Hello from a long time!

Long time no see!  My co-author has been doing all the postings recently (like for at least the past month, probably embarassingly longer than that).  There are several reasons for this.  One is that at the mid-semester point, we switch modules in all the undergrad courses - which means my (mercifully light) teaching schedule got turned upside down 5 weeks ago.  Another is that I got tired of bragging about how pretty it is here.  We have a ton more pictures from Hogsback that are gorgeous, but what's the point?  ...and so they haven't made it off the camera yet.  But they will.  Someday.  I'll also eventually finish the last post I started writing, sooner or later.



So what's new?
Today was a good day.  I've been managing to cram time for research in amid the teaching, which always fills me with a sense of accomplishment.  And Wednesday is my most research-ful day, so it tends to put me in a good mood.  Also, I've now got students doing their own research.  That's even cooler!  I think I'm more excited about their work than they are sometimes.  I tried to hide that at first, but it has not gone well.  And so they are perplexed by my enthusiasm.  And so work stuff is good.

Speaking of unwarranted enthusiasm, I now have a retainer!  Okay, not really.  Technically, it's a jaw splint, to do...something...to my jaw while it heals from being wanged by a bokken at Aikido club the last time I went.  But it means that I now talk like a confused 12 year old with a retainer, which I find endlessly fascinating.  Not being phoneticians or phonologists, other people have trouble understanding why being incomprehensible is so amusing to me.  And that's okay.

In other news, Al has been a saint about being patient while she waits for bureaucracy.  If there is one thing that South Africa does exceptionally well, even by any international standards, it is red tape.  It's not that there's so much of it.  It's that it's of such a high calibur: robust and sticky, and practically double-sided.  You just can't get free of it.  For her work permit, she apparently needs to first apply for a new visa (even though she's already got one), and must submit some of the same documentation.  Like a criminal history from the FBI, and a chest x-ray; things we submitted before, that home affairs must have on file somewhere.  But they want them again, I guess.  Who can blame them?  Chest x-rays are cool!  But also she's got to deal with weird, weird requests, like 'please send us a certified copy of your undergraduate research project' (which is not a thing, I guess, except here?).  So, props and encouragement to her.

In other other news, we're going back to the USSA!  Well, not for a while.  But June 18, we head back, for an unreasonably long – though busybusy – stint stateside.  It was going to be shorter, but then I was asked to teach at the African Linguistics School in Nigeria in July.  This is a super big deal to me, but it was at an inconvenient time, since my best friend Ted is supposed to get married July 22, and my other best friend Sylvia is having her wedding on July 13.  (So, sorry, Ted, I have to go to Nigeria.).  And so everything got shuffled around, and I need to now be in the NY/NJ area long enough to get a Nigerian visa, which is not a simple process.  Especially because the website tells you to do a different set of things than what you actually need to do.  So add in 3-10 days of hard thinking to remember how many money orders to bring to the consulate, and a week to get to Boston and to a wedding, plus 2 weeks in Nigeria for the ALS, and our 2-week holiday kerploded into a 6 week sojourn.  At least for me – my co-author is not bound by such requirements.

Okay, now it's time to go do dinner or something.  This post has made me remember how much I enjoy keeping in touch with people, so I'm going to try to make sure it isn't another 7-12 weeks until my next one.  Will out.

P.S. Good luck to my friends Jeremy and Aaron with their dissertation defenses next week!  Send them good vibes, everyone!  Or, I guess, do something useful instead.  Either way.