Still nothing really to write about. I could complain about the nonsense going on at DLG because of the upcoming move — I don’t have access to my Outlook mail (at least not without Dale being privy to it as well) and I certainly don’t have access to Outlook as a planning tool.

(I just realized: it should be, “On nie zna waszego imi,” not “wie.” I always got those two mixed up when I was learning Polish — wiedzieć and znać. Oh well — Krystyna will understand me, proving my point about mistakes being fairly insignificant, and Danuta will get a laugh out of it.)

Back to DLG: It’s really rather unprofessional that I have to send out business email from my Excite account. Of course, who am I really sending email to? People I know personally, and 99% of it is indeed personal email, so what’s the problem? Just something to complain about, I suppose.

Today I have a presentation about the linking tool cum database that we’re working on. In some ways it will be like I’m teaching again — standing in front of a group of people, explaining something. Not quite the same, of course. I don’t care about these people as if they were my younger siblings — such was the case with many of my students. And the analogy breaks down further — no test on the material. That’s good, though. I was always thinking, in the back of my mind, that there must be some way to be a good teacher without ever having to resort to “tests” in the normal sense. (I still feel that way, but in Poland it seems to be a little different–not quite so “cut and dried,” as Mrs. Sams liked to say.)

Yesterday I stayed at home to work and I actually accomplished quite a bit. I was really somewhat surprised. Of course it helped that Whit recently sent in two more chapters, so I have plenty of fresh editing meat to work with. On an annoying note, I can’t get the stupid color-coding toolbar I created at DLG to work here. I had Kali send it to me as an attachment, but it doesn’t work because our version of Word doesn’t have that many text color possibilities. It went berserk (biting its shield and all!) when I tried to turn text “bright green” — no such thing exists in its world. So I made a comment for each and every entry, and today I’ll go through it (big stupid waste of time) and convert it all to green text. Excuse me, to bright green text.

Last night, as I lay in bed (and I suppose as I was getting ready for bed), I was thinking about the fact that I’m supposed to go to Poland in July — late June, actually. As I thought about it, I realized that it’s really not that far away. It’s now mid-February. I could be leaving in four months and a couple of weeks! The point is this: I haven’t been obsessing over it. In fact, I hadn’t even come to realize how close it is, relatively speaking. I’ve been gone for about twice that time, I think. Now that I have a job that I like and a semi-regular schedule, things just seem to be zipping by, so to speak. It reminds me of being in Poland, slipping into bed and realizing that yet another month has gone by.

A few words on my class: I’m finding that I get really excited about the things we talk about often, but not overwhelmingly so. Durkheim is interesting to talk about, but actually to read his stuff — it can be a little tedious. Not nearly as bad as Parsons (based on the one selection I’ve read, that is), but not terribly engaging in a way. I guess in class we just get a distillation of many books in a few moments of lecture. But it has made me wonder whether I do indeed want to change to sociology of religion.

One of the things that I love about sociology, though, is how it provides clear, functional definitions/explications of normal, “everyday” life. Prestige, for example, comes from holding a job that society holds somewhat sacred. The most prestigious job in America (according to many, even most) is Supreme Court justice. It is certainly not the best paid job — Dr. Seligman pointed out that a partner in a law firm can earn many times more than a Supreme Court justice. Yet we see them as something like secular high priests, gate-keepers of democracy and so on. (Of course the fringes of society — particularly on the right side of the political spectrum — view the Supreme Court as something of a farce.) That’s what I want to study about knowledge — how do we get it? How do we keep it? What makes it possible for some people, regarding God, to stop saying, “I believe” and start saying, “I know?”

Yesterday — a great moment — I spent the morning working on a list of terms that Rob is going to submit to Pat (the permissions editor) who in turn will submit it (along with lists from other project managers) to an image clearinghouse to see which images we can buy, simplifying the whole process to some degree. Anyway, as I worked (a somewhat mindless job, compared with editing that is), I listened to NPR, specifically “All Things Considered.” It’s really been years since I listened to it, and it brought back lots of memories: driving to work at Holiday Inn; driving to school for an 8:00 or 9:00 class and sitting in the parking lot, listening to a story. (It was always good when I had Dr. Mr. Woolsey, because he was understanding if I was a few minutes late. Being an NPR fan himself, he let it slide to a degree.) Or, another memory — going to the Richmans’ for work and listening to NPR while working on poetry. (I should write to them as well.)