the hypothetical wren

I now have the same pair of shoes in four colors. The brown Dansko Marcelles pictured in the lower right arrived today after I won them off of eBay this weekend. Here they are, posed with their red, cordovan, and black compatriots. I think I have a bit of a problem. Luckily, the only other color these are made in is one I don’t want — it’s brown, but with a warm, golden undertone that would match exactly nothing that I own. I wear one of these pairs of shoes approximately 99 percent of the time — why I have so many other shoes is the question I should be asking, perhaps.

I am so busy. I wrote about my schedule in the last entry, and things haven’t really let up much since then. I’m enjoying my semester a lot, though, so I can’t complain, although the workload doesn’t leave me a lot of free time. (And what free time I do have, I’d rather spend riding my bike, hanging out with my friends, or seeing movies — anything other than reading or writing.)

I bought a rack and basket for my bike (the fenders are still backordered from the manufacturer). Now I can carry even more crap around with me — here, I have a sweater, a canvas bag, some leftovers from Il Vicino, and two library books attached and ready to go home. I’ve been experiment with various bungee-cording strategies, using varying lengths of cord, and now I feel like a real utility biker. However, I’m not as enamored of the basket (pictured here) — it seems like it rides up too high, and it’s difficult to use my front light (very important) when the basket is on. Other baskets I’ve seen on bikes around here aren’t as high on the handlebars — I might have to investigate some other basket options.

This dull entry is boring even me — I’ll have to come up with something more interesting to say, soon.

This is the awesome red bike I was referring to in the last post. It took me a while to get around to uploading it, a sentiment I fear will be the theme of the upcoming months. My feelings on the semester so far go something like OMGWTF HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO?

I’m taking on a whole lot this semester: three real classes (two of which are seminars), another class that I’m sitting in on (which still involves doing all of the [plentiful] reading), and teaching three discussion sections (which are structured around material I don’t know all that much about, and which adds about 125 pages of week of reading to that which I already have). Plus, there’s trying to go to the gym, and take bike rides, and I’m going to this conference in October, and I’m trying to put together a couple of paper proposals — maybe one for this, and another for a conference next fall. I did get one paper/panel proposal under my belt, thankfully, although finishing it required a few beers and some cheap bar food for me and my fellow co-presenters. I’ve just concluded that there will be no free time until mid-December for me.

Example? It’s Labor Day Weekend, and I’m thankful that I have three full days to catch up on things instead of just two. Surely, this is not what the American labor movement had in mind for its special day.

Even though I’m busy, I’m enjoying the semester so far. I’m finishing up my classes in my third (read: non-U.S. history) field, so I’m learning about nineteenth century France and Stalinist Russia, and lots of other things I don’t know that much about. I’ve been taking seminars and other classes on essentially the same topic for the last three years, so this semester is a nice break, even with my comprehensive exams looming off in the distance. I’m also taking a class in my school’s architecture and planning department, on how to do research in architectural and neighborhood history. I think, overall, I’ll be glad that I took on so much this semester — I just may not enjoy it while it’s happening.

In the meantime:

Recent stories on both bicycling in ABQ and walking in ABQ. The latter seems a bit overwrought, but she makes good points about the sheer WTFness of the dark, smelly railroad tunnel that you have to go through to get into downtown on Central. Who thought that was a good idea?

I’ve seen a lot of cute clothes for sale for fall, but the only thing I’ve seen that I really, really want is this coat, in the navy. Were I to purchase it (unlikely), it would be the only navy thing I own — but the appliques on the bottom match all sorts of other things I own.

A nice list of links on pedestrial culture.

The Shoe Project: pictures of people and their shoes.

“Fine art” photography vs. Flickr: a strangely pointless, polarized debate.

Free mp3 audiobook of Jerome K. Jerome’s Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. If I ever get myself to the gym again, this is what I will (ironically, more or less) be listening to on the iPod.

Books of interest, in case I ever have time to read again: Emily Cokayne’s Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England; John Fraser Hart’s The Unknown World of the Mobile Home, and Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland.

I keep almost buying this pendant.