The Go-To Girl

I use to need an alarm clock to get up at 4:00 a.m. these days, not any more…

So I wake up; it’s 4:00 a.m., and I’m, like, wide awake, I can’t get back to sleep, so I tackle one of the shitload of stuff I have to do. Type up meeting notes for my condo association meeting. Because I’m the secretary-treasurer. I’m secretary-treasurer because all the other people are either too busy or would embezzle the money.

The notes get finished and it’s 4:30 a.m. It’s too early to throw in a load of laundry. I’m not ready to grade essays yet. I start finishing the scripts for my film competition this weekend. I like doing the film competitions because it’s a creative break from the academic snafu I’m dealing with. The organizing, and casting, and hauling equipment to my car is pain, but once things get started it’s pretty fun.

Around 7:30 a.m. I get back to my dissertation. My advisor told me to be ready to defend in case the Provost approves. So I return to the idea of Lebenswelt as articulated by Gadamer who is referencing Husserl. Lebenswelt…life-world. How would this apply to an ex-slave like Frederick Douglass, and why is it important? I managed to figure out that it’s important because Douglass questions the a priori assumptions of life of slave through his autobiographies, or something like that. I’ll refine it.

I fix a quarter pot of coffee around 9:00 a.m. Only two hours to go until this online house auction being held by my local county. I’m bidding on a 6000 sq. ft house that will need renovation only a mile from where I live. It’s only two family flat. My bank gave me thousands upon thousands in cash to buy it, but it looks like I can get it for $500 if not a couple grand. The investors won’t touch it because it requires renovation, and those carpetbaggers are all about quick turn-around to collect rent money from the college kids. That’s fine by me. If I can get away from my downstairs neighbor, I’ll fucking camp out in that house.

I have a bowl of cereal for breakfast and begin putting film equipment in my car: C-stands, lights, extension cords, monitor, costumes, makeup, etc…a good one-hour workout.

I also bought a macbook on Ebay for $360. Nothing fancy. 13 inch monitor, duo-core, with an intel chip. The G4 CPU my sister gave me is great even though it’s like an OS kitty cat instead of Leopard or Tiger or Lion…but I like Garageband and iWork. And I’ll have portable editing for filmmaking vs. Windows which, even if my laptop had a octo-core still couldn’t handle HD film smoothly as an Apple does.

The most intense weekend I’ve had for a while, but that’s the cost of living.

And I’m out.