| oh also - |
[15 May 2007|10:53pm] |
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I wanted to take a podcast of a yoga class with me, and I was hoping for some recommendations. I know myself, and without a teacher telling me to stay in pigeon for a full five breaths it just isn't going to happen. Pretty much any generic flow course would be great (intermediate level - no crows during sun salutation for me!). Anyone got a podcast to rave about? Thanks!
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| two news items |
[30 Apr 2007|11:10am] |
Item One:
While surfing the PhD Comics website today I noticed a post about Professor Granata, one of the VT engineering profs killed in the shooting. One of his former grad students wrote in a little note about him. The weirdest thing? That grad student is Scott England, whom some of you may know from my freshman year at Tech. I've still got the Mickey cap he gave me from Disneyland hanging out on the top of my CD rack - every time I look at it I think about the time he guessed that he had to say "Once I was the king of Spades" when he played the king of spades in a game of Mao. Crazy.
Item Two:
If you are feeling blue, as I have been the past few weeks, I encourage you to go see Hot Fuzz. I couldn't believe anything could make me laugh Thursday, after attending the memorial service on Wednesday, but that movie just hit the perfect note. Highly recommended.
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| going back to Blacksburg |
[27 Apr 2007|11:25am] |
On Wednesday ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hokiejp and I went back to Blacksburg for the day to attend the Department of Foreign Language Memorial for Jamie Bishop and Jocelyne Couture-Nowak. I think the experience was really good for him - he walked around Norris and checked out a spot he used to hang out at between classes, and I could see that very act of being there gave him some peace. My feelings were far more ambivalent. While I very much enjoyed seeing Blacksburg and my friends there again (getting hugs from illdrawnbalcony was an unexpected highlight), the memorial service was hard. The program was quite well done, with readings in just about every language taught at Tech, and the focus of most of the commenters was on the good times, on remembering what terrific people and wonderful teachers Jamie and Jocelyne were. I tried to take the "isn't it wonderful how many lives they touched" line and buck up, but instead I kept thinking "what a waste." These were precisely the sorts of people I hope to be one day - kind, generous, and above all focused on their role as educators, broadening the world for their students. I want to bring to students the love of a strange new language and culture that Jamie and Jocelyne brought to their students. But I'm caught up by the fact that in the end it didn't matter, that in the end good people - great people - can be killed, and the world is a poorer place for their absence.
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| the things I think about to avoid thinking about Greek |
[15 Aug 2006|04:19pm] |
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mood |
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 distracted |
] |
So, umm, any of my tofu-loving male friends ever felt the need to go out and buy a Hummer? Or any of you ladies out there ever wanted an oversized pile of metal to prove that you, too, can throw your weight around? Like the author of this slate.com piece, I'm wondering who exactly these two new Hummer ads, one for men and one for women, are for. Seth Stevenson sums my confusion up quite nicely when he asks:
"And what prospective buyer will be swayed by an ad that explicitly suggests this truck's purpose is to compensate for inadequacies? How is that a positive brand image? I thought the whole idea with Hummers is that their superior capabilities (climbing steep inclines, muscling over tough roads) lend you street cred (or off-street cred, I suppose) as the dude with the baddest beast in town. This ad has it backward, eschewing all the performance hype and instead suggesting that the Hummer is best employed as an image enhancer for wussy tofu hippies."
Stevenson focuses mainly on the Hummer ad featuring a man, as this was the ad that generated his article, but I'm a little more fascinated by the one for women. I can almost picture the ad guys trying to come up with the female version - they can't use an attack on a woman's femininity, because feminine is exactly what the Hummer is trying not to be. They need a way for it to be a shortcoming for a woman to be passive, and they chose not to make it a woman who is dumped on at the office or can't speak up in front of men. Instead they made their central character not just a woman, but a mother. And not just any mother, but the mother of a male child (or am I pushing it too far with this note?).
In short (if you haven't already viewed the ad), another child cuts in front of the lead mother's son at the playground, she is ineffectual at confronting the other child's mother, she sees a Hummer ad, grabs her son off the slide, and buys one.
I find myself almost equally appalled by the implications of the ad (in particular what fears they suggest that ad execs, at least, believe are trapped in the psyches of men and women in America) and oddly impressed by the ingenuity of those same execs. The decision to shift the attack from inadequacy as a woman (which would be the direct equivalent to the male ad) to inadequacy as a mother was a brilliant move on the part of the Hummer ad people. While it might be questionable whether society wants forceful women as a whole, it is a far easier claim to make that it is a woman's duty to protect her children, and to imply that if she can't defend her children's place in society then she is a bad mother. After all, a non-Hummer owning mom might let her son get pushed around, turning him into the sort of man, perhaps, who eats tofu and feels he has lost his masculinity. But wait! This situation can be saved with, you guessed it, a shiny new Hummer.
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| random (food) thoughts |
[18 Apr 2006|06:37pm] |
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mood |
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 bored |
] |
I'm stuck in the grad office on campus until yoga at 7:15 tonight, when hokiejp is picking me up. I arranged this all on purpose, so I would be forced to work on my papers. Instead, I'm posting to LJ. Hmm. This activity is especially telling as I have nothing real to post about. I got my fellowship check in the mail, plus more info from the director of my Rome trip, so *wheee*, it is definitely happening. That was the big excitement yesterday, realizing that I'm going to Rome for real (and for free) this summer. Also exciting was finding out that the program ends at 4:00 each day, so I'll have lots of free time to get drunk on house wine, ride on the back of strange boys' mopeds ("Ciao."), and see academicly enriching sites and shit. But I digress (from my digression). What I wanted to mention here was a recent food discovery: how to cook puffy tofu!
In this past issue of Cook's Illustrated, they ran an article on how to make a great stir-fry. In a side column, they mention how to get great tofu that is soft and silky on the inside and crunchy on the outside. The key, as it turns out, is tossing the tofu in cornstarch first. (They tried other techniques, such as freezing the tofu and pressing it, but found that cornstarch was the way to go.) hokiejp and I tried this the other night, and I felt that the tofu turned out perfect! He disagreed, and claimed that the cornstarch coating left a funny aftertaste. However, I blame the aftertaste on the particular sauce we were using (also from Cook's), which I didn't particularly like. I think if we made this tofu with a better sauce it would be a hands down hit.
And speaking of a great sauce, here's some luck I've had recapturing thai fabulousness at home:
( Basic Thai Basil Green Beans )
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| the sorts of things that bother you after too much free wine |
[05 Apr 2006|10:37pm] |
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mood |
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 drunk |
] |
So, for some odd reason I find the latest Cat and Girl t-shirt really funny, and immediately was seized by a feeling of "I want". Mostly, I think, because I had just come from a department dinner at which the "vegetarian" next to me spent the evening sucking clams. But my feeling of righteous indignation and comradery was quickly followed by confusion - what the hell would it even mean for me, a vegetarian, to wear the shirt?
Mostly now I just wish she'd made shirts inspired by her cartoon on patriarchy, so I could have avoided this whole ridiculous mental debate.
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| house = massive money sinkhole |
[22 Jan 2006|07:33pm] |
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mood |
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 calm, or trying to be |
] |
hokiejp and I have gotten into a bad habit of working on our house in these manic bursts. We do little for a couple of weeks, then there's a big buying/cleaning/decorating spree. Fortunately, we are both really cheap, so those sprees haven't cost us that much. Today we scored an awesome, huge (40" x 40") mirror with a nice-sized dark wood frame, for only 30 bucks off of craigslist (this, after eying smaller mirrors priced in the two hundred dollar range). Right now the mirror is chilling on our futon, waiting to be installed over the fireplace. Once it is there, our living room will take an important step away from "barren and undecorated" to "friendly and lived-in". Also, I got a tiffany-style hanging lamp off of ebay, to replace the white lamp currently in our dining room (which only fits one tiny bulb way up in the recesses of the lamp, and so fails to do any real "lighting"). In addition to all of this (two purchases!), we got our butts down to the mall to cash in some home-decorating gift cards hokiejp's parents gave us for Christmas. None of the things we acquired there will make big, sweeping changes to the apartment, but we did pick up a number of cute knick-nacks and kitchen accessories, including a mini wicker basket filled with wicker coasters which brings me happiness disproportionate to the importance it should have in my life.
We still have quite a ways to go. We still are eating off of a metal folding table (granted, the tablecloth we've put on it disguises that fact somewhat), the seating in the living room leaves much to be desired, and our hardwood floors would probably appreciate having some rugs on them to take down the wear. But today we jumped forward a bit towards our goal of eventually turning this place into a real home. Now we need to learn how to take steady, measured steps towards that goal in the future, instead of random leaps.
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| hmm... |
[03 Jan 2006|03:38pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 curious |
] |
So I'm sitting in my favorite coffee-shop-to-do-work, and I overhear the people next to me talking about reincarnation stories. A rather elderly gentlemen asks the young female artist he's chatting with if she's ever heard of Orpheus, and she says no. Of course, my ears perk up. Then he proceeds to tell her the story, conflating the story of Orpheus and Eurydice with that of Persephone and Hades. My eyes widened when he took the first wrong turn (stating that Eurydice was stolen by Hades, instead of that she died fleeing from Aristaeus or some other variation), and as he continued I found myself digging my nails into my palms, overcome by the desire to turn around and snap, "No no no!" I calmed myself by reminding myself that it is myth, after all, and myth is meant to be played with, and what does it really matter if Eurydice and Persephone are mixed up? OK, so that didn't really help, and I'm still burning with the desire to find those two and tell them the "true" version. Of course, this will never happen.
But really, should one correct these things? When you overhear someone relating a fact or a story that you know to be wrong, is it completely rude to interject a little, "Actually, I think that is not *quite* right..."?
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| I'm amazing, or the universe is being totally perverse |
[22 Dec 2005|12:31pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 amused |
] |
Really. Evidence of this:
1. Last night I bowled four strikes in one game. And I never bowl (except that this was my third time bowling in a month). Also, in another game I bowled 134. Previously, it was a lucky (and rare) event if I broke a hundred.
2. I just found out I got an A+ in one of my graduate classes. Since I had previously be told that A+s weren't given in graduate school (or at least in my department) I just stared at the grade for a very very long time. And then I knew who I should ask for any future recommendations.
3. OK, so there really isn't a third piece of evidence, but the unwritten rules of rhetoric requires that I list three things. So, umm, I managed to make vegan mini black and white cookies last night? I survived a visit to the social security office? I'm actually starting on my school-crap-to-do-over-break stuff?
I'm saddened that I'm not going to NoVA for Christmas, and so will miss out on seeing people. And I suppose it is too much to hope that anyone will be in town for New Year's? Hmm?
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| mmph.....motivation....so....hard |
[19 Dec 2005|11:08am] |
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mood |
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 lazy |
] |
So, after turning in all* of my papers for the semester I've devoted the past two days to hibernating, partly 'cause I'm lazy and partly 'cause I'm recovering from being sick for the past year. Now the week has officially started and, umm, I'm having some trouble getting my ass in gear and starting to do stuff. Most of the problems come from the fact that I don't really *have* to do anything; any work I make up for myself is just that - made up. All I *have* to do is twiddle my fingers until Thursday, when hokiejp and I leave for Christmas festivities. Yet I feel like I should do something. Hmm. Perhaps I will get some coffee and try to make a list? Yes, I think lists are the first step towards actually out of the house.
*well, most of really, since there is that pesky paper that I have a massive extension on, but we're not counting that
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| come one, come all |
[02 Dec 2005|10:53am] |
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mood |
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 happy |
] |
Anyone hanging about Blacksburg tonight, feel free to swing by Gillie's (7:30-9:00) or the Cellar (9:00 on) to join in the festivities in honor of my 24th birthday. 'Cause you know, the more people, the more free drinks for me :-)
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| things I love |
[21 Nov 2005|10:14am] |
| [ |
mood |
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 chipper |
] |
Some, but not all:
Buying one article of clothing which suddenly opens up whole new worlds of possibilities for my closet. In this case, said article is a simple pair of tights, but now all of these skirts which had been shunned can once again see the light of day. It is like getting a whole new wardrobe, but for only 5.99.
Finishing a trashy novel. The actual novel reading is fun and easy, plus I get the bonus feeling of accomplishment that comes with finishing any book. The smartest decision I made yesterday was to stop stressing over my various end-of-semester assignments and to spend the evening relaxing in bed with book and tea. Mmmm.
Sitting with a hot beverage in a room full of windows when it is raining outside. Nothing puts me in a more relaxed mood, and yet gears me up to work at the same time. Thank goodness the drought finally ended. Now the working can begin.
Seeing my (well, really my parents') dog. She is so happy, and that makes me so happy. Just the thought of her right now, and of seeing her later on this week, and I'm all glowy.
*******
I am very excited about this week, which includes the Thanksgiving/Christmas throwdown with my family and my anniversary with hokiejp. I am also excited about next week, which will feature a trip to Blacksburg for my birthday and a visit to Williamsburg for the Grand Illumination. Excitement abounds.
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| back to the grind... |
[07 Oct 2005|04:17pm] |
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mood |
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 cheerful |
] |
Ah, finally a wedding-free weekend. Don't get me wrong - both weddings (my brother's and my good friend Carrie's) - were fabulous in their own ways, but there is something sublimely fabulous about having a weekend with nothing to do but loaf around. And do work. And move my books over. And add some nice touches to the house.
Each wedding featured it's own story - I caught the bouquet at Carrie's wedding (it wasn't hard, as she turned around and spotted me out before making the toss) and a moose ran past (twice!) in the area between the forest and the beach set-up for my brother's wedding. Plus, there was great food. But now that all of the craziness is done, I can actually put my nose to the grindstone. It is evening raining today - which is the ultimate do-work weather, in my mind - so clearly the gods are with me on this one.
In other news, this incredible synergy has developed in the department. With a few notable exceptions (well, one really), the graduate students have started to come together as a functional family of sorts, with less of an emphasis on specific friendships and more on general bonding. And this is great. There is nothing like sitting in class and knowing that the other students have your back, and that if you have some vague idea they will help you to give it shape, will loan you the facts you need to build it up or to criticize it. Its like we've dropped the whole strutting-and-proving part of grad school and moved into the (far more constructive) learn-from-my-peers phase. And that gives me a whole new feeling of satisfaction in my studies.
.
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| NY Times: the highs and the lows |
[21 Sep 2005|03:34pm] |
The Lows:
Yesterday, the NY times published an article on its front page that had my fellow female graduate students and (if its high ranking on the most-emailed-articles list is any indicator) many others all talking. At the center of all the ruckus is Louise Story's "Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood," in which Story discusses how "Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children." She continues, "Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment."
Now, while there are a lot of interesting issues to discuss relating to the article in question (what's role of education in our society, how can the "decision" not to work be seen as a reflection of privilege, etc), I'm rather charmed by the reaction of Jack Shafer, who tore the article to shreds in his slate.com piece "Weasel-Words Rip My Flesh! Spotting a bogus trend story on Page One of today's New York Times." Shafer dissects the shoddy editing, lack of rigorous research, and general fluffiness of the article. He refrains from attacking Story's thesis, however, since "while bogus, 'Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood' isn't false: It can't be false because it never says anything sturdy enough to be tested."
Shafer then goes on to address the question of how such a poorly constructed and argued story got on page one of the NY Times. He dismisses the notion that there is "a New York Times conspiracy afoot to drive feminists crazy and persuade young women that their place is in the home" in favor of the idea that the NY Times editors are just lazy and looking for a flashy story. But isn't there something telling in the sort of story they find flashy? He points out himself that John Tierney wrote a number articles on this theme earlier this year, and then there was the infamous Times Magazine piece "The Opt-Out Revolution" by Lisa Belkin (I guess I can't blame the NY Time for Allison Pearson's chick-lit "I don't know how she does it", in which the answer to all of a woman's problems - emotional, sexual, marital - is to stay at home, but it seems too appropriate not to add here). Can't we deduce some sort of trend, some sort of agenda-pushing? Certainly, we would more evidence to make that case than Story had in her whole article.
The Highs:
Also on the NY Times most emailed articles list is Natalie Angier's "Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore." Now, while I don't completely endorse her science-writing, I do endorse her style and her ability to assemble together an entertaining set of facts (her book "Woman : An Intimate Geography" is great - I particularly like her discussion on how confusing the existence of breasts is to hard-core evolutionary theorists). She opens her article with the question I've always had with profanity - why do people get so up in arms about it, when we've (ie, the human race) have always used it to set off emotionally charged language? Then she goes on to discuss research into the psychology and physiology of cursing. And, as a bonus, you get the entertaining drawings of Tim Bower.
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| just two more to go.... |
[16 Sep 2005|02:53pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 accomplished |
] |
I officially give myself permission to take the rest of the day off, go have a glass of wine at Fowler's, and celebrate the fact that I just got the results back from my Latin reading exam, and I passed. I knew I rocked that exam, but now I've got the letter to prove it.
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[14 Sep 2005|08:46am] |
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mood |
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 cranky |
] |
Classics fact of the day: The whole "the Romans sewed the fields of Carthage with salt" thing is a giant myth, given respectability by the 1930's Cambridge Ancient History. Spread the word. If you have a jstor connection, you can check it out here.
In other news, my attempts at wifery were a pretty big failure.
Motivated by a desire to prove I'm not the lazy one in my relationship (in spite of the fact that hokiejp always does the dishes and cooks), I decided to engage in some activities yesterday more suited to I-wanna-be-a-1950's-housewife/freshman year of college Laury than to my current incarnation. So I booked it home from school so I could have enough time to grab the laundry from the house and run it over to the apartment, where I would process it while making a big pizza from scratch. All was chugging right along by 6 o'clock: the dough was rising nicely, and I was about to put in the second load of laundry (in the ultimate nod to old-fashionedness, I actually separated the laundry into lights and darks). The stress started when I realized that 1) my dryer sucks and 2) it was going to take me until 8 to get everything folded and packed up in my car for the return trip. Happily, hokiejp left a message for me saying he would be home late, so all was well. I got to the house, unpacked the car, and got to making the pizza sauce. The roma tomatoes were merrily mixing flavors with the garlic and onion in the pan, and I was in a good mood again. I even put the pizza stone in the oven, and got it all preheated. Then the real trouble began. See, I've always made pizza on a crappy cookie sheet, but now that this pizza stone has come into my life, I was determined to use it. Who cares that there wasn't a baker's peel to go with the stone? Surely I could just make the pizza on the counter, and then pick it up and transfer it by hand to the oven, right?
Ah, the hilarity. The pizza started out so beautifully, but with every moment that passed the sauce absorbed into the crust just a little bit more, making the whole concoction that much more soupy and difficult to manage. With the oven door open the kitchen was unbearably hot, so I alternated between attacking the pizza, which was rapidly becoming one with the counter top, grabbing bits of it in my hands and then saying "no no no no no no no" as all sections not directly supported by me sank back down to the counter, and slamming the oven shut again to take a breather before attempting the exercise again. Finally I decided to turn it into a calzone by folding half of it over again, which would have been a great idea if I had thought of it ten minutes earlier. As it was, I only succeeded in making some sort of mutant bread-pizza-soup. I finally managed to get the mess off of the counter top, but by then I just had to throw it all in the trash.
Tired by this exercise, overwhelmed by the mess I'd made of the kitchen, I barely managed to make things look presentable before calling it a night. When hokiejp came home, he was met with some mysterious mess in the trash, several unwashed dishes, clothes that had been washed but which were now wrinkled from being crammed into a bag and forgotten, and one very, very, very grumpy and tired Laury. Hardly the cheerful greeting with music, a glass of wine, and warm Italian smells in the air that I had been envisioning. I need to learn to cut out the attempts at grand gestures.
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| random updating |
[09 Sep 2005|10:12am] |
Last weekend hokiejp and his whole family took on the project of getting him settled into the house. We had intended to show the relatives some of the nicer sights of this fair city, but they were more focused on making sure the house was cleaned up and stocked with necessities like a 6-foot ladder and soap dishes. Many trips were made to stores like Target and Home Depot. Much money was spent; fortunately, very little of it was mine. Last night, hokiejp went on a major grocery shopping trip and fully stocked his kitchen, including several items especially designed to attract Laurys like myself. After today, when he is taking a half day off work to finish putting everything in order, he will be firmly and irrevocably established in the new house.
Which is great. Really. But the thing is, I'm keeping my apartment (at least for fall semester). I decided to keep my place for a number of reasons, but one of them was that I failed to anticipate how quickly hokiejp would make the new house so cozy. But now that I see how nice the new house is, how close to campus and work-friendly, I find myself wondering how I'm going to negotiate having my own place as well. Hmm.
In other news, I got called up by the national bone marrow registry, and I've matched to a 49 yr old woman with leukemia. After mailing off my consent forms I'm going to have to go give another blood sample (I think sometime next week). The woman I spoke to at the registry told me I was an excellent match, with 5 out of 6 antigens matching, so barring the discovery that I have syphilis or something it looks like I might have surgery....I don't know when. I would think that time would really be of the essence in this situation. With the flood of weddings coming up at the end of this month, I hope that all scheduling stuff works itself out. But I suppose I'll just have to wait and see.
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| I'm the biggest classics dork ever |
[19 Aug 2005|01:46pm] |
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mood |
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 silly |
] |
I'm a grunt working data entry, and I recently had to email a fellow grunt at another university. I nearly died from laughter when, responding to an email from him, I realized he had customized the line which usually reads "On date, so-and-so wrote." Instead, it now said:
Sing, Muse, the song of Laury:
It is ridiculous how much happiness reading that brought me.
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| june excitement |
[06 Jul 2005|05:52pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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effusive |
] |
Many things have been going on down here. So many, in fact, that my LJ has been all forlorn and forgotten. Here's a taste of what's been keeping me so busy:
1) hokiejp got a fabulous job down here, and moved in with communtycard and I while he searched for a house. Then, in a flurry of house-viewing, contract signing madness, he officially became middle-aged. He closes on the house in mid-August, and will move into it in September, and I will be out one breakfast cook. Damn!
2) A trip to DC to see Sleater-Kinney perform at the 9:30 club. Their music has taken a huge turn (here's an interview with Carrie Brownstein about the band's new direction), and I'm not entirely sure that I can recommend their new album The Woods (see also the Onion review). I certainly don't love it - yet - as much as all the critics seem to, and so was a bit disappointed that their concert was so heavily weighted in favor of new material (very few pre-One Beat songs were played, and most of those came during the encore). But the whole trip experience was padded with goodness first from getting to see my brother, who happened to fly in from California for a wedding that same weekend, and second by a quick decision to stop at the Ipanema Café. The latter's amazingness was augmented by the fact that we got to chat with our waiter and the bartender about The Woods, making us feel very cool and hipster (a very rare thing for me, indeed).
3) Checking out the American Dance Festival OK, so we didn't get to see as much as I would have liked, but we did get to see an amazing performance by Chunky Move called Tense Dave (for a brief taste of it you can visit here). I won't attempt to describe it more fully than to say it was the most Lynch-like piece of dance I have ever seen (for a longer review, see The Independent, and skip to the bottom of the article). It was completely amazing, and made me incredibly sad when I realized that I would probably never get to see it again. At least I got to share the experience with someone, though, or else the thought of being the only person I know with these images on the brain would have driven me crazy. Seriously, if you happen to hear that Chunky Move is bringing Tense Dave to a city near you (although for now their touring is rather limited) go...but it is only an hour long, so don't spend too much on the tickets.
4) The Festival for the Eno, already mentioned in communtycard's livejournal, so I'll just say that it was quite, quite unfortunate that the Nields took up valuable song-playing time with bookreading. And didn't inform Eddie from Ohio in advance that they were going to be called up on stage for Keys to the Kingdom.
5) Working and studying. This summer I'm taking two of my language exams: french (with the aid of a dictionary) and latin (with no help at all AAAGGHH!!). I could have probably passed my french exam on my crappy, crappy memory of french from high school, but I decided that a) language exams actually have a purpose - to force you to learn the language and b) if I didn't become fluent enough in french to read it *now*, I never would take the time to do it later. So I've just finished a course in French for reading knowledge, and am working on translating some academic texts (as well as attempting L'Ignorance by Milan Kundera, which has the advantage having the largest type I have ever seen, making me feel like the queen of all things French as I breeze through each page right up until I glance at the untouched Proust on the corner of my nightstand, mocking my meager French abilities with its complicated structures, frequent switches in verb tense, and use of the damn passé simple). I'm also alternating between madly freaking out about my Latin exam and idly ignoring the latin reading list for days. I'm slated to take a "practice" version of the exam in a few days (the scare quotes are because if I do really well on the exam then it will count for real, and if not then there's no shame....until early September). In addition to the studying, I've been working as a tutor on computer basics for one of the emeritus professors and as a fancy data entry drone ("fancy" because the data I'm entering comes from published ancient greek papyri). The data entry work can be pretty dull, but I have access to an itunes library refined by countless workers before me, so that spices things up nicely (in particular, I've been discovering the world of alt country via people like Ryan Adams and Wilco). Also, I occasionally get to enter things that make me laugh, like an ancient Egyptian order for jujubes (unfortunately not these, but these).
6) Finally, this post by fuzzyamy mentions the word ebay, and that was enough to start me off on a mad crazy ebay obsession. I've finally put a cap on adding anything to my "Items to Watch" list, but I just keep thinking of new things that I need (really, I neeeed them!) The bright side of this obsession is that it has brought me a number of really nice items of clothing that I can actually teach in and still respect myself in the morning. The down side is that my obsession with Prada shoes is on an all time high, now that it seems possible that one day I might own a pair.
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