Life is Good!
I mean, it's not perfect. My car decided to bite it during the last snowstorm, so I've been by and largely pedestrian going on three or four weeks right now and am still searching for secure funding to procure its replacement. Didn't get much back on my tax thing, which took forever as it was due to the ineptitutde of one of my bosses. I also haven't been paid by that aforementioned boss in I don't even fucking know anymore.
HOWEVER, I'll not stray far from my stated topic--SO, why life is good.
It's almost springtime. We even had an eighty-degree day here on Friday. I was at work inside a basement for the majority of it, and on the mend from a cold, but when these two factors combine I was most appreciative of that remnant warmth on my walk home in the evening.
We have a new Pope and Ladies and Gentlemen he's a freakin' Jesuit. Politics and very very real myriad details aside, I attended a Jesuit school, most of my friends are at least culturally Catholic, and as time goes on I'm more participant in said culture myself. So when I see, on Facebook before anywhere else, "White smoke! White smoke!" and "Argentine! Jesuit!"--well, I somehow found a live feed from my little work desk in the basement to St. Peter's Square in Vatican City to see the first-ever Jesuit pope step out on the balcony and bless the faithful and merely curious alike. Mind, my cohorts and I always have to make the discernment to those who don't know between Jesuit and merely Catholic. There's a big difference. Jesuits are the smartasses of the Church, when the Church chooses to recognize them and not try excommunicating/obliterating them. I acknowledge that this guy's a more conservative Jesuit, but as a cultural event, I still thought it was pretty cool.
I got accepted into the Cultural Studies M.A. program at Claremont Graduate University for the fall. The Claremont schools are prestigious enough to be in some minds nearly on par with the Ivy League schools. I consider mere acceptance into the program presitigious in itself because they recognize me as someone they think would do well there. Unfortunately, Claremont is like a half-hour east of L.A., and given that it's Cali, i.e. it's fucking expensive, and nearly all of my relations in SoCal have at this point either died or emigrated, it's a move realistically reserved for either poor planners or fortunate sons, so I'll have to pass and take out my bitterness on my fellow grad students in the English program at UMKC in the fall.
BUT. Big but. Obviously I was accepted into UMKC if that's my I'm-too-poor-to-move-to-Claremont local alternative. I got a letter from them last week offering me an assistantship next year while I'm taking classes. As in, I take such and such course hours at least, and teach one of their entry-level classes, and they give me this stipend which knocks a lot of money off of my tuition. Which is pretty cool, to say the least. Takes a lot of the bitter out of that bittersweet Claremont situation, to say the least.
Going back a little to the Pope and cultural Catholicism, yesterday was Saint Patrick's Day, and it was smashing. (No pun about getting smashed intended.) I met up with some buddies in the morning and we marauded about with liquids stashed in containers originally intended for other liquids. We hit up the parade route and one or two bars, got delightfully buzzed and didn't have to pay anything for it. And then this week my ass will be hitting up Saint Joseph's table at at least one of the churches in town boasting majority Italian parishioners. It's gonna be sweet, particularly due to the pastries, of which I have to bring at least a thingy of back home this weekend, because:
My little sister's water broke around eleven last night, and my nephew, Parker Robert Virgil, was born at 7:22 this morning. Different pics texted me today show him in Form of Screaming Tadpole and Form of Stoned Buddha, the latter of which suggests that he already displays the family phenotype for Probable Cause. I assume my grandparents may go visit them at some point this weekend, in which case I'll hitch a ride with them; however a buddy of mine here, who hung out with my sister a lot when she was living with me, wants to "take her buggy," as she puts it, over to visit too, so either way I've got transport covered. My sister turns eighteen on Thursday and I still haven't gotten her anything; I asked her this morning and she said "A new vagina?," but I told her if I had those embroidery skills I'd been flipping buku in Iran right now. *shrugs* But, I'll think of something.
And that is this past week's syopsis of Why Life is Good. Cheers!