Painting for Zoe

Tonight I finally started painting Zoe's room. We're painting it "Spun Honey," a shade of yellow. I'm not that good at home improvement projects, but it feels nice to be painting the room for her. It seems to make it more fully hers. Tomorrow night we paint the second (and hopefully final) coat. Sadly, I can taste the paint after breathing the fumes for hours.

In other news, I was surprised to find that I've fallen for "Chuck," a new NBC show. The show seemed absurd based on ads I'd seen and news I'd read, but I'd earlier seen a bit of the premiere while waiting for "Heroes" to start and so tuned in last night. I found it laugh-out-loud funny and very well done. In fact, I was so satisfied that I didn't bother watching all of "Heroes."

Tomorrow: The October JFP comes out.

Changes

It would seem that the decision to start a blog was a good way to fill up downtime as I started to put together the full draft of my dissertation, but it was clearly not something that I could keep up with while finalizing the draft. As I became more immersed in finally finishing it, the work gained momentum, and when there was downtime, it was spent resting (or, if energy permitted, packing).

In the time since I last posted, Rhonda and I have moved down to South Carolina and into the house we bought (our first), we have started teaching in our new jobs at Newberry College, and I have successfully defended the dissertation. Rhonda’s pregnancy is progressing well, and little Zoe is due at the end of the month. Also, my sister, Heather, has given birth to a baby boy, Colin.

I was already an uncle by marriage, but now I am … a blood uncle?

Colin was a very big baby: 9 pounds, 1 ounce and 22 inches. He arrived this past Sunday (September 30^th). Both sister and nephew are doing fine. Here is a photo of little Colin getting a head start on his tan … no wait, that’s not a tanning bed; it’s just a heating lamp!

Newberry Opera House

This is the Newberry Opera House (facing Memorial Park) in Newberry, SC. (The photo was taken from the top floor of the Hampton Inn, across from the Opera House on Nance Street.) It was built in 1881 and extensively renovated in the 1990s (beginning in 1992 and finishing in 1998). The design is (according to its website) “an excellent example of Victorian civic eclectic architecture.” The site also claims that it is “French Gothic inspired” and “Victorian Gothic.” In any case, it is a very nice building: it catches light beautifully, and my eyes were continuously drawn to it. And it is now a state of the art performance facility. Although it does not appear to host actual operas, it does have a long list of performers coming through, ranging from blues and jazz to Kris Kristofferson. The aims of renovating the Opera House (aside from the desire to restore it to it former glory) was to give the area a stronger cultural identity and help lead a business revival. As far as we could tell, it seems to be succeeding in this aim, anchoring the town visually, culturally, and economically.

The new house we just bought (although we haven’t closed yet) is a few blocks north of the Opera House and just off Nance Street. It sits on a little hillock above the police station, and from the driveway you look straight out at the Opera House. It’s quite a nice view. You can’t actually see our place from the Nance-Street corner of the Opera House; however, you can see the white 1808 Gauntt House (home of the Newberry County Historical Museum). Our house is tucked away behind the trees to the right of the Gauntt House. You can see the Gauntt House in the photo below: it’s the white house up on the hill.

Busy Summer

Life has been busy here in Centrasota. The dissertation is humming along (slowly, but there is humming). And we've taken two trips: a five-day trip to the Bay Area and a four-day trip to Omaha, NE. Both were to visits to friends, and both trips whet my appetite for owning a home, so this Wednesday we head off for Newberry, SC to buy a house. Before we leave, I hope to post on our two recent trips; however, I'm finding that solid dissertating (combined with preparing to move) and active blogging do not (for me) go hand in hand.

Above is a photo of our duplex on an especially nice summer day. The clouds looked so very nice and so I grabbed the camera and ran out for quick photo. The skies can be quite nice here, and it can make all the difference for the landscape, which is beautiful when the sky is right.

Baby Thinking

We had our Week 18 ultrasound this past Tuesday. Those who know us know that our first baby had trisomy 13 and so did not make it past Week 24. It was during our Week 19 ultrasound that we first began to get a sense of how serious her condition was; thus, we were both a bit more nervous that I realized as we headed for new baby's latest ultrasound. It was a long one (about forty-five minutes), but all went well: the doctor said that everything looks great. In fact, she went so far as to say that she guarantees that new baby has no genetic defects. While the superstitious side of me cringed, it was good to hear. Indeed, everything looked remarkably normal, which in this case was wonderful.

We got lots of photos from the session. Above is one in which new baby looks like she's thinking. Also, the ultrasound technician confirmed that she is a girl. Back in Week 12 a different ultrasound technician predicted female based on a new experimental method for determining sex in Week 12 that the technician had just learned. The technician this time had a difficult time confirming the sex, however, as new baby was being very modest: she kept her legs together and pulled up, and as the technician tried to get her to change positions, she actually crossed her ankles. Eventually, however, she relented, kicking her legs out for all to see: definitely female.

She also looks really cute. R told me that babies initially look much like they do in the womb, so we might just have a cute baby on our hands. Yes, yes, I know that all babies are cute ...

Finally, the estimated due date still appears to be correct: it was October 31st this time, just a day later than the earlier estimate.

And she's moving quite a bit. R felt her at the start of Week 16, and I was able to clearly feel her this past Thursday. It was wonderful.

Happiness

Pokey sleeping on an armchair.

Pandora's Box

I recently finished watching the new Criterion edition of Pandora's Box. This is a fantastic movie. It's amazing to think that it had been largely unavailable to audiences for decades, even though it is one of the seminal films of the Weimar era (up there with Metropolis). DVD continues to revolutionize the ability of the ordinary (if avid) viewer to become further acquainted with the history of film, and Criterion continues to lead the way. The quality of the picture is surprisingly good, and I've just started to listen to the commentary, which so far is also surprisingly good. The commentary is by Thomas Elsaesser and Mary Ann Doane. Elsaesser is at the University of Amersterdam and the author of Wiemar Cinema and After (among other books). (His site is at http://home.hum.uva.nl/oz/elsaesser/.) Doane is at Brown University and the author of Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (among other books). The DVD has been getting excellent reviews all over the place, and Dave Kehr of the New York Times hit upon the best possible description: "a definitive edition of a seemingly inexhaustible film."

The story is rather simple in its basics: Lulu is an object of universal desire; she also seems to need a father figure of sorts and yet seeks satisfaction of this need in the wrong places. Further, the jealousies and dependencies and enabling of those who want her shape an ultimately tragic course for her. Lulu's tragic end is especially well-done. While I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't yet seen the film, I can perhaps safely say this: in the end, Lulu, an iconic image of the desirable, comes face-to-face with one whose primary desire is to destroy such images.

(Photo copyright: Criterion Collection 2006)

Mississippi River Headwaters

Rhonda's parents visited us last weekend, and on Saturday we drove up north to the headwaters of the Mississippi River, located in Itasca State Park. It was about a three hour drive and well worth it - it's a beautiful spot and the new visitors centers (one at the south entrance to the park and one by the headwaters themselves) are quite nice and informative. There were not many people there, most likely since it was cold (a high of about 49F) and overcast, and so I was able to get a picture of the headwaters with just one person (Rhonda's mother) in it (barely). The headwaters start at the rocks (which were put there in the 1930s so that visitors could be sure of where the river started). If a drop of rain (or something else) were to fall into the river here, it would take 90 days to make it to the Gulf of Mexico.

Editing the Dissertation

I am attempting to finish a dissertation on the early Wittgenstein. I am currently proofreading my first full draft. I am surprised both by how much I'm enjoying this stage of the process and by how slow it is going. The most difficult part of each day is what to do with myself when I cannot edit anymore. I find it dangerous to leave the house or to get caught up in a task that's too demanding. On Monday my break was watching Michael Haneke's excellent and harrowing The Time of the Wolf (Le Temps du Loup) (2003). Yesterday I downloaded Internet Explorer (which takes a surprisingly long time to download) in order to watch Netflix movies over the internet. The first movie I chose (Heading South (2005)) downloaded almost instantly and the quality was quite good, although I only had time and energy to watch the first twenty minutes. We receive (per month) an hour of internet viewing for each dollar of our monthly subscription fee. We've been members of Netflix for awhile now (since 2002) and I have been impressed with the company as it has grown and expanded its services since then. And they have helped to keep me sane while writing the dissertation.