I is graduashoning with an degree in Englilsh Litrachure. :)
I really am. I am finished, graduated, and have only to move out on Friday to be done with college.
Weird. Don't really know what to say. It's been a while since I updated here, but things have been going on. Most notably, I've begun playing World of Warcraft. I am a huge geek. But it's seriously more addicting than Oblivion, and that's saying something for me. Just the online-ness and get-together-ness of it all. I dunno. I hurt my finger, too. Managed to shove one of the tines of my comb completely under my fingernail while reaching for the comb in my purse. Ugh. I will probably lose the fingernail. I would post pictures, but...well...
That's it for me. Maybe when I have less of a life (i.e. no friends, lol) I'll post more.
Lol, this cracked my shit up! Heehee. Honest Abe...sexy Abe? Dunno.
Not much to say about myself. Just kinda cruising. Need to do laundry. Badly. Spent a weekend in Bend with my parents hanging out. That was fun. Dad and I went skiing on Sunday at Bachelor. Of course the weather was terrible, but the snow was pretty good considering it had rained and then frozen on Friday/Saturday. I must admit, I prefer skiing at smaller mountains like Mt. Ashland or Anthony Lake. Less crowds. Better weather. Mt. Bachelor is really overrated. I mean, it does have a lot of great skiing if you can go on a decent day, but they've taken out a lot of the old skiing runs to put in snowboarding terrain parks. Snowboarders really suck. Aside from Deidra, who is a polite snowboarder, I find the lot of them rude, pushy, inconsiderate, and constantly boarding out of control. There are few enough people who actually snowboard well, and those who don't snowboard recklessly and fast, thinking to make up for their lack of skill with speed and "sick" stunts. Ugh. I was close to clobbering some 14-year-old who kept pushing me in line for the lift. I swear the little shit nearly knocked me over four or five times trying to get ahead of me, when he hadn't even showed up at the lift until ten minutes after I got there. It's not a free-for-all, dammit! Anyway. I'll end the rant.
Repair-man is fixing my heater. About fucking time. It's been making the ringing noise since the middle of last term. I finally got around to reporting the noise. That was two-and-a-half weeks ago. I had to move half my furniture so they could do stuff to my heater. This better work.
40 days. Time is moving.
I have to write up a presentation on Jane Eyre today. Don't really feel like it. My group is presenting the last eleven-or-so chapters of the novel and my concentration is the power struggles Jane undergoes in her relationships with St. John and Mr. Rochester. Yay, feminism! :) I just have to actually get my ass in gear and write up some stuff. Have to do Power Point slides, too. Meh. Could be worse, I suppose. It's kinda pathetic, since this is the most work I've had to do all term and I'm being a lazy retard about it. Heh.
I'm off to the Book Swap soon. Cognito and The West Wind Review (our English department publications) are holding it all week long and I have to sit at the table and tell people to visit our websites and make sure they don't steal the free books. If anyone's interested, we have open submissions for Cognito and West Wind takes stuff any time, though submissions for this year's book are closed, you can always try for the next year. Submit, all you writers! We need good fiction/poetry/non-fiction! :)
Actually, 47 and x number of hours, minutes, seconds, etc.
Forty-eight days today until I am finished with my undergraduate education.
That's a glorious feeling, you know. I'm really just coasting, doing what I must to get through this last bit of school until I'm free.
Come the twenty-fourth day of March I will be out of Ashland, back in John Day, moving to Boise for the summer, and will hopefully have heard back from grad schools so I can decide what I'm doing with my life after SOU.
Super Bowl today. I don't particularly want to cheer for either team, but I figure I'll go with the Colts over the Bears just because I like horses better than bears and the Bears beat the Seahawks - several times. :( Also, I can get away with wearing a Boise State t-shirt because it has a horse on it. I think (not sure) that the Bears' colors are the same as Boise State, though. Hmm. Have to check on that. But whatever. Mainly I'm excited because a bunch of us are getting together to drink beer, eat junk food, and hang out. What could be more American than beer, chips, people sitting on their butts, and the Super Bowl? :)
Life is good now. There are things that need sorting out in my head/emotions, but really, life could be a lot shittier than it's been. I'm probably speaking too soon, but this winter has been less painful than many before it. We'll see how I survive Valentine's Day. I think I'm doing a bunch of stuff on that day, but I'm not sure. All (or most) of it is writing/English Dept. related, actually. I've been writing things for Valentine's Day, as well as just writing to be writing. Interested in reading any of my poetry? Go to Lamia's Chamber. This is my writing blog. Enjoy. :) Or not, as your inclination directs you.
And just because I'm a silly fangirl:
*SQUEEEEEE!!!*HARRY POTTER OMFG JULY 21 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!1!!!!ONE!!!!111!!*SQUEEEEEEE!!!*
Snow today. About two inches or so. I can't believe how much snow we've had in Ashland this winter. Here's the view from my window:
It's growing darker now and the cold is settling in. I complained of the cold this morning, but now it seeps in through my windows and my heater can't seem to keep it at bay.
I have a paper to write, but I'm procrastinating already. Sort of. I've done some of the work, but I haven't written the paper itself. Thankfully I have no class tomorrow. I'm worried that I might become bored this term without more to do. After all, I only have two classes that matter for anything and I don't have class most of the week. I want to use the extra time to work on my writing and read for pleasure, but I can't even motivate myself to do that. Knitting and watching television and hoping some of my friends will be as disengaged as myself so that I might hang out and not have to entertain myself are my chief employments.
That and I'm falling into archaic speech patterns in my writing. I've been reading too much Renaissance poetry. I apologize now because it'll only be worse as the term progresses.
I really have nothing worth saying here. Off I go to finish my damn scarf.
I think I need to see a doctor or something. I've been having terrible headaches quite regularly for a while now, and I don't think it can be normal to have this happen. I've had two in three days just this weekend. Surprisingly, it's not from drinking or partying too hard because both headaches have been after relatively quiet nights without a great deal of alcohol consumption. So...not hangovers. It's this piercing, screaming pain on one side of my head, right behind my eye and down through my neck. It's so bad it makes me kind of nauseous. Tylenol and Advil don't help. We'll see if Excedrin Migraine helps.
In other news...
I haven't updated since before the new year. Not much has happened since then. It's another year, and life goes on. How very exciting. Last term of Uni...9 weeks until I'm done with my undergraduate education and start on the real stuff. No word from grad schools yet. Probably won't be any word until March or April. I'm glad that I'm taking it easy this term. I would hate to stress out my last term at college. Renaissance Lit, British Women's Lit, SPEWS/Cognito, West Wind Review, and Beginner's Ballroom Dancing. :) I can salsa...sort of. I get to try again this Thursday.
Well, I must away to dinner. I shall attempt to write more at another time. If I can remember.
Interesting development...we're not having the New Year's party this year. The huge one with half of John Day crammed into our greatroom where we dress up like pirates and drink booze and eat food until we're all exhausted and the New Year is a few hours behind us. Strange. Dad and Ben are going to the Fiesta Bowl instead, and Mum and I are heading up to Boise to hang out and spend our Christmas gift cards. I can't remember a year without the crazy party, but such is life. It'll be nice to spend a few days shopping and seeing all the movies from the season that I missed. (*cough*Eragon*cough*) Anywho...Mum and I are leaving in about a half hour so I should probably get dressed. Just felt the need to note my interestingly wistful mood about the New Year. Also, I've been having some pretty fucked up dreams that would be better drowned in booze than repeated. Maybe I'll get to working on that.
It's pouring down rain right now. Hopefully it'll get cold enough in the next few hours to make it snow.
In other news, my mum is quite subversive...amusingly so. :) No explanations, sorry.
I've finished applying to grad schools, which makes me happy. No more capstone (which went quite well, all things considered), no more classes until January, no more fretting until I hear back from grad schools, actually. I don't know if I've mentioned before which schools I've applied to, so here's the lineup:
Duke University - Durham, NC University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill University of South Carolina - Columbia University of Florida - Gainesville Emory University - Atlanta, GA
Yup, I'm going south. Something new, you know? Also, being warm would be lovely. Warm, humid, crazy people. Yeah, it's great.
Been knitting loads. Makes me feel good. I haven't had the opportunity for a while, so it's been lovely. I have started socks. I have yet to attempt the heel, but I have faith I can manage it. I just have to figure out how to slip-slip-knit and make a gusset. Heh. Whatever. Had myself a Firefly marathon this weekend. Damn, that show is brilliant. I've also been reading, as well. Naomi Novik's dragon books, the first of which is His Majesty's Dragon, are amazing. I'm on the second now. They're about the Napoleonic wars except retold with dragons as part of the armed forces of all the different countries. The battles are incredible and the dragon, Temeraire, is so charming and funny. The writing is solid and has a distinct nineteenth-century British tone. Great books. Also, Peter Jackson is making them into films. Eedahdee!
That's all I have for now. Off to run errands with Mum soon, so I shall bid you all farewell until some far-off future update.
It's been a hectic few weeks. Thankfully this insane running about is almost over and I can collapse from sheer exhaustion Tuesday afternoon.
What have I done to cause me such strife?
I have applied to two graduate schools. UNC-Chapel Hill and Emory University are complete and no longer a worry. Woohoo! :) Granted, there was a bit of last minute panic when one of my recommenders didn't get his letter written until this morning. Thank God for FedEx and overnight shipping, eh? By 10:30 tomorrow morning my writing samples, statements of purpose, and rec letters shall be in the hands of the powers that be at each university. Only three more to go!
I have drastically overhauled my Capstone. I actually think it's going to be a decent paper. Surprise, surprise, no? It's about 12 pages now and shall be about 13 or 14 when all is said and done. Dr. Maltz has been a godsend in terms of telling me where I'm weakest and helping me shape my arguments more effectively. Apparently I have tackled one of the most difficult and abstract subjects in Romanticism, so that should earn me points. I just thought it was a cool idea when I started it. If I'd known it would be so bloody hard to write about, I might have chosen something different.
Tomorrow and Saturday: GREs. Ugh. My whole stomach is in knots about it. I hate long tests, especially SAT-style tests. And I have to do math! Holy shit, I haven't done any algebra or anything remotely math-ish since my senior year of high school. I feel that merits an ill sensation in my stomach, all things considered. I just hope the GRE people don't have a problem with me using my graphing calculator on the test. It's the only calculator I have and if I can't use it, I'll probably have a nervous breakdown at the testing center. Heh.
Monday is my Capstone presentation. This will be the first formal presentation I've given in two years. Oh joy. I hate public speaking. It's only 8 minutes, though, so I imagine I'll survive.
After that, there is light at the end of the tunnel! Yes, just a film final Tuesday morning and in the afternoon my wonderful mother is driving me to John Day. Winter break cannot come soon enough.
In honor of the new Nintendo Wii, I give you this article.
It's something of which I've always been aware and with which I've had my own problems. Sometimes the gender issues can be a great advantage when getting price reductions, but other than that...they kinda suck.
Anyway, happy reading.
And Happy Thanksgiving for all the Americans reading this journal. :)
In other news...I've got 12 pages on my capstone and it's still going. This is a good news. I've still got to start my 10-page paper on Adam Bede, but we'll celebrate small victories for now. I will get through this grad-school-senior-year-nightmare. Can't wait until Christmas break.
I'm sitting in the SU using their free wireless and wo-manning the SPEWS/West Wind Book Swap table with other lovely lit/writing peoples. The reason you haven't seen me on LJ for a while (and the reason you probably won't see me for a while longer) is because I'm losing it. I'm freaking out about grad school apps, GREs, my capstone, and everything. I'm about to have a fucking nervous breakdown, I swear. But whatever. I'll probably survive...I think.
I swiped this video from serenstar's journal. It really made me think about some things that I'd never considered before. If most of the statements are actually facts (and I wouldn't be that surprised if they are facts) then I'm kind of pissed off that we never hear these things. Anyway, watch and let me know what you think.
So, last night was Rocky Horror Picture Show. Heehee. Fun times. It was my last RHPS in college, which makes me sad. That's not why I'm posting. I'm posting because I have pictures...very incriminating ones, which are amusing, but if you don't want to see flesh and lingerie, I suggest you do not ( click this cut )
So, that's the night. We didn't get back until about 2:30, but it was fun. I'm sleepy still, and I'm going to watch Stargate now.
Holy crap OMG wow sweet! :) This is my 700th post on my LJ. Crazy, no? 700 entries. Most of them are crap, but there are some gems in among all the refuse. Where, I'm not entirely sure, but they've got to be there, right?
I don't think I have much to say here, though I should say something more than "Wow 700," right? What's going on in my life? Loads, but I'm loving every minute of it. My capstone is progressing, rather slowly, but it's going. All the books I'd requested finally arrived, so I spent an hour and fifteen minutes this morning photocopying essays so I could write all over them and hopefully get ideas to supplement my writing. God knows, I'll need all the help I can get with my capstone. Like I actually know what I'm talking about with Keats and the Romantic Imagination. Heh. I can pretend. Really, it's just an excuse for me to fawn all over Hyperion and be a huge lit geek. :)
I'm well again, which is always a bonus. I went to the doctor to get some drugs and I was better in a few days. Gotta love the Zithromax.
Ooh, I saw Jamie Cullum in Portland!! That was super fucking awesome. He's amazing. Jazz pianist, guitarist, singer, drummer...basically he does anything with music. He's a kick in the pants to see live because he's always running around on stage and off stage, up and down the aisles (he ran right by where I was sitting...he's super short, lol), climbing on the piano and jumping off of it, playing rhythm with just the wood and strings of the piano, jamming with random people in the audience (this guy in the audience had a harmonica and just started playing while Jamie and his bass player were doing "Nature Boy." It was fucking brilliant, and Jamie thought it was just the coolest thing ever that some random guy would start playing). The opener was Josh Ritter. He's amazing, lots of energy and really great music. Very folksy. He's from Idaho, which is cool, and he knows where John Day is because he's been there to dig fossils! I got to meet him at intermission and he told me this. I went out to buy his album after we heard him and he came out to sign CDs. I told him I was from John Day and living in Ashland. Since Ashland has the Shakespeare festival, he signed my CD with his favorite Shakespeare quote: "Lilies that fester stink worse than weeds." LMAO. :) How random, eh? Anyway, Portland was fun times. I had never been in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall before, so it was cool to see that. Seeing Mum and Dad was fun, too. I don't ever get to see them often enough anymore.
Had a good weekend, too...this week has just generally been great. Friday night Roger and I went to dinner and saw The Winter's Tale at OSF. It's a lovely play, especially the surreal fantasy concept they've used in this production. Such a great, passionate story. Saturday Roger, Ricky, and I went to the Jefferson State Pub to see the Rogue Suspects play. They're a local band, and they're quite good. They play rock and blues and one of their guitarists is fucking amazing.
This week is a poetry week. Tonight I'm going to the Poetry Bus Tour, which is 8 poets touring around in a big yellow bus, and they're coming to SOU tonight. I've been advertising them all day long. Fun times. Wednesday night I'm actually going to miss LOST (heaven forbid, right?) and go to the Open Mic at the Jefferson State Pub. English Majors with poetry and booze. Could be dangerous. Friday night is Rocky Horror Picture Show, too!!!! OMG, so excited, heehee! I love going to the interactive RHPC. Throwing shit at the screen, yelling, opening rituals...ah, yes, life is great.
Speaking of poetry, I posted a new poem at my poetry blog a little while ago. You should go read it.
So, being sick really blows. My throat hurts, my ears are plugged, my nose is stuffy, and I have a constant headache. Now, I think the damn thing is moving into my chest and I'm going to start hacking. Ugh. It's only the third week of school. You'd think I wouldn't be down and out already. *Sigh*
Things in my academic life are progressing nicely, though. I'm scheduled to take the GRE and the Subject GRE on the 1st and 2nd of December, respectively. I figure I'm just going to get them over and done with and save myself the trouble of driving to Eugene more than once. Plus, Mum and Dad are going to be in town so they can take care of me in my test-weakened state. :) I still haven't chosen which Grad Schools to which I'm going to apply. I'll need to get on that pretty soon. I've got my writing sample under way, and I already have professors clamoring to write me really nice letters of recommendation, so things could be quite a bit worse. As long as I have things put together by the 10th of December to send out to the different schools, things should be good. I'm not nearly so panicky about this Grad School thing as I was a couple of months ago, which is a huge relief.
Any of you on my friends list who are writers should check out SPEWS. It's the SOU English Department web publication. I'm a copy-editor for them. They take open submissions from anyone, though I'm not sure the contests are open to anyone outside the university. Anyway, it's a chance to be published. Also, Winter Term, we're going to be changing the name so you don't have to put on your resumé that you were published in SPEWS (which means Southern Publishing English and Writing Students). Yes, we're aware of the connotations that associate the name with digestive displays and Harry Potter. No need to point that out. Got a better idea for a name? Please share it. We're getting rather desperate. :)
I suppose that's all I have to say for now. I need to call my doctor and see if he'll see me today or Monday. I'm really feeling like shit and I hope it's nothing too serious. I have to be better by Wednesday to see Jamie Cullum live! :)
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sleepy
hungry
cheerful
pensive
ill
nostalgic
festive
tipsy
mellow
nervous
grumpy