I’m bogged down in dissertation-land this month, trying to finish a chapter before I start teaching in mid-July.

Things I have been doing lately, in addition to writing my dissertation:

• Pondering the confluence of events that leads pets to get sick immediately before one’s partner leaves on a scheduled trip.
• Washing a lot of bedding. See previous point.
• Watching season 1 of Leverage and pondering the caper plot. It’s a silly, fun show with a ridiculously sentimental frame story, but it’s also surprisingly ambitious — a caper a week?
• Preparing teaching materials for my fiction workshop, including a basic website. (Not totally complete yet.) Wondering why Drupal is so much more annoying than Wordpress.

Links to recommend:

• Alexander Chee’s great series of posts on MFA programs: when an MFA degree is a good idea, how he chose his own program, etc. Start with this post — the others are linked from it, including this brief FAQ about MFA programs, which is worth a look.
• This NPR story on a neurologist who studies the brains of psychopaths — and who found his own brain scans somewhat unnerving. (Not dissimilar, in a sense, to the book by Jessica Stern that I mentioned last week, in which she connects her own traumatic history to her study of terrorism.)
• The formation of a new continental rift valley in Africa.
• Tuscany via Henry James.
• Ernesto Neto’s installation at the Hayward Gallery at the Saatchi in London. A friend posted photos on Facebook; just beautiful.
• The sweetest story of a marriage I’ve read for a while.