Talking talking.
I enjoyed today although I'd be hard-pressed to say I accomplished much.
I had my meeting with the history and Slavic lit. bibliographers this morning. I can't say I magically realized what my thesis should be, but both of them are cool and approachable people, which counts for a lot. There's a bookstore right under the El; "Great Expectations" it proclaims in big letters across the windows. I walk past it every day. While at Glassman's house last quarter, I heard (dimly, and it's remembered still more dimly) the backstory to the place, which was evidently run by some friends of his... Rather, there was a store called "Great Expectations" run by some friends of his, but it was somewhere else entirely, and didn't succeed. So I thought my Great Expectations was something else, or second-generation or I don't know. Anyway, what I never noticed is that in smaller letters on the door is written "Russian Press Services, Inc." because it is in fact Prof. Bushnell's wife's Russian-press import store. Not that I knew such a thing (or, at least explicitly, person) existed. All of that came up while talking with the Slavic bibliographer. Honestly I might as well have blinders on if I'm going to be that unobservant.
I almost made it through a complete class today without saying anything (while sitting next to the professor, no less - and I'd read the book! Liked it, even), but lost it about 10 minutes from the end and interjected something or another. It is indicative of many things that I don't really know whether it was an on-topic contribution or not. The good news is that Erin-Marie turns out to be the other kid presenting my week (same book), which vastly simplifies the coordinating that must be done.
After class most of the girls went out to dinner, as per Jane's e-mail (sheer brilliance; thanks, Jane). We settled on Thai Sookdee, which is very close to my apartment. Needless to say I'd never been inside... Jane, Erin-Marie, Darcy, Britt, a girl whose name I didn't catch even though she freakin' presented today but who really should be named Stephanie (but her friends call her Stef) if you want my opinion, and I chilled for an hour or so. By "chilled" of course I mean had an uproarious time. The elders (everyone but EM and I) talked about TAing and the other students in the program, and although that should have been dull and awkward, it was not. It was in fact hilarious. Presentation is everything.
Talking about Christmas they discovered I'm from Atlanta, and Darcy (bless her heart) looks at me and says, "Okay, now..." "Ask the accent question!" I interrupted. "Yes," she said, which while not technically a question leapt to the heart of the matter. So we talked about the south (Hoyt, at least two people expressed strong desires to visit Savannah [they are architecture freaks]. 'Take a ghost tour,' I told them). No, not racism or slavery or big trucks: debutante balls. Oh, the hilarity! Britt expressed a desire to have been a debutante, then supplied the amazing story of her failed senior prom.
She's from Utah, and thus we all got our fill of Mormon-flavored craziness. (Specifically she's from a town of about 700, so you have to make additional allowances for quaintness.) Essentially she assured herself of an awkward experience by flirting with a random guy just to get a date - she actually liked a wrestler who took someone else - and by the time her date caught on, he was pretty angry about it. Skipping to the end: a 2-1/2 mile walk home in a $400 backless dress, no coat, along unplowed roads.
Darcy told us the story of her first boyfriend: in 7th grade someone passed a note up to her with the usual contents, and although she didn't recognize the kid's name, by turning around and counting back the desks, she figured out who it was from, "and that was my first boyfriend," as she concluded. There is an additional punchline to this joke, but you will have to IM me. A quick roll-call demonstrated that everyone has had a crush on a wrestler at some point (bonus in-the-know points: Britt's last name is Peterson (Petersen?)), but Jane and I at least stuck to the lower weight classes, aka "boys with necks".
The Girl Who Should Be Stef (TGWSBS) has a habit of proclaiming various things "the line" so that you can tell she'd be writing them on a whiteboard if one were handy. I will now share with you a previous holder of that title. I don't know that I've said anything before about Shawn, but he's a second-year Czechist and so emo it hurts. Not a bad person, but definitely a capital-I Intellectual. Once while recounting the story of auditioning a roommate candidate - she was evidently awkward and didn't take to him at this, their first meeting - he hypothesized, "She must have been intimidated because she was so attracted to me."
Personally I don't see any other possibilities. Do you?
For the record, I love text, and I love looking at it: the internet is a useful purveyor of same, but somedays I need more than my usual sites. I no longer - I confess it - can amuse myself by reading the same bash quotes over and over, because they're all eerily familiar, and sometimes FYAD is not the answer. Slashdot is just so damn ugly, you know? (Plus I'm only 57% equipped.) So what's a girl to do when it's all over at http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/jdate and all the usual suspects have been exhausted? My answer, as you know, is to read the archives of webcomics. Today (from http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com) I followed two fresh links and read http://www.questionablecontent.net and then http://www.sordidcityblues.com. I recommend the former, which has a few hundred strips down, a non-irritating art style, and less-than-stupidly-repetitive plot. I do not recommend the latter, simply because I didn't like it as much. Also, either the navigation is screwy or it's still pretty new.
Last quarter I read about twenty-five sites worth of archives, because it's hypnotic and it beats working. Unfortunately, even after weeding out the baddies there were still too many for me to keep in my head from week to week, and so my usual rotation (Sinfest, Penny Arcade, Goats, Achewood, Scary-Go-Round) remains the same, and I read the others in fits and starts if at all. Please understand, internet: it's not that I don't love you. I'm just not good enough. Also, I know full urls are unattractive, but it automatically formats to a link and the alternative is just too much work for me to countenance.
Those of you behind in your readings at http://lerve.com should mosey on over to the journal. Thrill to tales of Justice, Beauty and Truth that will enlighten and inspire. Also, if we want Aaron to update more we should look grateful.
I have my jacket now, Chicago, so bring on your worst! (Thanks, Skrmetti and Amish.)
I had my meeting with the history and Slavic lit. bibliographers this morning. I can't say I magically realized what my thesis should be, but both of them are cool and approachable people, which counts for a lot. There's a bookstore right under the El; "Great Expectations" it proclaims in big letters across the windows. I walk past it every day. While at Glassman's house last quarter, I heard (dimly, and it's remembered still more dimly) the backstory to the place, which was evidently run by some friends of his... Rather, there was a store called "Great Expectations" run by some friends of his, but it was somewhere else entirely, and didn't succeed. So I thought my Great Expectations was something else, or second-generation or I don't know. Anyway, what I never noticed is that in smaller letters on the door is written "Russian Press Services, Inc." because it is in fact Prof. Bushnell's wife's Russian-press import store. Not that I knew such a thing (or, at least explicitly, person) existed. All of that came up while talking with the Slavic bibliographer. Honestly I might as well have blinders on if I'm going to be that unobservant.
I almost made it through a complete class today without saying anything (while sitting next to the professor, no less - and I'd read the book! Liked it, even), but lost it about 10 minutes from the end and interjected something or another. It is indicative of many things that I don't really know whether it was an on-topic contribution or not. The good news is that Erin-Marie turns out to be the other kid presenting my week (same book), which vastly simplifies the coordinating that must be done.
After class most of the girls went out to dinner, as per Jane's e-mail (sheer brilliance; thanks, Jane). We settled on Thai Sookdee, which is very close to my apartment. Needless to say I'd never been inside... Jane, Erin-Marie, Darcy, Britt, a girl whose name I didn't catch even though she freakin' presented today but who really should be named Stephanie (but her friends call her Stef) if you want my opinion, and I chilled for an hour or so. By "chilled" of course I mean had an uproarious time. The elders (everyone but EM and I) talked about TAing and the other students in the program, and although that should have been dull and awkward, it was not. It was in fact hilarious. Presentation is everything.
Talking about Christmas they discovered I'm from Atlanta, and Darcy (bless her heart) looks at me and says, "Okay, now..." "Ask the accent question!" I interrupted. "Yes," she said, which while not technically a question leapt to the heart of the matter. So we talked about the south (Hoyt, at least two people expressed strong desires to visit Savannah [they are architecture freaks]. 'Take a ghost tour,' I told them). No, not racism or slavery or big trucks: debutante balls. Oh, the hilarity! Britt expressed a desire to have been a debutante, then supplied the amazing story of her failed senior prom.
She's from Utah, and thus we all got our fill of Mormon-flavored craziness. (Specifically she's from a town of about 700, so you have to make additional allowances for quaintness.) Essentially she assured herself of an awkward experience by flirting with a random guy just to get a date - she actually liked a wrestler who took someone else - and by the time her date caught on, he was pretty angry about it. Skipping to the end: a 2-1/2 mile walk home in a $400 backless dress, no coat, along unplowed roads.
Darcy told us the story of her first boyfriend: in 7th grade someone passed a note up to her with the usual contents, and although she didn't recognize the kid's name, by turning around and counting back the desks, she figured out who it was from, "and that was my first boyfriend," as she concluded. There is an additional punchline to this joke, but you will have to IM me. A quick roll-call demonstrated that everyone has had a crush on a wrestler at some point (bonus in-the-know points: Britt's last name is Peterson (Petersen?)), but Jane and I at least stuck to the lower weight classes, aka "boys with necks".
The Girl Who Should Be Stef (TGWSBS) has a habit of proclaiming various things "the line" so that you can tell she'd be writing them on a whiteboard if one were handy. I will now share with you a previous holder of that title. I don't know that I've said anything before about Shawn, but he's a second-year Czechist and so emo it hurts. Not a bad person, but definitely a capital-I Intellectual. Once while recounting the story of auditioning a roommate candidate - she was evidently awkward and didn't take to him at this, their first meeting - he hypothesized, "She must have been intimidated because she was so attracted to me."
Personally I don't see any other possibilities. Do you?
For the record, I love text, and I love looking at it: the internet is a useful purveyor of same, but somedays I need more than my usual sites. I no longer - I confess it - can amuse myself by reading the same bash quotes over and over, because they're all eerily familiar, and sometimes FYAD is not the answer. Slashdot is just so damn ugly, you know? (Plus I'm only 57% equipped.) So what's a girl to do when it's all over at http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/jdate and all the usual suspects have been exhausted? My answer, as you know, is to read the archives of webcomics. Today (from http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com) I followed two fresh links and read http://www.questionablecontent.net and then http://www.sordidcityblues.com. I recommend the former, which has a few hundred strips down, a non-irritating art style, and less-than-stupidly-repetitive plot. I do not recommend the latter, simply because I didn't like it as much. Also, either the navigation is screwy or it's still pretty new.
Last quarter I read about twenty-five sites worth of archives, because it's hypnotic and it beats working. Unfortunately, even after weeding out the baddies there were still too many for me to keep in my head from week to week, and so my usual rotation (Sinfest, Penny Arcade, Goats, Achewood, Scary-Go-Round) remains the same, and I read the others in fits and starts if at all. Please understand, internet: it's not that I don't love you. I'm just not good enough. Also, I know full urls are unattractive, but it automatically formats to a link and the alternative is just too much work for me to countenance.
Those of you behind in your readings at http://lerve.com should mosey on over to the journal. Thrill to tales of Justice, Beauty and Truth that will enlighten and inspire. Also, if we want Aaron to update more we should look grateful.
I have my jacket now, Chicago, so bring on your worst! (Thanks, Skrmetti and Amish.)