The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

Grades are in today. I ended up with a 4.0 for both semesters this year. So there. Apparently I can request a "Degree Verification Letter" which should satisfy the ATA, even though I can't get an official transcript yet.

Yesterday I did most of the things I was supposed to do, except for laundry, which I have to do today, and a couple of phone calls. I ended up making soup that can be summarized by "take some chicken and throw a garden at it". It's got carrots and potatoes and tomatoes and cabbage and zucchini in it, and garlic and various herbs and a couple of bay leaves. Good stuff. It's hard to ruin that sort of soup.

I get my driving lessons during the first week in June. Which means I have to call the shuttle service to get to the airport and back next week. (Ye gods, that is next week. I knew that, but it sort of snuck up on me anyway.)

Today I have to make the phone calls I didn't make yesterday, do laundry, and send out my resume to the places I keep meaning to send it to, now that I've re-written it for the fourth time.

The messing around in Photoshop was only half successful. When you start with an image that isn't very high-resolution in the first place, and then try to make it bigger, there isn't much to be done about it. However, the other project was a smashing success, to the point where now I've got two versions of it and I can't decide which one I like better.

I came home last night and discovered that the trumpet vine and the fence across from my front door have both been demolished. Most of the fence is still there, but the section that was holding the vine up is gone. I wonder what they're going to do now?

Today I must remember to buy stamps. I went to the bookstore yesterday and bought some generic graduation announcements, because personalized ones are exorbitantly expensive and I wanted to let my undergrad advisor know what the recommendation letter she wrote for me when I applied to grad school did for me. (I think I remember telling her I'd been accepted, but I can't swear to that.) You have to buy the announcements in packs of 10, so after I send one to my undergrad advisor and one to each set of grandparents, I'll have seven left over, and I haven't a clue what to do with them.

I also discovered in the course of buying announcements that the bookstore is having a pretty good small-electronics sale. I'm considering a bit of semi-profligate spending, because my current portable CD player is getting tired. It still works fine, but the mechanical parts make worrisome buzzing noises when it starts spinning a CD. Considering that a new one would usually be $80 but is now $45, I think it's justifiable. (The graduation regalia I'll only wear once cost more than that.) I know, I know, I should just get an iPod. Not until I have income again, thanks. [EDIT: Score! The bookstore is having a "25% off everything that was already on sale" day. So I got the CD player and some other necessary odds and ends for $35.]

The other night my father and I were talking about desks, and he suggested the cheapest way to get a bigger desk is to buy a hollow-core door and a couple of small filing cabinets. I said "right, and the door will even have a hole in it for the computer cables", which floored him for a second, and then he thought it was hilarious. He hadn't been thinking about pre-bored doors. I don't think I've ever zinged him in his own profession before. Maybe you had to be there, but both of us were snickering about that for the next five minutes.

Time to go run errands, and come home and start printing things.

The people who name hair colors must be related to the people who name paint colors.

The sun isn't quite out, but at least the cloud cover has holes in it today. And it's windy as hell, but it's warm again. I should be outside, probably. I'm going to have to go out and buy milk, at the very least.

I'm waiting for e-mail from the woman who's in charge of tutoring. It might be nice to know what I have to be doing before I have to start doing it. On the other hand, I don't know what I'm worrying about, since I'm only tutoring for about two weeks. Who's going to need tutoring in the first two weeks of the semester? Probably the same people who needed tutoring last semester.

I still don't know who's teaching project management. It's one of two people, and I hope it's the one it probably isn't.

I have to remember to make some new posters for the coffee hour sometime next week. Which is easy; all I have to do is change "Thursday" to "Friday", re-print the thing and make a mess of copies. Which reminds me, we're out of coffee.

Apparently it's not just me; my advisor intimidates everybody.

I wonder if the rec center will let me go bouldering on the climbing wall?

I believe we have a winner in the Let's Make Up Our Minds, Shall We? category:

So far I've heard four different deadline dates for filing the "intend to graduate in May" forms. Two different dates in late January, one in early January and, as of this morning, next Monday. So I went to the graduate studies office to try to figure out what the hell the deal was, and they were closed. Apparently today is holiday luncheon day or something. So I have to go back at 1:30 and see if they're there again yet. [EDIT: They were. The deadline is January 21; I think the "December 21" in the memo this morning was a typo. But I filled out the form anyway, so now I don't have to deal with it at all.]

So far today I've dropped off the SciTechMed final and gone grocery shopping. Now I have a whole list of domestic stuff to do in the next two days. A fair bit of it might have to wait until tomorrow, though. Even though I knew it was a bad idea, I got into the Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream last night after I was done with the exams. Therefore, I was up until 3:00 this morning.

The sun is out today, and while I'm all in favor of that, it's very bright out because the sun is reflecting off the snow. My first coherent thought this morning was "turn it down, willya?"

It had better be time to do something productive, because otherwise it's going to be naptime, and my entire afternoon will be shot to hell.

Yes, I voted. It only took about half an hour of standing in line, and most of the people in line with me were students. Then I went to campus to print things, and bought a milk crate to keep my dictionaries in, and came home in the rain. The problem with hanging around on campus is that there aren't really any good places to hang around. The air, or lack thereof, in most of the buildings makes me sleepy. Then I get into the caffeine-and-sugar thing to get over being sleepy, and everything else goes to hell in a handbasket. So, the best way not to fall into the problem in the first place is not to hang around on campus.

Since I'm home I might as well do some more composition exercises.

I'm not sure how they did it, but the building I live in is built in such a way that the only reliable way to find out what temperature it is outside is to go outside.

First, both windows in my apartment face south, and most of the weather comes in from the west, so if there's a breeze, it doesn't really come in through the windows much. Second, the eaves extend about two feet beyond the wall, so the windows are in shadow for most of the day. That tends to cool off the air that comes in if the windows are open. Third, the entire building is beige except for the front door, which is darkish blue, and the screen door, which is dark brown. The concrete front stoop is beige too, which means it reflects heat, which means the doors get HOT, which means that the air around the outside side of the door is hot too.

What all that means is, it's entirely possible for it to be cool enough indoors for me to need a sweatshirt and socks, while outdoors it's a short sleeves and sandals sort of day, but I can't tell that until I get most of the way down the sidewalk.

Now for the one-sided argument: This week's composition assignment is to do two outlines on the same topic, one informational and one compare-and-contrast. The topic I decided to deal with is "why Dubya shouldn't get elected", which is just fine for informational purposes, but I'm having a terrible time coming up with a reason why he shouldn't just go away. I've got three hours to come up with at least four reasons, and right now I've got one and a half. I'm going to have to write both of these papers for which I'm writing outlines sometime in the next couple of weeks. Sigh.

On my way back from the ATM in the student center, three separate people asked me if I was registered to vote (which I am). Even though Ohio is a swing state, they don't seem to care about who I'd vote for; they just care that I vote. Finally, a nonpartisan idea. (I think the College Democrats are the ones doing the asking, but they don't advertise that fact, so I'm letting it pass as nonpartisan since I don't know.)

Maybe I'd be able to come up with another two and a half reasons for this outline if I had something more substantial for lunch than coffee and cookies.

I've also figured out why I was going insane yesterday. That deserves its own entry, though.

That's me, jumping into academia with both feet. Today I went to fill out all the necessary paperwork (yes, I want the graduate assistantship, yes, I'm a US citizen, yes, I pay taxes in this country, yes, I live in Portage County, etc.). After that I went to the reception for new and returning grad students, and met the first-year French students. I think there are more first-year students this year than there were last year, but I lost count and there were a zillion people there anyhow.

Anyway, in the course of catching up with people and all like that there, I discovered that I now have an official mailbox in the MCLS office, and in that mailbox was my job description. I'm research assistant to my advisor, which is highly nifty, and apparently I'm also in charge of the French coffee hour this year. The silly thing about that is that the faculty member in charge of the French coffee hour is the same one I have two of my three classes with this semester.

Time for dinner and filling out the rest of the paperwork I couldn't fill out earlier. (Does anybody know their bank account's routing number without having to look it up? Hell, I don't even know my account number without looking it up.)

And lo, it's May 4, and we're in another war. In consequence of which, I'm not going anywhere near campus today until I have to. I'm not expecting anything in particular to happen, but I'm not interested in getting caught in the middle of the prevention of anything happening either. There have been several appeals by various groups to the entire student population not to do anything stupid.

Speaking of stupid, I'd love to get my hands on the idiot with the leaf blower outside my window at 8:30 this morning. I went to bed at 2:00 this morning, and six hours wasn't quite enough time asleep.

I think I bombed the Terminology final. All I know is that what I turned in was the required length and had seven different citations. I have no idea whether the content was what's required or not. I'm in that nasty mental place where I'm trying to convince myself that worrying about it now is a waste of time, but that telling myself I don't care at all isn't necessary either.

If I knew what would make me feel better, I'd do it.

The devil's in the details...

I spent an hour this afternoon trying to find a book the library swears it has two copies of, but I'll be damned if I can find it, and I want the head of the reference librarian I talked to. When I told her I was having trouble finding this book, she said "You must be looking in the wrong place. Keep looking." Mind you, she didn't tell me where to look instead. Not helpful. Especially since the reference desk is on the first floor and the book I can't find is supposed to be on the fifth floor. I went up and down between them about three times just to make sure I was looking in the right place. The book I want has a call number that ends in O7 A3, and the stacks go straight from O64N to O7 A32. There's no A3 in the middle there, and I swear there should be. I have no idea where else it would be. It's not like I'm doing this for fun; I need this book. I'm going to try a different reference librarian tomorrow. I didn't intend this to take an hour, but it did, and I lost track of time and had to run like mad so as not to be late for my class.

My resume now has a third line to be added: Member, American Translation Studies Association. It's getting to the point where I either have to remove my summer jobs during college or go into a second page. I also have to find something to use as a sample translation before the ATA conference. I don't think I have anything suitable yet. What I need is something semi-technical that I've done a good translation of.

Tomorrow I get to lock myself up in the computer lab when I'm not in the library trying to find that book. At least I have new music to keep me company, thanks to Newbury Comics' used CDs.

I found the other grocery store. The one that actually has the things I couldn't believe the other one didn't have. Most of the things in the larger store are cheaper, but there are some odd exceptions. Cheerios, for example, are cheaper in the smaller store. The larger store is three blocks up from the smaller one, but it's on a road that looks like it goes out into the boonies, and you can't see the larger store from the smaller one. I hiked up there the other day looking for an outpost of civilization, and found it in the Tops Friendly Market, which knows about frozen fruit (and several other things that make me happy, including the World's Second Smallest Broiler Pan).

The upshot of the whole expedition is, I'm considerably happier than I was a couple of days ago (thanks in large part to a phone call from whuffle), and the weather is behaving very nicely, and I'm sort of waiting for it to rain so all the salt and sand and accumulated gunk gets washed off the sidewalks. As a matter of record, on February 27th I went out in bare feet to go pick up the mail. The season of "Dammit, I'm tired of wearing socks!" has started. It must be almost spring.