Crossing

So I tried to put this photo of Q waiting to cross the street on her trike—taken by my lovely wife, of course—up for the blog header, but it didn't sit well up top. Still, I like it so much that I'm posting it on its own. To appreciate it properly, give it a click to see it full scale. Then have a look at (among other things) what my wife chose to bring in to focus and what she left soft.

We're lucky to have someone so good to make a record of our lives. She can even make me look good, which is doing something.

D'oh!

Here we are Simpsonized, courtesy of my lovely wife.  (Notice how hot she's made herself, by the way; she assures me that it's "accurate.")  It's great fun, especially if you're a fan, which I am.

(Note:  Picture not necessarily to scale.  While I'd like to think that I have a juicy, chess-club brain, I don't think my head normally affects the tides.)

Job lag

It's August in New York, which means that every time you step outside, the air is such that you feel like a large, well-paid man has put a pillow over your face. And it smells. Someone somewhere described the smell of the City in August as reminiscent of a thawing refrigerator. Though our neighborhood is a little better in this regard than, say, our old Greenwich Village street, the analogy is nevertheless a good one. So there's that.

My apologies for the largeish gap between posts. I've started my new job, which is straight up M-F 9-5 with commute, and I'm still recovering from job lag. I knew, of course, that the change from a "pure academic" to an administrator would be radical, primarily because I would go from seeing my kids several hours each day (and at least one entire day per week) to seeing them for roughly two hours before their beds get them for the night. Instead of making dinner for them every weekday evening, I ask what and whether they ate.

Q and The Boy have adjusted fairly well to the change, it seems. They've noticed--The Boy did ask why I was coming home so late from work now--but if my being gone more has shattered their earth, they've disguised it quite well. As a good friend of mine advised me, you will be affected much more than the kids (and affected by them not being that affected, alas). And, of course, she's right.

Things are rather different. Traditional academics (those who teach and research for publication in professional journals) are essentially idea entrepreneurs. They manage businesses of one, developing and promoting concepts and arguments on their own wherever and whenever they can. Like other entrepeneurs in business and whatnot, they make their own hours (more or less), and work when and as hard as they want. And like other entrepreneurs, the work never really goes away. Non-academics often sigh heavily with deep longing or jealousy when they think of professorial Summer Vacation once classes have ended in May. (As the old saw goes, the best three reasons to teach are June, July, and August.) But Summer Vacation is just a myth really. June through August was (and is) a harrowing time for me and many young academics especially. Many professors at all levels take up summer teaching to supplement anemic salaries. More importantly, it's a time shot through with dread over finishing and sending out papers so that they can begin to crawl through the criminally slow mill of peer review. Invariably I never get enough done.

This pressure still haunts me now despite my commiting, in body and mind, to clock out at 5:00 p.m. each day, leaving my work on my desk in a dark office. I guess the lag will be a little longer than I thought.

More on idea entrepreneurship later.

Here's a question—

We had some friends over this weekend — friends we hadn't seen in nearly three years — and we ran into a question that I had thought a little about but hadn't settled. The Boy is four years old now, as is our friends' older girl, and they're old enough to engage adults in a proper way. The four of us (the adults, that is), got to wondering to each exactly what the proper way is these days.

All this was clear when I was The Boy's age. Even close friends of my parents that we saw often were to be called Mr. or Mrs. So-And-So, with a Dr. thrown in when appropriate. Perhaps this stems from many of my parents' friends also providing many of the major services in town, which meant that I always tended to think of them in terms of the principal, the optometrist, the fire chief. No doubt my brother and would have addressed them formally anyway; it was just how things were done.

Now, though, when we talk with Q and The Boy about their friends and their friends' families, we tend to use the first of the adults, and Q and The Boy know them by those names. Our friends this weekend, though, more or less asked us how their kids should address us. And frankly I'm not quite sure. It's not that I'm that uncomfortable with formality — my students tend to call me "professor" or "doctor." I also believe that respect isn't a function of title but instead must be earned (ideally through competence and expertise). Still, having my kids speak formally to adults does sound attractive to me. Etiquette has a lot to do with respecting people as people, which is why my wife and I have worked hard to have our kids be relatively controlled at the meal table, whether in our house or in the house of others.

So I'm torn, then, about how they should ask. Any suggestions? Thoughts?

Did someone say "Hoboken"?

Have a listen to all four of us saying it. While eating chips. Just click on the (admittedly boring) little movie below.



(The Boy says it first, but Q's version is unmistakable. Frank Sinatra himself is probably smiling down from on high at this very moment.)