Christmas Newsletter 2008

You know, every time I sit down to write in my journal (rare), or give an update about life to friends or family (even rarer), I have the initial urge to write, “It’s been a crazy year” or week, or day, or five minutes. But the truth is that it has not been so crazy. It’s been interesting, sometimes, and compelling to me (it’s my life, after all), but not really crazy.

Alex and I had a nice year. Okay, I did. You’ll have to ask Alex if she did. We continued our frustrating long-distance marriage, but we got to spend some good time together. We both achieved milestones with work/school, and we both got a few non-work/school things done. We got to travel a bit, too. We went to Chicago (twice, as it turned out), went camping in Algonquin Provincial Park (here in Ontario), and I went to Monterrey, Mexico a couple of times.

Alex did a whole bunch of stuff, both academically and extracurricular…ly. Yeah, that’s totally a word. She has been rescuing Young Women from near-certain spiritual death and boredom all year, she’s acted (starred, really) in five plays, and she (drum roll please) FINISHED HER DISSERTATION! YAY!

And now, the questions you were too shy to ask:

Q: What is up with your plans to live in the same country as your wife?

A: In August, when the end of the dissertation was firmly in sight, we turned in our application for Alex to get U.S. residency. It was a massive pain in the butt. It involved hundreds of dollars in expenses (if you ever need to get something notarized in Canada, it might be cheaper to make a trip back to the U.S. just for this purpose), lots of documentation, and hassle for some very helpful friends who were willing to fill out affidavits for the gubmint (strange; my spell-check does not say “gubmint” is spelled wrong; gotta check that spell-check). Notably, Alex did most of the work.

Well, we shoulda sent in our application earlier. The processing center seems to have about an 8-month backlog. Maybe they’ll look at ours in March or April. Then we will have to drop everything and travel to Montreal (it’s not negotiable) for one of those interviews, just like in Green Card. I wonder if the immigration officer will find it funny if I tell him or her that Alex eats bird seed. Probably not.

In the meantime, it seemed important that Alex be able to continue eating and have a place to live, so she signed up for another semester teaching (TAing, really) at McMaster University. And, of course, she signed up for another play. She seems to have reached the point, in the community theater scene here in Hamilton, where she doesn’t even have to audition. Directors call her and offer her parts. Huh.

Q: Alex acts? Why didn’t I know about this?

A: She’s really quiet and sneaky about her acting, that’s why. This year, she was busy. Let’s see if I can remember all her parts.

• A murderous queen in Macbeth
• A tough representative of the U.S. Government in Two Rooms
• A deep-thinking astrophysics grad student hippie in The Constant K Determines the Ultimate Fate of the Universe
• One of several “town without pity” types who drive Romeo & Juliet to their deaths in Fair Verona
• A literary protegé in Collected Stories

All her roles were raved about and generally complimented to the heavens. However, her Macbeth, Two Rooms, and Collected Stories performance were especially well received. She’s still getting compliments about them, as far as I can tell. I’m not an actor anymore — well, if you don’t count the 5 minutes onstage with Alex in The Constant K — but I remember what they look like. Alex is most definitely an actor, and a good one. (Note: apparently everyone is an “actor” now, and “actress” is out of fashion. However, Alex answers to both)

Q: What’s all this nonsense about academic pursuits?

A: Alex and I have both managed to smoosh school and career together into an unholy alliance of academia and the real world. Me, I had lots of fun this year; I taught statistics, a new course  on sexual offending and abuse (how to prevent it), and my regular graduate classes in the clinical psychology program at UTPA. I also got involved in some international research that will (I hope) bear its first real fruit in Spring 2009. It involves collecting data from students both at UTPA and at UANL in Monterrey, Mexico. I’ve traveled to Monterrey twice this year already, and will probably double or triple that next year. I’ve had the good fortune to present my research during both Monterrey trips, and also in Chicago last spring (just a poster, but it was enough to travel). I’ve submitted a manuscript to a professional journal, and have another couple in the works. One was shafted by a journal last year, and another was shafted by my co-author and former adviser. Oh well. So that’s me.

Alex has been a TA for Latin, and was also hired this semester to teach a course all by her lonesome: The Roman Family. It’s sort of an area of specialty for her. From what I can tell, the course went well, and she was great; but it also seems to have been frustrating in some ways (evening classes… always a little weird to teach). She’s TAing another history course in the spring. But most important of the year was….

ALEX DEFENDED HER DISSERTATION!!!1! She was all worried, and, like, “I’m so scared!” and stuff, and I was all like, “You gonna rock da haus, woman,” and as it turns out I was right. Everything went extremely well. Her committee members from McMaster and her co-chair from Notre Dame took her out to dinner and suggested only minor changes. That’s about as good as any dissertation ever goes. She’s extremely awesome. Now, she just needs to make the small changes, do the obnoxious formatting (all universities require strange formatting for dissertations), and then she’s done! But I call her Dr. Holbrook now, anyway.

Q: Travel? Aren’t you poor? How do you travel so much?

A: Well, as a prof, I get a little bit of travel money each year, which I can use as long as the trip is for the purpose of presenting research (usually a poster). It’s not much, but it will usually cover one trip. Last academic year (2007-2008), my favorite conference was in Chicago. Alex and I had already zipped down there during the winter, for one of her conferences, and we went back in the spring. Chicago is nice. We wandered about, saw some Shakespeare (Comedy of Errors), gawked at the big buildings, etc. Right at the end of our summer togetherness, my university asked me to go to a conference in Boston. Yay. So, I gave up 4 or 5 days of my time with Alex to go recruiting. I don’t know what good it did, but it was interesting to see Boston. Then it was suddenly a new academic year and I got a paper accepted at a conference in Monterrey. The trip was cheap (its only a few hours’ drive from Edinburg), but the conference was stupid expensive. Now, I might have enough left for another trip, but not a big one.

Of course, there’s our traveling to see each other, as well. So far, in the 3.5 years we’ve been together, this means I travel up here (Hamilton, Ontario) for the winter holidays and for the summer break, as well as traveling 3 to 4 more times per year. Alex usually visits me twice. Though I am most certainly not well-to-do, I am not poor, either; I have a good, steady job. Traveling to see Alex takes about 10% of my income. Yet another reason to live together (as if we needed more reasons).

Q: Do you have some kind of wrap-up holiday message, by any chance?

A: Why, yes. Yes, I do. I hope the joy of the holidays fills all your hearts to the point that you think it’s going to be either a myocardial infarction or at least some kind of severe gastric event, but ends up just being a whole boatload of holiday joy.