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I had a really nice time going out for dinner with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
restoman last night! Despite the fact that he lives about a block from me, I think that was the first time I've spent more time with him than dropping in for a brief visit or catching a ride to the grocery store. It's a reminder that there is life outside of all this reading, and that I need to get back to living it. Maybe next semester will be a bit less of a system shock.
I don't actually have any classes the rest of this week. Naomi Klein is speaking on campus during class time tomorrow evening, and the professor cancelled class in favor of her lecture. I'm wavering about going. I'd like to, but I could use the time to work, too.
My usual Wednesday class is also cancelled, replaced with 15 minute individual meetings about our term papers. That class has been a slog for me. When my focus was on engaging current issues of urban social justice, it made a lot of sense for me take a politics of public policy class. But the literature is rather more quantitative than I'm used to, is generally unfamiliar, and honestly is rather discouraging as I learn more about how things work behind the curtain. I've read a few things that were really eye-opening, like E. E. Schatschneider's The Semisovereign People, but generally it's been hard to get through. My term paper is going to apply social construction theory to transportation policy. Social construction theory posits that a significant factor in the creation of policy is how that policy's target groups are perceived in terms of deservingness or undeservingness, and power vs. lack of power. There hasn't been much work on that in transportation, and I hypothesize that motorists are seen as more deserving than transit users and cyclists, who are seen as in a dependent, inferior position in comparison, and that that shapes policy decisions in terms of transportation spending, among other things. But navigating the literature around this is intimidating, and I only have a month or so left. I have a feeling that most of my Thanksgiving break will be spent working on papers.
At least Danae will be here with me! (Probably working on her own schoolwork.) She's flying out from Evanston to spend a week and a half with me over the break; I'm more than a little excited about seeing her again!
What else is going on? My legs are still a little sore from the VO2max test! But I still decided to bike over to Price Chopper for more spinach after school. Man, does this city have hills! I also bought some La Choy chow mein noodles because they appeared at first glance to be the same as La Choy rice noodles. They actually aren't, but they're close and they will do for salad.
In looking around for local poly resources, I found and signed up on a forum called The Bird Cage. It's cutely and consistently themed, and feels a bit old school in that it's a stand-alone forum unto itself, rather than a part of some larger thing like Meetup or Yahoo Groups or Fetlife. It seems to be fairly quiet these days, but myself, a moderator, and another new person had a conversation about poly-related books that may have led to a book club breaking out. I just ordered a used copy of More Than Two from Amazon, and I look forward both to the book discussion and the socializing that such things (hopefully) catalyze. And I made a new LJ-friend out of it too, which is always nice! This place, more than almost any other on the 'net, continues to feel like home.
I'm tired this evening. I think I'm going to get to bed early. Time to check off all my tasks on Habitica (Do any of my readers use that?) and get to bed. G'night.
restoman last night! Despite the fact that he lives about a block from me, I think that was the first time I've spent more time with him than dropping in for a brief visit or catching a ride to the grocery store. It's a reminder that there is life outside of all this reading, and that I need to get back to living it. Maybe next semester will be a bit less of a system shock.I don't actually have any classes the rest of this week. Naomi Klein is speaking on campus during class time tomorrow evening, and the professor cancelled class in favor of her lecture. I'm wavering about going. I'd like to, but I could use the time to work, too.
My usual Wednesday class is also cancelled, replaced with 15 minute individual meetings about our term papers. That class has been a slog for me. When my focus was on engaging current issues of urban social justice, it made a lot of sense for me take a politics of public policy class. But the literature is rather more quantitative than I'm used to, is generally unfamiliar, and honestly is rather discouraging as I learn more about how things work behind the curtain. I've read a few things that were really eye-opening, like E. E. Schatschneider's The Semisovereign People, but generally it's been hard to get through. My term paper is going to apply social construction theory to transportation policy. Social construction theory posits that a significant factor in the creation of policy is how that policy's target groups are perceived in terms of deservingness or undeservingness, and power vs. lack of power. There hasn't been much work on that in transportation, and I hypothesize that motorists are seen as more deserving than transit users and cyclists, who are seen as in a dependent, inferior position in comparison, and that that shapes policy decisions in terms of transportation spending, among other things. But navigating the literature around this is intimidating, and I only have a month or so left. I have a feeling that most of my Thanksgiving break will be spent working on papers.
At least Danae will be here with me! (Probably working on her own schoolwork.) She's flying out from Evanston to spend a week and a half with me over the break; I'm more than a little excited about seeing her again!
What else is going on? My legs are still a little sore from the VO2max test! But I still decided to bike over to Price Chopper for more spinach after school. Man, does this city have hills! I also bought some La Choy chow mein noodles because they appeared at first glance to be the same as La Choy rice noodles. They actually aren't, but they're close and they will do for salad.
In looking around for local poly resources, I found and signed up on a forum called The Bird Cage. It's cutely and consistently themed, and feels a bit old school in that it's a stand-alone forum unto itself, rather than a part of some larger thing like Meetup or Yahoo Groups or Fetlife. It seems to be fairly quiet these days, but myself, a moderator, and another new person had a conversation about poly-related books that may have led to a book club breaking out. I just ordered a used copy of More Than Two from Amazon, and I look forward both to the book discussion and the socializing that such things (hopefully) catalyze. And I made a new LJ-friend out of it too, which is always nice! This place, more than almost any other on the 'net, continues to feel like home.
I'm tired this evening. I think I'm going to get to bed early. Time to check off all my tasks on Habitica (Do any of my readers use that?) and get to bed. G'night.
