from Umberto Eco's Baudolino
"Yes, the vision was an illusion, but what I now felt inside was not; it was true desire. When you feel it, it's not an illusion. It's real."

"But it was the desire of an illusion."

"By then I wanted never to lose that desire. It was worth devoting my life to it."

the price of peer presentations
Copying onto transparencies....$3.46 on DebitCard
Pre-Presentation chai and dinner...$5 on CampusCard
Feeling like you're going to throw up.....priceless.

"No, I'm not a goth, I'm a morbid hippy"
If I do recall correctly, my ex-boi Kevin responded this way to the retarded question, "What are you, a goth or something?" years ago. Speaking of morbid, I could not stop laughing when I came across the Book of Bunny Suicides. "Little fluffy rabbits who just don't want to live anymore"?! This man is after my heart, I swear.

I have a big peer-teaching thing tomorrow
But my work doesn't have powerpoint on their computers (waaaaa) so I can't work on my transparencies....so instead, I'll post fluff to my blog...yeah...

You're Pale Fire!
by Vladimir Nabokov
You're really into poetry and the interpretation thereof. Along the road of life, you have had several identity crises which make it very unclear who you are, let alone how to interpret poetry. You probably came from a foreign country, but then again you seem foreign to everyone in ways unrelated to immigration. Most people think you're quite funny, but maybe you're just sick. Talking to you ends up being much like playing a round of the popular board game Clue.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Ok, for those who wanted to hear
the Delta ebonics ad , here it is! I laughed so hard I almost puked the first time I heard it!

Weekend recap
Really fun weekend.

Friday night Coop, Heidi and I went and hit Chapel for drinks...ended up doing dinner too. I had a Hibiscus martini and a Ginger martini...both were excellent. Coop had something involving cucumber and whiskey which was surprisingly good....indeed possibly the ultimate summer drink. Heidi had a martini called Murder, which, you guessed it, contains red rum. Many jokes involving that drink continued throughout the night.

We weren't going to eat because, well, the place is quite pricey, but I must say the $12 cheese plate was quite something. On our way back up the hill, we were passed by a couple of police motorcycles crossing an intersection. They were followed by a SUV limo and a tour bus...upon closer inspection, we realized that we were being passed by none other than Kid Rock and his bitches. Woo-hoo. My greatest brush with fame yet. (joking).

Hmm...Saturday I read lots of books, corrected papers, and slept through what I'm sure was an excellent housewarming party (Sorry, Jay! I still love ya).

Sunday spent time with Mom on her day. My sister and I took her out to see Mean Girls , Tina Fey (of SNL fame)'s new film. Excellent movie. Captured a couple of my high school memories more perfectly than Heathers. I swear that the goth artist girl was a characterization of either myself or my best friend Chloe.

still too pensive for my own good
Perhaps the shift in weather is responsible? I just want to curl up with my kitties and read a book.

I think I'm a little too concerned with my progress (or lack thereof) on some of the goals I've set for myself. I always tend to err on the side of setting impossible and/or arbitrary standards for myself, and of course getting upset and frustrated when I don't reach them as quickly as I'd like to, instead of being content with the many opportunities I've been blessed with.

Current goals:

*Grad Project-in order to finish my Master's degree in August, I need to complete a big ol' graduate research project in some area of education or linguistics. I have no idea what I want to research, and, more importantly, what is feasible for me to research before July.

*Weight loss-not necessarily back to my svelte, going-to-the-Mercury-wearing-nothing-but-paint days, but it would be nice to look in the mirror without saying "Well, I wouldn't shag me." :)

*Learn bass. Been putting this one off for far too long.

*Find enough teaching work to pay the bills....or find a job that's not in my field that I enjoy, but something more challenging than what currently occupies my non-school, non-choir, non-teaching hours...

*Decide if a doctoral program is really what's best for me in the next few years, and if so, decide upon where to go.

*Along those lines, go visit Albuquerque (sp?) and UNM--home of the Doctoral program in Educational Linguistics that I've been eyeing recently.

*Learn how to be satisfied with changing the world in small ways

sigh...depressing myself already

I need a hug!
It's just been a wierd, emotionally unpredictable day. Headed up to Seattle Central to meet with my internship supervisor-type and to tutor the pre-literate Somali woman I teach and ran into an old friend. Got stood up by my student (which happens often when teaching immigrants and refugees), but I think the reason I'm all nostalgic, pensive and melancholy at the moment has more to do with running into the old friend.

Seth, if you're reading this, you didn't really do anything to make me feel this way....it just made me miss you, that's all. I haven't really spent time with you in a couple of years now, and I caught you having a moment that is very indicative/descriptive of the qualities I love about you--calling a friend who's returned from military service and who is returning to military service, to wish him well....

Such a sappy, emotional type I can be. Somebody slap my hand and tell me to knock it off.

Stupid Tickle IQ test!
So I was a little bored this morning and took the Tickle IQ test....SO WRONG! First of all, it labeled my "thinking type" (whatever the hell that is!) as a visual mathematician (those who know me and my complete ineptness with anything spatial-mechanic are allowed to laugh out loud here) and secondly calculated my IQ at only 135. That's not even into genius territory (is it? I was pretty sure genius started at 150 and have tested up there before). I'm bummed.

For those of you that STILL aren't convinced that a democratic U.S. is a myth
In his weblog, How to Save the World, Dave Pollard makes some excellent observations about some very scary things going on in the U.S. right now.