It's been Spirit Week here at good old UB, with silly activities all week, that I've been avoiding. Last night there were some fireworks following a bonfire, and today UB's proud Bulls football team took on the Owls of Temple University! I stayed home and read a book for class.

According to a live-blog, the Bulls started off by fumbling the opening kickoff. It was all downhill from there, to a 42-0 denouement. Go team! And don't come back! The live-blogger seems to have given up at about halftime, after having called for a mercy-rule at just twenty minutes in.

Frustratingly, the football team costs literally millions of dollars a year for UB. For some schools, football teams are a profit center. Not here. Not many people pay good money for tickets to watch games like that.

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Another interesting thing about being a grad student, is the paper assignments tend to be much more flexibly worded. We are expected to follow our own muse (Clio, preferably) and write something interesting.

I mention this because today I turned in my first substantial paper of the semester, and during a class break I talked about it with some of the other people that did that paper. (That is, the paper was for my Wednesday class, but it's a small world in grad school, even in a university with about 30k students. Over half the students in my Wednesday seminar are also in my Monday seminar.) Anyway, talking it over, we found we'd all taken extremely divergent tacks. Hopefully the prof likes the diversity.

And in other news, the old adage about "If you've lost something, retrace your steps!" does indeed work. It helps that our departmental offices are on the fifth floor of a building that is off the campus's main drag, so not many people wander by to disturb gloves that people like me have dropped on the floor.

Posted by: Boviate at 09:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I and my GF attended a party for the history department faculty, staff, and graduate students. I'm not a real party-hearty type, but there are quite a few professors that I've never talked to. Also, while I know most of my fellow first-year grad students, I don't know many of those that have been in for a while.

It was potluck, students to bring desert and faculty to bring entrees; I made my customary angel food cake with whipped-cream-and-blueberry topping. The topping proved to be the most popular- I have it to the side so people can put on however much they want, and lactose-intolerant types can avoid it. Well, people were piling it on all sorts of deserts brought by other people, as well as eating it plain. It's kind of like blueberry ice cream, except even more fattening!

Several people brought their young children, which was entertaining. There was alcohol, paid for out of the department's entertainment budget- woo hoo! Except I didn't drink, as I was driving, and I am also a total lightweight.

I didn't stay all that long, but I got to know a bunch of people, and I had a good time.

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Solomon Burke has died. He wrote and originally performed "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" which has been covered by just about everyone. He was no one-hit wonder, though.

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I kind of liked being an undergrad at a massive state university. I was free to do my own thing; while there was a path to graduation, so many classes were available that I had a great deal of flexibility in choosing which ones to take. If I liked a professor, I could get to know him; if I didn't like the prof, I could disappear into the herd of students.

Last week, in my Wednesday class the professor recommended that we attend a conference being given Thursday. I skipped, to do work for my Thursday night class.

So this week, we meet again, and the professor says "Well, I spent about three hours at the conference, and didn't see any of you. Did anyone show up later, after I'd left?" There was an embarrassed silence among the dozen students in my seminar.

"Well, at first I was irritated," said the professor. "Then I decided you all must have been home doing academic work. So that's OK. Also, I left early because the conference was interdisciplinary, and it was becoming clear that, shall we say, the literary criticism people engage with the past in a very… ah … different manner than historians."

"Anyway, there's another seminar being given Friday, on cultural assimilation. I'm sure Boviate's going, he's in Doctor G_'s class. The rest of you might be interested too!"

And that last paragraph was what freaked me out a little. Because I'd never discussed my other classes with this prof– so she knew that I was in there because she and Dr. G_ have been talking about their students. There are less than thirty new grad students this year, so we're easily kept track of, but it makes me miss my protective anonymity.

Posted by: Boviate at 11:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As long as I'm doing music, check this performer out. She's from South Africa, and uses a technique I'd never seen before.

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And now, I present to you a performance of the 1825 composition, "Duetto buffo di due gatti" performed by Les Petits Chanteurs à la Croix de Bois in 1996. The soloists are Hyacinthe de Moulins and Regis Mengus.

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I always wondered how a mechanical watch works. I've read explanations, but even with still photos it was kind of cryptic. Behold, video!

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I was feeling strong yesterday, so I got my crash-damaged bike onto the bike rack… barely. I got to the bike shop where I bought it only a half hour before they closed, explained the problems, and told them I'd be back on Tuesday (as the shop was closed Monday for Labor Day.) The mechanic insisted I stay, so I did. They closed the door and were vacuuming up by the time it was finished, but I have to give Campus Wheelworks some major love for working late to get a job done.

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The weather we've got right now, I could make s'mores by pouring a marshmallow straight out of the bag and on to a graham cracker. It is just roasting. But Friday there is supposed to be a 30 degree swing. I expect some kind of serious winds.

The heat has forced me to break tradition. Since I came back to school, I've been dressing up for the first day of classes. But Monday I put on a tie, walked outside, then decided it wasn't worth dying from heatstroke. I've been doing polo shirts so far this semester, which is dressy as I can manage without feeling in danger of a heat injury.

Amusingly, for my Monday class, the professor started off by apologizing for her attire, saying it was unprofessional. (She had on Bermuda shorts and a casual blouse.) Apparently before class she'd gone to the pool to pick up her 10-year-old daughter, as local schools don't open for another week. Somehow she dropped the dress she was going to ware for class, into the pool.

Seeing as how I'd dressed down for the day, I wasn't going to criticize. Also, one of my favorite professors dresses down every day. The first class I had with Doc T, when I walked in he was sitting in the front row of the lecture hall, wearing tattered jeans, sandals, and a t-shirt. I assumed he was a non-traditional student until he checked his watch, stood up, walked to the front, and started lecturing!

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