Tuesday, October 05, 2004

A Tennessee goth

Listening to R.E.M.'s new album, Around the Sun, just out today. Call me square, I still love them. I'd listened to the streaming version of it and had been disappointed, though it should have been obvious that it wasn't the best presentation. I'm really enjoying it. Since Bill Berry left, they've been too fussy with the studio production. Take Logic Pro away and put the effing Rickenbacker in Peter Buck's hands and turn it up to 11 and we're set. Still, they're great.

***

Argh. Can I say, argh? I haven't touched here upon the moderately long-running soap era of which I've been part since taking this job at UTC. It's old news so I'll give the super ultra-condensed version: I'd looked for a nice apartment near campus, found one, expressed some concerns for some modifications needed, to which all parties involved nodded in happy agreement. Five days before I was to move in, I dropped by to see what was up, as no one would ever return my phone calls. Well, nothing was up. Six weeks had passed and they'd done nothing. After enlisting the Dean on my behalf, it turns out a few low-level flunkies had been kicking me around all summer without ever doing anything, or talking to anyone higher-up who could actually make these decisions.

The end result is that, in October, I still have nowhere to live. Luckily, I have family in the area and have been commuting. And the plan is that I'll be moving into a dormitory. Yay. Yes, it's an apartment and it's ok, though inaccessible (a whole other tangle), but still, I'll be living around some of my students, which just bugs me.

And the most vexing thing is that I need to hire a couple of people to help with basic daily stuff, which is always hard to do, and now, in the middle of a semester when people already have schedules and jobs, is made that much harder, thanks to institutional ineptitude.

So I'm feeling discouraged today. This weekend I sent out an email to the faculty/staff listserv about it, where I'm essentially filed with COUCH FOR SALE and UT TICKETS NEEDED.

So, I have a couch to sell. And a conch. But you can't hear the sea at all.

2 comments:

Annette in Alaska said...

What sort of stuff do you need done? At what time? You can email me. My schedule is relatively flexible, and I'm looking for some distraction from working at the Finger constantly.

Cori said...

( I still love them too!)