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Name: The Lady of Shalott
Country: United States
State: Indiana
Metro: Lafayette
Birthday: 2/9/1986
Gender: Female
Interests: But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.
Expertise: British literature, poetry, cooking, ninjutsu
Occupation: wife, writer, lit. student
Industry: academia
Message: message me
Member Since:
11/9/2004
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| I guess I ought to update this, but my brain is so tired. I've spent the past week in new TA orientation week, and it's exhausting. They have to prepare us to teach a college-level course within that one week, so it's pretty much non-stop from 8 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon with lots of homework in the evening. Tomorrow's the last day. I think I'm at least ready for the first week  . But our mentoring group will be meeting twice a week for the rest of the school year, so it should be fine. As long as I'm a week or two ahead, all will be well. Right? (I do have the rest of the semester roughly mapped out, but nothing very specific)
So since I've got the next week planned (mostly) and I've made up my first assignment sheet that will cover the next three and a half weeks (what with drafts and peer reviews and so on), I'm taking the time to now get caught up on my own work--like the hundred lines of Old Norse translation that Prof. Hughes wants us to have done by Monday. I'm 5% done.
Also, all the new grad students who aren't from the Midwest are a little freaked out by all the tornado sirens that have been going off this week. I told some of them about tornado safety protocol--like covering the back of your neck so your head doesn't get severed by flying debris  Honestly, when we did tornado drills in elementary school and had to crouch down in the locker room and cover our necks like that, I was terrified that my head was going to come off.
(btw--my currently reading is one of the 106 textbooks. It's quite handy) | | |
| Well, the weddings are over, so I have no more procrastination excuses. Orientation week for new TAs starts in less than two weeks, so I've got a lot to get done between now and then. Besides a couple summer projects I want to get done asap (Floyd's manuscript and my translation of Andreas) I also need to read all the books that I'm supposed to be teaching out of for ENGL 106, plus pick up my textbook for the new TA mentoring group. Additionally, I really need to bleach and scrub both the bathrooms, clean out the fridge and vaccuum one last time. It's not like the house is that bad, it's just that it's going to take a while once the semester starts to get my groove (what with teaching for the first time and all) to find time to clean. And when the house is a mess I get stressed out.
Anyway. The weddings (both Kari/Kevin's and Joseph/Jennifer's) went off just fine, and Kari and Jennifer were of course gorgeously radiant. I've decided that the ideal wedding would be Kari and Kevin's ceremony and reception food, plus Joseph and Jennifer's music and dancing. You can't beat a simple Protestant ceremony officiated by a pastor who knows and loves the couple, followed by food from Brenda's, but Jennifer's family from Monterrey, Mexico, were such enthusiastic and infectious dancers that even Barb (the groom's mom) got out on the dance floor with them.
Before the ceremony I gave Kari's band to Mark, the best man, and kept Kevin's, but later someone sent Mark to get Kevin's as well. However, I'd already stuck it on my finger and insisted that I would take care of it, which I did. Somehow I felt like, if Kevin's side provided both bands, that there would be a symbolic imbalance in the ceremony, as though he were somehow initiating both sides of the covenant, and I'm pretty sure the only covenant that happened that way (that worked, anyway) was God's covenant with Abraham. And not that Kevin's not a great guy (because he is, and I'm happy he's my brother-in-law), but let's face it, he's not God Maybe I'm the only person who cares about that kind of subtext, but it seemed like a reasonable objection to me.
Anyway, K^2 ought to be living it up in St. Croix right now. Hopefully it's going well--last I heard there was some problem with finding their luggage, but we haven't heard from them since, so I'm assuming it all got worked out? They'll get back on the 10th so I'm sure I'll hear all about it then. I hope they took pictures, too (but not too many!) | | |
| I picked up my ENGL 106 texts today--I've got The Norton Field Guide to Writing, A Guide to Teaching The Norton Field Guide to Writing, and They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. So far They Say, I Say looks really good--it focuses on how students can organize their thoughts into meaningful rhetoric using templates, and to see writing as part of a discourse with other people. As in, rather than saying, "I think X is Y," they say instead, "So-and-so says A, but I say B, because of C." These are the kinds of basic structural writing moves that experienced writers take for granted, but new college students sometimes struggle with. Also, the Norton books are, like everything Norton publishes, pretty handy, and the teaching guide is designed for new TAs, so I'm sure I'll be using it a lot.
This is probably going to be an ugly week--David's has to spend several nights in the lab for some four-day biochemistry experiment that he and Ellen are working on. This is why, for the most part, he avoids biology. In the physical sciences, you can often stop an experiment at some point and say, you know, I'm going home. I'll finish this in the morning. But in life sciences, you've got to deal with living, growing things, which means that once you start something, you're stuck until it dies or quits growing. And if it dies too soon, you have to start over. So he's kind of dreading this week. S'more's going to enjoy it, though, since I'm going to let her have his spot in bed while he's gone.
I've got a few things to get done for Kari's wedding this weekend, like nail polish and getting snacks for the bachelorette bonfire. A bonfire for bachelorettes, I mean, not of bachelorettes I also want to get the house really clean. I know that starting on the 17th I'm not going to get a lot done around the house, so I want to start from the cleanest point possible before things start going downhill. | | |
| For some reason, there's a huge different for me between waking up to a ringing phone and waking up to an alarm clock. Besides the automatic panic you feel when you're jerked out of a sound sleep by the (frantic-souding) ringing phone ("oh no, what terrible disaster occurred that would cause someone to call me while I'm sleeping?"--even if you were expecting the call), for some reason the alarm clock is just less startling. Maybe my subconscious is keeping track of the time for me, so that at 7:00 when the alarm goes off, my brain already knew, yeah, it's about that time again, isn't it? Usually the alarm is seamlessly blended into my dream, so while it does wake me up, it's a more gradual transition.
Phones, on the other hand, are totally unpredictable. This means that my snuggly, warm little subconscious is forced to make unmediated contact with the harsh jangle of reality, which burns like sunlight on a vampire. Apparently my subconscious is now a vampire. So even though I went to sleep last night knowing we were going to get a phone call from Robby at about 3 saying he'd arrived from Louisville to sleep on our couch, the call itself nearly made my brain pop.
In other news, Taco Bell is now charging 27 cents for water cups. What the heck, people? | | |
| I highly recommend her. I've read three novels and several short stories by her in the past three days. Needless to say, I haven't got a whole lot else done. All of them, of course, were Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. These books have the finely-tuned plot of an Agatha Christie novel, the clever dialogue and characterization of a Jane Austen comedy of manners, and the philosophical genius of C.S. Lewis. The one I finished tonight, The Nine Tailors, depends heavily on campanology--the study of the art of ringing bells (as in, church bells)--and she researched her subject so thoroughly and used the material so brilliantly that it has been noted that scholars have recieved PhDs for less. She was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford, back around WWI--in fact, Oxford didn't even give any female graduates the actual degrees they had earned until years later, and she was an associate of Lewis and Tolkein. I'm pretty sure I'm mentioned her here before, but I have to say it again. Brilliant. I may be partial since her degree was in medieval literature, but still. I'd like to be her when I grow up. She did a lot back in the days when women were barely even allowed to vote, much less take part in academic discourse, and after she'd made a boatload of money on Lord Peter, she was able to sit down and do what she really wanted to do--translate Dante. So far, I've read Cloud of Witnesses, Gaudy Night, Have His Carcase, The Nine Tailors, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Murder Must Advertise, and several short stories. Good times. I haven't been compelled to read like this since That Hideous Strength, back when I was an undergrad. That one kept me up until three in the morning. Lord Peter is a little less epic than Lewis, but, I think, a lot more fun. If you've read Mere Christianity, I recommend Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World. It's excellent--a collection of essays by Sayers about faith and culture and so on. It's passionately Christian, but kind of biting, like C.S. Lewis on PMS. Parts of it made me giggle, but all of it made me think. | | |
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