Sunday, February 18, 2007

Some reflections on February

Well, we haven't blogged much lately. My apologies. The big reason for this is, principally, that my book is going to be published! Yes, Suny Press is going to publish my little treatise. A few weeks ago, they sent me a cheery acceptance letter, along with a very intimidating 10 page contract to sign. I will be making 10% off each book sale! That doesn't sound too bad, but when you consider the average academic book only sells around 600 copies, it doesn't really amount to much. If I make $100, I'll be lucky. Anyway, SUNY wants the completed manuscript by March 1st, so I have been breaking my back trying to get the thing in a polished form. A book is a big deal in my mind as it constitutes a form of immortality. A little piece of me will be sitting in libraries all over the world. Oh death, where is thy sting!

In other news, we had a huge snowstorm last week. We got about 10 inches of snow. Not bad if it were just that. But, on top of the snow, we got several inches of freezing rain. For those of you in the west, freezing rain is a terrible midwestern thing. The rain comes down and freezes almost immediately wherever it hits. So, last week we had about 10 inches of snow covered by about five inches of ice. Shoveling the driveway was like breaking up concrete (well, not that bad, but you get the picture). And you could just forget about driving anywhere.

If you haven't noticed, OSU will probably be #1 in men's basketball next week since Florida lost. I'm not impressed, actually. This town has barely recovered for the embarrassing Buckeye performance in the football nation championship game. I didn't blog about that, but it really was an interesting experience. I have only rarely had "my teams" playing for championships (Utes 1998, Jazz 98 and 99, Illinois 2004). I have never really been in the position where it was expected, even taken for granted, that my team would win. That is, I have never been anything but an underdog in any championship game. Let me tell you, it is a completely different experience watching a team that is expected to win big utterly bomb than it is to watch an underdog team fail to beat the odds. It was completely humiliating.

Finally, ya'll might be interested to know that we have entered the world of bourgeois materialism. In the past few months we have acquired 1) an MP3 player (for running), 2) a cell phone (for babysitters to call us) 3) a second car (a rusty 92 Geo Prizm given to us by some friends), and 4) a laptop. So, if you are playing "keeping up with the Warnick's" the gauntlet has been thrown down.

Bryan

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That's great about the book deal. Let me know how I can get a copy and I'll contribute the Warnick cause.

Better slow down with all the new goods - people might start to talk!

Anonymous said...

1), 2), 3), 4) been there, done that.

Now the book, that's something I've always wanted to do.

Guess I gotta get moving.

D'oh!