LAST Weekend

Sorry for the long break there, fans. It's been...well, regular life. I'm just lazy with da bloggie.

Anyway. I have sooooooooo many wonderful pictures from my trip last weekend, but I know Blogger is going to be all retarded and not let me post things like I want, so I'm picking my top ten faves (still a lot of pictures...where is their server, anyway, Nairobi?) and letting them set the tone. Maybe I'll post sequel sets of pictures every weekend for the next, oh, ten years or so until I get them all up. Maybe not. Here goes the Top Ten from Janaury 29ths' "First LEGO League North Carolina State Tournament:"

The MIGHTY MARSHMALLOWS!


We are talking about some serious firepower in the 9-14 age range. Plus their parents. Plus the college students who were working the event.


The Bot!


Big Brother--definitely key in the whole process. I wish I had better pictures of them switching out attachments on the robot...so very cool.


It took lots of concentration.


And looking to Mom for hints and help--she wasn't allowed within a certain foot radius of the tables.


We needed a scorekeeper.


And a fan section. With posters. No painted stomachs, though.


Breaks are also very key.


There were disappointing moments. (A clear winner emerged in the "expressive face" category, though.)


And heartwarming teamwork--people came to our spot in the pit to congratulate and encourage the homeschool team. They were impressed by what one family was able to do. And we were all like totally "well, duh!" and, like, right? It was neat to watch the kids work together.


And this pretty much sums up how we all felt at the end of the day. Pretty much.

Snapshot

For those of you who complain that my blog "doesn't show what's going on in my life," I present a little snapshot. This is my Saturday morning:

Cat hunting birds.

Boy eating banana (unaided!).
My new book that I want to read. And probably won't.
My breakfast! Yes, on a Star Wars plate. It's the little things in life...

Thankful for a blessing.

A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure.
A faithful friend is beyond price, no sum can balance his worth.

Things Babies Love the Heck Out Of

(Don’t worry.  This is done totally in loving jest.  You know who you are out there…)

So, back along about a decade ago, while I was growing large with child and simultaneously racking up the frequent flier miles between here and Oklahoma, il mio sponso decided to begin a conversation about whether buying “the best” for baby was ok to do, provided you had the means.  Along with that conversation (which, as I recall, got some really heated responses out of the internetz) was a side question about what kinds of things were, well, okay to skimp on.  I, of course, make no such sort of studied inquiry.  I never have.  I probably never will.  Amazon reviews, registries, and rich relatives are the way of life.  I want the best for my child that my grandmother’s money can buy.  So, some things I totally recommend:

1. Swing: Who doesn’t like that relaxed feeling they after tripping for a while, right?  Rainbows and puppies and a gentle, rhythmic rock.  No people to bother you.  Just you and the swing.  (Ours came from the neighbor, who was giving it away as her uterine-use days were evidently over, and it got me through the first three months of teaching piano.  Price of swing: $0.  Money earned because swing freed my hands: $380.)

2. Infant Carseat: Because one sleeps better at night knowing that the carseat (which we put over 25,000 miles on before it was outgrown) we bought was crash tested, legal for use in the United States, and kept baby safe.  So what if he couldn’t use it until he’s five.  Hell, they’ll redesign cars before then and the seat will be unusable anyhow.  Also, goes with the uber-expensive stroller that great-grandma bought.  (Cost of seat + stroller: $280.  Money saved on gym membership because I carried that thing around at a whopping 32lbs for eleven months: $210.  And I’m still using the stroller.)

3. Millions of Clothes: Being able to change him four times a day, if necessary, and still have a complete matching outfit in the drawer—shirt, pants, vest, socks, and hat—is the kind of couture that a self-respecting mother should strive for.  After all, just because I wear the same clothes for days at a time and don’t brush my hair doesn’t mean that baby has to live that way.  Also, it comes in handy for when you got busy doing things and put pants on baby but not diaper.  Voila!  Extra pants in the dresser!  (Cost of clothes: $0, they came from the all-done neighbor.  Money saved on the water bill because I could just change baby’s clothes instead of washing his little body off all the time because I make him eat naked because I don’t want to wash so many clothes: $50-80.  Money saved on moisturizing lotion also from fewer washings: $30.)

4. Plates, Bowls, Spoons, Forks, Sippy Cups: Makes baby feel like a “big boy.”  This way, when he gets to be two or so and I want him to develop homo sapiens manners, he’s used to trying to act like an adult by using utensils and dinnerware.  After all, if I’m going to get the child a stinkin’ broom for Montessori sweeping—a broom his size, for those of you in Rio Linda—I can sure as heck get him a spoon that’s baby-mouth-sized, and a plate that sticks to the table/tray so he can’t projectile it at me.  Also, if he hates the sippy cup, get him a straw.  Put the straw in a sippy cup.  Put the straw in your beer.  Put beer in the sippy cup.  Whatever it takes.  (Cost of baby dinnerware: $25.  Money saved on carpet cleaning, no broken adult dishes, and valium for when preschooler still insists on eating with his hands: $500+.)

5.  Baby Bath Tub:  How else can I tell if the water is warm enough?  The tub has the little turns-white-when-too-hot ducky on it!

6. Crib: Ours turns in to a toddler bed, which is the way we’re using it now, and a full-size bed, which we probably won’t ever use.  Again, a great opportunity for little man to feel grown up, transition gradually into adulthood, and start saving for college.  What child in his own grown-up bed doesn’t want to start saving for college?  Interestingly enough, we did co-sleep with our guy for the first year, completely by serendipity and not by design.  He hated the crib.  So I converted it to a toddler bed.  Slept in it almost every night since.  (Crib cost: $200.  Peace of mind from having a no-drop-side crib that matches the furniture: priceless.)

That’s probably it for now.  I can think of other things to post, but my mobile and active son is sleeping.  Which means I’m supposed to be reading Scharnhorst or Machiavelli or Sun Tzu.

Monday, continued.

Because, even though I did a full day's worth of driving (6.5 hours) and a full day’s worth of teaching (3 hours), yesterday was technically part of the holiday.  And I didn’t do any school yesterday.  I went to bed instead.  So here is a post, as I go into hour 36 of my “Monday.”

Something is amiss with my child.  I might be his teeth.  It might be his tummy.  It might be his head.  But I think it’s his attitude.  Because he shore does have one.  And I’m going to go insane dealing with him.  I can’t take the climbing, writhing, crying, difficult little boy much longer.  Argh!

Pictures of Aforementioned Snow

Snow, Snow, Snow!!

I haven’t taken any good pictures yet, and blogger is being a pill so it doesn’t matter what kind of pictures I take they still won’t post, but there’s SNOW outside!  I think we’re probably pushing 2 inches out there, which is pretty impressive for the southern end of the North Carolina coast.  Wowie.  V was so excited, crawling all over my head and banging on the window at the snow.  It’s so pretty, too.  Nice big flakes, so soft and peaceful and quiet outside.  I love it.  Just don’t ask me to get out in it, at all.

Other than that, feeling really good about school this week.  I got everything that ought to be turned in, turned in last night, and also participated in two of the non-mandatory boards for the “third” class on my schedule.  It’s the standout favorite for the new semester, too.  “Great Military Philosophers.”   Right up my alley.  I still have two major assignments to turn in, but both have had their page limits reduced dramatically, such that the TOTAL due pages due by Thursday night is only 14.  Which is like, ppppsh.  Nothin.

Progress

Manged to complete over half of the reading for one of my classes. That's good. That means that 1/8th of the total assignments due Sunday at midnight are now complete.

Aaaaand I realized that the assignments due the NEXT weekend are going to have to be completed by, uh, Thursday. Because I'm sure as heck not working on school while traveling to and from a wedding. Nope. No sir.

A New Year

So, here's V enjoying the snow at my grandparents' over the Christmas holiday. It was a wild ride, as usual, complete with trips to bookstore and long drives to science museums. After all, I hardly ever get to ride in the car. Right?

Today is the first "real" day back home, as family is gone for good now, and even dear friends :) who stopped in on their way back home have moved on down the road. Now it really is just me and the kid. This nice part about this is that I'm nearly halfway done with the week's lessons already (halfway is actually at 3pm today), so I have only a half week of work left to do. The not nice part is that my new classes started on Monday and I'm still behind on the old ones. So. Oops.

And here's mah boy with his Gramma New Year's Day:

And furthermore

It’s funny, so many years after I had started the blog (and named it, at the time mainly just because it sounded cool, even though the psalm in my title bar lends it some credence), I’ve turned out to actually have a little “midnight radio” all of my own.  Because of the time difference, if I stay up reeeeeeeeeeeeeally late, some nights I get to gchat (or skype chat) with Joseph for a little while before he begins his day.  This is such a blessing.  There’s a long list of people, too, who would probably come and eat my bones for snacks if they found out how lucky I am—most people are feeling good if they get a one line email every two weeks.  Most people’s husbands are living in 2-man tents and the nearest internet is 45 miles away.

So yes.  If I stay up good and late, I might get to “talk” with my best friend.  :)  Totally worth it.

A Bit Dull

Yes, the blog is sleeping. But you see, I'm actually getting my READING for CLASS done here. Along with many family-and-friend related things. So, every time you come and see that no blog things have happened, you may think, "Oh, that's so wonderful for Jen. She's getting her school and family things done. She's feeling accomplished. I'm so happy for her."

So, be happy.

Not nice

Not a great start to this Fourth Week of Advent (aka “last week before the good stuff”).  The Senate went the next step toward a DADT repeal, which isn’t particularly nice of them.  Bunch of spineless…bad words.  Anyway, I’m just completely depressed and put off by that.  Not sure what it bodes for our life, future, livelihood, etc.  The whole thing is so dishonest from start to finish, the rhetoric is malicious and skewed, etc etc etc.  I could write for a long time about, and not make a heck of a lot of sense, but I won’t.  Too t’d off to do so, anyway.

Also, patrol cycle starts/started today.  So that’ll ruin my next ten days or so.  Nothing like waking up every morning wondering whether you’re still married to anybody.

Also having irritating misgivings about all manner of life decisions, including but not limited to the way I raise my kid, make my food, spend my money, etc.

Oh, and they are trying to repeal DADT.  My buddy Danny (good ol, Danny) says not to worry, they’ll reinstate it on January 21st.  It’ll be fine.  Just don’t worry.  But I have a hard time feeling it will be that easy.  Can you imagine the backlash from the left?  It’s awfully freaking hard to roll back something that the entire world is gushing about being a “great civil rights victory.”

Finally, all this has totally sapped my interest in and motivation to work on my school stuff.  And I have a big discussion board due tonight.  On World War II.  And I haven’t done the reading.  And right now I’m supposed to be motivated to be reading all like 115 pages of the relevant chapters.

Yeah.  Not happening.  Stupid Senate.  Merry Christmas to you, too.

Small Successes -- Winning the Germ War

(This came from something Tea & Co. do every week. I decided to steal.)

It's important for moms to realize that all those small successes add up to one big triumph. So on Thursday of each week, we do exactly that! My skirmishes for the week:

1. Christmas cards are all addressed and the Christmas letter is written. Must now inscribe and stuff them...

2. Kept V from the worst of the cold, I think, by stuffing him full of oatmeal and vitamins. Don't tell the pediatrician.

3. Did all but the last 2 items on my 76-item "To Do" list from the fridge. Now I get to make a new list! :D

BBC’s 100 Books

I got this list from Facebook, then via Matt’s blog.  I totally agree with his assessment that some “books” are on here twice, once as part of a collection and once on their own, and this is annoying.  He’s so right.  But anyway.  Below are “the rules” (you don’t have to play), plus I liked Matt’s addition, so I’m also underlining a book that I read specifically for school, and not because I’m a nutball.

The Rules

• Copy this into your NOTES.
• Bold those books you've read in their entirety.
• Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt.
• Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!
• The BBC says that most people average about 6 of the following, -- Let's see how well I do!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling [read a little of the first one and HATED it]

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6. The Bible [Yes.  I did.  One Lent.]

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell [One day. . . ]

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller [Yuck.]

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare [One day, when I have money and time]

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger [And never will.  Too sad!  But I know the story, and not from watching the movie.]

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [Top 3 favorite books]

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll [Again, yuck.]

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis

34. Emma -Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini [But it is upstairs on the shelf…]

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres [GREAT movie!]

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden [Met the author once…]

40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown [Nevah!  Fr. Jose says I should, though, so I can discount it to my students.]

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52. Dune - Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley [fun times]

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville [I swear I’ve read the first page like 100 times, but I just can’t get past it.]

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72. Dracula - Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett [Booooooriiiiiiiing.]

74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses - James Joyce

76. The Inferno - Dante

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom [My family made me read it so I could explain to my Grandmother what all was wrong with it.]

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery [First “long” book I ever read.]

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Other Things

Also trying to get rid of: fantastically large number of matches, over a dozen candles, hair products of various descriptions, accumulated Christmas cards from sales of Christmas Past (making real progress on that one), and the many many many legal and letter-sized pads that we collected during the cleaning out of the professors’ building that one summer that I worked at the college…

I’m getting there.

It has been an interesting week, though.  Fo sho.  Like, I had never expected that the smell of a newly-opened bag of Tostitos would remind my of my husband.  Who knew?  Wow, though, man, I opened up that bag and all my reflexes went, “WHAT?  You went to the store and bought CHIPS AGAIN?  I COOKED food for you!  REAL food!”  And then I ate an entire batch of guacamole by myself.

Which reminds me of another reminder.  Who knew that I would actually want to go out for a run, just because it reminded me of Joe?  That’s power, right there.  Something that makes me want to go out and be miserable.  Not that its an option, anyway, because it has gotten so BLEEPING COLD around here all of a sudden.  (Whence cometh this new typing in all caps habit?  I think reading others’ blogs is rubbing off on me.  And I used to be so good with italics, too.  Sad.)  I mean, seriously, like in the 30s all day.  So cold that the ice I dumped out of the recycle bin did not thaw after a full day of sitting in the grass, half of which was sitting in the grass in the sunshine time.  That’s too darn cold for this clime.  One of the selling points, in my head, was that we wouldn’t have to endure another Virginia winter.

So much for selling points.

Holly Jolly Rodent

Yes, I know that he is not a rodent. He is a feline. But I don't care. He's a PEST. (This photo was taken at eye level, btw.)

Unaccustomed Presence of Routine

Sooooooo some of my goals during the deployment are, shall we say, less lofty than others. Pray for Joseph, lose some weight, get V sleeping in his own bed. Those are the lofty goals. So far, V sleeps in his bed the whole night exept for the part he sleeps in the floor with me. I'm unsure at what point the transfer takes place. Lose weight...bah humbug. And praying for Joseph is (a) ongoing and (b) a total sucess. So I'm doing well there.

The less lofty goals are odd. One of them was to "use up some of the lotion and other hygiene-related products that I've got laying around." I'm a scented-thing fiend, so these articles pile up, you know? So I'm going through and trying to use up things, mostly by remembering as part of my daily regimen to put moisturizing product on my peeling, itchy, poor, sad skin. This is something I've always needed to do, but never remembered before. I never had time to remember it. I never had time to wait patiently in my robe for the lotion to become unsticky so I could get dressed. Now I have time, or at least I'm making time. I feel a little triumph every time I toss an empty container out. (Yay! More space to put new lotion! Except that part of the deal was a vow not to buy more of the stuff until more than half of the existing inhabitants had bought the farm.)

Another goal was "clear out the pantry." Somehow this also translated into "clear out the vitamin shelf." Every M.D. that I saw during my entire pregnancy was convinced they had to prescribe prenatal vitamins to me--and I never realized the vitamins were in amongst the other medications until I got home and opened my pharmacy sack. Sooooooo there's ye piles of prenatals (and iron, which I'm terrified V is going to get into even though they're in a child-proof container at the back on the top shelf of an above-the-counter cupboard over the dishwasher and there are no climbable furniture pieces within six feet) in my cabinet which I wanted out. And rather than toss all but one (wasteful) I decided to just take the things, one per day. Which I never did before or during natalness, so what the heck. I'll do it now. Nothing like planning ahead. And I'm taking Vitamin C. And I feel soooooooooo proud. Again, a little triumph every time an empty container leaves my shelves that much less full.

As far as the real pantry goes, that's another story. I could easily not shop for groceries until February and not go hungry (and I wouldn't get scurvy, because I'm taking Vitamin C!!), but there would be a total lack of meat, dairy or vegetable products (except for frozen veggies). So I still go grocery shopping, some, but basically I only buy things from the three categories listed above. I cook LOTS more when Joseph is gone anyway, so the food that is sitting on the shelves for months and months always leaves faster when he is away, but lately I've been trying to be good about cooking veggies for V (because Macaroni is not really a food group) so there's just more cooking all around.

Granted, I'm sitting here in my jammies after a day of teaching with two bottles of water and a ham sandwich and some mini snickers. But who says you have to be perfect?

Not Dead

Merely resting my blog. It needed some vacation time.

When I mentioned in the last post we would leave PA "bright and early," I should have said "dark and early." V and got moving at 0420 Friday morning, moved our tails on down the road, had a nice lunch with my family (at Five Guys), then spent a solid SIX hours at Busch Gardens. I rode the Griffon (only roller coaster running--boo) like six times (yay), the last time in the front row (YAY). Awesome times.

On Saturday, we walked and walked and walked and walked around Williamsburg. Toured the Palace, toured the Capitol, generally enlarged our minds. Had dinner to celebrate my baby sister's 16th birthday. Sat around the hotel room and read school books.

On Sunday, we went to Mass at a Poor Clare Monastery, had a big breakfast with Uncle Mike, then scooted on home. Sunday night V spent his first night in the big boy bed. So far, so good. Last night he came and got on the floor and slept with me (sometime after midnight, not really sure when), but in general he's sleeping at least four hours straight (at a time) in the bed. And no night time nursing. BIG step. :)

So that's the story. I've been teaching since I got back, cleaning the house, answering phone calls, cleaning some more, putting up the Christmas tree (no comments please, Advent People), putting the wreaths on the outside of the house (boo), packing up boxes to mail overseas, organizing my desk, and trying to overcome the beast that is my garage. Many things happening, none of which involve the blog.

Oh, and I have a paper due at midnight. I should be reading my book right now.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We were informed (once again) at Mass this morning that this is a holiday begun by the Pilgrims to give thanks to God for giving us a home and food and family.

Pretty sure that's not exactly right. Pretty sure George Washington instated Thanksgiving as a national holiday to celebrate the end of hostilities with England. But whatever. Leave it to me to rain on everyone's pie parade.

Anyhow, here we are in central PA, watching the rain and sleet come down merrily. V has fallen asleep (thank goodness) and I need to head downstairs here momentarily and find something upon which to gnosh until the real food shows up around 4pm. Much coming and going has been done, including going shopping to find more fun things to mail to Daddy. Thanksgiving without him is not so fun, we're discovering. Not that that's a big shock.

Then, bright and early, V and I have to hop in the car tomorrow and head ourselves to Williamsburg so we can freeze our buns off in the "Birthplace of Democracy" (also not an accurate statement) for the next two days.

Random Wikipedia Article of the Day

(Thanks to Val for this fun idea.)

Augustin Buzura

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Augustin Buzura (born September 22, 1938) is a Romanian novelist and short story writer, also known as a journalist, essayist and literary critic. A member of the Romanian Academy, he has been the president of the Romanian Cultural Foundation since 1990 and president of the Romanian Cultural Institute between 2003 and 2004.

Biography

Born in Berinţa village, Copalnic-Mănăştur commune (Maramureş County), Buzura graduated from Gheorghe Şincai National College in Baia Mare and attended the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj (1958–1964), specializing in psychiatry.^[1] He debuted as a journalist with articles published by the magazine Tribuna during 1960.^[1]

Augustin's Buzura first published work was the 1963 collection of short stories, Capul Bunei Speranţe ("Cape of Good Hope").^[1] He continued to publish regularly after that date, receiving critical acclaim and being awarded the Romanian Writers' Union prise three times, for the successive works Absenţii ("The Absentees"), Feţele tăcerii ("The Forces of Silence") and Vocile nopţii ("The Voices in the Night").^[1]

Works

• Capul Bunei Speranţe, 1963
• De ce zboara vulturii, 1967
• Absenţii, 1970
• Orgolii, 1974
• Feţele tăcerii, 1974
• Vocile nopţii, 1980
• Bloc-notes, 1981
• Refugii, 1984
• Drumul cenuşii, 1988
• Recviem pentru nebuni şi bestii, 1999

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} (Romanian) Detalii despre autor. Buzura, Augustin, at Editura Paralela 45; retrieved April 30, 2008

The Awful Truth

Ok, I only got two "scheduled" posts written, and one of them has already appeared. (The other one is coming Thursday.) The problem arose on Sunday afternoon, when Windows Update killed my poor laptop. Soooooooooo, for the second time in two weeks, I had to nuke the hard drive and start over with this blasted machine.

So, no other scheduled posts. And no fun pictures of everything I've done for the past two or three months, because running the file restore to get all my pictures and files back (AGAIN) is going to take several days. You'll just have to enjoy my live posting and virtual presence this week. As available.

Had a great visit with Betsy yesterday (it occurs to one, with much accompanying embarassment and guilt, that to grammatically correct your friend's engraved and/or monogrammed gifts is not tastful) and a not-unbearable drive. Took about 13 hours with the stop halfway, and this morning the car is already safely tucked away at the dealership to have the brakes redone. Much progress. Much amazingness.

Perhaps more to come later this week. Stay tuned.

Monday's Child

A little piece of the local domestic bliss:

Disclaimer and Some Notes

First, I've decided that I want to try out the "scheduled posting" thingie, given the fact that I'll be away all next week. So (with all this free time in my evening) I'm piling up a week's worth of posts for everyone to enjoy while I'm away. This is dumb, because everyone else will be "away," too, but what the heck. You can't win them all. Or even a few.

So anyway. If you're reading this post and nothing is above it, that means you got me early in the proposed COA, before the internets have taken over and done all my posting for me for the next week. It also means that you're seriously in need to something to do on a Saturday night.

Today, though, we did some things that are worth mentioning. Most recently (i.e. the last thing I did today) was make all this stuff:

I know, it's a crappy picture, but I took it with the webcam because it's faster and I'm sorry. Anyway. That's two pecan-walnut pies and several dozen gingerbread seminarians. I still have to royal ice the darn things (tomorrow). They are for my bro and his friends. They go to school here:

And they dress like this:

Hence the "skirts" on the gingerbread, which are really cassocks. Once I get collars piped on, it'll all be much clearer for everyone.

ANY WAY. Before that, Vincent and I went to the MASSIVELY HUGE AND OVERWHELMING fall craft fair at the O'Club. Holy moly. Never before has so much been handcrafted by so few for such prices and crammed into such a small space. I was OVERWHELMED. Lemme just say, though, and no brown nosing intended, that Betsy takes better pictures, and Tea and her gang make much more appetizing-sounding foods. But alas, they are there and I am here. So I get craft fair fare. Which I enjoyed! I wanted to buy many things, but restrained myself and only bought things that could in all decency be wrapped and given for Christmas to one of the few people remaining on my list. And since everyone left on my list is a male between 14 and 21 years of age, there was much wanting and little buying. Much safer for the wallet.

Before we went a'craft fairing, V and I went to the bank, the post office, the Commissary, the Exchange, some yard sales (got a litle kiddie desk for $5! score!), and made it home in time to have guacamole and lemonade for lunch. I'm pretty sure both of those are food groups, so we're good. And I think that's all I have for now. All the stuff I'm scheduling for a later post (you can see I'm excited about this concept, can't you?) is interesting, mostly from things I cleared off the cameras recently and should have posted a while ago, and didn't. And now I am.

Just So You Know

I do not hang around the internet waiting to pounce on emails and blog posts.  I just get lucky sometimes and happen to sit down just as something has been posted.

 

Yay for me!

We Interrupt This Program

To bring you wheezing, coughing, misery.

WHY????????

I'm taking my medicine, I'm using the humidifier, I'm doing all the things I was told to do. Why can't I kick this thing? Why am I so miserable? Aaaaagh!

There's something wrong when I'm short of breath, when the wheezy throat feeling is so bad I can't breathe right. But every morning when I get up, things are better, and in the daytime I decide not to call the doctor "because it isn't that bad." And then every night I regret it.

Drowning

The part of class I had been dreading is here--the Civil War. Our nation is a nation of total and absolute, dyed-in-the-wool, horn tootin', book totin', information spewing, movie critiquing, park visiting, battle analyzing, armchair quarterbacking Civil War FANATICS. It's like, totally the only war we were ever in, man.

Totally.

And we can write stinking REAMS about it. Can't we? Yes, we can.

I was really not looking forward to this, because (unlike my classmates) I have not read several hundred books on the subject. I don't know how many yards apart the skirmish lines were at the Battle of the Wilderness. So I'm drowning in yards of discussion board, pages of reading, and (of course) a deadline. I was supposed to be getting lots more reading done here, but dealing with Mr. Sicky for a week has sapped my staying-awake powers.

Yawn.

Some things

I told someone special that I'd post more pictures, specifically all the ones that I'd dumped from my phone to the computer in the last couple days--since the Great Computer Crash. Re-ordering pictures on this stupid post editor is virtually impossible, though, so the order of photos does not precisely reflect reality. What the hey.


In the "pool" at Nina's:
Enjoying homecoming at Christendom:
Sir Edmund Hilleary:

On a walk near the house (most recent pic):

Pickle on his second day as a domesticated animal:

Pickle in his second week as a domesticated animal:

All over with a #4:

See food at the Chinese place: Pushing the envelope (this is the way he goes in and out from under the table, every time): And finally, to finish off this little tour of my life, a shot taken mere moments before I began composition of this post (which, considering my photo posting frequency, is practically a picture of the future):

Small Victory

First off, this story is in no way some kind of judgment on parents. In other situations, yes, maybe, but not this one. This is just pure Me Being Amazing. This me and my mad diplomacy skills. This is a screaming, crying six year old showing up at my door and a happy, smiling one leaving 26 minutes later.

First, this little guy's parents had told me once before that he really wasn't enthusiastic about piano lessons--they wanted him to learn, he enjoyed it most of the time, but on days when he remembered that he didn't want to take lessons it was a little rough. He switched from his old piano teacher at the first of October, and with me it had been so far, so good. On not so good days, his mom would send me a text that it had been an anti-piano day, and we'd go back into the old books and only do things that he liked and already knew. No pressure. No work. Just getting through the lessons.

But all good things come to an end. Last night, with approximately 1.5 hours left before he had to be in the door of his Birthday Ball, Dad showed up at my door with the aforementioned screaming and crying offspring. He just kind of looked at me like, "Um. He seems to be crying. Good luck." So the kid came in, still crying, knelt down on the floor next to the piano (still crying) and proceeded to cry cry cry. It only took me 2 minutes to figure out what was wrong--he told me what was wrong. "I just DON'T want to PLAY the piano ANYmore!!!"

Ah.

So I said, "Ok. We've got half an hour. Would you like to mow my yard, fold all my laundry, or change the baby's diaper?"

None of those things.

Oh. "Ok, fine. But please get off the floor, you're going to get it wet with the crying." Dad is still sitting on the couch, watching. No pressure, Jen. He's just a lieutenant colonel. Who is good friends with the General. Who is good friends with your father-in-law.

"Boooooohooohohohohohohohohooooooo." And he leaned over to put his head and arms on the piano.

I was like, "Hey! Be careful! You're going to play the piano, and you said you didn't want to!" And of course he still plops his head down on the keyboard. Noises issue from the soundboard. "See??" He shakes his head at me, still crying. So I shut the lid and told him it had to be that way just in case he accidentally played again. Then he started swinging his feet.

"Hey! Don't do that, either! You're going to play the pedals!"

The head comes up. What pedals? Dry eyes. Bright expression.

"Those pedals."

"What do they do?"

And the rest, my friends, is history. Actually, he played the piano for virtually 20 minutes straight, which is more than he normally does in a non-crying lesson. So, good for me. At some point, Dad snuck out the door, and when we went outside at the end of the lesson, he said, "Wow. I just can't believe you don't have a six year old. That was amazing."

:D

Running with the Pack

Yeah, no WAY am I going to be the one with the oldest post on my blog. Holy cow, Betsy has posted TWICE in a week. Which is, like, Armageddon or something. She hardly ever does that. Hardly.

Anyway, I've been alive for the past couple days, just busy. I did get the computer fixed, after nuking the hard drive--not once, but twice--and then slowly replacing all my programs and settings. It took a while, and my file restore of all my pictures (I had it all backed up, so the whole ordeal was never upsetting or cause for panic, just really really really irritating) is still in progress. Part of the problem is that I keep letting the machine hibernate, which pauses the restore. But the computer saga is resolved.

In the meantime, I've already taught 12 lessons this week, which is 8 more than I was teaching on Mon/Tue a week ago. My name made very fast progress through the field grade housing, evidently, which is actually really nice. It's flattering that people want to recommend me to their neighbors. What can I say? The kids seem to like me, and their moms LOVE the fact that I'm on base. I think even if the kids hated me I'd still have quite a few students, because of how much my being on base thrills their moms. I have 8 lessons today, five tomorrow, and then V has his 12 month checkup on Friday morning. Oh, and the car has its 80,000 mile (!!!) checkup in like three hours.

I would rather not be awake right now.

Not much else going on. I'm almost done with cleaning the house, going one room at a time, kinda one room per day. Obviously I don't feel much pressure to get it done in any kind of hurry. The bedrooms are left. Any form of motivation has come from watching "Hoarders" over the last couple days. Oh my gosh. What a horrifying show. But it makes you want to clean your room, man. And get rid of things. And never stock your pantry with more than a 12-hour supply of food. And get rid of more things. And never have a pet.

Wah wah wah wahhhhhhhhh

Have gotten one HECK of a trojan horse on the notebook.

Expletive expletive expletive.

Will return with updates in the comments box, no doubt.

Aw, nuts.

It occurs to one that if one (a) goes to bed at 1130pm and (b) gets up at 6am, nothing interesting will have happened on the internet in the meantime. Nothing, at least, on the parts of the internet one frequents. Oh well.

V and I dragged our adorable little behinds up to Raleigh for the weekend, in lieu of sticking around the house for what was shaping up to be a rather hairy ball season. (That will hopefully only make sense to a very special few of you.) They FINALLY finished updating the Pavilion and it was pulling its weight as a venue, which is nice because it looks infinitely more betterer since it has been completed. If it wouldn't put me in jail, I'd take some pictures of it for all you lousy lousies who moved away. They clear cut all around the creek edge between the pavilion and the bridge, leaving just the big trees. You can clearly see the creek from the path or from the pavilion driveway. Looks nice, I promise. Back when we had the flood, the water had come up over the jogging path, so I have a feeling part of the clearing-out was done in order to clean up the mess all that creek water had made.

Anyhow. We came up to Raleigh in hopes of visiting the children's museum downtown, but it turns out it is expensive and exclusive and a little out of our reach. We'll probably do free things instead, like go to the Farmer's Market and freeze our butts off. Or sit at home and watch football games. :) Livin' the life.

Faux Twit

This is me using my blog as a twitter account. (I have a real one, somewhere, but haven't used it in so long I don't know how to get to it again. Maybe the password is on my old computer...)

Anyway. Got up at 0315 to wander around, shush the cats, use the restroom, etc. Normal 3am stuff. Got distracted by the computer. Blogged a little. Clicked on links from my own blog, found new things I hadn't seen before.

Bought some stuff online.

Bought more stuff online.

Oh lord.

GRUMBLE

Tempting as it is to just steal my husband's identity and post this on facebook (see, people, I still read it from time to time, so don't go talking about me behind my back), I shall refrain. I shall make my pissy but called-for comment here.

You PEOPLE need to STOP WHINING about the issues within the Republican Party and the conservative movement in this country. You need to STOP making snarky and/or negative comments about the people who have won elections in recent days, you need to STOP making deprecatory statements about voter apathy and how few people turned out to vote. You need to stop pontificating about how those who have come to power are a "poor face" for the conservative movement, you need to stop moping about who didn't win way the hell back in 2008, 2004, or 2000 (or 1988).

This is WHY conservatism is PUNY in this country--we're all too interested in complaining about what we've got, and eternally looking for a better option, to WORK WITH what's on the table and make the best of it. Young voters are turned off by cynical, cranky, doubtful people like you. Old voters are turned off by you. I'M turned off by you. It's time to say, "Ok, this is wonderful. People are showing that they aren't happy with the way things are going. People are trying to improve the situation. It's going to be a slow battle. Let's roll."

You can't expect your kid to EVER get past T-Ball if you stand there griping about his stance and his technique every minute. He's going to get depressed, get frustrated, and quit. How about some cheers and support?

Geez louise.

Backfire

Having a stat counter is fun, because it gives you a little picture of who visits and why. For example, back in the summer, my post on Toy Story 3 got me literally hundreds of visitors who had googled "what is ascot toy story movie" and gotten my blog as the #3 hit. Who knew?

Unfortunately, until you correctly input the IP address of yourself (which the counter is supposed to ignore) and finalize all your settings, you also get a clear picture of just how many times you visit your own blog in a day.

Embarassing.

Even as we speak...

Say hello to my little friend. He's "cleaning" while I scour the internet for drug coupons. Can't send daddy out the door without meds, now can we?

Free Stuff

Head yourself on over to Homeschooling Resource Dot Org to enter a book giveaway. It's only open for two weeks, so hurry hurry hurry. Nice feature of this giveaway--no invasive inquiring about detailed personal information. Just yo name, man.

Also, I have a one year old boy here who would love to come live with you, climb on your furniture, and redecorate your home. Free.

Testing

Should be reading, should be writing checks, should be washing clothes.  Trying to make WindowsLive work instead.

Technorati Tags: blog

Birthday!!

Cupcakes by Ladybug and Aunt Bit:
Birthday Boy cake by Gramma:

Professional pumpkin painting by Cat:

Less professional pumpkin painting by mommy:

Eating decorations (this is from earlier in the day, but blogger is out to get me and I'm tired of trying to reorder the photos):

Scarfing down some pure sugar, by V:

Catch Up

So, I just got caught up on school for the last three weeks (whew) and wanted to stick a couple things up here. First, this is how my childing like to spend his afternoons:Mosquito swarms are no obstacle. And yes, we're still having mosquito swarms, even with fifty degree mornings and a good stiff breeze. Like Sarah said "unfall," and its just hateful. Ugh. Anyway, when he's all done doing that, this is a nice way to relax:
Being inside a moving object, behind a net, helps with the bugs. Mommy just gets them in her teeth. Also, here is Reeses with the kitten that we kept, who has been named Pickle in honor of Miss Pickles who lives in Tennessee. Miss Pickles is 20 years old, and (no disrespect intended) is probably not much longer for the people world. However, my Pickle looks JUST LIKE HER (at least from the back) and we got permission from my mom to call the kitten after the ancient and cranky old lady cat:
Reeses like him--they sleep together in the crib when no one is in there to bother them. She lets him cuddle and play with her tail. When he gets annoying, she puts a foot on his head and pins him to the floor. Hysterically funny. One day I'll get video of it and put that up for everyone to see.

Epilogue

Toothless appeared on Wednesday in my garage—not sure how long she’d been stuck in there but my sister found her in the afternoon. She had the fourth kitten with her! Sooooooooo we caught the baby and sent him to a new home, and animal control came for Toothless this morning. A happy ending, mostly, but a little sad for poor mommy cat. After all, she’s basically a wild animal and being caught wasn’t her cup of tea. Good news is, she isn’t a rational animal so I don’t really have to worry about things like hurting her feelings or betraying her or anything like that. Four kittens with homes, mommy not out there in the wild making more babies, etc etc etc.

But it’s still a little sad.

IN other news, I have LOTS of pictures from birthday parties and visits and other such fun to share with everyone, but I have to get everyone’s gear and life and schedule and laundry back in order first. Stay tuned.

Yay!

Mah boy's a year old. Yeehaa.

One Year Ago

This is me one year ago today. Shows how much I love you guys, that I'm even sharing this picture. This is what it looks like when you let them induce you and you've been in labor for 24 hours with no apparent progress (oh, except for successfully absorbing 11 bags of fluid). The only reason I'm smiling is because I don't know that it'll be ANOTHER 24 hours before the baby shows up.

Lurkers?

Seriously, am I writing for myself here? Who visits my blog but doesn’t comment?

:(

Just one bloggy friend (who also emails and etsys, so like she’s DONE her part, people) doesn’t feel like enough.

Something else--Amiable Post

Note the total lack of ads on my blog. Not even any sidebar buttons. I selleth not items with my blog, I really don't. This is partially because I don't have anything to sell, and partially because I'm too lazy to maintain the blog in such a fashion that it would ever earn money. Please take this paragraph as (a) an indicator that I don't make a habit of turning myself into a highly caffeinated internet ad, as well as (b) a note that you should take this totally seriously, since I don't make it a habit and therefore I must really really really mean it, right?

SO, THEN.

I bought something pretty today, and it makes me happy to have bought it. Part of it has this picture on it:And part of it has other pictures. (I made this one small on purpose. No "save image as" for you. I'm the only one who does that to my bud's pics. Do as I say, not as a do.) They were taken by Betsy, the sick-in-Virginia friend who I blogstalk and talk about all the time when she isn't looking. She makes really beautiful things with her photographs, like the things I just bought. She sells them here: SomethingBetsy on Etsy and I seriously recommend going to her site and checking out the wares. I'm rockin' Christmas gifts this year from her shop, because I think the art is pretty and I like what she does with it. Oh, and also it doesn't require me going further than the mailbox to get it. No stores, lines, gas money, traffic, or people saying "Happy Holidays" because they aren't allowed to say Christmas. I love it. Just be careful, because if you get started looking at ALL the shops on etsy, you'll end up broke. And you'll need a bigger house to hold everything you bought.

Just a couple things—Angry Post

First, I’m peeved with our unit M.O. (medical officer) who can’t seem to get all his proverbial stuff together. I mean, maybe I’m getting an unfairly filtered picture of the guy (dear lord, I hope his wife and I don’t have mutual friends…does he even have a wife? I don’t even know his name. Maybe that makes all this ok. I am angry with a faceless officer of the United States Navy.), but it just seems like one thing after another through all this. He’s primarily there to make sure no one dies, I suppose, but ideally he’s contribute to morale, right? Like those dudes on MASH. They’re medical, they’re officers, and they’re stinkin’ hilarious. This guy isn’t funny at all.

First, he sets it up for all the guys to get their smallpox vaccine a mere five days before returning home from EMV back in July. Not at the beginning, in case something went wrong, not at the beginning, since they’d all be out there together with fellow vaccinnees and the incubation period wouldn’t matter. This means—ta da!—no close contact with wife and baby for at least two weeks, because you can get smallpox from the injection site. Nice. What a great way to come home after a month. Joe’s vaccine “didn’t take” so we were actually spared all the fun of that inconvenience. They said the guys who needed to be redone would be done right after they leave, sometime in the admin period before they get too far out in the boonies of you-know-where.

NOW the nutball has it all nicely arranged so that the guys whose original vaccines “didn’t take” (technical medical term, I have no idea what it means) can get their vaccine redone on Monday. MONDAY. Less than two weeks before they leave. Last two weeks before a deployment, and no one can touch Joe, or his laundry. And he can’t touch us. No playing with baby, no hugging his mom goodbye (she’s coming on Monday to visit for a week), no chillin’ with all the nieces and nephews that are coming in next week for V’s birthday party. Idiot medical officer.

Oh, also they’re getting a flu shot on Monday. Nice. Oh, and also he didn’t evidently feel like it was key to let everyone know at our pre-deployment brief (you know, the one in which they told us what to expect in these final weeks and then through the course of the deployment?) that these vaccinations would be coming up, as well as MALARIA PILLS. Malaria pills which give you intense nightmares. Very helpful. Good to have these things on my list of “things aware of and prepared for.” Nice to not have to stress or be concerned about them.

…..aaaaand baby makes seven.

No, not a human baby. A feline baby. Three of them, in fact, and they’re all sleeping now, crammed in a little pile between the head of my mattress and the wall. Aw. How sweet.

See, it is like this. The cat that lives in the woods behind my house [Toothless] is a girl cat, and she is not alone in the woods but lives out there with a number of other cats of undetermined gender [Beef, Smith, Wesson, Captain Morgan, Widowmaker, and Fluff]. We know that Toothless is a girl because, in the spring, she brought three little kittens to our yard. (In an really interesting corollary, this also established that at least one tabby and one orange cat from the undetermined group is a boy cat. But it still didn’t narrow the field enough to make legally binding accusations about anyone.) That was the point, in fact, in which I became a really hard core Cat Enabler and started feeding her every day. She had babies, everyone was hungry, I felt bad…you get the picture. Anyway, long story short the kittens eventually all disappeared and Toothless went back to being a pretty cat who came alone to my back porch every morning to eat.

The summer passed in this predictable and day-to-day fashion. In the meantime, Widowmaker was rehomed to Mike’s Farm, and the other cats appeared almost never, except for Captain Morgan. Who walks with his head on one side and always moves slightly to the left (instead of going in a straight line). That’s why I named him Captain Morgan. I do not know if he is a boy. But I couldn’t think of a unisex alcohol.

ANYWAY. Toothless came back to the house on Monday evening (as we returned from our whirlwind NOVA tour) looking painfully, distressingly, upsettingly skinny. How can she get so thin in just a weekend? I ask myself. She only went like two full days without food!

On Wednesday, I’m sitting there minding my own educational professional’s business and the piano student I’m teaching says: “Hey, kittens!” Well, poop. Sure enough, there’s ol’ Toothless with FOUR little furballs. In my yard. Hungry. Sooooooooo I feed them, and Joe catches three and we put them in a box in the garage, hoping to catch Toothless in there with them, and relocate the entire gang to a non-base location. No go. I catch her coming in and out around midnight, retrieving her babies and heading back to the woods. Not able to get the door shut on her. Time for plan B.

**Plan B on hold for Thursday while I make like a cadaver and lay around [with a really evil head cold]. While I’m sick,though, it gives me a chance to mention that once again a tabby cat and an orange cat are boy cats. Still isn’t narrowing the field much. Widowmaker was black and white.**

On Friday, Plan B. Toothless continues to bring back kittens to The Place That Took Them (dumb cat) but now consistently carries around the fourth kitten, the one we hadn’t caught during Plan A. They eat, but she won’t let them stay long, and then she comes back alone later to finish her entree. We wait, we watch, and we catch three kittens by Friday afternoon, this time bagging #4 and missing #3 from Plan A. What to do? Well, I’m not sure now. But they’re sleeping in my room. Me, baby, and three little kittens. No mittens.

Where is Joe, you ask? Sleeping in the guest room, because he finally had LASIK on Wednesday and is supposed to avoid all possible situations that could hurt/touch/damage/bother his eyes. Evidently my habit of playing ping pong in my sleep is not eye-friendly. Oh, and also V wakes you by standing up next to you in the bed and then body-slamming into your face.

Would you like a kitten?

Also, in other news, our lives are going well. You should send me an email so I can get you addresses for a couple dudes we know that deployed during this month. They like to get mail. :)

Comehoming

Quickie to let you all know that we did, in fact, return to Christendom for homecoming. It has been a blast, and now the fun is winding down. My own little bro drove down from Philly to see us, Kiah came ALL THE WAY from Cali to spend time with us east coasters, and it has been just the awesome. The boys (the big ones) have gone out to the Debate Society’s final debate for the quarter. The resolution is “Lincoln justly defended the Union.” Hopefully they all come back alive and whole.

The little guy is here sleeping peacefully, and I’m supposedly working on my research proposal for HIST500, but instead I’m writing for the bloggity blog. Oh well. Much kisses to the online world, and don’t expect to see me back anytime soon. ;)

Insomnia?

This is new. People finally get back to sleep and quit fussing at me, then I can’t go to sleep myself. How nice. It’s ok, though. I can sleep in (HA!) later if I need to, and I just got a cool hour’s worth of work done on all the message boards. For the record, I am currently enrolled in:

HIST501: Historiography. The class with the paper from hell. Three weeks to go on this semester, and the comments back on my rough draft were, well….never mind. It irritates me that the rough draft is and will always be worth 10 percent more than the final, but whatev. The price we pay for not knowing that “prose padding” is a no-no in graduate level classes.

HIST500: Historical Research Methods. Not a gimme class, exactly, because the reading level for discussion boards was pretty high, but this one wasn’t as bad at the first one. Again, three weeks to go, and a huge research proposal is all that’s left. Not a big deal, except for actually having to write it.

HIST551: The American Revolution in Context. Looks like fun, several smaller papers and what looks like a biweekly discussion board. A [bleep] ton of reading, though. I had to buy like four books, which is nice for adding to the collection upstairs, but does not bode well for my Bejeweled high score.

MILH510: Survey of US Military History. A bear of a thing, mainly because there’s a bunch of motarded professional students in the class; people with 3, 4, and 5 masters who haunt the message boards and make nuisances of themselves with copiously long posts. This class also looks doable, with small papers rather than a huenormous one, but the professor is pretty hard, uh, bottomed. Could be interesting.

(also, I wrote all of this but the final two sentences at 0350 this morning, when I woke up)