Awards

After spending several weeks fretting about whether or not I would have the money to attend college, I just found out today that I should have sent a reply on my financial aid award letter to my graduate school about a week ago. I missed the deadline, and they reserve the right to cancel all of the awards that do. I'm hoping that they're not going to cancel, and I'm fairly confident that they won't because I'm just receiving loans, but we'll see.

Yet, on a better note, at work I found out how to disable the messenger program on Internet Explorer. Whenever anyone here would log on to the net, they would recieve several gray text messages from the "messenger service" that were essentially tyring to blackmail the user into buying their pop-up killer. Make no mistake pop-ups and the people who use them are, in my admittedly flawed estimation, pure evil. But the guys behind these messages are worse than that.

Of course, the FREE solution - something that took me about an hour and a half to discover - is to disable it from the control panel. The audacity and offensiveness of these types of pop-ups is amazing. Thankfully, they're gone, and now the only pop-ups I have to endure are the ones I encounter when surfing the Internet. And those I don't mind, because if I find them particularly annoying (which, frankly, is a term that doesn't really capture the negative emotions inspired by pop-ups), I simply stop visiting whatever site it spawned from. Freedom from pop-ups should be the unalienable right of every computer user; I look forward to the day when that goal is acheived.

Updates

I'm firmly ensconced in my new job for the summer - although the pay is dismal, and I'm dangeorulsy flirting with the reality of not having any money to pay for anything beyond rent and car insurance. I'm hoping I can slide until the middle of september on the scant savings I have left and make the most of free meals without trying to be the next Freddie the Freeloader.

As for the summer job, I should mention that it is the exact same one that I had last summer, and - by way of explanation - it was during that previous summer that I set-up the managerial system and structure for operating its small web store division. Now, I don't really have to have any great reserves of web knowledge or expertise, which is fortunate, because I truly know next-to-nothing. However, I do seem to know more than the remaining employees, so that has made me the defacto expert. An example, you may ask? Well, last year I registered the virus protection software and faithfully installed the updates almost every other day. Turns out, no-one ever updated the software after I left - a year ago . A whole year! That there has not been an infection or system crash during the interim I take as a sign that miracles do, in fact, exist

Summer Vacation

Well, I'm back; I've spent the last several days on an extended vacation. Graduation has happened, and I actually lived through it. And yes, it was extremely boring - except for a breif moment when a couple of eagles flew overhead during one of the speeches; I must admit eagles are pretty cool. Now I really need to finish up all of the random forms and applications to graduate school; I only have a few more days left to reply to the new school that I'm going to accept the Teaching assistantship position. I could explain more about my trip to the coast, the beaches and the campground. However, right now I've got to get started on my summer job and earning some payola.

The Final

While certainly not my best work, I've managed to complete all of the homework that I have had hanging over me this past week; I almost can't believe I got it done. On another note, it is somewhat sobering to realize that this is my last official day of school as an undergraduate, the last day to go to class, the last day to work in the library, the last day with a lot of people I spent the past two and half years with. (Although I'm still planning to do thank you notes.) Tomorrow is graduation, and by way of underlining that fact this morning on my way to study, a group of four men - obviously related - asked me to take their picture in front of the large garden sign of our school, as a way to commerorate someone's time here. Posts might be sparse over the next few weeks as I adjust to a summer schedule divided between a summer job and the big city. (My girlfriend is looking forward to our spending time together, and so am I.)

Quick Update

I just learned that the graduate school I am planning on attending in the fall has offered me a teaching assistantship after all. While it doesn't cover all of the expenses that I'll incur going to school, it will take a huge chunk out of it. Of course, although I'm excited that I've pulled off a minor coup, I'm worried if I'll be able to cut the mustard. I guess we'll see. In the mean time, I have exactly one day to finish all of my school work before the final at noon tomorrow. Due to the amount of work that I still have to do, the deadline is beginning to seem like an old western showdown - high noon, and then when the dust settles, we'll see who's left standing. (I'm betting it won't be me.)

The Remaining Days

These are the last few days that I'll actually be in this particular cellar, the dark, slightly dank, hidden corner of the ol' computer lab in the university's technology center. After Saturday, when the official graduation ceremony occurs, I'll have to find a new cellar to post from over the summer until I get to grad. school in the fall. It shouldn't be too hard, but I confess that the final few days have become a little nostaligic for me. Here is where you insert all of the typical cliches about how I'm glad to be graduating, but sad that it is all over - blah, blah, blah. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't even go to graduation because sitting around listening to boring speeches with about two hundred other people is not my idea of fun, but my girlfriend is coming from the big city to see it, and my parents want to make this a big deal, so I'm going.

But in the mean time, I have to finish my finals, which, since they are mostly take home, I have procrastinated so long that I'm now behind. I've got to friday at noon; that's D-day for me. Last term around finals, I started this blog to avoid doing any real work until the last minute. I'm hoping that I don't go that far, but unless I really get started now, I'm sure I'll find even more creative ways to lose track of time.

Concerts

Yesterday night, I took my girlfriend to a Tracy Chapman concert, which was really good and a lot of fun, but when we got there, another couple was already sitting in our seats: row U, number 12 and 13. An usher, about fortyish with a medium length ponytail wearing a wine colored sports coat, quickly stumbled over to us through the purplish-blue dark and examined the tickets; they were exactly the same. (Flash back to a month and a half ago when I bought them - the clerk behind the counter, a young man still struggling with the subtle mysteries of technology, screwed up the tickets three times trying to get them to print out of the machine.) Fortunately, after missing about the first ten minutes of the opening act which wasn't all that great, we got the seats I paid for, and the couple who we "evicted" were moved further to the center, ten rows closer to the stage. I wish we had the option of getting closer to the stage but that's life I guess.

After the concert, we went the city park blocks and talked to an old friend who we both haven't seen in about a year. We sat on a park bench, and as the small hours of the morning burned away, I watched the moon glide through some of the leaves of a smaller tree. Of course, I was really tired, so we went home around 3:00 a.m. Overall, a good day.

Almost Completed

Of the three papers that I needed to write in as many days, I'm finally glad to say that I finished one of them, and second is about 85% done. Now, I'm off to get some food and try to rest the brain as much as I can for about an hour. Unfortunately, I stayed up all night last night, getting only about an hour and a half of sleep, so it might be a losing propostion, and if I don't keep up the pace, I may have to do that again tonight. However, I think I'm in pretty good shape; although I do have finals to study for and other assignments to complete by Friday afternoon. Those things do not stress me out as much as the papers have. Once again, I need to stop waiting until the last blah blah blah. You know the rest.

Writing in the Laundry Room

Trying to kill two birds with one stone, I went to the local laundry mat to get some badly needed clothing washed while getting some incredibly postponed homework done, when a man - about twenty years older than my father and, who I suspect, has a mild mental impairment - asked me to fix his pen. He couldn't get the end of it removed so he could access the ink cartridges. Soon, I found myself not doing my own homework, but rather helping him write a love letter to his girlfriend. He asked me how to spell "lifetime partner," if the second line sounded right, and whether or not I thought the ending appropriate. Because I spend three days each week working in the college writing center, I initally took his requests a little too seriously until I realized that he was lonely and was actually looking for a stranger's approval, in this case mine.

It was all rather odd, but I began to feel a little guilty because I have never written my own girlfriend a love letter; It also occured to me that writing a good love letter took some practice and that this guy obviously had more practice than I did. I suppose that love letters belong in their own genre, and speaking "literarily," it might be good to read a compilation of them. Griffin and Sabine has been a popular book in recent years that fictionally explores the art of writing of love letters. Personally I've avoided reading it because I feared a heavy dose of schmaltz, but maybe I should finally take a look.

Sunlight and Diet Coke

Here we go - I'm going to have to burrow further into my cellar here and not emerge until I have completed at least three papers, one for each of the next three days. It is a theme (no pun intended) with me that I typically wait until the last minute to write my papers, and although I sincerely had good intentions this term, too much of actual life (read difficulties) has gotten in the way and set me back a little. I'll not bore anyone here with the lurid details, suffice it to to say that once I emerge from the darkened corner of the computer lab to joyfully embrace the clear sunlight of the elysian like days of summer beyond graduation, I'm sure that things will be better.

Things of note recently: my lingusitics professor, who has returned to work after surgery (and incidentally who is also my advisor), seems to still be recuperating. Perhaps it was because I knew that she wasn't feeling well that I consciously noticed that she always drinks a diet coke midway through her lecture. Usually, I'm too involved in the topics under discussion to pay any attention to that sort of thing, but maybe like the friend who buys something frivolously expensive and also owes you money, I noticed this time because a diet coke doesn't seem to me to be the kind of thing you should drink a few days after surgery. Another item: an older man, a student I admire, complimented me on my paper presentation at Friday's award ceremony saying: "I always wanted to know if that guy could write." Being a little paranoid, I thought the statement was odd and began to wonder what type of impression I give other people to make them thing that don't have the ability to write well. Finally, I suppose it is something approaching mandatory for me to mention that my graduation from college is less than two weeks away. If I wasn't currently struggling with the papers I have to write and an allergen assault on my respiratory system, I'd be happier about it.