The case of the mystery alarm clock

If you're reading this, chances are I've complained to you in the last several weeks about how I keep waking up between 4 and 4:30am and can't get back to sleep. General consensus so far has been stress-related insomnia. So when I went to bed last night, having finished my last term paper (yay!), I expected to sleep well. Or at least better. At least past 4:30.
Well, I was wrong. I didn't sleep. But I did figure out what's been waking me up every morning! A semi truck, much like the one in this picture (only ours is bright green), has been barreling up and down our street about once an hour. At just before 4am, it was empty and headed toward the river, where Ford has some kind of storage lot for new vehicles. At 4:47am, it headed back up our street toward the highway.
The thing is, our street is residential. There are stop signs! There is a non-residential street, without stop signs, just two blocks east of us, which is where these trucks used to drive.
Here are my questions:
1) What the hell?
2) What would you call this kind of truck?
3) Who would you contact about this? The city, the company, the trucker?
4) Where do I get one of those "Not a truck route" signs?
5) Is it legal to just construct my own road block?
Sigh. I'm going on vacation for a week. Hopefully, by the time I get back, this will have stopped on its own....

Quote of the day: Yoshimi battles the pink robots of modernity

“The self changes by one’s holding fast to it. (That which does not change is not a self.) I am ‘I’ and yet not ‘I.’ If I were simply ‘I,’ that would not even be ‘I.’ In order that I be ‘I,’ there must necessarily be a juncture at which I am outside of ‘I.’” - Takeuchi Yoshimi, "What is Modernity?"
I'm done with classes. I'm done with exams. I'm done with everything except this one long paper for my history of consciousness class. I feel like I've been avoiding this paper basically my entire life. Perhaps you will understand what I mean if I tell you that this quote is taken from the chapter I'm writing about - one of the easiest, shortest, most reasonable pieces of theory we read all semester. So it's kind of obvious that I'm having a hard time concentrating - there are so many other, better things to do than to worry about what Yoshimi thinks modernity is. Like laundry, and dishes, and watching Cricket kill and eat a fly, and picking at my split ends, and wondering why on earth, if this babble counts as theory, the crazy, chatty, homeless man on the bus the other day is homeless and not a well-respected theorist. And blogging.
Disclaimer: I held off on blogging until now, and I already have an impressive 11 of my minimum 15 pages written. And the paper isn't due until Friday.

Spring, again

This is the view from my kitchen window. Note the blooming magnolia AND the clothes drying on the line. You can't hear it, but there are birds chirping. I'm beginning to fantasize about vegetable gardens (what should I plant?). Hopefully spring sticks this time around....

Quote of the Day

"She was, you know, in, like, the putting out business." - B., speaking on the economic role (which was not prostitution) played by one of the Prophet's wives in early Medinan society, during the presentation of her final project in Women in Islam. B. is apparently at the top of her class, and possesses a bewildering combination of ditziness (stupidity with dimples) and arrogance which leads me to believe she will probably someday be my boss.

The end is near

The end is near. This phrase is full of hope, joy, sunshine and puppies right now - I desperately want the semester to just be done already. Wrapping up my classes has reminded me how little I enjoyed them (a fact which I've tried very hard to ignore), and because my department is completely dysfunctional right now (at least, I hope it's temporary), there aren't fall classes that I can look forward to taking yet. So, to cope, I'm doing what I actually always* do during finals: procrastination via extreme list-making (and blogging). Right now, my most important list is Things to do by May 16th (in no particular order):

1. Read Takeuchi & Kaul
2. Write one more Bir Istanbul Masali essay
3. Read Spivak
   
4. Do 30-60 minutes of Turkish recordings
5. Read and comment on 2 final papers
6. Write 15 pages on Berlin/Prinzessinnenbad/economy of the margin for 20th century lit.
   
7. Write 15 pages on _________ for basic seminar on the history of consciousness
8. Think of a topic for basic seminar paper
9. Give final presentation in Turkish
10. Write 10-12 pages on Quranic marriage
11. Study for (and then rock) final Turkish exam
12. Clean the house
13. Do some laundry
14. Run the dogs
15. Pay the bills
    
16. Eden Prairie Book Day
17. Baseball game
    
18. Brunch
    
19. Guthrie
20. Another brunch
21. Pack for vacation

Now, I don't have a calendar, like some people, but I do have sub-lists for almost every one of these tasks. Then I have a list of what I'm doing after May 16th, which is a lot more fun, but also not very realistic given how busy my summer is looking. I guess I should get started....
*Always, except for the times when I get new dogs, in which case I procrastinate by looking at puppies online.

Good News, Bad News

Good News: Rob and I got engaged! I think (and hope) that all of you who would have been offended to learn of this via blogging have already been notified.
Bad News: This will definitely feed my planning addiction.
Good News: I won a research grant for the summer! And then I won another!
Bad News: I can't have both.
Good News: Almost entirely good news this last couple of weeks!
Bad News: Kind of makes for a boring good news, bad news post, huh?

Spring

Signs that spring has arrived in Minnesota:
1. There are enormous flocks of robins everywhere, making Cricket insane and reminding me why I shouldn't park under trees.
2. Minnesotans who are unphased by blizzards dropping 10-16" of snow at 10-20 degrees from November through February completely freak out at the prospect of a spring storm threatening 2-6" and temperatures in the upper 30s in April. Those freaking out include the weather people, who issued lots of doomsday-esque winter storm warnings and announced that driving conditions would be "treacherous."
3. While I was waiting for the 6:30 bus this morning, the streetlights went off!
4. The bus driver was wearing shorts.
5. I put my long underwear in storage and I'm desperate for a new pair of flip flops.