ifeelbetter

I totally make myself believe that I'm about to be kicked out of the program every couple of months and then my adviser is surprisingly wonderful (despite having actually kicked a good friend of mine out of the program just last year) and talks me down. It actually goes down with a lot more professionalism than all that sounded like....but it's still a crazy loop that I am stuck in.

ANYWAY. Long story short--I got plastered last night after figuring out that (a) I'M STILL HERE and (b) I HAVE MORE TIME TO DO ACTUAL THINGS AND SO THEY WON'T BE BAD. OR AS BAD. (THEY MIGHT STILL BE BAD.) And I watched alllll of Psych that I missed in the past couple of months. And now I'm watching Inception. Yeah, that's right. I'm watching it right now.

You wish you were watching Inception right now.

( THOUGHTS. I AM HAVING THOUGHTS ABOUT INCEPTION. )

And then I stopped keeping track of my thoughts and just shouted at the TV. God, I LOVE this film.

So I have had some awful roommates in my time. But I have held out and kept going because I do not do well living alone and there's a very high probability that I'm mostly asexual and so spouse-ing it up is not an option. So.

This year is the. Best. Group. Of people. EVER. There's four of us and sometimes I am so happy to go home I literally skip. Like....grown woman. Skipping. Down the sidewalk. These things happen now.

But to sum up:
a) we decided to have family christmas pictures taken at JC Penny's because I was not raised Christian and my other roommate grew up in Kenya/Singapore and neither of us had any experience with it.
b) we brought props.
c) including (but not limited to): a stuffed whale. a stuffed monkey. a super gay tree topper from our christmas tree. a nicki minaj custume.
d) we actually asked things like, "yes, I know you want us to smile, but we wanted to be creepin' instead. Does that work?"
e) and the lady who was helping us had an awesome time too.
f) I sort of wish we could hang out with her again.
g) then we went to have dinner and ran into a bar with live jazz on the way back.
h) and we had a couple of hilariously named cocktails and talked about what we would do with a time machine if we had one.
i) and what orgies we would or would not feel comfortable visiting with our time machine.
j) and the relative cleanliness of each.
k) and, at one point, all had to jinx each other because we followed up the comment, "I could teach you" with "BUT I'D HAVE TO CHARGE" at the same exact time.
l) and then raced home afterward.

My point is--therefore--that having roommates is so good when it's good that it's worth it even when it's bad.

Also. I'm a little drunk.


GIFSoup

I am awarding myself an ironic award tonight for completing TWO. WHOLE. SENTENCES. in my dissertation. (Four if you count the two I added and then deleted. [Also. There were like ten hours between each of those steps.] Six if you count the false starts too.)

In OTHER news: I am re-doing my Detective Fiction syllabus for next term. ( WAFFLE ABOUT TEACHING UNDER THE CUT. I HAVE SO MANY FEEEEEELINGS ABOUT TEACHING. AND THOUGHTS. FEEEEELINGS AND THOUGHTS. )

OK. That's enough waffle about teaching.

Other news: fabulous roommates and I are sticking together for another year (yay!), we're also getting Family Holiday Portraits at JC Penney this week because two out of four of us (me!) have never done so before (yay!), and the semester is almost over (YAAAAAAY!).

On the other hand, I am almost finished with Stargate: Atlantis (BOOOOOO!) and am already feeling Rodney withdrawal. I just....I love him. Lots. With all of my many Feelings and Thoughts. I always talk to my TV when I watch, yeah, but I stopped using his name at all like a hundred episodes ago (<--hyperbole to my left) and have started, at first unconsciously, referring to him primarily as "Babe." As if I was Danny and he was my Steve. I am H50-ing my love for him. It's crazy pants up in my head, is what I'm saying.

Look at this now:

Yay! Done with the latest batch of grading!


My roommates this year are awesome enough that we can actually host events here in chez nous. We did for Halloween and last night we did a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner (the kind without the family). It went brilliantly despite the fact that none of know anything at all about turkeys, roasting, or carving.

( Photos under the cut.... )

And there are so many films I am excited about coming out in the next few months.

( Further proof that I am best suited to be a film reviewer, not an English grad student, under the cut... )

In other news: after fixing the toilet for the umpteenth time, I have decided I have a future in plumbing if this whole English professor deal falls through.

I'm applying for funding today. It always makes me feel a bit like a beggar and then the phrase "cap in hand" starts to roll around in my head until I get the whole Proclaimers song stuck in there.

Also, my roommate and I were Interview With A Vampire for Halloween:

Just thought I'd share that with you. :)

So I have these new roommates who make my life full of butterflies and rainbows all the time (it's very distracting...and awesome) and we were having wine on our mini-porch--it's wooden and we can all fit if we scrunch--when New Roomie #1 asks what's the big deal about Firefly.

I haven't had the new roomies so long and usually I keep the geekier geekiness under wraps for at least the first month of a new friendship. But, hey. We already watched all of The Matrix movies together (made better by the company) and were contemplating starting a Lord of the Rings marathon. So. I opened my mouth to give my explanation when New Roomie #2 (and perpetual Peter Pan, so much so that we call him "Boy") starts in with his instead.

It included zooooom noises and running around the driveway.

Conclusion: New roomies are magicsauce.

Also: I watched Panam. I have a strange urge to watch it regularly all season long. It's about planes. And going places. And featured a riDICulous segment about the Bay of Pigs. I think it's hilarious that it thinks it's empowering those women, though. Hot≠new Darwinianin evolution of women. Sorry.

Alsoalso: The New Girl. I see pearls of awesome in that hotmess, I swear I do. Give it some time to smooth out the kinks and it could evolve into a great sitcom. Don't we all agree that's what happened to How I Met Your Mother? First season was nowhere near as clever and awesome as it would later turn out to be. It looked like a Friends knockoff at first. I'm just sayin.

I have a meeting with my advisor in....two hours....about how she expects me to go from no dissertation to a whole chapter by the end of this term. Yeah. I'm freaking out in my head a lot:

I was thinking about The Oatmeal's tumblebeasts the other day and it occurred to me that there ought really to be a procrastination beast as well, don't you think? I mean, there's Hyperbole and a Half's Why I'll Never Be An Adult, which (let's be honest for a moment) has warmed my heart during dark times that try the soul, but there's no specific mascot to flock to during bouts of procrastination. I feel we need a mascot. Someone should get on that.

I did actually get some work done yesterday. Like, totally real work. Not the justify-the-hours-spent-flipping-through-various-books kind of work. And not the I-cleaned-all-the-things kind of work either. Like, actual typing in an actual document. And some actual progress made on making sense of the jumble of things I feel need to be crammed into my dissertation. So....*self fist-bump*

AND I e-mailed and called lots of people---I am naturally a hermit so these sorts of things take a lot of windup for me---and am now (a) signed up to audit a history course in the Japanese department to shore up some of the gaps in my credibility, (b) back in contact with my adviser, (c) closer than ever to having a cognate person for my committee, and (d) scheduled for a physical on Thursday. (That last one was especially hard because I find phones abnormally, absurdly difficult. The other tasks could be done via e-mail, which I much prefer.)

On the other hand, my old AOL e-mail address is sending horrible spam to everyone I ever knew. So that sucks. -_-;;

A friend of mine posted this on facebook:

It's National Book Week. The rules: Grab the closest book to you. Go to page 56. Copy the 5th sentence as your status. Don't mention the book. Post these rules as part of your status.

But, dudes, I am practically professionally obliged to have multiple books at my side at all times. So I picked five. Let's see if anyone can guess the books:

1. "Go home at once." (Clue: I only counted lines of dialogue, not stage directions. And the response is: "I know, mother. I came on purpose.")

2. "Fear not, fear not, thou wedding-guest!"

3. "You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood; God has graciously given her the shape that he has given to all of us; no signal deformity points her out as a marked character."

4. "Could Anne have forseen such a junction, she would have staid at home; but, from some feelings of interest and curiosity, she fancied now that it was too late to retract, and the whole six set forward in the direction chosen by the Miss Musgroves, who evidently considered the walk as under their guidance."

5. "Right. 'borrowed from Septimus Hodge.' Is it conceivable that the letters were in the book when Byron borrowed it?"

Any litterati in the house want to accept my challenge? I'll promise to do a favor anyone who guesses any. Your choice.

In other news, I have another bookshelf now. And not a moment too soon. That makes....five and a half. In my bedroom. -_-;;

In case anyone was wondering where I had scamped off to, I have been very busy this past month. First, I went to a wedding in Minnesota. Then I flew to my beatific hometown of Jersey City to meet up with my dad so we could both fly to visit my sister's in-laws in Copenhagen and celebrate her and her husband's "cotton" anniversary. Now I'm temporarily back in Jersey for a few days before I finally return home later this week. There will be many pictures at that time--this is fair warning.

The realy impressive part is that I have been without my laptop this whole time. This entry is being written on my iPad which, while lovely, is not entirey as user-friendly as my tried-and-true buddy the laptop.

Wallace Stevens: "Summer is like a perfection of thought."

William Carlos Williams: "In summer, the song sings itself."

Henry James: "Summer afternoon--summer afternoon...the two most beautiful words in the English language."

And yet, despite knowing such great thinkers feel this way about summer, I'm much more aligned with the Manny school of thought:

One of these days, I might just end up on some cars in the street, is all I'm saying.

I can't get myself to do anything. Not dissertation, not funtimes writing, not necessary household work, not grocery shopping....

Things I have been doing:
1) watching In Treatment. Makes me want therapy just for the helluvit.
2) re-watching Sports Night because I will always love Dan. I have this thing for characters named Dan/Danny. Especially written by Sorkin. IDEK.
3) I went on a mini-vacation with the family. We're about to go on the longer one to Denmark but I am temporarily back in my Real Adult Person home to do some "work" beforehand. Now if I could just get some actualfacts work done, that'd be aces.


If only it wasn't summer...I would have so much energy and will to accomplish shit if it wasn't summer!