Kira Disapproves

This is Eden.

This is Kyle.

(This is my first try at a photo essay. How’s it going?)

This is Jimmy Carter. Not the former president. The former feral (but not really) cat. Jimmy Carter, or “Jimmers” as he is often known, was rescued from a feral cat colony by the humane society, but it turned out he was someone’s former pet that was just hanging out there. In this picture, Jimmy sits by my suitcases casually. As if I just might accidentally take him with me when I go.

This is the couch. I slept here. While Theresa was visiting, I got relegated to an air mattress on the floor. Eric was in my guest room. Good thing I like Eric and Theresa.

This is the awesome balcony. It’s perfect for sitting and people-watching. One night, we were all sitting out on the balcony when a group of people walked by below us talking about aliens and zombies or some such thing. It was a strangely out of body experience. Maybe it was really just us in a future dimension. It was dark. Anything is possible.

This is the awesome built in bookshelves and fireplace in the living room. The whole apartment is really long (I think it’s called railway style or something) and has lots of built in units. This one is probably my favorite. The cabinets hold Kyle’s movie collection, alphabetized. He ran out of room for all his movies when we purchased “Role Models” during my visit. I suggested that he should now take up a new hobby. Please feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.

Let’s just get a close up of that picture on the mantle, shall we?

Why, it’s Eden and Kyle at Homecoming! Awwwww. History. Meant to be. Other sappy sentiments.

This is one of the frogs from Magnolia. Seriously! A celebrity frog! He just came from eBay and is totally getting his own display case. In time for the next tour, I suspect.

Front hall, complete with awesome retro desk. This tour was taken the day I left when I was getting all sappy and sad and I wanted to have pictures to remember the apartment by. So this shot of the front hall is the last one because then I left.

This may be navel-gazing blogging at it’s finest, but I’m happy with my first attempt at a photo essay. This is one of the places I feel at home, or at least feel like myself, which is pretty much the same thing. Thanks for letting me come visit! I’ll see you in Atlanta SOON!

I know I haven’t posted in forever. I’m going to try to be better. First, I was recovering from the end of the semester. And then I was in Chicago to visit Eden and Kyle and then in Madison for Wiscon (which I failed to actually attend.)

The recovery from the semester started with Sunday dinner where we had homemade ravioli and homemade chocolate covered oreos. Mmmmmmm. I ate so much pasta and dessert, I couldn’t even eat any of the chocolates Alex brought from London (but I took a few home with me.)

The pink ones are strawberry. The green ones are mint. There were some regular ones, too, in case any one is concerned. (Why do most of the pictures I take of food also have Nikki’s hand in them?)

After the fabulous dinner,  we played Celebrity, which is way better than Mafia. It involves choosing names (we did five each) and putting them in a basket. Round one, you can say anything but the name to get your team to guess it. Roung two, you can only say two words. Round three is charades. Some of the people in this group have a bit of trouble with charades. Like how whispering is still talking. (*coff* HAROLD *coff*) This night’s round went pretty well.

Were these two acting out the same word in these pictures?

One of these three pictures is NOT of someone playing charades…

Actually, really well. My team won!! By three points, so nice try other team! We’ll call you the “Losers.”

Winners

Losers

Timekeeper

After Sunday dinner, I bid Atlanta goodbye for a month of so and went to my parents in Virginia. My Mom was nice enough to agree to Lila-sit so I could take my trip to Chicago and then Wiscon. More posts to come on that, starting with tomorrow’s special edition: “On Location: Kyle and Eden’s Apartment.” For now, here’s a few pictures of the group.

Kyle, Mike, and Eric being Hounded by Paparazzi

Sitting by the River in the Park with Theresa!

Hanging out by the water in Madison with Shane, Eden, and Pam. More to come!!

I feel lucky to have two great groups of friends to post about. With that warm fuzzy, goodnight!

When I was Gertrude McFuzz in Seussical: The Musical (yes, such a thing exists. No, I will not show you pictures of me in feathers.) I had to sing a song about how “My eyes are too small. I have very large feet. And I’m not very proud of my pitiful ‘tweet!’”

That’s the only tweet-ing I’ve ever done. (Yes, this was the best segue I could think of.) But I know lots of you Twitter. My friend and grad school classmate Elizabeth Daley has an article about Twitter in USA Today. It’s about celebrity “Tweeters” and the crazy things they share. I think she makes a really nice point about the ways in which celebrities who tweet seem to be acting out some weird stuff. Also, this definitely falls into the category of writing that doesn’t jump to the “gee, whiz, technology” position that lots of writers take on things like Twitter and Facebook.

Read it!

My links are still wonky, but you can just do some old fashioned cut and paste and get it here: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/05/tech2-celebrity-tweeters-expose-themselves-for-what-they-are.html#more

Come on. You can spare the time to cut and paste. Especially if I’ve ever made you anything out of construction paper.

Bean man finished his papers!

See the beer mug in has hand?

See the pleased, but still slightly wild and overbright look in his eye?

Yup.

I survived, but I’m not ready for toooo much celebration. It was really rough writing papers this semster, especially this last one. I realized that part of the problem was that the first paper I had due was on a very emotionally draining topic. I didn’t do as much as I could have on my last papers because I didn’t have the energy to completely immerse myself. But whatever, it’s done now. Revisions are for the summer.

Oh, and I still have to finish editing my course syllabus for when I teach next spring. I’ll be getting right on that.

Thanks for all the encouragement and congratulations to those of you who are now DONE yourselves.

Lila and I are going to go pass out now.

I just sneezed sitting at my computer in the library. I’m pretty sure I don’t have swine flu (I checked www.doihaveswinefluyet.com, for example) but I betcha no one will mess with my computer the next time I go to get a drink of water.

Silver linings, people.

And, my father’s advice for paper writing:

1. Write a word.

2. Follow with more words with a sprinkling of nouns, verbs, and adjectives

3. Let it sit

4. Rewrite

I hope these instructions help.

Dad

Well, people, now that we all know how it’s done, let’s get typing!

From BoingBoing, a desk that mechanically presents the reader with the book they should be studying, for exactly the amount of time they should spend studying it. I have a feeling that this desk, rather than forcing me to work, would force me to find new, time-limited methods of procrastination, before I had to break the damn thing apart and retrieve the books to actually write a paper.

I invented a desk in which the books I had to study were arranged in order at the beginning of each term. I also made a bed which set me on my feet every morning at the hour determined on, and in dark winter mornings just as the bed set me on the floor it lighted a lamp. Then, after the minutes allowed for dressing had elapsed, a click was heard and the first book to be studied was pushed up from a rack below the top of the desk, thrown open, and allowed to remain there the number of minutes required. Then the machinery closed the book and allowed it to drop back into its stall, then moved the rack forward and threw up the next in order, and so on, all the day being divided according to the times of recitation, and time required and allotted to each study. 

- Naturalist John Muir

Links still aren’t working, but you can see a picture of it here: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/01/john-muirs-clockwork.html.

That’s a line from some song or saying or something. I’m pretty sure the point of it is: no, rabbits don’t climb trees. Nor can grad students function after writing papers all week.

Here’s the bean man:

See how he looks kind of wide-eyed and crazy but he’s written a lot?

Yup.

One of my papers was due today at five. We have a big clock on campus that chimes the hour and then plays peices of a song every 15 minutes. It chimed the :45 when I was walking from my car and it chimed the end of the song and *dong* while I was *dong* seriously walking right *dong* down the hall towards *dong* my professor’s office *dong* just in the nick of time.

I hope that was five. I’m loopy and can no longer count.

I do have one paper writing adventure to share. As most of you know, I am a true night owl, so during final paper writing time, I generally pull “all-nighters” not because I’m behind on deadlines (necessarily), but because I now have no classes and the luxury of sleeping all day and working all night. However, since I can’t live this way all the time, I have a bit of trouble adjusting to the new schedule, and around 5 or 6 am, I can get pretty loopy.

At 5:30 a.m. Wednesday, I was leaving the library and when I got to my car I decided that, instead of going directly home, I should stop at the 24-hour CVS and buy a toothbrush because I had noticed that day that mine was getting icky.

So, I drive through this construction zone at the front of the school to get to the CVS and pull slooooowwwlly into a spot, since the construction work has left a huge pot hole in front of the store. I go inside and spend approximately ten minutes figuring out what toothbrush to buy, settling on a four-pack of CVS brand, because there is a little voice in the back of my sleepy brain saying “you’d better stock up on toothbrushes. something this ridiculous shouldn’t happen again.”

I take my toothbrushes to the counter, and I’m already holding two fives in my hand that I dug out of my bag. My bag is always a mess of credit cards and cash I just toss in there, so I try to find some payment method before I reach the counter. I hand over the toothbrushes and cash to pay the $5.46.

Then the guy at the counter asks me if I have 46 cents, presumably so he won’t have to break a dollar. I grumble, “Maybe,” annoyed that he’s making me go to the trouble and dig a handful of change out of the bottom of my bag. I start counting out the change and then I realize I’m at 75 cents and forgot to stop. I start over and give the guy the change, then stand there and wait for my four dollar bills. The guy stares at me and goes, “Um. Thank you.”

“Didn’t I give you a five?” I ask.

“No. You gave me a five and a one.”

The correct response at this point would have been “Oh! So sorry!”

Instead I said: “really?” with complete disdain.

For half of the drive home, I was CONVINCED this guy stole my four dollars. Then, it finally started to sink in. “No! You are just dumb tired and actually, you were quite rude to that nice man.”

Sorry nice CVS guy.

I hope you all can see the humor in this story. Now that I’ve written it up, I realize I just sound totally crazy. Remember that I had been awake for about twenty hours at that point. Wednesday was my transition day to the new schedule.

One more paper to go!