Ready or not ....

Here they are!

Windless days have their own rewards

I "shipped" the Barcelona-Irony paper! The last part came together quite easily; Ulla read it a couple of times and made good suggestions, and Jack did his "eagle eye" editing job. (AND I didn't have many errors to correct!) Even putting in the references manually was not so bad beacuse they were presented in the correct format in "the irony book." (Though I'm dismayed at how many small errors I've spotted in the book while working with it over the past few weeks.) That's the second job out for publication -- and two, or maybe three, in pretty good shape to be finished before th eend of summer. Way to go!

And what a different tone to my blog from even a week ago!

Diana's back on the Point and raring to go on the Five Minds piece. I hope her enthusiasm will be infectious for everyone else and this piece will not be long in the making.

Otherwise, I'm "dispensing" with a number of messages to WCOB eddresses in order to clear my desk before the family invasion begins tomorrow evening.

Jack coped with the continual lack of wind by turning to boatbuilding (click for demo) and getting the cars ready for their chaufering jobs.

Simple saturday

We didn't even consider sailing today. Not that it was raining, just "June fog" -- but it's July, isn't it? Never mind, blame it all on global warming, and move on.

So Jack and I did various chores in preparation for next week's family invasion, and I worked on the Barcelona-Irony Book Chapter. I'd sent the first draft to Ulla yesterday so we were able to Skype and discuss today. She liked it (relief) and had some suggestions for areas that I had flagged as problematic. I've since dealt with most of these and moved on to the final referencing and formatting.

I tried to update my Endnote to work with Vista (I've been resisting upgradung from my version 8 for some time (Endnote's now at version 11 or 12) but decided that I'd been experiencing enough problems with other applications to deal with this one head-on (and at a cost of $100+). But the Endnote onlne sales website was down, so I have to decide whether to do the references manually or wait. I'd like to get this paper out, so I'd better knuckle down and do references the old fashioned way. I haven't done that in years -- I'm sure to think that $100 will be money well spent!

After reading this morning's Journal, I wonder, does this blog have Creative Elephantiasis? Or is that what all blogs are, by definition?

July 4 @ 15 Charles Street, Lord's Point, Stonington

This is the Grand Union Flag

New (useful) skills

I've "mastered" notetaking! I like to work by first making some handwritten notes -- I've discovered how to do this on my tablet -- THEN, when I have something that will be a trigger for the finished text, I copy and paste a sentence or phrase into the keyboarded document, and continue in tyepface. My handwritten notes automatically change to typeface! Way cool! The only problem is that "Bill Gates" doesn't have translations for the somewhat esoteric vocabularly of organization theory. Maybe, in time, I can train him! THIS is what I want my laptop to do -- work in MY way!

To the substance of the day, I finished the section on ironies of identity and stated to work on Raza's piece on knowledge transfer in India. Raza was a colleague at UMass and we see each other at at least one conference each year. I saw him this year at EAM in DC -- he has a little boy who is severely autistic, and this is clearly a source of great pain for him and his wife. Tomorrow first thing I need to concentrate on writing my commentary of "How does one pour tea into a cup that is full," then I will only have the summary section to write -- plus the endless subsequent revisions to the text! But, as I realized when I was having such troubles earlier this week, I cannot hurry my creative process.

Our count of aborted sails for lack of wind now totals five: two when we got as far as Wind 'n Go, two when we were togged up and close by the beach before we turned back, and now today, when we were almost ready to leave the house before better judgement prevailed. But today all was not lost, and later in the afternoon the wind picked up and we hurried out on the water.

July 3 and we saw 3 sailboats and 2 power boats. Normally there is a steady stream of both heading for July 4 celebrations on Block Island. Was it the "small craft advisory" that was posted at 10 AM, or the price of gas? Take your pick!

Better ...

Writing and sailing were both better today. I took down my collection of "rough water" and "stoic figure-heads" postcards, and substituted cards with a sense of leading the viewer towards a pleasant destination -- at least that's my interpretation, and I'm the only one who counts here!

I settled down to write straight away and conquered the "sad ironies" section, plus I found a workable solution to the fact that I cannot use a copyrighted Dilbert comic strip for the illustration. At 10:30 I checked my email -- only to find a box full of spam-like messages. The irony of neglecting email!

Now I'm grappling with the next section --highlighting ironies of identity. This is my favorite chapter from the book, written by Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera. But it's written in a postmodern, constructionist way and merely sumarizing it destroys its power. I'm not letting myself get depressed -- my feeling today is more of challenge than block. At least here I already have a usable illustration.

This afternoon we headed for the boat as soon as it was apparent that the forecast thunderstorms would pass to the north. The wind was light, but adequate -- I had forgotten how well Wind 'n Go performs in light airs. We didn't venture far -- down towards Mason's Island, round Latimer Light, and back again. It was good to be out on the water.

No more excuses

A 7:15 AM start got me to my campus office by 9. An hour and a half in The Factory sorted out my latest batch of problems on my laptop, and also cleared up some of my problems with "inking" -- I tried to insert some handwriting here, without success. More learning is needed!

Few people were around, so I quickly accomplished my task list, reviewed the files waiting for me in my office, discussed future plans with Lynda, printed papers to analyze for "the discursive construction of learning," called Jack to say, "I'm ready to get out of here" and we headed back along I95.

Coming onto the Point at about 4 PM we looked at every flag -- was there or wasn't there enough wind for a sail? The Orr flag indicated wind, so we lost no time in getting out to Wind 'n Go. But where was the wind? Gone! For the second time in a week, we headed back to shore without even taking the sail cover off. Ironically, about half an hour later there was a steady breeze again.

So, I had no excuse but to apply myself to the paper that is beginning to take over my sanity. For three days I have made very little -- I should say no-- progress on a particular section; today I was determined to write something. Maybe I wrote a sentence, definitely not more. Nothing substantial. The publication deadline is fast approaching. I don't like having writer's block.

How shall I get out of it? Think back to inspired writing days ... I had a really good writing period in while in Florida; so I'll begin tomorrow by enjoying my blog from that time to put me in the mood. And NO EMAIL before "the sad story of fun at work" has reached first draft status.