headaches
16 February 2002

I am very glad to have my computer back but the fact of the matter is that the internet isn't nearly so much fun as I remember it being. I check my email, check my bank account balance, run something through IMDB, and that's it.... I can't even quite bring myself to write yet. ^_^ Oh well. I woke up this morning unrested, as usual, and tried to shower my headache away. It didn't work. And now it seems the Riverhouse isn't open which makes my getting up an unnecessary thing in the first place.

Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another!--and THAT other, a man who had suffered no less than herself under the event of a former attachment, whom, two years before,she had considered too old to be married,--and who still sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat! Sense & Sensibility-- Jane Austen

The Cheese Test
again, same day


*Take This Test!*

Never able to sleep enough.
15 February 2002

Am I the only one who think that Ani Difranco sounds completely different in "As Is" than she does in any other song? I slept through all my classes today (until noon!) and now that I'm up and about I am so exhausted already that I can't do anything. Something is wrong with that. Cleaning the room is on the agenda for today, as is researching Robert Armin's role in the King's Player and his role as Feste in Twelfth Night. I also plan to research the Ophelia project some more and write a few chapters on the Tarot project. If I can summon the energy to do *anything*...

I keep having bad dreams about this past summer, dreams that I'm stuck in KinderCare or that I'm in trouble for something I've done there. Getting my computer back and listening to the music most familiar to me from that period is just terrifying. I know everything's going to be different this year but I haven't quite internalized it yet. I have a car. I have a job. A GOOD job. I have money. I can very easily find a place to stay. So why am I still so anxious? I think it's safe to say that I simply have some loose anxiety floating around and it attaches itself to whatever it can. I think I'm anxious because I'm so used to being anxious that my mind can't quite grasp the fact that it has nothing to be anxious over for once in my life. Well. I go attempt to clean the room now. And then I will be reading Ahab's Wife.

I love Lent.
14 February 2002

I don't know what it is about penitential seasons of waiting that I find so refreshing but I love Advent and I love Lent. That's not to say that I don't love Christmas and Easter but there's something about the anticipation that I get a lot of meaning from. There's really nothing like walking into the church on Easter morning after forty days of Lent. Especially St Davids. I've never seen anything like that many flowers.

(For all concerned parties, I have at this point skipped a line in hopes of making a new paragraph. The formatting may not allow this however.) Dr Williams will be here at the end of the month. I can't wait to see him again. Is it strange to have an academic idol you worship the way most people worship rock stars?

Snow!
6 February 2002

We have snow. And rain, and wetness, and coldness and...yeah. My shoes, soaked an hour ago, are still sloshy. I received my new tarot deck in the mail today. The book will help me design my Shakespeare tarot deck which is now my honors contract for my Shakespeare class. Terry is the best teacher in the world. I told him that I had a perfect idea for the honors contract but that I wanted to surprise him--so I asked him to sign the paper and let me fill in the details later then just hand him the project in a month or so. He agreed, almost without pausing. My friend is currently reciting "The Walrus and the Carpenter" at the computer next to me. (I'm at work again.)



So I had this theory in high school that I was the exact mix of Diana and Liz. I matched Liz on the "Which carbonated beverage are you?" and I match Diana on the "Which bird are you?" So you analyze that.

Mindless diversions.
4 February 2002

So I'm at work. I had one wonderful tutoring appointment then I attempted to write my review of Black Hawk Down for the school paper and I wasn't bitter enough. So my co-workers and I went to the Dating Game online and carried on a few minutes worth of perverted conversation with random people. I assure you that it was an incredibly amusing fifteen or twenty minutes.

Which Carbonated Beverage Are You?

silly me
1 February 2002

Thanks to Felis-chan I have a nifty graphics heavy pita page for my writing and your reading pleasure. I came back to the room today (on this incredibly beautiful sunny Friday) and because I had nothing better to do I started working on math homework. Because I find this sort of thing enjoyable. Those of you who knew me in high school are doubtless having apoplexy now but I swear it's true. I've become an Algebra 130 addict.

I had a conversation with Terry today that made me realize how happy I've become. Thanks to the fact that I am an unusual-looking person in a place where everyone dresses alike and due also to the fact that I go to a tiny school where my least significant civic activities bring me headlines in the school newspaper every faculty member in my department seems to know who I am. At this point I've only taken classes with about eight of them but everyone calls me by name. This can be good. When, for instance, one is applying for a departmental scholarship, familiarity with those voting on it is a good thing. This can also be bad. Because the department--and indeed the university--is so small it has a somewhat familial atmosphere. The kind of place where people get your back if you're in trouble and also feel they have the right to pass judgment on your life, so far as they are acquainted with it. I was sitting in the lounge today waiting for Terry to get back from the fitness center and a certain professor passed me by and gave me this bemused little smile that seemed to say "I know who you're waiting for. AGAIN." The fact that Terry and I are good friends is obvious, I suppose, since I'm always in his office. But sometimes people look at me as though they think I'm in his office a little too much. You know where office visits lead to...

I have friends here my own age who think my relationship with Terry strange--though none of those people know Terry. The ones who know Terry don't need explanations because Terry is their friend as well. Terry is at a bit of a disadvantage in the department because he isn't great friends with any of his colleagues and therefore has no advocate. No one who knows Terry would give me those looks in the lobby. No one who understands what true teaching and learning relationships are really about would look at me strangely either.

I realized how happy and healthy and whole I've become when I realized that I didn't feel angry or embarassed or confrontative or even defensive against the people who look at me strangely. I feel a bit sorry for them because as long as some of them have been teaching they still don't get genuine teacher/student relationships. I would happily explain my relationship with Terry to anyone of the faculty who would listen but they are not so interested in the truth as in themselves. I do wonder if they ever stop and wonder why, if he's so weird, has Terry been nominated so many years in a row for the Chancellor's teaching award. You'd think that would clue them in to the fact that he obviously knows something they don't. And that's fine. My feelings are on record and a matter of public knowledge to anyone interested in finding out. --Britt