The week and I tied for who was ordering whom around, despite my improved time management. This week promises to be almost as busy, as it turns out.
Saw my brother when I went to take the GRE (which went well). He seems so much older, after only about two months apart from him. Gave me a hug, which was nice. We couldn't have lunch or anything, 'cause it took too long for us to find each other, but maybe some other time. I went to DiBella's and got a taste of Rochester. Ah, sub sandwiches on delicious rolls. Ah, oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies.
We went to Bev and Harold's farm for honors-seminar last Thursday. Harold's stories are super-cool and super-impressive. It made me want to abandon grad school to go work on his farm for five years. Sort of. If only I were good at anything besides academics.
But I guess academics are not so shabby. Dr. Strong was quite impressed, as it happens, by my poetry lesson. Jessie, sweet girl, told me she'd take a class with me any day. ...Have been reading some FYE papers and grading them on a separate sheet of paper, to see how closely I match up to Dr. Strong's, since I'm really not sure what makes an A paper, a C one, etc. Stay tuned on that one, I guess.
Everybody is forbidden to ask me about grad school until at least December, and probably February. Else the squeaky hammer shall come for you.
I have an actual personal journal now. That's perhaps an odd comment to make on a public one, but for a while, this was really all I had. The new one began as just a space to gush and think about FYE and that whole bright new world as much as I wanted, but quickly branched off into other topics. I guess I mention this by way of apologizing for my entries here being fairly boring these days, but it's not like they'd be radically different otherwise.
Lit GRE after all, December 2. Guess I needed another thing to do. Next week I have to meet with Dr. Strong about my honors thesis, which means that I'll have to get that together as much as possible this week, so that I know whether or not I have a Newbery Project. I might not, you know. I've made rather a bad job of it, as it turns out, with far more books read (and by now forgotten) than notes taken. And Herrick is closed for renovations. Wellsville Library, here I come.
...I'm not really sure who knows me anymore. But I'd still rather be here than anywhere else.
-Laurel
10.30.2006
10.23.2006
Whoa! Time management is awesome!
So this is pretty much the Week of Craziness, due to all of the following on top of the regular stuff expected:
-paper due Monday on The Sun Also Rises, necessitating my reading the book again (since the last time I did was twelfth grade)
-the rather inconveniently-placed FYE-program meeting tomorrow night
-the PBK-speaker dinner on Wednesday that we have to get the house ready for, but at which I can't actually be, since I have...
-...the interdojo clinic for karate, which is an extra-long class where the upper-belts, the Tiny Tigers (little-kid karate), and some jujitsu students get to watch us do stuff (though we also get to watch them do stuff)
-a treasurer/Invisible Children meeting with Sandy on Wednesday afternoon
-having to really get stuff done on my grad school search, since I have...
-...the GRE (aughhh!) on Thursday, which means...
-...study time for GRE math and essay before that (verbal seems to be fine, based on practice)
-teaching FYE on Friday, good ruddy gracious (we're doing poetry; I'm going to cover the idea of allusion...at least I have no set amount of time to cover, since Dr. Strong promises to finish up if I can't go the whole hour)
But things have gone well so far. I actually, in a shocking display of productivity, got all my homework for tomorrow done before karate, so that after karate I could start The Sun Also Rises, which I did, finishing Book One, and even managing to make a small batch of cookies on the side. And then I did my dishes, read my friends' blogs, and wrote this. Now I'm going to bed so as to get, ideally, at least seven hours' sleep. If I can keep this up (everybody pray!), I will have this week by the collar, instead of the other way around.
Oh, and Lightning the Larger (my car) is back in action. w00t!
-Laurel
-paper due Monday on The Sun Also Rises, necessitating my reading the book again (since the last time I did was twelfth grade)
-the rather inconveniently-placed FYE-program meeting tomorrow night
-the PBK-speaker dinner on Wednesday that we have to get the house ready for, but at which I can't actually be, since I have...
-...the interdojo clinic for karate, which is an extra-long class where the upper-belts, the Tiny Tigers (little-kid karate), and some jujitsu students get to watch us do stuff (though we also get to watch them do stuff)
-a treasurer/Invisible Children meeting with Sandy on Wednesday afternoon
-having to really get stuff done on my grad school search, since I have...
-...the GRE (aughhh!) on Thursday, which means...
-...study time for GRE math and essay before that (verbal seems to be fine, based on practice)
-teaching FYE on Friday, good ruddy gracious (we're doing poetry; I'm going to cover the idea of allusion...at least I have no set amount of time to cover, since Dr. Strong promises to finish up if I can't go the whole hour)
But things have gone well so far. I actually, in a shocking display of productivity, got all my homework for tomorrow done before karate, so that after karate I could start The Sun Also Rises, which I did, finishing Book One, and even managing to make a small batch of cookies on the side. And then I did my dishes, read my friends' blogs, and wrote this. Now I'm going to bed so as to get, ideally, at least seven hours' sleep. If I can keep this up (everybody pray!), I will have this week by the collar, instead of the other way around.
Oh, and Lightning the Larger (my car) is back in action. w00t!
-Laurel
10.16.2006
Soli Deo Gloria
So if people do have guardian angels, as I'm told they do, then thank God for mine.
I found myself, around 9 tonight, with nothing in particular to do and a few things to get, so I went to Hornell. Stopping for money and gas was apparently an act of particularly bad timing, for, several minutes after I did those, I clipped a deer. To spare you suspense, it was the best possible situation, short of not hitting anything. My right front signal's out, but not a crack to the windshield, dent to the chassis, or bruise to my person. The deer might even have lived.
I don't think there was anything I could've done; it bounded right out in front of me, a smallish doe. Quick one, too; she almost made it all the way across before impact. As soon as I saw her coming, I knew I'd never stop in time, so I hit the brake (maybe I should've done that, maybe not, but it just sort of happened without my brain being really involved) and braced for impact. I got it down from 55 to 45; not bad for the little time I had.
And it was way less than I expected. A loud, solid thwack, something white went flying (goodness knows whether it was part of my light or part of the deer), but my car never even jolted off course, never slowed. Just shouldered the hit and kept right on. I felt worse, really, for the person on the other side of the road, who must've been as freaked out by watching as I was by experiencing.
I was really more stunned than anything. Talked to myself a lot about it as I drove to Wal-Mart. Didn't spend all that much time in there; got my stuff and got out of there. Well, I did get a CD, WoW 2007. I kinda figured, (a) I was getting something out of this startlingly-anomalous experience, even if it was my own $15 paying for it, and (b) some Christian music seemed like a good idea anyway, all things considered.
Drove home as slowly as I could; looked for a deer carcass or any other sign of badness as I passed the general area, but there was nothing but a mark toward the middle of the road, possibly related, possibly not. I'll call my mom tomorrow; it didn't seem quite like the thing to do tonight.
I mean, crud, I didn't have my cell phone on me, or even my license. If it'd been bad, I would have been in big trouble. But my stupidity, in all respects, was more than compensated for. Thank heaven and the Manager thereof.
-Laurel
I found myself, around 9 tonight, with nothing in particular to do and a few things to get, so I went to Hornell. Stopping for money and gas was apparently an act of particularly bad timing, for, several minutes after I did those, I clipped a deer. To spare you suspense, it was the best possible situation, short of not hitting anything. My right front signal's out, but not a crack to the windshield, dent to the chassis, or bruise to my person. The deer might even have lived.
I don't think there was anything I could've done; it bounded right out in front of me, a smallish doe. Quick one, too; she almost made it all the way across before impact. As soon as I saw her coming, I knew I'd never stop in time, so I hit the brake (maybe I should've done that, maybe not, but it just sort of happened without my brain being really involved) and braced for impact. I got it down from 55 to 45; not bad for the little time I had.
And it was way less than I expected. A loud, solid thwack, something white went flying (goodness knows whether it was part of my light or part of the deer), but my car never even jolted off course, never slowed. Just shouldered the hit and kept right on. I felt worse, really, for the person on the other side of the road, who must've been as freaked out by watching as I was by experiencing.
I was really more stunned than anything. Talked to myself a lot about it as I drove to Wal-Mart. Didn't spend all that much time in there; got my stuff and got out of there. Well, I did get a CD, WoW 2007. I kinda figured, (a) I was getting something out of this startlingly-anomalous experience, even if it was my own $15 paying for it, and (b) some Christian music seemed like a good idea anyway, all things considered.
Drove home as slowly as I could; looked for a deer carcass or any other sign of badness as I passed the general area, but there was nothing but a mark toward the middle of the road, possibly related, possibly not. I'll call my mom tomorrow; it didn't seem quite like the thing to do tonight.
I mean, crud, I didn't have my cell phone on me, or even my license. If it'd been bad, I would have been in big trouble. But my stupidity, in all respects, was more than compensated for. Thank heaven and the Manager thereof.
-Laurel
I should probably still be asleep right now.
(Note to d'Artagnan: I had already posted this, or at least was on my final sentences, by the time we started talking about whether I'm ever calm this early in the week. So...this isn't your fault, haha.)
I'm one of those people that Dr. Mayberry talks about as being sort of like she sees Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, someone who just can't turn his brain off. Without being hyperactive per se, I've always been a little, I don't know, high-strung or something. I talk fast and often unnecessarily--I've always been like that--and one big reason why I was a morning person (like my dad) as a kid was that, as soon as I got up, I had things to do that I found so interesting. I remember fifth grade, always being up even before my dad; there were mornings when I'd wake up at quarter past five, and even that was exciting (since it wasn't until junior high that I had to do that all the time); I'd go downstairs with a book and lie on the dining room table, reading. (Why the dining room table? Well, the dining room light was one I thought was harder to see from the upstairs, when on. I didn't want to wake anyone; I often expected to get in trouble even when there was no danger of that...another thing that's changed very little.)
Since I don't go to bed early enough now to be fully-rested when I wake up before the proper time, I am no longer a morning person, so much as a person awake in the morning. My problem isn't waking up in the middle of the night--that happens, but not often, and I can get back to sleep without much trouble--but waking up long before my alarm (or, when I haven't set one, long before I would choose to get up). Once my brain is awake, my body has no choice but to be awake. I am one of those people for whom bathroom trips mean big trouble, since that's about all it takes to switch my consciousness on. No caffeine necessary. I try to get back to sleep, and all I get is my mind darting in a dozen different directions. After a while, I'd rather act on everything I'm thinking than stay in bed trying to sleep.
Dr. Mayberry went on to say that Mercutio's mental busyness is probably one reason that he and Romeo get along so well: Romeo's not like that, so they kind of balance each other out. I don't know what I think of that. I mean, I can see her point. There are friends I have that I really value for their sort of understated, steady goodness...Jessica and Amy always sort of struck me that way, and cider-Jamie (to distinguish him from any other Jamie you might be thinking of, I guess), and even, to a lesser degree, Chris (since, though he can be real good at the kind of thing I'm talking about, he also has this hyperactive streak that comes out in a series of personal quirks). Certainly they're rewarding friends regardless, but it's also sort of calming to see them...sometimes.
On the other hand, my best friends have always been smart, high-strung people. It means something that, among the calming people I just named, none of them is from home. The problem I have in talking to really understated people is that they also make me self-conscious; without meaning to, I think they make me count my words, scrutinize my topics. They're calming when I can, like them, shut up. When I can't, I'd much rather be around someone I know will respond with the same energy. And I can't tell you as many things about Jess and Amy as I can about even, say, Maggie and other-Tim, two people I know about as well as I know them.
...I went into all this simply because I woke up far earlier this morning than I had intended, and couldn't get back to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about things. It's not clear thought when I do that, but even smeary thought puts the adrenaline in my bloodstream. I'm tired, but up.
Would that I could sleep more, though, 'cause it's contributing to my feeling that a bunch of campus people are getting on my nerves. Though a lot of things are behind that, so whatever.
I was essentially complaining about everything to somebody over AIM the other night--I don't like myself when I do that, since I always sound, or actually become while typing, worse than I really am, but, again, whatever--and when I kind of apologized for that at the end, they'd told me that, actually, I should do it more often, since they'd kind of been living in a bubble-world and should care more about other people. I think this actually was a sincere comment, though I have to admit that it was also a brilliant response, since it was so different from what I expected that I half-returned to normal simply out of a mix of surprise, curiosity, and admiration.
I thought about that when I stumbled onto the NPR "My Cancer" blog last night, which I knew nothing about theretofore. Leroy Sievers, apparently sort of a name in the journalism world (he's covered several wars, among other things), is chronicling his cancer experience and treatment. The blog is long and difficult, but very insightful (it almost can't help being otherwise, though that's not to insult it in any way). Starts here, if you're interested enough to go back to the beginning, here if you want the most recent.
Breadmaking today, and studying for the GREs. Probably a nap, too.
-Laurel
I'm one of those people that Dr. Mayberry talks about as being sort of like she sees Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, someone who just can't turn his brain off. Without being hyperactive per se, I've always been a little, I don't know, high-strung or something. I talk fast and often unnecessarily--I've always been like that--and one big reason why I was a morning person (like my dad) as a kid was that, as soon as I got up, I had things to do that I found so interesting. I remember fifth grade, always being up even before my dad; there were mornings when I'd wake up at quarter past five, and even that was exciting (since it wasn't until junior high that I had to do that all the time); I'd go downstairs with a book and lie on the dining room table, reading. (Why the dining room table? Well, the dining room light was one I thought was harder to see from the upstairs, when on. I didn't want to wake anyone; I often expected to get in trouble even when there was no danger of that...another thing that's changed very little.)
Since I don't go to bed early enough now to be fully-rested when I wake up before the proper time, I am no longer a morning person, so much as a person awake in the morning. My problem isn't waking up in the middle of the night--that happens, but not often, and I can get back to sleep without much trouble--but waking up long before my alarm (or, when I haven't set one, long before I would choose to get up). Once my brain is awake, my body has no choice but to be awake. I am one of those people for whom bathroom trips mean big trouble, since that's about all it takes to switch my consciousness on. No caffeine necessary. I try to get back to sleep, and all I get is my mind darting in a dozen different directions. After a while, I'd rather act on everything I'm thinking than stay in bed trying to sleep.
Dr. Mayberry went on to say that Mercutio's mental busyness is probably one reason that he and Romeo get along so well: Romeo's not like that, so they kind of balance each other out. I don't know what I think of that. I mean, I can see her point. There are friends I have that I really value for their sort of understated, steady goodness...Jessica and Amy always sort of struck me that way, and cider-Jamie (to distinguish him from any other Jamie you might be thinking of, I guess), and even, to a lesser degree, Chris (since, though he can be real good at the kind of thing I'm talking about, he also has this hyperactive streak that comes out in a series of personal quirks). Certainly they're rewarding friends regardless, but it's also sort of calming to see them...sometimes.
On the other hand, my best friends have always been smart, high-strung people. It means something that, among the calming people I just named, none of them is from home. The problem I have in talking to really understated people is that they also make me self-conscious; without meaning to, I think they make me count my words, scrutinize my topics. They're calming when I can, like them, shut up. When I can't, I'd much rather be around someone I know will respond with the same energy. And I can't tell you as many things about Jess and Amy as I can about even, say, Maggie and other-Tim, two people I know about as well as I know them.
...I went into all this simply because I woke up far earlier this morning than I had intended, and couldn't get back to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about things. It's not clear thought when I do that, but even smeary thought puts the adrenaline in my bloodstream. I'm tired, but up.
Would that I could sleep more, though, 'cause it's contributing to my feeling that a bunch of campus people are getting on my nerves. Though a lot of things are behind that, so whatever.
I was essentially complaining about everything to somebody over AIM the other night--I don't like myself when I do that, since I always sound, or actually become while typing, worse than I really am, but, again, whatever--and when I kind of apologized for that at the end, they'd told me that, actually, I should do it more often, since they'd kind of been living in a bubble-world and should care more about other people. I think this actually was a sincere comment, though I have to admit that it was also a brilliant response, since it was so different from what I expected that I half-returned to normal simply out of a mix of surprise, curiosity, and admiration.
I thought about that when I stumbled onto the NPR "My Cancer" blog last night, which I knew nothing about theretofore. Leroy Sievers, apparently sort of a name in the journalism world (he's covered several wars, among other things), is chronicling his cancer experience and treatment. The blog is long and difficult, but very insightful (it almost can't help being otherwise, though that's not to insult it in any way). Starts here, if you're interested enough to go back to the beginning, here if you want the most recent.
Breadmaking today, and studying for the GREs. Probably a nap, too.
-Laurel
10.09.2006
Week seven? Seriously?
Dang.
Since the last posting, we did indeed adopt Emily's guppies. It's been 10 days, and they're still disease-free. Yayyy, fish-keeping is easy again! (Erica, John, and Chris named them, respectively, Maria, Jemima, and Sparkette.)
Midterms here. The only real work I have is in Shakespeare, which's cool. We're reading Pride and Prejudice in Jane Austen, with which I'm already quite familiar. I'd forgotten what a lovely book it is.
Everything goes fairly well. Tim's going to give me some karate help on Wednesday, which's good. This weekend, it'll be just John, Chris, and me in the house; we're hoping to have a soup-and-bread party on Saturday night (I'm probably going to attempt sourdough, which means I should make the starter soon). And John and I should study for the GREs, oh dang. I hope they mail me my information soon, if they're gonna.
Lily Jo's dog died. :( She had a fairly long, really good life, with much more freedom than the average dog has. So their family's getting kittens this weekend, which should be nice.
'kay, guess it's bedtime.
-Laurel
Since the last posting, we did indeed adopt Emily's guppies. It's been 10 days, and they're still disease-free. Yayyy, fish-keeping is easy again! (Erica, John, and Chris named them, respectively, Maria, Jemima, and Sparkette.)
Midterms here. The only real work I have is in Shakespeare, which's cool. We're reading Pride and Prejudice in Jane Austen, with which I'm already quite familiar. I'd forgotten what a lovely book it is.
Everything goes fairly well. Tim's going to give me some karate help on Wednesday, which's good. This weekend, it'll be just John, Chris, and me in the house; we're hoping to have a soup-and-bread party on Saturday night (I'm probably going to attempt sourdough, which means I should make the starter soon). And John and I should study for the GREs, oh dang. I hope they mail me my information soon, if they're gonna.
Lily Jo's dog died. :( She had a fairly long, really good life, with much more freedom than the average dog has. So their family's getting kittens this weekend, which should be nice.
'kay, guess it's bedtime.
-Laurel