What country, friends, is this?

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 08:02:21 GMT

There is something deeply depressing about cleaning one's apartment so the super can come and fix something. In my case, it's a leaky showerhead that's been causing mildew. Thing is, the mildew was so ucky that I felt the need to spend the entire day applying ammonia-based shower cleaner to the tile to get as much of it gone as possible so he wouldn't think I was a dirty birdy. Plus am tidying up tonight and will be vacuuming in the morning. Argh. Wish I were the kind of person who could always keep apartment clean enough for others to come over.

Sadly, I am not.

Fear of Baking

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 07:45:53 GMT

So I've spent my evening ever so productively, picking out recipes from the Martha Stewart Holiday Cookie thingamajigger to use in holiday baking. While initially overwhelmed by the choices, I finally narrowed it down to three recipes to try: Cornmeal Thyme Cookies, Hazelnut Thumbprints, and Gingerbread Snowflakes. They're all fairly easy and yummy and interesting.

I am filled with fear by this prospect of trying to bake and actually pass my baking off on others. My baking history is...not a good one. There are purple muffins and cakes with secret floury sleeper cells that explode in your mouth when you least expect it. I've mastered cornbread. You want cornbread, you come to me. That's about the level of my accomplishment, without a mix of some kind being involved.

I'm determined, though, to overcome this culinary challenge. After all, I know myself to be a good cook. My cooking is probably about five times more sophisticated than it was even two years ago. I give mad props to Jamie Oliver, Nigel Slater and Elizabeth David for this transformation (Yes, they're all British. Don't fear my cooking, though!).

Baking is my last hurdle. Part of my fear is lack of correct tools. I do not have a big cutting board. I do not have a rolling pin. I'm going to correct that, though.

The other aspect is lack of skills: flour management skills, pretty icing skills, keeping-things-from-sticking skills, etc. But this is correctable. I can learn these skills. I can learn them, and then I will feel myself to be a more rounded cook rather than a lopsided one.

So I'm planning to do a trial run on all these cookies before the holidays hit. A batch a weekend, and then I can guess at what goes wrong, and refine my skills before I try them for real and impose them on people who aren't me.

Open letter to the City of Berkeley

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 00:04:01 GMT

Dear City of Berkeley,

After calling three different numbers (including the one on your ticket) that were supposedly for your traffic court and were disconnected, I have finally found where you are located, and that no one will be answering your phones tomorrow as a "budget measure." I need to make my ticket be gone, City of Berkeley. I need to make it be gone so that one of your fine boys in blue doesn't haul me off to the frickin' pokey.

I think I have confidently found your new address, and I sure hope I'm right because I have to take a full day off Monday in order to come and try and fix this ticket, on which a different address is printed.

I have a thought for you, though, City of Berkeley. Perhaps you could take one, just one, of these young men who has nothing better to do than follow me for a mile and pull me over for a broken tail light, then make me sit in the sun for forty-five minutes while he writes me a ticket (and probably has an ice cream or something). Take him, station him down at the bleeding courthouse, and make him stamp my damned paperwork. I'm pretty sure this would be a massive improvement in the situation as a whole. When he's not stamping things, perhaps he could call every webmaster the city has and actually put the court's *correct* number and address on their webpages. Perhaps he could even call the printer and get some new tickets made up for his erstwhile colleagues with actual correct information. I realize that this will not be so fun for him as making young women cry by citing them for tiny violations, but I think it might be for the good of the city.

Many thanks,
Me

Gah

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 07:24:09 GMT

Gah

GahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGahGah

Have just sealed up application envelopes to Cambridge.

It doesn't matter.

I won't get in.

I won't get in because I didn't have four copies of my OFFICIAL transcripts or three hundred passport photos or four real diplomas or...or something. I don't know. I wrote insane little letters trying to explain why only one set of official transcripts, but they were mostly babble about kidneys and geological ages.

I'm feeling punchy, can you tell?

I also just might not get in because I'm not good enough. Because despite the fact that they are actively soliciting Victorianists, I just suck way too much to consider.

And can't do paperwork.

And my writing sample is lame. Who frickin' cares about father figures and agency in North and South? I sure as hell don't anymore!

Also, I am paranoid that the English Department copy room has a security cam and I will be charged with sneaking in at night and copying things and stealing paperclips. I'm guilty, all right? GUILTY! Now kill me.

If I don't get into Cambridge, I swear to God I will go to Massachusetts and recreate Quentin Compson's suicide. Though I don't know where you can get flatirons nowadays, but I'll buy antique ones. Two five-pound ones that can be wrapped up as shoes.

Then again, if I did that, people might think I was confused between Cambridge, England and Cambridge Massachusetts. And then they'd say, "Well, no WONDER she didn't get into Cambridge if she couldn't work that out."

I feel sick. Maybe I should just throw the apps in the fire and save ninety dollars in postage (ignoring that it would be wasting the ninety dollars I spent on transcripts--yes, you read that right).

Oh, God. I have a Latin midterm tomorrow and haven't even looked at the book. I'm going to fail. But it doesn't matter. I can conjugate Quentin's suicidal negation in Latin: "Non fui. Sum. Fui. Non sum."

Maybe I should go back to that plan of becoming a Faulknerist and recreating As I Lay Dying with a random corpse and drilling holes in it and leaving it in the sun and soaking it in water and burning it and carting it around for a long time to see if it actually bubbles, like Studlybrit claims the body did, and then write my thesis about that. I personally would admit to graduate school anyone crazy enough to do that. In fact, I'd let them in and give them money. A lot of money.

I miss my diploma. It will cost me ten dollars to get another one. I SENT THEM MY DIPLOMA AND THEY'RE NOT GOING TO LET ME IN.

*huddles in the corner crying self to sleep*

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 14:22:16 GMT

It is 7:22 in the morning, and I am sitting here making Latin flashcards. *headdesks*

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 15:32:34 GMT

* A sealed envelope containing copies of your first reference. You will need to:
==>Print the referee's information sheets (use the link on the self-service menu page);
==> Give one reference request and one copy of your self-service cover sheet to your first referee;
==>Ask your first referee to write the reference and put it in a sealed envelope, with copies of the reference (see below), one copy of the self-service cover sheet and one copy of the information sheet ;
==>Your first referee should give you the sealed envelope, for you to include in your packet;
==>However, if your first referee wishes to send the envelope directly to the address on the self-service cover sheet, please indicate this when you send your other materials to us.

AHHH! Brain just fell out!

Things I don't want to do right now...

Sun, 16 Oct 2005 00:40:38 GMT

...but must do before Monday morning (in no particular order):

1) Fix my writing sample
2) Write a twenty-page paper on Quentin Compson
3) Fill out the online application for Cambridge
4) Go to my aunt's "Open Studio" thingummy
5) Clean my apartment, which is turning into a rathole
6) Go to mass
7) Work on Latin homework
8) Clean out my car so daunzerly has a place to put her legs tomorrow
9) Clean out the catbox so my cat doesn't kill me while I sleep
10) Fill out transcript request forms for places
11) Figure out what the hell Cambridge means by an "authenticated copy" of my undergrad diploma
12) Wade through suggestions from reviewers for Prof. Grandmama's book

Argh! Someone please kill me now!

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 00:55:10 GMT

I no longer have so many parking tickets that I could be towed at any time.

I also no longer have any money.

Tomorrow, I have to get my tail light fixed.

Someone kill me. Please.

Usual rambling

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 05:21:15 GMT

So I've spent this evening moderately productively, I think. I've registered for the GRE subject test and made a list of all the schools I'm applying to and what their deadlines are and how much the application fees are, what materials they reply etc. etc. I've discovered that southern schools have an additional advantage beyond just being likely to let me in and give me money: they're dirt cheap to apply to.

Once, when I was eleven, my stepmother said to me, "No wonder you don't have any friends." I'm still annoyed by that. Also by the fact that she referred to my career once again as onanism.

Studlybrit actually feigned concern for me today! Upon hearing that I'd been cited for a broken tail light, he murmured sympathetically and arranged a chair nicely for me.

And I have been reassured by an actual nun that it's pretty damned likely that God wants me to go get a PhD instead of picking maggots out of wounds, so I'm relaxing a little on that score.

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 03:13:44 GMT

I am torn between the desire to do several thing simultaneously. The first is to rewatch the last episode of Firefly in preparation for Serenity. The second, the most obviously virtuous, is to work on reading all the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell so that I can get my research proposal in order. The third, for some unfathomable reason, is to reread in a gulp several of Dick Francis' mysteries. The fourth, also relatively unaccountable, is to clean my house in a scarily thorough manner.

Until one of them takes over from the others, I'm just floating around eating Moroccan chickpea stew (impossibly yummy) and contemplating going to the store to buy Pop Tarts to eat tomorrow while waiting for Latin.

That was possibly the most purposeless livejournal post I have ever made, and that is saying something.

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 06:54:55 GMT

I should not be up this late.

I am, however, and the good thing about this is that I finally finished knitting my coif. It looks like this:

only dark green.

I'm actually hoping it will be overcast tomorrow so I can wear it and show it off.

If anyone asks if I'm Amish, I will punch them. Yes, daunzerly, that includes you. Don't make me mess up the pretty, woman.

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 15:03:55 GMT

Gah...just woke up from a completely soul-destroying dream in which Prof. Murderess (so called because she writes about them, not because she is one; though, like Macbeth, she has murdered my sleep now) told me that I was quite mediocre, second-string, that I wasn't going to get into any good programs. And I tried to convince her that it wasn't my fault, that if I'd gone to stricter schools I might be more self-disciplined. And she said no, that really wasn't it. I just wasn't good enough.

Dude, am I going to be having these dreams until April?

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 23:48:56 GMT

So I am pondering whether or not to take a sock-knitting class this month. On the down side, it would take two nights away from my already impoverished free time. On the plus side, however, dude, I'd know how to knit socks. I'm learning to love socks, having realized that, astonishingly enough, they keep my feet warm. And you see, if I learned how to knit socks, then I could make some like the pair that my mother gave me, which are the softest socks in the whole world, and I love them dearly, even though they're getting holes in them. We've never been able to get any more like them, either.

So yes, I think I shall have to take the sock-knitting class.

I'm feeling really obscenely consumery today, and I ordered several house-cleaning rewards for myself last night (floating beeswax candles, new soaps and lotions, the needles and yarn I need to knit a coif...). Today, I bought all new towels, a new sheet set, and two new pillows. The towels look rather scarily like the ones that my aunt has, but I'll try not to think about that. Spanish Moss is a very nice color after all.

I could knit a pair of socks that color!

Wow, I do interesting things on my day off.

More tales from choir hell

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 05:22:11 GMT

Tonight was apparently humiliation night at my church. I was finally allowed to try and do a psalm and my diaphragm shrunk until it was the size of a...well, a tiny thing because I was so nervous. And I was hideously sharp and singing all in my head, and it was...it was a very bad evening. I'm to try some more next rehearsal, and I'm going to practice with the piece, so maybe I'll be more relaxed next time.

Maybe.

grumbles deep down in throat

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 14:25:06 GMT

I don't want to go to mass. I'm all sleepy and overworked (and the semester just began this last week!), and I'll have to go work more on Prof. Grandmama's very, very dirty office afterwards, then work on reading for Prof. Studlybrit, and I just...wah. That's all, just wah.

Plus, my stepmother annoyed me to really massive proportions last night by calling literary criticism onanistic. Then again, she also once claimed that higher mathematics was onanism. I think, actually, that anything that she doesn't understand she calls that. But it's still damned rude, and I'd like very much to bitchslap her.

Also (while I'm on a whining roll), every time I tell someone at church that I've left the catechumenate, they act like my faith life has some kind of problem. It's just fine, k? I simply can't stand sitting in an ugly room in the rectory listening to unsound doctrine being promoted. That is not so much a problem with me.

On the plus side, I've been asked to do a presentation for the bible study class, which is kinda cool. Not that I don't have enough on my plate right now (My to do list: Finish statement of purpose, edit core of thesis, figure out what my dissertation will be on, do work for two professors, go to Latin every day, read insane critical theory articles, complete smut-writing obligations, read Mrs. Dalloway, clean up hideous office, abuse financial aid office for my scholarship money, find a spiritual director, do Cambridge applications, study for GRE lit subject test...).

So yeah. Just a little wibbly right now.

Fri, 26 Aug 2005 07:34:11 GMT

Query: Does wearing socks make your feet swell? I swear they don't usually look like this.

Mem: No more playing Taboo and drinking until midnight. Particularly not while wearing socks.

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 19:41:39 GMT

So The Guy has started seeing someone else. We continue friends, thank God.

In other news, I have to meet with horrid priestman on Tuesday. I think I'm going to wear gloves, in order to intimidate him.

And hmm...my oven's delinquency forced me to make that ultimate breakfast indulgence, fried toast, this morning. Yummy.

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 04:31:45 GMT

So I had my second day of orientation hell today, which has left me utterly unfit for anything other than weeping and possibly wriggling about on the floor in a properly pathetic sort of way. Not only that, but all these over-achieving little bastards are all sending forth via email ideas about things that we should do with the writing center, and I'm like, "Um. Could you please let my brain heal first?"

On the plus side, I should know soonish whether The Guy really likes me or not. I should know this by virtue of a clever scheme that I have devised and daunzerly has implemented. Or at least she better have, by now. It involves the clever ruse of inviting him to my birthday dinner. Okay, so I'm not so good with the deviousness. I am massively wibbly until a response is forthcoming and trying to convince myself that it won't mean anything if he says no. Gah. *rocks back and forth*

A brief dialogue with my mummy

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 04:15:47 GMT

jw372.geo: Sorry, I just sliced my finger open and had to put some ointment on. And a bandaid
Mummy : I am so sorry
jw372.geo: On the wastebasket that you gave me. *glares*
Mummy : I'm extra sorry
jw372.geo: You know, the pretty brass one with sharp leaves to slice little girls' fingers open.
Mummy : Yes
jw372.geo: I hope it doesn't get infected.
jw372.geo: I might die.
jw372.geo: Then you'd be sorry.
Mummy : God, don't
jw372.geo: *giggles* You're too easy.
Mummy : I'm the sorriest one
jw372.geo: Don't worry, the ointment was antibiotic.
Mummy : good
jw372.geo: Oh, wait, not it wasn't. *headdesks*
jw372.geo: It was contraceptive jelly.
jw372.geo: I better go wash my finger and change that bandaid.

Free Crappy CDs!

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:53:47 GMT

So I was cleaning out my CD collection today and reorganizing (*coos at how big the Dylan section has gotten*), and I found a number of CDs that I had never listened to, had listened to once, never want to listen to, etc. So I'm putting them up for grabs. I make no promise about condition, or when it will arrive, just that if you claim this in a comment to this post and I then tell you that it's yours and you email me your address, you will receive this CD. Someday.

The Ladybug Transistor
My Vitriol: Finelines
Lauryn Hill (possibly self-titled?)
Mia Doi Todd: The Golden State
Keller Williams: Dance
Keller Williams: Laugh
Sounds Good In the Nude (Disc One: Tom Findlay and Disc Two: Tim "Love" Lee)
Margarita Mambo, a collection of...yeah. Just what it sounds like
Vive la France (see Margarita Mambo)
The French audio press kit from the release of The Craft. Yes, I do hang on to stuff that long
The Spiderman Soundtrack
Watchers: To The Rooftops
Derek Trucks: Joyful Noise
Consonant: Love and Affliction
The Derek Trucks Band: Soul Serenade
Lo Fidelity Allstars: Don't Be Afraid of Love

The horror...

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 19:41:43 GMT

Today I cleaned out my shower.

I now understand what Kurtz saw on his deathbed. Poor bastard.

The Results

Sun, 03 Jul 2005 20:32:25 GMT

So I came out and told the gentleman that I'm interested just now that I was interested in him today. It was all very odd and probably funny if one weren't suffering from a pounding headache and a mad case of self-consciousness. Briefly, I told him in a rather hearty and yet bland congratulatory tone that I was "moderately interested" in him. He opened his mouth two or three times, looking flabbergasted (as, really, anyone would by the way in which I announced it), said, "Thank you," twice and not much else. I then told him brusquely to keep it in mind and walked away.

Are there actually people who manage to do these things gracefully? Anyway, I find myself not nearly so distressed as I might have expected. This may have something to do with said pounding headache and the two hours of sleep I had last night, but I'm not sure.

At any rate, I suspect that my manner of announcing the fact was straightforward and awkward enough not to unsettle him unduly, if that makes sense, so I should still have him in a friend/mentor capacity. Which is perhaps more important, really.

Query

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 03:48:32 GMT

Right. So I've made a sort of decision, partially based on daunzerly's impatience for me to stop bitching and get moving, to simply tell the person that I am currently interested in that I like him and am interested in getting to know him better. Just like that.

On the plus side, it is simple and straightforward. If he responds, things move forward much quicker. If he doesn't, it's low-key enough that I should be able to continue seeing him as a friend/mentor type person.

On the negative side, it's fricking scary, and it's possible that it would make him uncomfortable enough that I would never, ever get to interact with him again. This would make me sorry.

But I'm kind of tired of being in limbo, and...yeah. I am an impatient woman. I need to get this over with. And if he's the kind of guy that I would ever have a chance at succeeding with, straightforward will work far better than any kind of subtle flirty games.

Any thoughts? Talk to me, you lazy bastards!

I Hate You All

Sat, 18 Jun 2005 00:39:53 GMT

Yes, that includes you. Why? Because I hate the world, and you are part of the world. Let me enumerate some of the many, many reasons.

1) My stepmother is a whore.

Not literally, just in the generic derogatory term sense, which is worse. I called last night to talk and beg for a shipment of salami or something, explaining that my diet for the last few weeks has consisted almost wholly of vegetable soup and cornbread. She did promise to send something, then felt the need to mention a friend of hers who lived on Campbell's Soup and "her metabolism reset itself and she ended up skinny as a rail!"

Great. Fucking great. Then I could be a pretty, skinny little show pony for you and Daddy to trot around in front of your friends. I feel so much better now.

2) I can't borrow any library books.

Because I owe the fuckers $70. I hate them so very, very much.

3) The temp assignment from hell.

I got to the hotel where the seminar was supposed to be. No seminar. Frantic phone calls. The seminar had to be moved to another hotel. Owing to the loss of time, I arrived maybe ten minutes before the first attendee. I had to set everything up while handing out shit and registering people on like...three different forms. Then one of the speakers got into a car accident on the way there. More frantic phone calls. The morning speakers had to just keep talking. Add to this the fact that I had to sit in a draft for seven hours on a chair without a back, shivering. All this for about eighty dollars. I hate my life. Best of all were the Big Important Banker Men who think that wearing a fucking tie means that I have to laugh at their stupid jokes. Let me tell you something, Big Important Banker Man. There isn't enough money in the world for someone to laugh at your lameass jokes, which are mostly slightly insulting anyway.

Books!

Sat, 04 Jun 2005 23:59:13 GMT

So I'm in my "living humbly" bit of the summer, since I haven't been working much of late and felt obliged to help out with my rent all the same. The upshot of which is that I'm eating a lot of soup (homemade, though!) and trying for cheap amusements.

Thus today I gathered up some of my less-beloved books (several from classes, etc.) and took them to the used book store where I managed to trade them in for three new books! Well, new-used, you know what I mean. I managed to resist a Russian cookbook (barely), and got instead The Leopard, Wives and Daughters (by Elizabeth Gaskell! Squee!) and A Mind to Murder (because everyone needs some trash every once in a while). So I'm feeling very pleased and excited and, on the strength of it, got the ingredients for noodle kugel at the grocery store. Hurrah!