Archive for March, 2004
Bubble wrap
Along the same lines, my new worthless knowledge from yesterday: on a PC, Ctrl-Alt-(down arrow) will flip the screen display upside down. Isn’t that good to know? And yes, Ctrl-Alt-(up arrow) will fix it.
Have fun today!
Categories: miscellany
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…fruit flies like a banana. It’s been another full week, which I am blaming on Arcadia - a thick little book with a crazy plot. Rather like a Shakespearean comedy, with lots of gender bending and twisted love plots and a faked death. Amusing, but very much a time sink. Thursday, though, I took it outside to read the last bit because the weather has been GORGEOUS!
Last week I spent Saturday working on the set for Fiddler. Everyone’s supposed to pitch in on at least one Saturday, and that was the week I’d signed up for back in January. A local private school is allowing us to use their shop behind the theater to build the set, so I got a ride out there with a cast memeber. We spent maybe six hours putting together sides of the house and short platforms together, and had a pretty good time.
The show itself is progressing. We have rehearsal nearly every day for the next week or so, and we’re starting to feel confident about everything. On Monday we start rehearsing big blocks of the show all at once - act 1 on Monday, act 2 on Tuesday.
And if you haven’t seen it, go check out the newest trailer for the third Harry Potter movie! In the CCLC, I work around noon and a friend of my coworker often comes down after lunch to hang around for a few minutes before class. On Thursday, the friend came bouncing in and commandeered our computer saying “Here, lemme show you something cool!” I’m looking forward to that movie - I think this one is my favorite of the books.
Categories: college
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Brutus:
Remember March, the Ides of March remember:
Did not great Julius bleed for justice’ sake?
What villain touch’d his body, that did stab,
And not for justice? What! shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man of all this world
But for supporting robbers,–shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes
And sell the mighty space of our large honours
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.
- Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, IV iii
Categories: Shakespeare
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Quiz stolen shamelessly from Stephen’s blog.
You are a green dragon. You dwell in the forest and
you love peace. You don’t often bother yourself
with human affairs but you love to help when needed.
Which Dragon resides in your soul?
brought to you by Quizilla
Take that with as much salt as you like, I just think it’s a cool picture.
Categories: miscellany
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My classes are going to be good, I think. Even HES is sounding bearable. Two days a week Dr. Moss lectures on things like general health and nutrition sorts of things, and two days a week are exersize days in the gym with all the aerobic and weight machines (I think pretty soon we’re going to have to make out our own exercize programs - whoo). The fifth day alternates between lecture and exercize. What makes it decent is that Dr. Moss is a really nice guy. In some respects, he reminds me a little of Mr. Harper at Meigs, only more cheery than sarcastic (sometimes a little toooo cheery for that time of morning, but that’s okay. There are worse faults.)
At ten I have German lit 1750 to the present. I’m a little intimidated - it’s the first class I’ve had with a bunch of upperclass German majors (and a lot of them spent fall term in Germany). Fortunately, there are five of us who had German together last fall. That’s really nice - I know that at least they are on the same level as I am. The first thing we’re reading is a play called ‘Emilia Galotti’ by Lessing, premiered in 1772. It’s tough sometimes, but not as incredibly hard as I was afraid it might be. And from what Dr. Chew says, the older stuff is harder, so things will become easier as the term goes on. She says that she’s tried going backwards to start with the easier things, but that makes talking about the historical background of everything really confusing.
What’s really interesting is that I’m sure German must have changed as much in the last three hundred years as English has, but where reading English prose from 1750 is harder (generally speaking) than something modern, in German there are enough words I don’t know anyway that I don’t notice the difference.
My other class is 16th century English lit, which will be fun, I think.
The Greenville library is getting a travelling exhibit on Elizabeth I next month. It’s a really big deal, and there are going to be all sorts of lectures and events about Elizabeth and the time period and such, and my English class gets to get in on the fun. Instead of just doing class presentations . . . we’re doing public presentations at the various library branches. The first group even gets to dress up in period costume and explain the exhibit at the VIP reception (which I think would be great fun), but I didn’t get to the sign-up sheet fast enough to be in that group. I’m in a group doing a children’s program on a Saturday morning - most people didn’t want to be in that group because it’s during beach weekend (*rolls eyes*). It’ll be fun, though.
If you’re interested, this is the exhibit:
Jen and I rearranged the room this week! When we got back, there were notices posted around the dorms announcing that filters were going to be changed this week, so everything needed to be moved from in front of the AC unit. Meaning my bed. When the filters were moved over Christmas, we switched my desk and my bed, but it was very awkward. We didn’t want to deal with that again, so we decided to try bunking the beds, and we’ve decided that we like it. It gives us enough space to get the tv off the dresser, which is great! The dvd player is out of Jen’s drawer, the VCR is off her side of the dresser, the tv is off the dresser, giving us both the surface and the mirror! I have the top bunk (I would hit my head if I were on the bottom), and I’ve gotten it through my head that I won’t fall off in the night. (I didn’t sleep well the first night, but since then, I’ve slept like a log, as usual.) I have a cozy nest up there to study, which is fun.
I guess that’s enough of a book for now, so I’ll stop.
Categories: college
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This is at home, but the daffodils are blooming here in Greenville too!
Spring term classes start today. *crosses fingers!*
Categories: home
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Sorry, Stephen, but this is why I admit that I’m a bad diarist. I don’t write regularly. Cope.
But there are such good stories that I need to back track to…
Monday, February 23
…which was the day before my final for satire final. I was at work that afternoon, filling in for Jen, who was showing her ankle to a doctor. So there I sit, trying to study for this exam, surrounded by my various books for the class, and who should walk in but my professor? (Remember how I was saying that some of the English profs are going to be moving into these offices? Apparently Dr. McArthur is one of them.) It felt very odd.
So Tuesday was the satire exam, and like I said at the time, it was not a pretty thing. I think it’s the first final I’ve taked at Furman where I sat and wrote for the WHOLE two and a half hours. The first part he had warned us about on the first day of class - we had to write this extended definition of satire. And as we gradually found out, no writer has yet written a satisfactory definition of the word. So that was ugly. About an hour into the exam, I was not-quite done with the definition - looking at how much more I had to do, I really wanted to have a nervous breakdown just so I wouldn’t have to do it.
About this time, I put the definition aside and moved on. For the next section, the instructions were this big block of text in all caps, which is bad enough, but Dr. McArthur had put the test in a font that I like to call typewriter-wannabe (why DO teachers like it???). It was not easy on the eyes, and I wrote a note telling him so. In retrospect, this was really not the smartest move, but anyway…
Tuesday afternoon and evening I pulled a marathon shift at the CCLC (schedules are all funny around exam time - you don’t have to work if you don’t want to, but I like the extra hours. In general, things have calmed down by exam week, so I can study as well there as I can in my room). And Dr. McArthur came back. I was helping with a video project when I saw him come in, so he didn’t say anything then, but knowing he was there made me nervous, being right after that exam.
And he STAYED down there for over an hour. Measuring. For over an hour. I began to think he had slipped out the back door, but when I wandered over to check, he was still around. I hadn’t meant to bother him (translation: I was nervous because I thought my test sucked and I was afraid that he’d be upset about the note I wrote on my test), but he saw me go past. “Katie, is that you?” he says. “Um, yeah, hi,” I reply eloquently. “I repent,” he says. “Uh, beg pardon?” I say - partly because he tends to speak softly and partly because that was about the last thing I expected to hear. “About the font on the test,” he says, “I repent.” I was patently shocked and highly amused. Apparently he took my comment quite seriously and apologized for it, complete with explanation. That’s the second time with him that I’ve felt that our roles were momentarily reversed. The other was when I asked him to critique my second paper - he was making some very general statements about what I could do to improve it, and I’m sitting there saying, “How, exactly?” I felt like a teacher trying to push a student into a deeper analysis of something. Very wierd. Overall, Dr. McArthur is a nice guy and an interesting teacher and I like him as a person, but he has some wierd ideas about grades - not sure I would take another course from him.
Wednesday was my math exam, which I won’t waste time on - I have my grades already and I know I did just fine, end of story. 
Then I got to go home - flew Delta this time. Both flights were late, but not by too much.
Got to see Liz/plot with Liz/laugh uproariously with Liz after I got home. 
Spent a nice weekend with J.C. - we rented the movie Groundhog Day, which I recommend to anyone, it was very funny!
I’ve managed to keep myself busy this week: tried to buy a calendar in March (failed utterly, will hit Sprawl Mart next time I’m there), applied for a passport. That was interesting. I hadn’t been into Shalimar’s courthouse complex. It’s not big or fancy, but somehow the aura was still very official and intimidating. I was wearing jeans and suddenly felt grossly underdressed… Anyway, the lady I dealt with was very nice.
I’ve been reading Michael Crighton’s The Andromeda Strain and finished it this morning. I think my fellow bio-nerd would enjoy it *pokes Theresa* And probably my roomie too, come to think of it *pokes Jen* 
Categories: college
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