Two Hues of Blue ... and Biscuit, too!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

I "un" this video

Just when I thought it wasn't possible, I fell a little bit more in love with Darius Rucker.

And, as it turns out, he and I have more in common than just a Carolina heritage and an obsession with SEC football - he, too, has kissed Facebook goodbye ... or, at the very least, he realizes that it can be a great big pain in the patootie.

Still, to those of you still keepin' it real on the World's Most Hectic Social Networking Platform, happy "Un-Friend" Day!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

BREAKING NEWS from the Dissertation Beat

Chapter Four is NO MORE!

That means I've finished it ... well, the first draft of it, anyway. Well, most of the first draft of it. To be honest, I could've knocked it out a looooot sooner if I didn't have to actually produce the evidence to back up my assertions. It's such a to-tal drag - but my super-conservative committee is insisting that I actually substantiate my claims about the life and lyrics of Dorothy Fields. Since when does that matter? Proof, schmoof! Just ask the crack squad of sports reporters (and "independent bloggers") covering the Cam Newton story. They can say whatever they want without having to produce so much as a shred of evidence. Why can't I do the same?

Oh, wait. I just remembered why. It's called academic integrity. Journalists used to have it, too - emphasis on the "used to."

Oh, well. Doesn't matter. After all ...

CHAPTER FOUR IS NO MORE!

As my mom always likes to say in these situations, "SUCK IT, NAYSAYERS." Hey - maybe Cam should try that the next time he gets a call from a certain New York Times reporter.

("Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary,
and His understanding no one can fathom." - Isaiah 40:28

Father, thank You for filling me with Your unfathomable understanding, for making sense of my scattered thoughts as I seek to finish this dissertation. To You I give all the glory, as the Giver of every good and perfect gift. In Jesus's name, Amen.)

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Meditations on Preparations

To do before Thanksgiving trip to Maui:

1) Book a housesitter. CHECK.
2) Pick up a birthday hat (& matching wand?) for my niece Lila who'll turn 4, while we're in "Duh-why-ee." CHECK.
3) Also, buy Kentucky-themed neckwear, pom poms, and ribbon for nieces' hairbows to be worn at UK's Maui Invitational basketball games. CHECK.
4) Make nieces' Kentucky-themed hairbows. CHECK.
5) Pack 10 days of color-coordinated outfits for sister's four children. CHECK.
6) Pack 10 days of color-coordinated outfits for self. CHECK.

7-9) Charge camera batteries. Make Thanksgiving reservations at Leilani's. Confirm start time of Beach Ministry Community Church. CHECK. CHECK. and CHECK.
10) Complete Chapters Four & Five of Dissertation Draft One. UM ... "IN PROGRESS."

My family's gonna make fun of me for this. In fact, they already have. Mercilessly, I've been teased for my need to plan ahead whenever we take a trip, which we do pretty often.

They've mocked my detailed itineraries. They've bedeviled me for booking things so far in advance, and there is no end to the ribbing I've received for the fact that I have the Walt Disney Reservations Line on my cell phone's speed dial.

I was thinking about all of these things as I started my final preparations for our trip to Maui ten days before take-off, and in thinking about it (again), I couldn't help but consider how ironic it is that they should make so much fun of me - especially Daddy. I mean, the man became an Eagle Scout at 13. What of "always be prepared"!?

Yet will I persevere. No amount of their picking on me will keep me from upholding my father's nearly 50-year-old oath (taken in response to a certain "safety violation" while at scout camp). I will stay strong. I actually do it for them, you know.

Though he doesn't like to admit it, Daddy gets all testy if he shows up somewhere and his dinner reservation has been cancelled for not being confirmed, and Mom wouldn't know we were even going on a trip, if not for my daily email reminders. Plus, sweet little Lila would be absolutely mortified to go to a Wildcat ballgame without her UK cheerleading uniform. Okay, so maybe I'm the one who'd be absolutely mortified for Lila to go to a Wildcat ballgame without her UK cheerleading uniform. But still.

All that to say, I've been thinking a lot about preparation lately. Mostly, I've been preparing myself to defend my - somewhat, slightly obsessive - propensity to prepare. Naturally, I can't think about "prepare"-ing without thinking about Jesus's promise in John 14.

"My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."

Somehow, that verse took on a whole new meaning for me in all my own preparing this week. It's a very personal thing to "prepare" something for someone. When I pack for Sissy's kids, I have to be sure every outfit is the right size. I have to be sure I've packed the pajamas Lila likes - and don't forget the case for Payton's glasses! Plus, Lizzie Gray will want to take dolls Kirsten and Bella, and Camden will have a cow if we arrive in Maui without whatever Chip Hilton book he's working on. I know these things, because I know these children.

In the same way, Psalm 139 tells us that God knows each of us.

"You have searched me, LORD, and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; You are familiar with all my ways ... Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain."

In connecting these two promises - that the Lord is preparing a place for each of His children and that He knows us as individually as I know my nieces and nephews - I can't help but imagine that the place He's preparing for us will be tailor-made to each of His children.

My Heavenly home, for instance, will probably be more like a bungalow. It'll have polka-dotted furniture, built-in cabinetry to hold my record players, and framed showcards dotting the walls (and God, while we're talking framed showcards, how about replacing that "If You Have Only One Wish, Make it BIG" one that I misplaced in one of my many post-college moves?!). Sissy's Heavenly manse will be filled with cherry wood; Leslie's will look like a cabin in Colorado, and Lori's will have approximately 37 dog houses spaced at aesthetically-appropriate intervals all over her backyard.

Nice as a celestial bungalow sounds, I honestly have no idea what God is, at present, preparing for me. In fact, all I know is that it is too marvelous for me to even imagine. As I Corinthians 2:9 tells us,

"... 'What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived'— the things God has prepared for those who love Him."

All I can say is, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain."

(Because I absolutely cannot wait for my family's "Island Time," I've been marking the time until we leave by not only packing a week in advance but also by revisiting last year's trip. Here's a slideshow of some of my favorite shots from our Hawaiian Vacation in 2009. Enjoy. Or not.)

Click here to view these pictures larger

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Curiosity KILLED the Wildcats

Hello, Regular Readers.

Do either of y'all happen to know of any 6'11" guys who may - perhaps, perchance - know their way around a basketball court and who didn't - no way, no how - spend a couple of years playing professionally in Turkey?

If so, please have him contact John Calipari via EnesFAIL@we-dont-have-a-center.com. Be sure he mentions it's in reference to the fact that JOSH HARRELLSON WILL NOT CUT IT.

Y'all are the best.

Thanks.

Stultzie

Short but oh, so deliciously sweet

For my money - $1.08, to be exact - I don't know that there is a tastier dissertation distraction than Sonic's Jr. Candy Sundae.

Oh, wait. Yes, there is. Feast on this amazing morsel:

What that means, for those of you who don't eat, sleep, and breathe Kentucky basketball, is that the Wildcats might have gone and gotten themselves a center ... or an "Underkanter," as the case may be. Until this news is confirmed, how in the world will I ever focus on comparing and contrasting Charity Hope Valentine with Belle Poitrine?

Looks like I picked the wrong week to try and finish Chapter Four.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Chapter Three: Pre-Sneakview

Psst.

Come here. I've got a secret for you. Now, don't tell anyone you heard it from me, but I'm about to tell you one of the inalienable truths of graduate school. Are you ready for it? Are you sitting down? Are you writing it in your college-ruled notebook with a Number Two pencil? Alrighty, then. Here you have it:

The reason that graduate programs require that you write a dissertation is?
... to keep people from applying to graduate programs.

Of this, I am convinced. If they took the more hospitable approach - let's say the departmental brochure began with something along the lines of "Y'all just come on in and spend a coupla years studyin' your favorite things!" - we'd all be PHDs. But professors don't do that, because, to be honest, they don't have the time - or (I can say as a part-time professor) the desire - to grade the papers of that many people, so in order to weed out the sane from the masochistic, they tack on the requirement of generating a 200+ page document in which you discuss topics that you really don't understand in an effort to earn a degree so specialized that you really aren't very marketable job-wise.

It's a weaning process through which only the idiotic survive.

Guess what that makes me. Idiot that I am, I'm currently wading knee-deep in my dissertation.

In fact, it's been my personal goal to have an entire first draft submitted by the time my family leaves to watch our beloved Wildcats in the 2010 Maui Invitational Basketball Tournament. I decided that this would be a wise thing to do, so that I wasn't distracted while I was at the games.

You know, in case Coach Cal needs me to suit up or something.

Quit laughing, Peanut Gallery. The snickers you hear are those of the people who know me best. They know the truth, which is that the chances of anything distracting me from watching the Wildcats is about as likely as Les Miles not wearing a ball cap or Billy Donovan not reminding me of Eddie Munster. In other words, it's not gonna happen.

But still, imagine how much slimmer I'll look in my swimsuit, if I shed the weighty albatross of Draft One before hitting Hawaii.

Needless to say, then, I've been pressing on. For the past several weeks, I've immersed myself in Dorothy Fields and The Musical as Drama , and, this morning, Comden & Green's classic Bells are Ringing. It's not easy. My love for musical theatre ranks just below God, Family, and the Big Blue Nation, yet "dissertating," as my sister calls it, is a laborious process. It's also a loveless process. By that, I mean that you start with a topic that you love so much that you're willing to forego four years of full-time income in order to study it, and then you analyze and theorize and poke and prod and hem and haw, until the tank of your love is absolutely drained dry, and you start to think "Professor of Musical Theatre History?! I'd just as soon be hired by the San Quentin Sanitation Department."

Thus frustrated, you're just about to take your MacBook Pro and every back-up CD you ever burned and toss the lot on the tracks before a fast-moving train, and then, it happens. In your research, you stumble back over a song you haven't heard, since you submitted your masters thesis. You listen to it, and suddenly. Instantly. Like the sweet and simple fizz of Coca Cola being poured over crushed ice, your cup runneth over with the love you thought you'd lost.

That's how it happened for me, anyway. I was sitting in the Atlanta Bread Company, trying to focus on finishing Chapter Three and fighting my desire to watch UKCat8Fan's latest video when I listened to this:

Oh, Shirley Booth as Lottie Gibson in 1954's By the Beautiful Sea, how my heart explodes to hear you again. I absolutely love this song. Do you want to know why? Sure, I love it's "I ain't settlin' for anything less than everything" message, but even more I love how perfectly it illustrates what I love about Dorothy Fields. Without tipping my academic hand (for that, you'll have to wait for the "absolutely riveting" final draft, which, let's be honest, even I won't ever read), I'll tell you that no one else was writing songs like this for musicals in 1954. No one (seriously. I can quantify this. In fact, I DO - in Chapter One). That's what Chapter Three is all about - it discusses the ways in which my girl Dorothy was a singular sensation with a creative voice that was singularly sensational.

In that moment, all the academic hazing of my years in graduate school were once again worth it. Living on no heat and sunflower seeds? Not a problem. Entire summers lost to studying for comprehensives? Child's play. The Spanish Inquisition of oral examinations? It ain't nothin' but a thang, a rite of passage through which I access the dream of making a career of my musical theatre fixation.

Just as Dorothy's voice was a gift to musical theatre, studying her work has been the gift of my (admittedly short-lived) career. In the same way, it's such a gift to be able to pursue my passion. I'm thankful - amidst all the frustrations of academic hemming and hawing - to have been reminded of how blessed I am to love what I do ... even if I sometimes hate it.

Hey - now that I think about it, I remember that the way I'm feeling right now has been expressed in song.

Guess who wrote the lyrics.

"Poor ev'rybody else,
how I pity every body else
but me."
- D. Fields, 1973

Monday, November 1, 2010

Top Five Things to Do When You Should Probably Be Working on Your Dissertation

5) Text your friend Leslie.
4) Talk to your cousin Lori.
3) Wonder what in the world got into Randy Moss.
2) Listen to the Old Crow Medicine Show and wish you were going to their New Year's Eve show in Nashville,

and the number one thing to do when you should probably be working on your dissertation is ...

1) Watch the Kentucky Wildcats play their first exhibition game of the 2010-2011 basketball season!

Two guesses which one I'll be doing.