asteroid B612

I feel completely drained. Driving has been going better this week, thanks to my handy-dandy tape player, and I'm starting to carpool on Tues and Thurs with a classmate who lives in Metairie (a NOLA suburb). But Latin continues to be my bane. After staying up until 12.30 last night (which is really late for me), I got to class this morning to find it had been cancelled. This provides temporary relief for the day. Actually last night, my translation was going a better than before, though it's still pretty lumpy. I'm really worried at how much time day to day class work is taking with term papers and tests looming. ...And my conference paper. I'm getting more and more nervous about it. I'm trying not to be nervous. I'm sure it will be fine, but my sub-conscious keeps poking out and taunting me. Well, enough whining.

The other night our neighbors invited us down for supper. However, they are the sort that if they invite you over to socialize this means watching a movie. They're really friendly and fun, and we enjoy them but watching a movie in the middle of the week was a little stressful on my time. We watched Bruce Almighty, which neither of us had seen yet. My experience with Jim Carrey (or however you spell his name) is that I never want to see his movies, but when I actually do, I really like them. BA is no different. I was a little worried that it would be blasphemous, and I guess the whole idea of God giving a man some his "powers" (like he's some kind of Dumbledore or something) is a bit silly. But during the last scene of the movie it struck me in a sense what the form of the movie was like. Notwithstanding the unmistakeable allusions to It's a Wonderful Life in many scenes, it was essentially a Greek play...complete with chorus (i.e. the homeless guy holding placards). The reason the makers of the film had to use God, as in the Christian God, was because He is the symbol of divinity for Western culture. If they had used Thor or Jupiter, it wouldn't have had quite the same resonance for our society. So like in Greek plays where mortals are interacting with gods with certain results, a mortal is interacting with God with certain results. Anyway...we really enjoyed the movie, and it never ceases to amaze me at how funny Jim Carrey is even though he is extremely silly!

My COMPUTER!!!! Yes, the dear ol' machine is back in biz. New hard-drive is installed. After being without my baby since before Thanksgiving, I'm feeling slightly euphoric. And now I feel like the semester can truly begin. I also got a USB memory stick, so if something catastrophic decides to visit me again, I won't lose everything.

So today, in addition to racking my brain over my Latin, which seems to be the defining activity of this semester, I'm reassembling my electronic life.

It feels good. My keys are familiar, the screen is familiar, values I save are still there. *sigh* nothing speaks home like one's own computer. :-)

Why are my emotions always so extreme?? I envy people who can just go through life at such an even keel. I suppose my ancestral make-up doesn't help much. Anyway, so I went from feeling really awful and sobbing on Thursday (for reasons already blogged about) to okay on Friday, to really happy on Saturday through this morning to palipitiously fearful now at midday as I recover from my medieval Latin class. Reasons to be happy: I don't have to pay as much tuition anymore (which I paid through payroll deduct) so now I'm getting paid $450 more per semester. That alone is reason for elation. Another reason to be happy, I bought a little portable tape player at Best Buy on Saturday night and checked out some books on tape from the library, so now my commute is going by with blissful unawarenedness. A jolly morning dripped into a panicked mid-to-late morning as I went to medieval Latin class. The stuff is so hard! I'm shaking with fear the whole time. I hope that as I get to know the prof and the rest of the class it won't be so bad, but right now trepidation reigns. I love it, though. It's SO interesting! I love learning about all these rhetorical devices and the vast variety of meaning a word can have. So now I'm recovering from class and getting excited for Packed-Lunch Club.

Another PhD student and I were sitting around saying how we should pack our lunches more. It costs too much to buy the $1.50 breadstick thing everyday at the snack bar. As motivation for doing this, we've started the Packed-Lunch Club, and invited the whole department, students and faculty. So far we've had good turn-out. It's nice to gather in an informal way, too. Makes us all seem like real people.

It's only the first week of school, and already I feel like life is shooting past me. I have that weak-muscled/sore-eye feeling of the last week of school in a semester. It's really hard not to freak out with all the stress of my work. If I'm not freaking out about my present work, there's always future work to freak out about (what am I going to write for my dissertation? how in the world can I get anything published?! can I even find a job!?!??! etc.) Then there's my 85mi-each-way commute which I faced last night with tears. The bucket seats of my car always give me a sore back. The antenna has gone through so much..."rebuilding"...by my well-meaning husband that now I only can pick up radio stations about a third of the time. I can pick up a cell phone signal about half the time. I don't have a CD player or tape deck. I plan on buying a small, cheap tape player at Walmart (I'm uncomfortable using a walkman while driving...can't hear noises and be as alert) so that at least I can books on tape for the library. But as I was driving through my muffled, tired sobs last night, I remembered the "confession" section of our prayer sheet our pastor hands out for prayer meeting...something about not casting our care on the Lord...and I felt upbraided by this. After all, I have a lot to be thankful for. At least I have a car! I certainly know what it feels like trying to do the commute without one (doesn't work too well). AND not only do I have a car, but the heat and the air conditioning work. The latter being an especially nice luxury for Louisiana roading. AND I'm doing what I love to do. I'm in grad school studying what I want to study in a great department only 85 miles away from my house. AND I have a voice with which I can sing the myriads of hymns I learned at Cono in those many miles of nothing on the highway. SO I'm trying not to become overwhelmed and discouraged by the stuff that is so overwhelming rather praise God for his blessings in my life.

Yesterday something very jr-high-ish happened to me. It all started Tuesday evening. My skin was really dry from all the cold weather we've been having, so I took a baby oil bath. As usual in a bath, the bottom of hair got a little wet from my lounging around in the tub. What was unusual was that the bottom of my hair got saturated in baby oil, and rather than washing out the next morning my shower, the oil got spread to my entire head making me look like a grease monkey! It looked awful. Thankfully, though, my hair is just long enough to pull into a little ponytail, which I did thanks to the ponytail holder afforded me by my classmate. And I had a couple of extra hair clips floating in my bag to help out straggling bits of greasy hair. About three washings later, now the oil is out of my hair, which is now luxuriously soft. So if you don't mind a day of grease-monkey hair, baby oil is a really nice conditioner for your hair.

What's jr-high-ish about all this? Well, I spent yesterday feeling embarassed in that really tragic kind of way about my appearance. ;-)

Slowly getting into the swing of things as far as classes are concerned. As predicted, they all will be fabulous! Though, I have to admit, music analysis is not my favorite thing to do.

Well, school has started. I've had one class, one that's full and I'm waiting for someone to drop so that I can sign up. The prof doesn't think it'll be a prob for me to get in, but at the moment, I'm still waiting. It's a Schenkerian analysis class. I'm not really into theory or analysis, but I really need to learn this stuff and get it down. Hopefully a certain five-legged Kafka-esque bug won't be bothering me throughout the semester as he did today. I'm looking forward to my other classes, though: a medieval music survey and medieval Latin. (Do we see a trend?) I'm so glad that I don't have to take more than three classes the rest of my grad career. My semesters should be manageable. I STILL have a paper to write from a seminar I took last spring. Aaaugh! I've just got to do it, but my motivation is running on very low for it.

Like last semester, it's going to take a few days before I feel ready to be back into the swing of things. I'm much more into making things with beads at the moment than paying attention to things medieval. Oh well. I think once my body gets adjusted to getting up super early again, life will look a whole lot brighter.

And my hard drive should come this week, which means I'll have my laptop back in biz. That will make things a lot brighter!
As it is, here I am in the library. I better at least check out books so that I at least LOOK like I'm working on that paper.

okay. I realize there's a little confusion about hte pics. I didn't realize when I chose this site that access is invitation only. :-| So consider this a public invitation. Login and Password are "diber". Now you can peruse pics happily. (this info is in my sidebar now.)

My teeth are starting to feel better.

We saw Big Fish tonight. We join the ranks of those praising it. We thought it was fantastic!!!! As we walked out, Chris said, "it was so postmodern. A copy of a copy of a copy..." I just liked the stories. We said to each other that the movie could've kept going on and on. We wanted to hear more stories.

In lieu of a digital camera, I've been getting my film developed onto a CDrom. I'm starting an online album, so that I can actually share pics with folks, since most people I know don't live near me.

First album is from this summer...when Grace, Joanna, and I had a little vacation together on Lookout Mountain.

Scraping and prodding. Blood. Suction. Pain. Yes, I deserve it all. After not going to the dentist for 4 and 1/2 years, I deserve it all. Though inwardly I cringe and protest, outwardly I meekly submit to the "lesson" in brushing my teeth. What good does it do to tell them that I fervently brush my teeth 2-3 times a day, when I am faced with tooth decay, infection, and the need for fillings? My teeth feel fantastic now, though a little tender. And I hereby solemnly swear to go to the dentist faithfully every six months. Actually, now that I found a dentist that I like, who will send me little reminder cards, perhaps it won't be so difficult to go. At least I don't need a root canal, a fear that lurked in the back of my mind when I saw the black spot appear on my tooth, the final motivator for me to make an appointment. My poor teeth....