Email. Ever.
6:27 PM Feb 10th from web

@alevtina Go, City Tech! Snow can’t stop the awesomeness, oh yeah. :)
8:20 AM Feb 10th from Echofon in reply to alevtina

RT @kittenwithawhip: RT @DrinkWellDoGood Southern Foodways Alliance seeking interns for Oral History programs. http://tiny.cc/8tVfD
11:36 PM Feb 8th from Echofon

Dear printer, Actually, paper is *not* jammed in the transport unit. Please get a grip. Thanks, Maura
4:07 PM Feb 8th from web

One of the cats likes to nap on the shelf next to my desk. Study buddy! http://twitpic.com/122mcu
10:23 AM Feb 8th from Echofon

RT @mwesch Check out “The Class” a parody of The Office on technology in the classroom from @LynnSchofClark ’s class at DU http://bit.ly/cerGqP
7:48 AM Feb 7th from web Retweeted by you and 16 others

Watching Fringe + swooning over Olivia Dunham’s awesome black wool coat, as usual. 3 buttons on the sleeves!
10:41 PM Feb 6th from web

Brooklyn, NY = NOpocalypse. Bummed.
3:11 PM Feb 6th from web

Already disappointed that we are not going to get enough snow. Bah.
7:40 PM Feb 5th from web

Gus would like me to know that he does NOT have a giga-memory, GOSH, how can he POSSIBLY remember all of the THINGS he has to DO before bed!
8:41 PM Feb 4th from web

I always feel kind of guilty when we spend the whole day inside if it’s nice out, even when there’s a good excuse. Gus played video games and read nearly a whole book (The Great Cheese Conspiracy, a refugee from my ’70s childhood) and played D+D with Jonathan. Over dinner Gus asserted that he didn’t want to go for a bike ride today anyway. But it still seems somehow wrong to spend the whole day inside. Maybe I am also feeling a bit guilty that I just read today rather than tackling all of the other stuff on my list, much of which can be accomplished perfectly well from the sofa with my laptop.

We did get out yesterday, and in far more inclement weather. We went to Manhattan to see Fantastic Mr. Fox (surprisingly only playing in 2 theaters), which was a good time for the adults + the kid. Gus <3s Roald Dahl, and for the adults the movie was pretty much standard Wes Anderson fare with puppet animals instead of people.

Cloud Atlas is really good. I’m still in the middle of the other Cloud Atlas, which is a bit surreal. And the Mitchell book has a sticker in the back with the correct author information that’s covering a sticker that mislabels the book as the Callanan book. Woah, meta.

I could get to those other tasks now (Gus + Jonathan are playing a little Super Mario Galaxy before bed), but there’s only about 50 pages left in my book and I’m dying to know how it ends. Later, gators.

* Where this morning = 4/29, because that’s when I started the draft of this post.

Today’s idea is about pens. Yesterday I went to a meeting and passed around my own pen with the sign-in sheet, and of course it didn’t make it back to me. Which is not a big deal — frankly, the library is nothing if not a repository for pens left behind, so I never want for pens. But I started thinking about pens, how they move around between people. What if there were tracking devices in them, cameras and recorders? What if the pens were semi-intelligent and they had a plan, an agenda?

(Probably this was inspired by the evil pen that kills people in The Lost Room, btw.)

Pens left behind in the library might be part of the story, too. You decide!

The other idea actually got a bit more fleshing out because I started thinking about the last time we visited my mom; it’s a 2-ish hr drive, so I made Jonathan talk to me about it for a while. The basic framework sprang from archaeology: archaeologists assemble knowledge of prehistory from an incomplete record.* No one knows how incomplete it is, and while they work in scientifically rigorous ways there’s still never 100% certainty with any interpretation of the past.

* I remember a great diagram in the shape of an inverted triangle from my archy days that depicted the estimated amount of stuff (animal bones, I think, because that was my bag) that makes it into the archaeological record. Each level of the triangle depicted something else that happens to the bones: carried off by scavenger animals, crushed by accumulating sediment, etc. Probably under copyright; I can’t find it on the interwebs.

(This goes for historical archaeology too, but I feel like the existence of historical records can make a big difference in interpretation.)

Anyway, then I started thinking about ground-penetrating radar, and how it’s been such a boon to archaeology to have the technology to “see” sites before digging them up (and even instead of excavation, in some cases, since excavating a site essentially destroys it). And I started to wonder: what will the next technological breakthrough be? What if a machine were invented that could not only see the shapes of buried objects and features but actually tell you with certainty, this posthole is from a dome-shaped structure made of wood and skins, or this bone fragment is from a domesticated goat? That kind of technology could potentially completely rewrite prehistory and even history as we know it.

As Jonathan and I talked about it we tried to come up with a plot, since this is really just a setup, but we couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t involve aliens, which is kind of lame (and makes the whole dealie too much a derivative of Battlestar Galactica anyway). And this is probably a book only an archaeologist would love, sigh.

So if anyone wants to take these ideas and run with them, please do! Just write them quickly, because I’m almost out of things to read.

Another reason for the leisure reading drought is probably because the last piece of fiction I read was Neil Stephenson’s latest 900 page bruiser “Anathem.” It was intense + awesome: compelling and academic scifi with lots of good plot twists in all the right places. I haven’t been so sad about finishing a book since “Time Traveler’s Wife” (which still hurts to think about, actually).

A couple of weeks ago I finished 2 disappointing nonfiction books. And afterwards I experienced an incredibly intense need for fiction, it was really weird. Now I’m reading “Never Let Me Go,” courtesy of our building’s ad hoc basement lending library. It’s pretty good so far, creepy + atmospheric + engaging.

Next up I think I’ll read an old collection of Kelly Link stories, “Stranger Things Happen.” Jonathan recently reminded me that it’s available for free for Stanza, the awesome iPhone ebook reader. And I have a bunch of meetings in Manhattan coming up this week so it’ll be convenient not to have to carry an extra book with me.

One of our recent TV diversions was this 6 hr miniseries that ran on the Scifi Channel a few yrs ago called The Lost Room. The intriguing premise is that there’s a hotel room that disappeared 50 yrs ago, no one knows why. The objects that were in the room have weird powers, and the key makes any door open into the room (and when you leave you can come out of any door that you can envision). It was a good ride for the first 5 episodes — the plot moved fast + hung together well — but the last ep was kind of weak, as if the miniseries had been a pilot for a show that wasn’t picked up.

When we finished watching the show Jonathan proposed that it was kind of like reading Borges or Donald Barthelme or Steven Millhauser or Kelly Link: “They’re all working on the same project. I don’t know what that project is, but clearly they’re all involved.” Which is what made me remember that Kelly Link book in the first place.

So I leave you with this, which is apparently what happens every day after Jonathan gets home from the coop and leaves his backpack open on the floor as he’s unloading it. And today he took a picture.

Not much interesting, really. Working at work. Last week was a bad sleep week, so lots of coffee was consumed (and not much scooting done). Enduring high heat + humidity. Moving to temp office space during renovations. The members’ picnic night at BBG. Sesame Place. Family visiting + nephew baptizing. Driving on the NJT, 2nd most hated of all roads (right behind the SIE, which was also driven on). Kitten love (they missed us when we were away). And laundry, there is always laundry.

I am buried under reading at the moment. 1/2 a fiction book from the public library (renewed at least 13 times!). Another fiction book from work (plucked from the shelves mere hours before the PSs were sealed off for the rest of the summer!). 2 kids books. 1 new arty-n-writy book by Lynda Barry that I did not even know existed until my rad spouse got it for me for my birthday. 1 exciting (if you are me!) work book. Rounding out the pack are a few work-related articles, a few articles for the literature review of an article I hope to write, and a few articles for a research project I hope to start in the fall.

I need to stop sleeping. That’s clearly the only strategy.