I warned you this might happen.
I'm not talking about anything truly bad, like annoying co-workers, undrinkable coffee, kaiju larvae boiling out through your plumbing system, wildfires fueled by nicotine addicts flicking their butts into a lake of magma, the GIANT TURKEY PUPPET O'DOOM using your birdfeeder as an apperitif, kaiju larvae boiling out through your sprinkler system, or Ben Carson pontificating about the eeeeee-vuls of organic steel cut oatmeal over Froot Loops as a part of a complete breakfast. I'm not Will Robinson's badly designed robot rolling about and flailing its ridiculously short arms while bellowing WARNING WARNING DANGER I WILL PROTECT YOU LITTLE FRIENDS. I'm just a kid from Pittsburgh who somehow ended one of the world's leading experts on medieval quilting, and there are times I still wonder just how that happened.
What I do not wonder about is how much time it takes me to research, write, edit, and rehearse an academic paper for presentation.
This is both more and less time consuming than it might appear. Research time can vary from a couple of days in a local library to a couple of years and a week overseas, depending on just what I'm writing about this time. It can also entail a trip to New York to visit Bella, which is always fun, even if I end up driving Roomie nuts singing the score to On The Town before and after.
Once I actually start writing it usually clicks along pretty well, with a few days of dithering followed by two weekends of good, solid work. After that it's rehearsal time with the kitchen timer so I don't run over during my presentation, a great deal of very loud, very bad language over what I have to cut, and then roadtripping to Kalamazoo. This year I'll be driving there and back again with my friend Ysabel, and a merry time we shall have, hey-ho, hey-ho!
This year's paper is on a new subject and for a new session, so I'm anticipating this taking a bit more time than, say, last year's paper on Indo-Portuguese quilted capes. It may go well and quickly, or I may end up tearing out my hair and wishing that kaiju larvae would come boiling out of my microwave to put me out of my misery and get me off the hook so I can write fanfiction and go to Age of Ultron fourteen times in a row. I won't know until I actually start, and won't that just be yummy funz?
Either way about it, this means that I will be doing what I mentioned I might in my first quarter scheduling: devoting several weeks to reposting older diaries rather than writing fresh material. Whether this is for good or ill is not for me to judge - I'm not the consumer of these little forays into Badbookistan, just the producer - but this is what's going to happen since, y'know, I got commitments.
Remember, I did warn you.
So! Now I've given everyone the chance to abandon all hope before entering here, below are the next three months' worth of diaries! Some are original, some are rewinds, all are guaranteed to include my trademark mix of mockery, fannishness, erudition ha! and just plain stupidity, both mine and the books. As usual, I am not responsible for damage to your computers, pets, or crockery if you spit at the monitor, fling a plate, or terrorize the gecko and/or budgie once you read the secrets contained therein:
3/21 – The Plagiarized Roots of Roots
3/28 - I Was A Non-Existent Teenage Addict/Writer/Media Personality
4/4 – Research Rewind: Back to the Kitchen, Modern Jezebel!
4/11 – Research Rewind: The Vikings of Rhode Island
4/18 – Research Rewind: What Not To Wear, Historic Edition
4/25 – Research Rewind: Around the World with Clueless Tourists
5/2 – Research Rewind: Forward, Boy Commandos!
5/9 - Research Rewind: How Not to Draw Comics the R__ L___ Way
5/16 – I'm Still a Gal in Kalamazoo
5/23 – Moonlight, Magnolias, and Bible-Believing Slaves
5/30 – Lil' Orphan Annie and the Conservative Duck
6/6 – The Blue-Blood Academic and the Lasso of Love
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So...that's the second quarter schedule, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea! Will you read them? Flee? Contact my roommate to have me shipped off to McLean Hospital so I can do first-hand research before writing my own version of Girl, Interrupted? Yawn? Now is your change to confess.....
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