Live Plays and Performances: 36

Antony and Cleopatra; Come from Away; Keith Lowell Jensen’s Not for Rehire; Kinky Boots; Metamorphoses; Slowgirl; A Winter’s Tale; Home; Two Pints; The Other Place; Keith Lowell Jensen’s What I Got Arrested For; A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre with Brianne of Tarth; Blithe Spirit; Small Island; Aaron Simmonds’s Disabled Coconuts; Heidi Kills Time; Macbeth; Wuthering Heights; The Lehman Trilogy; Weird Al Strings Attached Show; Hamilton; In the Heights; Hannah Gadsby’s Douglas; Oklahoma; Life Sucks; Sleep No More; Play Time; Margaret Atwood: Live in Cinemas; Between Riverside and Crazy; Fat Kid Rules the World; Ranked; Burst; White Noise; The Humans; Hansard; Present Laughter

Davisville interviews: 1

Podcast interviews: 2

Other interviews: 3

New books published: 1

Herniated discs: 1

Ligaments strained: 2

Surgeries and injections: 4

Incredible butt bruises from falling down in DC: 1

Times I went into shock after a blood vessel getting nicked during an allergy shot: 1

New doctors broken in: 7

Osteopath appointments in Oxford: 4

Times I got to fly in the fancy class across the pond: 2

Times our little blind kitten got himself lost: 1

Times my cocky little Thoth got himself lost, except the neighbors thought he was just out on his usual stroll: 1

Visits to the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen: 2

Visits in which I was able to eat the amazing grouper at the Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen: 1

Times I cried in a German airport: 1

Times I found a bed and a chain in a bathroom at UCD: 1

Times I watched Good Omens all the way through: 3

Times I held a chicken: 1

Full books finished (not counting issue comics, magazines, online reading; counting rereads): 61

Lamentation by Ken Scholes; Lucy & Andy Neanderthal by Jeffrey Brown; The Rook and Stiletto by Daniel O’Malley; The Healing of America by T.R. Reid; The Secret Loves of Geeks by Hope Nicholson (ed); No Apparent Distress by Rachel Pearson; Nelvana of the Nothern Lights by Adrian Dingle; Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente; Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann; Fire and Hemlock and A Tale of Time City and Howl’s Moving Castle and Dogsbody by Diana Wynn Jones; La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman; TransAtlantic by Colum McCann; Above the East China Sea by Sarah Bird; Meaty and Same Year, Same Trash by Samantha Irby; People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks; I’m Just a Person by Tig Notaro; How to Marry a Werewolf and Impudence and Competence and Reticence by Gail Carriger; Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire; The Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell; Among Others by Jo Walton; the four Murderbot Diaries books by Martha Wells; Fangirl and Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell; There There by Tommy Orange; The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris; Bitter Medicine by Clem and Oliver Martini; The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke Harris, MD; a book of short stories edited by Neil Gaiman; Heavy by Keise Laymon; first two books in the Inheritance Series by NK Jemison; The Testamants (twice) by Margaret Atwood, along with Alias Grace and Cat’s Eye; The Fellowship of the Ring; Alice in Wonderland; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis; A Discovery of Witches and The Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness; Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler; How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman; A Very Scalzi Christmas by John Scalzi; The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter and European Travel for Monstrous Gentlewomen by Theodora Goss; So, Anyway by John Cleese

Purses stolen: 1

Drivers licenses obtained, because the replacement license I had to get after my purse got stolen expired six months later: 2

Epic battles with the credit card company after they accused me of lying about my purse being stolen: 1

Epic credit card battles won: 1

Performance of my one-woman show: 2

Stand-up performances (other): 7

Museums and Exhibits: 54

British Museum, Sally Lunn Museum, American Museum and Gardens in Bath, Jane Austen Centre, Bath Abbey, The 9/11 Museum, Neue Gallery, Old Royal Theatre and Masonic History Tour, Wellcome Collection, British Library, Victoria and Albert food exhibit, Design Museum Kubrick exhibit, The American Writers Museum in Chicago, Bampfa in Berkeley, Native American Museum where I had bison, African American Museum, Natural History Museum in DC, FDR monument, MLK monument, Whiskey Museum, Little Museum of Dublin, Famine Exhibition, Dublin Gaol, Dublin Castle, Trinity College Library and the Book of Kells, EPIC Immigration Museum, The Divinity School, Natural History Museum in Oxford, The Sheldonian Theatre, Christ Church, Magdalene, The Oxford Botanical Gardens, The Harry Potter Studio Tour, Stonehenge, Prague Castle, Wilton House, The Acropolis, The Museum of Cycladic Art, The Acropolis Museum, Athens’a 1st Cemetery, National Archaeological Museum of Athens, MSU Museum, Sedlec Ossuary, Kupta Hora Cathedral, Brno Ossuary; The Church of Loreto in Prague, The Temple of Poseidon, Underground Market Labyrinth in Prague, Saint Charles Bridge, Uncomfortable Oxford Walking Tour, Trinity College Oxford, Wadham College; Bodelian Library exhibits; the Roman Baths

Attendees at this fall’s UC Davis stand-up club performances: Hundreds!!!

Non-California cities visited: 16

Chicago (twice); Washington DC; Anaheim; Cincinnati; London; Bath; Gerrards Cross; Oxford; Dublin; New York; Prague; Brno; Vienna; Kupta Hora; East Lansing (and Lansing–I can’t count this as two); Athens

Exciting new ice cream flavors tried: 2

(G&T and Black Currant and Clotted Cream)

Times Anubis ate rum cake: 1

Conferences: 8

The first jacket I’ve ever cared about, bought at WonderCon, which I think might begin a new era in which I care about clothes sometimes (my new prescription sunglasses make it a verified trend): 1

New nephews and cousins: 2

Gin distilleries: 2

Whiskey distilleries: 4

Ouzo distilleries: 1

New pubs tried in Oxford: 7

Times I couldn’t tell the difference between a packing crate and a shopping basket in Oxford: 1

Baby showers hosted: 1

Courses taught: 16

New courses taught: 1

Christmas ornaments I had the energy to put up: 2

Times I probably irritated Weird Al by making him sign his tiny gold record: 1

Trips to Nandos: 8

Times I got to eat fried okra in a hotel room with a view of the Acropolis: 1

Incredibly bad flus I currently have, which have knocked me down harder than I’ve been knocked down in years and that probably guarantee I’m forgetting some stuff for this list: 1

A little over a year ago, I broke up with someone and decided to take a break from dating.

(I took a break from that when I was in Oxford.)

After much reflection, I’m not going to restart dating any time soon.

Now, I’m not saying that if I meet someone out in the wild and feel a spark that I won’t succumb, but the active search is off.

The very thought of activating a dating profile fills me with exhaustion and existential dread.

I’ve spent a lot of this year just staying alive, including surviving another herniated disc. I’m never bored, never lonely. There aren’t large gaps of time waiting for a guy to fill. I’d have to create gaps for one, and I don’t have the energy to do it.

And now for the existential dread. I’m not sure exactly what I even want. I just know what I don’t want. I don’t want to get married. I don’t want more kids. I don’t want to live with someone.

And in looking back at a factor of some failed relationships, I don’t want guys in my workspace. I can almost never take a whole weekend off, which is both a product of my workaholism and of the financial circumstances that have me teaching way more than a full-time load every year.

It’s sometimes okay when I’m grading papers at a guy’s place.

But I just can’t seem to do it when they’re at mine. I mean, I get the grading done, but it takes longer because I have to turn on the tv or whatever to keep him entertained in a space that’s not his own. And it wears on me a bit, having to work so much. And then I find myself getting annoyed by this person who isn’t working. And I feel pressure to finish faster cause he’s at my place.

This isn’t how it is at first, of course. In the honeymoon phase, I want to spend as much time as possible with the guy. Nothing annoys me, not even the objectively annoying stuff.

But the honeymoon phase is shorter and shorter as the years go by. I don’t know if this is because I’m getting more intolerant or just more honest. Or both.

I think, though, that the phase lasts longer if I only see him when I can actually carve out that time or when we can be at his place when the work has to overlap with the notwork.

I miss the sex, of course. And I definitely need more oxytocin.

But right now, I don’t miss having a boyfriend. I feel relieved I don’t have to negotiate someone else’s feelings with I’m suffering with this incredible flu.

I know all of this might change. But for now, don’t expect a lot of entries in this thread.

I’m gonna start this by saying it’s the absolute best time to get this sick. I’m trying to be thankful this isn’t happening to me during a quarter or at a conference.

Because I’m fucked up.

I was having an amazing time in Greece (more on that in a later post). It was my penultimate night (Saturday); I headed out for some seafood. But then, all of a sudden, I couldn’t eat the seafood. I hit a wall. I thought I was just tired from pushing myself so hard.

So I went home and put myself to bed. A few hours later, I woke up with a stuffy nose and a very sore throat.

In the morning, I went down for breakfast, to a lovely staff who knew how I took my tea. And then I couldn’t finish my breakfast or my tea.

So I spent the last day in Greece in my hotel room. I tried to have room service a couple of times, but it didn’t go well (who puts a whole bottle of mustard on a sandwich before sending it up)?

On Monday, I got up at 3 a.m. and took my sick ass to the airport. On the first of my three flights, my eardrum perforated, making the rest of the day even more awful. About 24 hours later, I was home.

I keep thinking that I’ll wake up feeling better. But everything just keeps trading off. The better the sinus congestion gets, the worse my throat does. The better my ear congestion gets, the more I get pink eye.

My headache is extraordinary–my TMJ is totally triggered by the congestion and the ear pain and having go breathe through my mouth. Right now, I feel like something’s trying to squash the whole right side of my face and neck. My back keeps reminding me that it hasn’t enjoyed six plane rides and a week in a strange bed.

Writing this blog is the most my exhaustion has let me do.

I’m not sure what I have. All the signs point to flu, except I don’t have a fever.

Just to top it all off, I’m having my period, although my lady parts doctor says on my birth control, they’re not periods, they’re just break-through bleeding (that happens just like periods do). I don’t have an acronym or a cute name for that.

And I’m too exhausted to figure one out.

I’m going to have to lie down after finishing this sentence.

30 years ago today, I had the VCR all ready to go.

I had to record the very first episode of The Simpsons.

Today, I landed in Greece. Tomorrow, I will give a paper on Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, based on The Simpsons.

Today, I go to Greece.

This has been a dream since childhood. Now, thanks to a perfectly timed conference on Myth, I finally get to.

We read some Greek Mythology together in elementary school.

I was hooked, reading more and more.

This is surprising, since the mythology was used against me. The boys started calling me Medusa. When they were playing this game, they had to freeze on the playground when they locked eyes with me.

I assumed that I was hideous. I remember consciously making the decision to embrace being smart. I won’t ever be loved for beauty, I thought. But someday, there will be a guy who will love me for being really intelligent.

I took Athena as my patron goddess, although I did eventually (and the details were really hazy here) want a romantic relationship.

I wore owls and prayed to my goddess before tests.

I was too young, of course, to understand that Medusa was actually a gorgeous rape victim.

Greece never lost its allure for me. I routinely found ways to find all Roman history, art, and social structure lacking in comparison. The Greek gods factored in heavily when I taught comparative mythology (Dionysus=Osiris=Jesus). My degree in Theatre–and Theatre itself–owes everything to the Greeks.

Strangely, I’ve felt really numb leading up to this trip. Like I’m in shock.

Like Zeus will see my hubris and send his lightning bolt to fuck up my plans.

Dear Athena, I want to have an amazing time in your patron city. Tell your dad to leave me alone. And if something awful happens there, don’t turn my hair into snakes. Roomba (aka Sisyphus IV) and the cats just wouldn’t know what to do.

My union posted this: “During bargaining this week at UCSB, the UC’s chief negotiator Nadine Fishel said this about Lecturer positions: ‘No one says it’s a gig you want to sign up for.’ WOW. You may ask, is that how little she respects our contribution and commitment to teaching and to our students??

“To her, we say: We consciously made the choice to become teaching faculty at UC. We teach 30%+ of the student credit hours across the UC. We are proud of our students and the work we do everyday. #WeTeachUC“

I’m offended, of course, at the lack of respect the UCs are showing to us. But it’s not surprising, since they’re trying to change our contract to remove the word “faculty,” to take away our offices, to make it impossible to get a merit raise (it’s only nearly impossible now), and to fire us without cause or warning.

But here’s why you should be offended, especially if you’re a student or if you care about students.

Lecturers teach 30%+ of the courses across the UC, and remember that we’re the only teachers whose primary job is teaching. The other classes are taught by research faculty and graduate students.

Now, some of those people are good teachers. And many of them are not. Some aren’t just bad at it; they hate teaching. Most have no training in how to do it. Some graduate students don’t speak English well enough to answer students’ questions. But it doesn’t matter. And once someone has tenure, they can fail their teacher evals, and nothing will happen to them.

We are hired and retained based on one thing–our ability to teach.

The UC representative just re-clarified the UC position–that those of us who prioritize teaching, that those of us who are required to prove we are “excellent” at it, are losers who have signed up for a job in which we shouldn’t even expect to be treated well or fairly.

The UC is admitting that we are treated poorly. They’re saying it’s a feature, not a bug.

Students, you should be insulted that they consider teaching you so beneath them that they actively oppress those of us dedicated to it.

In my last post, I talked about how many daters and many scammers sound exactly the same.

On Thursday, I added someone on Facebook. The guy’s profile mentioned Oxford under education, so I thought he might be someone I’d met (and forgotten) last summer.

I quickly discovered that was not the case. And I tried to quickly dissuade him.

(I now live in horror that I’m on some “suggesting list” on Facebook.)

(To post this for you, dear reader, I had to draw on a phone screenshot for the first time.)

Let’s skip ahead, while he keeps telling me I have to talk to him since I’m pretty.

I had been thinking he was just one of those clueless guys who won’t take no for an answer and who have no sense of empathy. But the part with the widower with a wife who died that way gave me deja vu. I’m pretty positive I’ve had another guy on Facebook say that exact thing.

Or else this guy tried this line on me last year, but neither of us really remember.

Let’s skip ahead some more, to where he’s been in love with me for days somehow, even though this conversation started about an hour ago.

I told him he was ridiculous. I’d already unfriended him, but book group was starting, so I got too distracted to block him.

Now his posts are gone; FB says his account requires verification.

Glad I took the pics for you, dear reader, when I could.

Today, my feed showed friends making the point that more people died from gun violence in New Orleans in one day than died in all of Japan in a year.

THIS IS THE ONLY 1ST WORLD COUNTRY IN WHICH SHIT LIKE THIS HAPPENS.

We are also the only country that is going to make it hard for those who survive the shootings to survive the bills afterwards.

At any given mass shooting, there will be some insured people and some uninsured ones.

Under my current insurance, for example, I am paying a couple hundred dollars a month in premium costs (under single payer, I would be paying much less each month in taxes). Some of my tax dollars also go to provide healthcare for the poor, the elderly, the military, the politicians, etc.

On top of that, a victim under a plan like mine would have to pay just under $1000 for the ambulance, $200 to enter the ER, and copays for tests, treatments, and doctors.

And I have good insurance.

Some victims with insurance will have to fight with insurance company. They will have their insurance company telling them they’re paying the whole bill because they didn’t go to the right ER, that they should have somehow gotten a pre-authorization. They will be denied medications, treatments, and care that insurance deems “unnecessary.” A panel of nonexperts will override the doctor, making more money for the insurance company.

Some victims won’t have insurance, because they’re contractors or because they’re between jobs or because they work for a small company or because they work for a giant company that only gives them 34 work hours a week just so the giant company doesn’t have to help pay for healthcare.

Those victims will be charged just a few thousand, if they’re lucky. Others will be charged tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to stay alive after someone shot them.

Problems with medical bills will affect victims’ credit. Many will go bankrupt.

(A few years ago, I got sent to a collections agency because I refused to pay for the same ambulance ride twice. It took a year and many infuriating phone calls to straighten it all out.)

Some people won’t be able to return to work without intensive physical therapy; if they’re lucky enough to still have insurance, they’ll be paying a copay at every visit. Some won’t be able to return at all.

A few will have disability insurance, though it will take months to see any money from that, months in which the landlord still needs that rent check.

Some will lose their jobs because they become disabled. They’ll have a year or more of paperwork to certify that are unable to work.

If they’re in Southern/Republican states, they will have to wait two more years after being certified disabled to have access to nonER healthcare.

Some people will be lucky enough to be able to work part time, but if they want insurance, they’ll have to look for a full time job. In our country, even when you work several part time jobs, equaling more than 40 hours/week, you’re still not eligible.

If the person who was shot was the primary breadwinner (and thus the person whose insurance policy covered the household), the whole family may lose their insurance in addition to their income.

If another family member has to quit a job to help a mass shooting victim in the struggle to stay alive, that person loses coverage.

THIS IS THE ONLY 1ST WORLD COUNTRY IN WHICH SHIT LIKE THIS HAPPENS.

My upper-division writing courses are challenging, so I offer some generous extra credit.

One of the ways students can earn it is participation in a book club. I pick a book (one related to the course ideas, often one I want to read), they read it, write a response paper, and meet at the end of the quarter to talk about it.

My favorite choices, ones I’ve used again and again, are Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Maus by Art Spiegelman, Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss, and Red Son by Mark Millar.

My Writing in the Health Science students are the most compelled to raise their grades. Many of them have enjoyed Atwood, but we’ve also read Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats, Adam Alter’s Drunk Tank Pink, Alan Alda’s If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face, Rachel Pearson’s No Apparent Distress, T.R. Reid’s The Healing of America, Paula Kamen’s All in My Head, Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, Anne Fadiman’s When the Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and books by Atul Gawande and Mary Roach, among others.

In a tight quarter system, it’s a much needed chance for students to have a good discussion in a small group, to think through issues in a low-stakes way, and to remember that they do actually like to read. (Many students ask for further book recommendations for the break.)

It’s also a way for me to learn more about them, what they don’t yet know, what moves them, what surprises them.

Recently, for example, a few students in my Writing in Social Justice class said they learned a lot about the Holocaust from Maus–they had never heard of the camps. My premed students learn about patients who weren’t believed, who were told it was all in their head (they didn’t think doctors would ever abandon someone). They learn that our ideas of villainy are completely determined by point of view. They learn great scientists can also be great writers.