Free Dinner

It has been hot around here lately, which isn't so bad for me during the day, but at night things get to be a little unbearable. The afternoon heat seeps into the walls and then pours slowly out at night in a claustrophobia-inducing miasma of dark warmth. I try not to stay up too late watching television, but is sometimes hard to go to sleep at a decent hour under a blanket of heat.

The other day, I decided to indulge in my bad habit of eating fast food. Although I had a good breakfast of eggs, toast, and whatnot, I skipped lunch and when 9:00 p.m. rolled around, I figured that Burger King was a good enough place to fill my belly. And, when I say fill my belly, I mean just that; after as many hamburgers as I have eaten in my life time, they all have that same cardboard-bland-like taste. I should have cooked dinner, but like I said, it is a bad habit.


Night Mountain

So, I drove eight blocks down to the restaurant, pulled up to the drive-thru speaker and ordered a number one with a coke. (For those of you who do not eat at Burger King, a number one is a whopper, fries, and a drink: $4.29 where I live.) As I pulled around the building, I saw a man--who looked homeless--digging through the garbage. As I drove around him, he had found a hamburger that someone had thrown away. He held it in his hand as he continued to search the trash can. It seemed as if he was looking for more food.

I pulled up to the pickup window, paid my money, and waited the few minutes to get my order. None of the employees seemed to have noticed the man, otherwise, I am sure that they would have told him to leave. In my several previous trips to fast food restaurants, I have been occasionally asked by homeless people to buy them sandwiches, and I have seen the restaurant employees chase these people away.

The man who had been digging in the trash for food left by the time that I got my order, but I drove back behind the building and tracked him down a couple blocks away. He was walking through the parking lot of an industrial building. "Hey! Buddy," I called out to him. "Are you hungry?" He stopped a looked at me for a brief second before answering that he was. He looked a little embarrassed to admit that fact. He also seemed to recognize that I was going to give him my all food, the whole order, which I did. After I handed the meal over, I drove to the next fast food restaurant, McDonald's, and got another meal for myself.

Injured Bird

Okay, so the other day, I decided that I was having kind of a bad day. It was already late afternoon, I was tired, but I needed to do much more work to get caught up for the day. It involved reading and writing, and I was already overwhelmed with that. I was also a bit depressed for various personal reasons that I won't go into. Since I had not eaten anything all day, I figured that the least I could do was buy some fast food and go to the local park. Fast food is a bad habit that I am trying to break, but since I needed to really get out of the house and I did not want to cook, I told myself that a burger would be a quick indiscretion.

After purchasing a meal I felt guilty for eating, I drove up to the city park on top of the hill. It is a nice park where you have to walk west for ten minutes to get a tremendous view of the entire city. Although there are some great trees with a lovely canopy, the view is high enough up to see the whole valley in which the town is nestled.

Finding a relatively secluded spot away from the occasional joggers and bicyclists, I sat down, ate, and opened a book. The breeze was cool and the sun was warm, and I was engrossed in my book. After about twenty or thirty minutes, something small jumped out of the tree at my head. I recovered a few seconds later to realize that a bird had just flew over my shoulder by only a couple of feet. And then I noticed that it wasn't a regular park bird, but a yellow and white cockatiel. It was obviously somebody's pet.


Injured Cockatiel

I sat and watched the bird as it watched me in return. Of course, I wondered where it had come from, but I did not see anyone searching the park with a bird cage in hand. Nor did I remember seeing any lost bird signs posted anywhere as I had driven up to the park. It appeared to me that the bird was a little distressed. It was shivering, fluffed up, and it seemed to be trying to gather the courage to dive bomb me again. I stood up and stretched out my arms. After was seemed like another thirty minutes of me looking like a statue, after a couple of more dive bombs by the bird, it glided out of the tree and landed on my shoulder.

My concern for the bird shifted slightly towards myself in that I now wondered what I was going to do next. I figured that I should try to take it back to my car and search for its owner. Slowly I began walking down the hill with the bird perched precariously on my shoulder. A few people, mostly joggers, walked by and gave me odd looks. One person asked me how I had trained my bird to stay on my shoulder outside. I explained the situation and asked if they were missing a bird. The stranger answered no, but his energetic dog frightened the bird back in the trees. At this point, I figured that the bird was not going to come back. But, as I did not try to harm it while we walked down the hill, it trusted me enough to come back to my shoulder after another patient twenty minutes. Taking no chance this second time, I grabbed the bird and walked the rest of the way to my car.

I drove around the neighborhood for an hour trying to locate someone who was missing their bird, but no luck. Long story short: the bird you see in the picture above has been with me for the past five days. It resides in a cage in my living room. A trip to the veterinarian confirmed that the bird had been injured by some other small animal. I think that contributed to the bird's decision to trust me, a total stranger. I will continue to search for the the bird's owner for a while, but so far nothing has turned up. It looks I will be keeping this bird for some time to come. Any suggestions for a name? (She's a female).

Status Report

It has been awhile since I have last posted here, but I've been alternating between doing work and catching up on sleep. Personal issues have kept me from getting everything I had planned done. However, I have managed to do quite a bit already. The most significant of which is a working bibliography for my next report. I still have a ton of reading to do, which I'm working on right now.


Rainy Day

I no longer have access to a digital camera. I used to be able to check one out from the college library, but that is no longer an option. I don't forsee having to stop posting pictures here on my site because I still have a few on my laptop that I have yet to post. The other day, I foolishly tried to win one. I won't explain how, except I will mention that it involved staying up nineteen hours in a row. And even after all that, I'm pretty sure I did not win. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Recovery

Some days ago, I got a phone call from the police informing me that my car had been found. As I mentioned in the previous post, I had been through this whole process before, but even still, it was still a little nerve-wracking. It seems as if I had been holding back my emotions until my car was found because some anxiety and apprehension came creeping back after I hung up the phone. The cop had said that he would wait about a half an hour for me to show up, after which time the car may be impounded.

I quickly checked the Internet to find out how to get to where the cop said the car was, which was about ten minutes north of where I live. I printed the directions, and drove the rental car back to the rental office. I tried to return it, figuring I could get a free ride to where my car was. And although I was in the office behing the counter, the manager unfortunately said that they were closing for the day and did not have the time to take their car back or drive me to mine. I couldn't stay to argue, not that I would have anyway, so I left without saying much beyond a mumbled "Ok," and I drove the rental out to my car.

When I got to the intersection where my stolen car had been abandoned, I saw the sheriff's deputy waiting for me in his patrol car. We both got out of our vehicles, and after assuring himself that I was who I said I was, and not like the disheveled homeless guy I looked like, we examined at the car togther. Although it was obvious that the theif (or thieves) had rifled through it looking for things to steal or sell, it was equally obvious that they hadn't stole anything. The ignition cover around the steering column was damaged. The cop said it looked like they "popped" the ignition. As my car was most definitely the huge pile orangutan crap that it appeared to be, the cop did not wait around too long to get any details. But before he left, he did tell me that he had recovered another stolen car, almost exactly like mine, in the same area just a day before. Apparently, Hondas made before 1996 are easy to steal. Just my luck.

Now by myself, I stood out in the street trying to figure what to do next. My immediate problem was that I now had two cars in one place and needed to get them both back home. After making a couple of phone calls to local friends who were not home, I slowly realized that I needed to drive the rental home and get a taxi back to the intersection. As I drove home in the rental, it was starting to get a little dark. It took me longer to search through the phonebook for a taxi than it did for the taxi to arrive to pick me up. The driver said almost nothing. He was listening to some real-estate investment scheme on the radio. I didn't feel like interuppting him too much. Thirteen bucks and an hour and a half later, I had my car back.

I'm glad the whole experience is over, and it is nice that I have my car back, but my insurance rates are going to go up (of course), and the deductible I need to pay for the repair is too much for me to even bother fixing the ignition cover. I bought a club, the cost of which will be barely covered by the small insurance payment I will get. In the midst of all of this, I'm trying to get my work done, but things haven't been going great for me during the last few weeks. Intellectually, I know that things can better, but right now, I'm struggling to keep on tops of things.

Stolen, Again!

The recent few weeks have not been going great for me, lately. My car was stolen sometime last Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Last time my car was stolen, I went through the typical stages of grief, with a longer stay in the Anger phase. After the initial shock of this first act of theft, I envisioned all kinds of ridiculous revenge fantasies that really didn't help me cope with the fact that I missed my car. Now, I am not feeling a whole lot except maybe numb disappointment.


Stolen! Again!

My car, the above blue '89 Honda Civic, is exactly what you'd expect from an elderly car--almost a piece of junk. The picture gives it more credit than it deserves. I considered buying a club for it at the time, but I could never scrape the forty or so bucks together all at one time to buy one. Plus, I figured (stupidly) that probability was on my side. What are the chances that this junker would be stolen again? Next to nothing, right?

Well, just to hedge my bets, I figured that if I couldn't buy a club, I could at least engage in some "Urban Camoflague." I thought that if I put enough visible trash in the back, something like this but not quite as bad, the thief (or thieves) would reason that the there would be nothing inside the car worth stealing. Maybe the thief would figure that someone who allowed his car to be filled with so much trash couldn't really afford nice things anyway. Maybe the thief would suppose that if the car was worth stealing, it would be better taken care of. I guess I was wrong.

This time, I've got a rental car to drive in the meantime. I am also in the process of filing an insurance claim, a hassle that I really don't want to go through. This afternoon, I have to make a statement to the company and then wait a bit more than two weeks to find out what they might do. As for my car, I hope the police find it intact--and find it soon. Of course, the first time my car was stolen, but later recovered, may have been a kind of cosmic joke, a warning if you will. This time, I may not be so lucky.

A Day for Reading

Day Seventeen: Taxes are completed and are in the mail, something for which I am grateful seeing as how money has been unusually tight lately. The meager refund, approximately 200 hundred bucks, will help matters some. Taxes were one major task that I can cross off my list. I have also managed to arrange things at school so that I can stay in my student apartment until the end of Fall Term, even though I will not be attending class during Spring or Summer. Just today, I got the official approval I needed from the housing office. I had thought that they would need to meet with me personally, but the disability office worker that I have been talking to had smoothed things out for me. (The housing director wished me good luck with my plan to re-enroll in the Fall, an odd, but touching note. It struck me as odd in that it was a personal note out of what I expected to be a more bureaucratic process.)


Spring Weather

As for the other things that are still unfinished, I have yet to hear back whether or not my Leave of Absence has been finally approved. If it has been, then everything should be fine, and I can focus entirely on completing my unfinished papers. If not, I will have to quickly make other plans, including attending (as a guest) a couple writing classes taught by my colleagues--a requirement for one of my unfinished classes. I also need to meet with the Financial Aid counselor about some loan options. I have been putting this task off because I only have a very slim hope of getting what I want. Consequently, I feel a little intimidated and daunted by asking for something that I will not be getting. However, this is something that I definitely will do in the coming week, all feelings of trepidation aside.

My actual school work has been picking up. Currently, I am re-reading Mary Barton for my Victorian Class. From what I have gathered from the novel's Introduction, Elizabeth Gaskell, the author, wanted to write a novel about the working poor, thereby illuminating their plight to the upperclasses. And the upperclasses, having read her novel, would somehow be so moved by their feelings of sympathy for the poor that they would help alleviate their suffering. But, according to the author of the introduction, Gaskell seems to have omitted any recognition that the upperclasses were responsible for that suffering. Apparently, Gaskell felt that the poor's "problem" of being mad at the rich for their greed and luxury could be solved if the rich could learn how to emotionally sympathize with the poor, not rethink their own culpability in the economic oppression. I suppose it would be as if someone hit you in the head, and then said, "You poor dear! You somehow have gotten a bruise on your head." I've only just started, but I'll be interested to see if this is how the novel plays out.

Progress and Reading

Day Nine: When people ask me what I do, my answer is that I am graduate student studying English at a State University. Of course, mostly this means that some people think that I am mentally correcting the way that they speak, or am silently amused or annoyed by the way they use the language. And while inspiring self-consciousness in other people is fun for about a minute and a half, I actually have better things to do than to mentally grade the way people talk. ("You get a B- for the grammar of that sentence, but I'm afraid you get an F for originality. Begone foul abuser of English Tongue!") In fact, as a word nerd, I like the creativity of non-standard uses of English. Phrases like, "All your base are belong to us" is a source of enjoyment, not an opportunity to be a pompous idiot.

English majors are not the appointed guardians of language, and those you do critique the way people speak may have good intentions, but are really killing the life of the language and are fixing it for the grave of obsolescence. Besides, this is not what English majors do anyway. My insufficient, oversimplified definition of what an English scholar does is basically this: they take a "text," which can be almost anything, and interpret it to reveal the hidden layers of meanings behind it, or interpret it to reveal its simplicity, or reveal its comment about the human condition--whatever the hell that is. Of course, to oversimplify the oversimplification, English scholars "interpret texts."


Reading

With this in mind, I am going to interpret a 'text' for you, thereby showing you an example of what a Graduate Student in English might be doing instead of inwardly laughing at your use of spoken language. In this case, the text the above photograph. You can see three main elements: my feet, a book, and my computer. There are other elements involved, but I choose to ignore them.

The feet in this picture symbolizes my walking all over campus today. I went to the housing office, the financial aid office, and the disability services department today, something that is at least a couple of miles of walking. The book represents my studying. I need to do much more of this in the coming days. And the computer represents the writing that I will be doing in the future. Of course, these elements can combine. Walking involves "putting one foot in front of the other," and this is, metaphorically speaking, what I need to do with my papers. I have several miles of text to plow through and, like walking, I need to pick a path and start with the first step. The book operates the same way. I could go even further with all of this, perhaps suggesting that the window represents my "looking toward the future," or that my office represents an attachment to school and work. But, I think you get the idea.

SUMMARY
Here is what I still need to accomplish in the next few days: read my Victorian Book, file my taxes, and investigate my registering for summer term. I need to meet with a financial aid counselor to discuss getting a loan, and I need to see about getting some personal counseling off campus for the next term. Today, I turned in my Leave of Absence From and my Housing Petition. I met with the Disability counselor again. And, I read more of my Victorian Book. Tonight, I will clean house and do laundry. (And if there is any time, I will update my comic with a quick picture.)

Pathways

Day Four: This morning, after not too much sleep due to cartoon watching and videogame playing, I went to the student disability office for my appointment. I laid out the whole story for the counselor/social worker and asked for help with resources. Of course, I was told that there is no help with money, which means that I will have to figure out a way to pay my bills and buy groceries while I am working on my papers. I suppose that I could look into private loans, but without an income or any assets I'm pretty sure no bank will touch me with a ten foot pole. However, the disability office can advocate for me while I negotiate through the policies of the various college departments and facilities. For example, a letter from the disability office will make it so I don't get kicked out of my apartment just yet, that is as long as I can pay for it. I might just go through my collection of books and videogames and sell some of them if I can.


Pathways

So, as notes for myself, I am going to summarize what I need to do next. On Monday, I need to turn in my leave of absence form to the main office of my department. I need to get the petition from the housing office and write my statement of explanation, after which I contact the disability office again to touch base. I need to visit with the financial aid office one more time and discuss loan issues and the summer term. If there are any hiccups, I will have to contact the disability offices again.

As for the incompletes, I am going to focus on one class first and work through them all one at a time. I am still planning on developing a steady, solid routine that will carry me through the work that I need to do. I feel confident that I can do the work, especially now that I have worked out some personal issues. Now, I just need to dive in and do it.

Rainy Days

It was ten days since my last blog here on the site, but I am going to try and start posting with much more frequently. I've got a plan to use this blog more as a tool to help me keep focused, but there'll be more on that later in this post.

To be frank, I have a had a difficult past two academic years, the result of which has been the accumulations of incompletes in most of my classes. Most of my professors have heard my tried and true sad-sack excuses, which if they're not sick of them, I certainly am. But, I've always been pretty good at painting a picture of redemption. Perhaps my ability to admit to very personal (and vaguely embarrassing) difficulties, combined with my discomfort at doing so, seems to move my professors to pity. Inevitably, they offer me a second chance to do good. Now, I'm nearly at the end of the whole graduate school experience, but it is still not too late to turn things around. This is my last second chance to do well at school and work towards the career I want.


Rainy Day

This blog comes in as a tool insofar as I am hoping to use it each day to track my progress at getting my schoolwork done. There are two classes for which I going to work on completing first: 19th century Victorian City class, and Sacred Violence class. I will read: Bleak House, Samson Agonistes, and No-No Boy again during the next month.

Today, I went to the student health center for my one-time free followup meeting to meet with the Doctor. (As I am on a leave-of-absence, I can't use the University resources anymore like the student health center, nor get any finances.) The doctor will write a letter explaining how my difficulties during the last couple of years are attributable to a medical problem that I have just now begun to work out. Tomorrow, I pick the letter up. I will also take the letter to the disability services office tomorrow afternoon.

As for my accomplishments today, I re-inaugurated this blog as a work tool and read part of my book for the Victorian City class. This book, Victorian Soundscapes, is part of a three page paper that I will have done by middle of next week. I e-mailed my professor about getting a paper that I had previously turned in back. I need it for my records. Even though this is the second day of the new term, I am going to call this: Day One.

Workloads

Finals week is over, but that does not mean that work is over for me. I'm not sure if I have mentioned this here before, but I have some incompletes left over from the previous terms. Therefore, I am planning on taking off the next term to finish these incompletes up. This means developing a solid work routine that I stick to: read, write, meet with professors, and write again. My old system of working like crazy at the last minute of a deadline, or working day and night for a handful of days to get a final paper done, is dead and finished. That system does not work anymore. My plan is to develop a balanced approach where I can write every day, and then take time off to decompress from the stress of the exertions. I suppose this is not unlike starting an exercise routine in that it requires a lifestyle change for a permanent result. The raw intellectual ability is not an issue, but rather the issue is the development of new work skills and basic discipline.


Winter

But I think that this is not such a bad thing. The temptations to do other things, like watch television, as a means to avoid sinking under the weight of unpleasant emotions must be overcome. This is where the lessons of Beowulf come back to me. The traditional means we use to slay our monsters do not always serve us. Like Beowulf, one must be able to toss aside the sword and use one's hands to overcome their Grendel, even though it may feel more difficult. These next few weeks will be a new beginning, a pseudo-do-over.

Volcano Again!

In October, I wrote this brief post when Mt. St. Helens (Aka: Loowit) first began getting attention. I am reposting the camlink here because the mountain is rumbling again.



As you may have heard in the national news, the volcano had a relatively small eruption yesterday with a plume of ash and steam. I'm just a bit too far away to see it from my house, but my parents saw it from their house, which is still pretty far away. I did not live in the Pacific Northwest when Mt. St. Helens really blew its top in the eighties so some of the information that comes across the television news is interesting.

For example, if ash falls on the windshield of your car, don't use the wiper blades if you can help it because you'll scratch the heck out of the glass. Furthermore, your car's air filter will clog up with ash something horrible. And if you happen to live near the mountain, move already (or get volcano insurance). The daylight images from the Volcanocam have been really interesting lately. Check it out.

Two Academic Papers

The building that you see below is the place where I should be spending the majority of the next several weeks. I have two very important papers to write, but I am having some difficulty deciding what they should be about. Briefly, the first one should be about the nature of the "Victorian City," more specifically 19th century London. The second paper needs to be connected to the idea of "Sacred Violence." I do not have any strong leads on either paper, and I fear that this might have something to do with not knowing as much Literary Theory as I think I should.


Library

For the first paper, the Victorian City, I am completely at sea metaphorically speaking. I figure that I might try to do something about the nature of physical space and how class differences worked in those spaces. I guess what I mean to say really is this: if you were rich in the 19th century you had more space, more mobility, but if you were poor, you were more confined. Unfortunately, I don't know if this is something that I ground in some kind of theory. Right now, this thought is an observation and does not rise to the status of a fully realized, academic thesis yet. An added restriction for this paper is that it must include some kind of connection to Dickens Bleak House, but what that connection is I haven't the foggiest idea yet.

The second paper I may have better luck with. I am going to return to some earlier work that I have done on Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried. All of the stories in this collection are about a group of American soldiers during (and after) the Vietnam War. I have managed to write two other papers about two different stories in this collection before. I think I can write another paper about a third. By using "How to Tell a True War Story," and some research I did on psychological Trauma, I may be able to analyze how this seemingly secular war story has an element of sacred Trauma within it. However, I will be leaning heavily on the scapegoat elements within it and that may be stretching the story further than it will bend. But there are other stories in the collection that I could try work with as well.

I think my main project will be to swallow my pride, gather my courage, and talk to my professors about my paper plans. Even though they may not be happy with my admitting that I am not further along in the process as I should be, it looks like I am going to need some assistance to get something turned in to them by the end of the term. With the end of the term in mind, I am really going to be focusing on catching up on my reading assignments during the next four days. My only choice is to work steadily through this mess rather than doing what I normally do: which, specifically, is finding novel ways to avoid it.

Dreariness

The end of the term is fast apporaching, so with that in mind, I really need to find a to get all of this term's work done in the next three weeks. Projects of note are two seminar papers, and one book review, which of course, requires reading the book. I have been doing pretty good with my assignments lately, but even still with my increasing productivity, I still have a backlog of stuff to do. This past week has been characterized with meetings with Professors and Program Directors. I think I have passed beyond regret stage about what I should have done, but I still can't help think that I really should have done this during last year.


Dreary Winter

As far as my personal life goes, I think I am getting a grip on my the balance between school and personal non-academic interests. Although I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, I have found that my knowledge as a blogging hobbyist is proving useful and interesting to the few people who know me. I have a paper pending about the nature of blogs and hyperlinks, but it has been a few months since I have worked on it, and I already see that I am going to have to revise it. Some of the information is already out of date.

As for the above picture, I think it represents the kind of drab winter days that have been visiting here lately. The iron grey skies carry a chill that is most intense in the mornings when you have to scrape the ice off your car's windshield. On these days, it is almost a disappointment if the sun happens to come out in the afternoon. If, like me, you are dressed for the cold, the afternoon combination of the lunch induced drowsiness and unexpected warmth sap all my internal reserves for concentrated study. Plus, for some reason, the whole building in which I work is constantly overheated. Even if it is only 40 degrees outside, it is sometimes necessary to open a window.

Resolved and Figment

I'll try to post here a bit more frequently if I can. Now that I met with the appropriate advisors and professors, and now that I have resolved some of my issues here at work/school, I feel I can do a bit better about posting with more consistency. Of course, there will still be stretches of days at a time when I will have to put my blogging priority on the back burner (probably no longer than a week), but I am still committed to it and therefore will continue to do it for the forseeable future. I think I am fairly visual person, and I am enjoying posting pictures here on my site. I am not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the pictures look nice here, and it can be an interesting hobby of sorts when I am in the mood.


Winter Fountain

Today, after the high-water-mark of resolving a months long school issue, I decided that I needed a short break from the study routine, so I spent a little over an hour at the University Ary Museum looking at some of Andy Warhols' most famous prints. Of course there were the popular Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe displays. There were also some interestings ones of Jimmy Carter and JFK. I am not sure what to make of Warhol. Now that I am older, and can look back with some perspective (no pun intended), I realize how many people in the 80's tried to copy him. The large blocks of bold neon colors and the sketchy lines next to those colors, most of which is layered on a screen printing of a celebrity really brought that realization home. Seeing his works in person is really a lot different than looking at them in some art book. I have a new found appreciation for his ability to make a artistic composition out of his "manufactured" approach.

But part of me wonders if Warhol should not be remembered most as a comedian than as an artist. Some of his statements really seemed to me that he enjoyed putting the public on. He claimed that he thought it would be best if instead of dying, one could just "vanish" or turn into "sand." He also said that he did not want anything printed on his tombstone, he just wanted a plain slab of rock. But in the same quote, he amended his comment to indicate that the one word he wanted on his tombstone should be "Figment."

Nineteenth and Twenty-Fourth Centuries

It has been over a week since I last posted, for which, all I can say is that the delay is like a result of my struggling with the increasing press of work at school. It is time to really start thinking about term paper topics for my seminar papers due in about five weeks. Research should start to take priority which means that I should be spending more time reading in the library than anything else. I would really like to read at home, but I have found that the allure of shows like Battlestar Galactica, Futurama, and Star Trek Deep Space Nine is nearly impossible to resist. My Victorian City class demands that I spend more time in the 19th century than the 24th. Thus, I commit myself to the Library on campus.


Rain

As far as spending time in the 19th century goes (specifically: London, England), it has actually been quite interesting. In 1851, there was a "Great Exhibition" of nations that drew large crowds to the "crystal palace" to see the so-called great accomplishments of mostly Western Nations. For example, the Americans brought their sewing machine (or Singer brought it, I guess). But one of my favorite displays was one from Germany which displayed the new achievements in Taxidermy. One display of animals had about five stuffed cats drinking tea, while another cat played the piano. It reminds me of the famous "Dogs playing Poker" painting that you see in thrift stores. This particular German display of animals in human poses was so popular that two policeman had to guide the crowd through the exhibition and prevent the usual crowd type problems. In any event, that is all for now. More on all of this later, I suppose.

Graduate Students and the Four Groups

On Tuesday, the professor for my class veered away from the lecture for a few minutes to tell us about how grad. students are the only group at the university who "know" they are not the top of the educational heap. He said that there a four groups at every university: Faculty, Administrative Staff, Undergraduates, and Graduates. The first group, Faculty, can say, "without us, there would be nothing to teach." The Administrative staff can say, "well, without us to organize the schedules, facilitate the registration, and pay everyone's salaries, nothing would happen." And even the undergraduates, who make up the majority of the student body can respond with, "we are the people who pays the money into the system by taking these classes. Without us, there would be no-one to teach."


Working at Night

The only group who really "knows" that they are NOT the top of the heap are the graduate students. They are the only ones who recognize that they are working for some other purposes, usually another professor. And the graduate students wind up doing the bulk of the drudgery work such as "grading papers, doing class prep. work, etc." I admit that I haven't heard this before, and when the professor said it, I felt that it was at least true for the college where I am at currently. Perhaps it is true for all colleges. I know that I have graded more than my share of papers, and I haven't even taught a course yet.

As far as my own academic work goes, I am still behind. But, I think I can catch up. I have a plan that might work, and what is more important, a new attitude. I now know that all I can do is my best work and turn it in, which essentially means to me that I don't have to strive for perfection. I can strive for "good enough." I have heard people say this before, but only now is the realization of it sinking in.

Shouting

The other night I was shopping at my local grocery store because I had run out of milk and eggs. It was about 10:00 p.m. at night, and on Saturday night. From the looks of the shopping crowd, there were more than a few decrepit-looking bachelors or young people on a "beer run." This is what happens when you shop at the grocery store at night. If you shop at the other end of the day, say around 6:00 a.m., you will be more likely to run into people over the age of 60. In any event, this stop at the grocery started out to be uneventful, and like most things in my life lately, dull.


Summer Tree

When I parked and got out of my car, a young woman, college aged shouted at me: "JOE!" I stopped and looked at her out of the corner of my eye. I wasn't sure she was talking to me. "Hey, JOE!" Okay, now she was talking to me. I looked at her. The passenger was laughing. The woman shouting at me, oddly enough, looked a little shocked, perhaps even slightly scared. Something weird was up, and she expected some kind of an answer. I said, "uh, no--sorry. I'm not Joe." "You not!?," she asked incredulously. "No," I said and proceeded to walk away. Next, for some reason, she decided to start cursing at me and saying some things that would make a sailor blush. "HEY! YOU &*&%^?! Why don't you (expletive) effing (expletive) You (expletive, curse word, and you guessed it: expletive)!!!!" As she was still shouting at me when I had made it halfway from my car to the front of the grocery store, I decided to stop. I turned around and walked straight over to her car. I got within 5 feet of her car and made a big show of reading her license plate. She stopped yelling. Without saying a word, I walked inside the store and did my shopping.

When I was done, her car was gone. So I went home without incident, and went to bed an hour or so later. But, this kind of thing really makes me wonder. Why do people do this to each other? I am a stranger to her, and the funny thing is, I think she knew I wasn't "Joe" all along. For some reason, maybe the thrill of adrenaline, she wanted to yell at me. In a weird way, the whole shouting episode makes wish it was August. I took the above picture then, and I keep thinking of how I would do some things over again if I go back in time to then.

A Slump to End Them All

As you can see from the bottom of my post, it is about ten o'clock. I got back from my class on violence about an hour ago. And, believe it or not, I have two books to read in the next thirty six hours. Subtract the time I need for sleeping, eating, an going to an appointment to the dentist tomorrow, and you'll find that time is actually much shorter than that. I've been able to read books in a single day before, but 650 pages of small typeface is going to be a killer, and I am not sure that I can really do it. It has me a bit depressed. Okay, I'll admit it, more than "a bit." But there is nothing that I can really do about it.


Bicycle and Car

Although I no longer have a cold and feel fine physically, the rather immediate school stress combines with the ongoing and increasingly difficult stress of my new home situation (I'll not go into it). I know it is a bore to read about other people's problems, especially on other people's blogs--but I got to tell you--I'm having more trouble than I normally do. Another way of saying all of this is: I actually have some good reasons for complaining this time.

One of the ways that I have been coping is by working on my webcomic in brief intervals during the day. It gives my brain a rest from the constant studying, and it helps me stop dwelling on my problems for a time. I admit I am becoming more attached to the webcomic than I ever suspected I would be. I really want it to become more popular, like Beaver and Steve or something like it. And I wish I had more feedback about my comic and how to make it better. My current stats suggests that traffic is increasingly slowly, but I wish it could go a little faster.

Out of Commission

For the last five days, I've been pretty sick with a nasty head cold. One the consequences of which has been that the dentist appointment that I had scheduled for today was cancelled. I've been spending most of my time writhing on the couch under a blanket or lolling on my bed looking like death-warmed-over. When I've been forced to attend class, I've tried to sit in the back next to window and cough discretely into my sleeve. Yes, I'm sure I annoyed the hell out of everyone with my icky display of illness, but when your graduate course only meets ten times in a term, you have to go to every class. However, that has been balanced by my recent realization that most of the students in the class were nerdier than I remember.


Reach for the Sky

So, I've been trying to do my best during the last few of days of illness, but it hasn't been too easy. The physical illness, in a way, is a just a token of the larger, more intense personal issues with which I have been struggling during this past half month. Work, which for an English Graduate student means reading and writing, has been both a refuge and a distraction from these other problems. Currently, I'm reading Charles Dickens Bleak House, a novel which is supposed to paint a portrait of 19th century London. It is sometimes been a challenge to wrap my poor, ill and infected head around a Victorian sentence structure, but I have been able to follow the gist of the plot anyway. Also, I've been reading Flannery O'Connor. There's nothing like a weird story than one written by her. And, of course, Faulkner will be coming soon. But by that time, I hope to be feeling much better.

School Again

The first week of classes here at the University are over, but I am not sure that I have fully got in the swing of things yet. Too much has happened during the last three or four weeks for me to have fully processed all of it yet. In many ways, I am still trying to recover some lost equilibrium. I know people talk about finding their "centers" or becoming a "centered" person, and I think that is what I may be trying to do, but I admit that I hate that terminology and cliche.


Farm Chickens

One of the major things on my plate for this week is figuring out how to resolve what, exactly, I plan to do in September, nine months from now. Nine months from now seems like a ridiculously far away date right now, but if I am planning on getting a PhD., I will need to apply to a school during this next week. It would have been better if I applied during the first of part of December, but as I was functioning on such a basic level emotionally, I was barely able to meet some basic needs. To be honest, I am still having a hard time thinking or planning for the future, but circumstances demand that I do, so reluctantly I will. This is the first thing on my to do list for Friday morning. If I can crank out the applications, I may still have a decent chance. I am still waiting for the results of my GRE English subject test, something needed for applications. I will let you know how I did when I get them.