Monthly Archives: April 2004

I think it went well

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I have returned from my inter­view at Creighton (hello Creighton peo­ple!) and I am pretty happy. Despite Aidan throw­ing up in the car while Tiffany took him to day­care. I feel awful about that. But happy about my interview.

For AT peo­ple: it’s a small group, much smaller than AT, but they do much the same kind of work. Given how much I loved my work at Iowa, I think I’d really like work­ing there. They have a Bb server (recently switched from Bb/WebCT to Bb-only) and train fac­ulty and offer con­sult­ing and do more work than they should be able to do given their num­bers (sound famil­iar?). I enjoyed my inter­view, and hope they will call me back for the sec­ond round.

I think one of the things I liked best was that they’d had some water leaks recently, and they had equip­ment and boxes piled in the halls and the con­fer­ence room… the inter­viewer apol­o­gized a cou­ple of times for the mess, but shrugged it off with a grin. It was com­fort­ing in that “we’re not so pol­ished that we can’t laugh at our­selves” kind of way that I appre­ci­ated about AT.

Think happy, lucky thoughts my way, I would be very excited to work there.

I got an interview!

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Hey, good news on the work front. I have been asked to inter­view at Creighton for the Instruc­tional Design job I applied for. My inter­view is next week, and I am pretty excited about it. I hope I do well, and I (nat­u­rally) hope i get the job. I have a lot of expe­ri­ence doing the kinds of thing they were look­ing for in their ad, so I am feel­ing good. More as this develops.

Fantasimania

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Since her per­for­mance on Wednes­day, Fantasia’s ren­di­tion of Sum­mer­time has got­ten a lot of notice. Three blog­gers I fre­quent admit­ted that they watch Amer­i­can Idol by way of prais­ing her. Now I’m look­ing for a video ver­sion of her per­for­mance. We’ll see if the Inter­net delivers.

Give that girl a contract [updated]

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First off, yes, I watch Amer­i­can Idol and like it. It is the quin­tes­sen­tial guilty plea­sure. But enough about me.

Last night, one of the con­tes­tants, Fan­ta­sia Bar­rino, sang Gershwin’s Sum­mer­time and it was amaz­ing. After the show (after watch­ing her sing it twice, thanks to the won­ders of TiVo) we went down­stairs and lis­tened to our copy of Ella and Louis doing the same song. Also good, but Fantasia’s ver­sion was some­thing stellar.

Where Ella’s voice is but­tery and smooth, Fantasia’s was soul­ful and real. The Ella and Louis ver­sion evokes in me images of slow sum­mer, warm, lan­guid, with peo­ple in sun hats and Sun­day dress. Fantasia’s ver­sion made me think of Brook­lyn brown­stones and hot days, sum­mer with a lit­tle grit of sand and sweat. It was a fresh, orig­i­nal take on the song, and now that I have found it online, you can enjoy it, too.

Fan­ta­sia Bar­rino singing Summertime

Applied for my old job last week

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Sounds odd, and it feels odd, too. I didn’t apply for my old job, exactly. I applied for a job that sounds exactly like my old job when I applied for it.

I dropped off my cover let­ter and resume to Creighton Uni­ver­sity for a job as an Instruc­tional Designer with their Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy group, help­ing fac­ulty put course mate­ri­als online.

When I applied for my old job at the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa (almost five years ago now), it was as a Com­puter Con­sul­tant for Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Ser­vices help­ing fac­ulty learn to use technology.

I am some­what hope­ful that they will at least offer me an interview.

Under the Tuscan Sun

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A sur­pris­ingly delight­ful movie, Under the Tus­can Sun. I’ve had a thing for Diane Lane since see­ing her in Jack, on some air­plane trip. But then I saw half of her crit­i­cally acclaimed per­for­mance in Unfaith­ful and couldn’t really stand her. Not sure why. And it turned me off of her. I kept think­ing that I’d like to see her in some­thing, but I couldn’t quite shake her char­ac­ter from that movie. I needed to see her in some­thing com­pletely different.

When Tus­can Sun came out, it seemed like a pif­fle of a movie (it is) with no good rea­son to be seen. Turns out it’s a delight­ful pif­fle, with a charm­ingly retro/only-in-the-movies opin­ion of Italy mixed with a nineties gay-is-the-new-sidekick flair that works. And Diane Lane comes off as a some­what weary but win­ning, wiser than she was, mod­ern Amer­i­can woman. Amidst gay side­kicks and retro/sexist Italians.

Unfor­tu­nately, it didn’t bring me back the old Diane Lane, so much as show me a dif­fer­ent one. One I’m not so enam­ored of. She’s nice, and pretty, but still too stressed. I want to see her play­ing a Reese With­er­spoon role. Some­thing where her char­ac­ter only has to emote on the most sur­face of lev­els. I know, I know, I do her act­ing abil­i­ties a disservice.

Any­way, the movie was bet­ter than I thought it would be.

Something’s Gotta Give

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We rented Something’s Gotta Give a cou­ple of weeks back, with very low expec­ta­tions. For some rea­son, all through Oscar Sea­son, nei­ther Tiffany nor I could get up the inter­est to watch it. Another Jack show. Diane Keaton never has rung my bell. Amanda Peet really doesn’t do any­thing for me.

Sure, lots of folks were telling us it was good. The crit­i­cal acclaim was strong. But it took us a long time ot come around. And now we have.

The movie is cuter than we thought, with pret­tier peo­ple (wow, that house was some­thing else!), bet­ter guest stars (Frances McDor­mand, Jon Favreau, and Starsky!), a more inter­est­ing plot (they have sex pretty early on as these for­mu­las go), and on-screen instant mes­sag­ing that could actu­ally be real!

It may have been a lit­tle long, and the Paris thing was a bit over­much, but still, wor­thy of your time and money.