I argue, I posit, I demonstrate, I contend ...

I am deep in the trenches of dissertation grant applications right now, which means that I really want to do anything but.  This includes tending to my neglected blog and its three readers.  Sorry, guys.

I wanted to blog about two things today, one being this: why the hell I wake up at 6:13 am every single morning.  This has happened every morning for the last two weeks, and it's starting to make me feel slightly nuts.  My alarm does not ring until 6:45 on weekdays and 7:30 on weekends, so what on earth is rousing me from much-needed sleep every morning at the exact same minute is really beyond me.  Ideas welcome.

The other subject I'm mulling over is my lifelong obsession with cities, which would make for a much more interesting and thoughtful post.  But it will have to wait until this application is done.

In the meantime, please enjoy this adorable music video about cuckoo clocks (I think?) of which I understand about every fourth word:

Sounds about right

Well, it's that part of the long weekend in which I just missed one train home because the scanner in the library was taking forever and now have an hour to kill and am too tired to read more AND already a bit anxious about and dreading how tired I am going to be at work tomorrow.

But that is not what I was going to write about.  Instead I wanted to throw this your way:

I spent some of today reading Lewis Wickes Hine's collected letters, which he signed in all sorts of clever ways.  I can't decide whether my favorite is "Hiney" or "H-sign."

Also you should look at this, because it's awesome - Lewis Hine Project - even if you're not a photo nerd.

Library. All weekend.

Acknowledgements

So I've been reading a lot of dissertations lately - like you do, when you're trying to write one - and hands down the best part of any dissertation is the acknowledgements section.  It's like the gossip column / family tree of academia.  A real place for discoveries like, "oh, so you're not gay after all" or "I see that so-and-so helped you work through your argument in chapter four -- interesting."

Anyway, since it's pretty much the only part of my project that seems manageable right now, I've been giving mine some thought off and on today.  Non-human entities that are getting a shout-out will most definitely include Google Books.  Do you know how many times today alone I've read a footnote referencing an obscure, unpaginated [love that word] 19th-century journal and thought, where the hell am I going to find this RIGHT NOW on the day after Christmas so I can read it RIGHT THIS SECOND?  And then there it is, right there, on the interwebs.  I don't even have to put on non-pajamas-type clothes and venture out into the snow.  A real life-changing source for 19th-century nerds.

And speaking of snow, pleaseohpleaseohplease let tomorrow be a snow day, but only if I get paid on snow days.  It's really important that I sit at home and read again.  And build a snowman in my front yard.