Electrodes to the Brain

I am about to go stay in the hospital for the evening so the medical powers that be can study my sleep patterns and oxygen intake. My brain capacity continues to deteriorate and I feel increasingly lethargic. I'll be my pessimistic self and anticipate them finding an inoperable brain tumor. After establishing such low expectations, I'll be mildly relieved to find out from them that I will be likely to live for a few more decades in this veil of tears. Maybe I'll get lucky, and they'll have some ideas of ways that might improve my situation. Unfortunately, this overnight diagnostic will cause me to flail at an Italian test and in my Greek translation tomorrow. They'll release me just in time to mess up my entire schedule even worse. I just need this hellish quarter to be over. I'll post again soon if I make it out of the hospital. Fine!

Losing Brain Capacity

I'm embroiled in the worst quarter of my life, experiencing an annoying level of brain atrophy. I am overloaded with Greek translation and a slavery seminar. I have adapted my time and brain capacity to accommodate these important aspects, but it allowed my Italian course to lapse to the point where I was ambushed by a test. I hate the communicative approach to languages and I missed enough class with illness and my grandfather's death that I had to morph my enrollment schedule to allow me to drop Italian in the last week of the course. I'll probably complete most of the work for the course in preparation for my trip to Italy, but I may not take the final due to my Greek final requirements. I find my brain unable to process anything outside of my ancient languages or history at present. Age and stress are allowing my mind to become very forgetful of little things. I think I left my Greek notebook in class this week with a full quarter of intensive word lists and translation notes in it, I can't find it and it will really hurt my preparation for the final in this class. I can't remember anybody's name anymore. I can't process what my Italian instructor is saying fast enough because I can't concentrate on the stupid and inane material presented in lower level languages courses that meet 5 days a week. My brain capacity is deteriorating and I can only focus on the most important tasks at hand. The medical bureaucracy is a hassle in scheduling all of my sleep tests. I need to sleep better for my brain to work, and I'm just not. I'm contemplating trying to talk the doc's into loading me up some of the teen ADD meds to see if I can boost my concentration levels, but it is dubious. I need the summer to get here so I can be away from class for awhile. Italy should help me recharge, but we'll see. I don't know when my brain will allow me to remember to blog again. For now, that is all!

The Scourge of Fatigue

Forgive the blog hiatus, but my life has been rather oppressive lately. Time and energy have been at a premium. I flew home a couple weekends ago to see my daughter and help my mother with my grandfather's estate. It is difficult to go through 86 years worth of accumulation in a household. There was a strange paradox in being in a house so full of material things, yet still feeling an inherent emptiness of the house that had so many memories for me. It affected me a bit more than I expected, but I was glad iwas there for my mother. My 7 sets of aunts and uncles went through most of the stuff and took many personal things for themselves, but I was very grateful to be able to get some very personal items for myself that were related to some significant memories and experiences I had with my grandparents - including a hunting knife my father had purchased for my grandfather's birthday in the 1960's. I was also able to have a good weekend with Madaline, but due to a combination of exhaustion/stress/food poisoning/fatigue or something my body shut down when I got back and I had to miss my brutal Polybius seminar in greek translation. I'm still trying to catch up and I have to start putting together my paper on the archaeology surrounding the gladiatorial barracks at Pompeii - which I will see in person in a couple of months. I need to get to Italy to reenergize myself, the next few weeks will be grueling until it happens. I'm still getting limited sleep and my sinus doctors ran a CT scan and are sending me to a sleep study center when the paperwork is completed. I'm hoping they can improve my sleep and oxygen intake. Maybe I can gain a few IQ points and energy with more oxygen to my brain. My brain feels slow right now, and my body is deteriorating under the grad school lifestyle. I'm forcing some changes. I did go to a few Gradbar get togethers for free food and drinks, and decided to summon up from the depths elements of my old romance skills from the days when I actually gave a damn. I masked my emotional vacuousness behind a moderate veil of player smoothness to achieve a fairly surprising level of success with a plethora of lovely ladies. I now have to try to reshuffle my schedule to allow for that most difficult and delicate of all romantic endeavors: multiple person dating. I haven't had to date juggle in over 15 years and my disposition toward this is much different at age 36 than it was at age 22, but for now it is better to explore my range of options without getting entangled in an emotionally invested situation that requires a higher level of maintenance. At present, I just don't have the time or patience to be too emotionally invested in anyone other than my daughter. Disclaimer: Before anyone takes umbrage toward my strategy in this matter, know at this point in my life the situation has been fully disclosed to all parties involved as I've never been one to operate in a sleazy manner, even when I was 22. Hopefully, this strategic casual dating will provide some needed distraction from the oppressive nature of my academic schedule, but finding the time will be difficult. It should go well, as long as i can remain immune to the scourge of any semblance of deep emotion. Drinks, dinners, movies of a casual nature are much needed for me at this point. Be well!
P.S. I was almost mobbed by a swarm of screaming females a few minutes ago. I started to feel even better about myself until I realized Ashton Kutcher was behind me premiering his new movie with Cameron Diaz. Then I was almost crushed by the crazy paparazzi. That life has it's advantages, but I think at some point I would snap and descend into a berserker Conan rage that would leave the world light quite a few photogs. Sorry for the length of this diatribe, but I thought I would make up for the past couple of weeks. I'll try to maintain future brevity and consistency until I go to Italy.

Familial Remembrance

My present entanglement in largely inane academic concerns was disrupted by the death of my maternal grandfather Wednesday afternoon. My focus was retrained to remembrance of a man who lived life very much on his own terms in the face of a rapidly changing world. He was an Oregon logger of the old school who started falling trees with axe in hand during the Great Depression. I have inherited most aspects of my physical stature and strength from him along with an obstinacy and general animosity toward modern 'civilized' society. He was still trying to subsistence farm and herd his handful of goats last week despite failing health. I have numerous images and memories of my time with a man who was most comfortable working independently in the woods or on a farm without submitting to the daily oppression or grind of punching a time clock for wages at a company. He paid an economic price for his autonomy and refusal to submit to the changed economy, but he was more content living his life without being trapped like a rat in the maze of urbanized life. He was a usually good-natured and simple man who retained a level of superficial, yet lighthearted, orneriness throughout his life - underneath he was a surprisingly caring and sensitive person. He'd argue just to be obstinate and stir the pot in a teasing way, while grinning to let people know he was usually agitating for the sake of agitating. This is probably the root of my deteriorating boyish mischievousness that used to soften aspects of my personality and make me more interesting and likable. Hopefully, I can retain and reclaim some of this heritage before I lose the playful side of my nature to emotional vacancy and my atrophied bitterness. I think I can set forth myself as a decent legacy and representation of this man in this world.

A Good Spring Break with Madaline

Here are some pictures in a slideshow on the right from a fun time this last week. In 5 days Madaline and I went to an Egyptian Mummy Exhibit at the Bowers Museum, Sea World to dine with Shamu, San Diego Zoo, Universal Studios, Getty Villa, La Brea Tar Pits, Museum of Natural History to see dinosaur bones, Getty Villa and Museum, and Medieval Times. The image above is from the Museum of Torture at Medieval Times that Madaline demanded we pay $2 extra to go through. This is a lovely snippet I thought the feminists among you might like to rail against. The images of the masks used are among the pictures linked in the slideshow album next to this picture. There are many images of Shamu and other animals from the San Diego Zoo - along with the instruments of torture at Medieval times. Madaline had a great time and did not want to leave from her vacation and fun, but she also understands the advantage of living in the security of the familial homestead after seeing how different a large city is compared to what she is accustomed to. She wants to visit and play quite a bit though, which is good. I hope everyone had a good week - I did!

I Emerge from my Writing Stupor to Grade

After very little sleep this weekend, I finished my paper and turned it in Monday night at the end-of-quarter bash at my Prof's house. It is good to have that paper out of the way, but it didn't come together as well as last quarter's. Hopefully, it will be sufficient to not disappoint her before she leaves for Oxford for a year. I'm still tired, but I have to grade all week until my daughter Madaline arrives on Sunday for a week of SoCal touristy stuff. It will be fun. I was able to get my summer funding activated along with the additional plane ticket to Italy from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, so I'll be in Italy from June 16th - Aug 4th with free weeks on each end. I'll visit as many sites as the weak dollar will allow. I'm confident it will be great. Now, I'm back to grading a bunch of mediocre papers. Be well!

Successful Networking at an Absolute Top Level Colloquium

After 12hours of presentations, discussions, dining, and drinks at the Getty Villa, I emerged having successfully networked with some of the very top scholars in the world in my field on the topic of Representations of the Alien. Three of the speakers were some of Oxford's best trained PhD's with a litany of books and publications - one now a Harvard professor the other at Cambridge. The best speaker has been Head of Ancient History Dept in Scotland for the last decade after separate stints at Oxford and Cambridge. Another speaker was the Vice-President of the American Institute of Archaeology and had been Head of the American Academy at Athens. All these speakers were real heavy hitters and some of the smartest people and elite scholars on the planet, leaving me feeling very much out of my depth and feeling completely inadequate as though I were a complete mental midget as one of the very few Grad Students invited. It became even more intimidating when I watched some of these eminent figures being totally dissected by Prof Erich Gruen who was the moderator of the event and had been UC Berkeley's Head of Classics and Ancient History since the late 60's. From the top of his head he could whip out the most obscure Greek and Latin sources to decimate even the slightest crack in any of the arguments or statements. He is an extremely amicable person and treated everyone well for most of the day, but then toward the end he said "I think this excellent discussion has been a bit too cordial in nature, so I will remedy that from here on out." He then proceeded to perform intellectual jujitsu on some of the best minds in the world. I did the best I could to get in on some of it as one of the few Grad students in attendance, but I was pretty far down the pecking order as all the Prof's wanted to do battle and I couldn't get much access to the microphone. Because it was on barbarian representations I was somewhat equipped to engage in some precision slice and dice intellectual forays, but the intellectual battlefield was a pretty gory mess. Everybody seemed happy with the robust debate and the day went very well. I used the drinks and dinner period to make some very good networking inroads, and I pulled this off better than any of the other Grad Students. I had a great individual discourse with Prof Gruen who was very supportive. Later, I even had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a choking Professor of Archaeology. It's a weird feeling to do that at such an uppity reception event, but she was very grateful after having been in real trouble. Weird things happen to me, my life is just bizarre. In any case, I networked better than all others and most people seemed to think highly of me as far as I could tell. I effectively veiled the fact I was so far out of my depth and all in all it was a good day, but it took quite awhile to effectively swim in the deep end of the pool. Be well and have a good weekend while I write a paper for the next 72 hours straight - I will reemerge by Tuesday.