Paper

What is it about having things on paper that make them seem more real? I can deal with things more easily when they're just up on the computer screen looking at me through a hazy glow and be fine, but the second it's on real paper it seems like more.

I think it's a tangible thing, something about having a physical form that I can put my hand on rather than something I can click on and have disappear when I don't want to think about it.

I printed off what I'm going to submit to my thesis advisor a few minutes ago and now my stomach feels like it's spinning in circles--tilt-a-whirl style. I want to be done with this more than anyone could possibly know. Am at the point where I think I'd be okay with never writing anything about Joyce again. I don't think I could tolerate not reading Ulysses again, or Finnegans Wake is that bizarre? Probably. I really am an English major through and through, aren't I?

Maybe I'll just drive up to class now and drop it off, out of sight out of mind. My class isn't until 1:00, but I know my thesis advisor is there at 10:00. I'm sure I can find something to work on for two to three hours. My next paper perhaps.

I have this extraordinary feeling that this is never going to end for me. But there's really nothing that I'd rather be doing. sigh

A Sea of Books

I am wading in a sea of books. As I type, two books press against my left arm and another tome grazes my right. Below the three books nearest me there are other volumes. Those not in piles have arranged themselves in a U around my legs stretching from my reclining position to the farthest reaches beyond my feet. As a surprise to no one I'm sure, these volumes all bear a certain name on them either as author or subject, and that would be James Joyce.
Beyond my sea of literature, stretching onto the floor dwell many more tomes resembling the effects of a nuclear bomb on a library. The volumes littered across the floor are largely those that have fallen from the couch and have proven to either not be necessary for the remainder of my paper or simply too far away to reach. I prefer to think that they are unnecessary to my research because I'm not going back through them to look. Several of the floor volumes have found themselves opened to random pages or lying splayed at odd angles. I suppose if there were a nuclear blast there'd be loose pages floating around, but fortunately I haven't been reduced to shreading any texts yet.
I used to have more respect for books. As a child I was raised to respect books, to put them on their proper shelves, never to throw them, and certainly never to write in them. What happened to that? Some of my volumes have an equal number of printed lines and notes scribbled in the margins. I ask again, what happened to my respect for books? I would like to think that studying literature this much would make me treat books with infinitely more respect, but not so much. I look all across my room and see volumes here and there, some sitting under glasses, others lying on chairs, some piled horizontally against a vertically aligned bookshelf. I have far too many books I dare say. But then I ask, is that a possibility? Can I have too many books? Too many for anyone or too many for me? I don't know I don't know I don't know.

From here to there

Okay, I went to the library this morning and my internet connection on my laptop worked. The little bubble popped up to say that there was a wireless network in the library that I could connect to if I wanted. I didn't. I take my laptop home and there is no connection at all. No wireless, no wired for that matter. The rest of my house has internet. I can connect from other computers but not my own. Why?!? Apparently in the journey from the library to the house, a whopping seven or eight minute trek the drivers for internet vanished. Where'd they go? How'd they go?
I'm blaming _Finnegans Wake_. It has decided that I'm crazy and therefore unworthy of internet. Or perhaps I'm unworthy of _Finnegans Wake_, who knows.
Okay, I'm hostile, I'm bitter, what you gonna do about it?
Will somebody go to this dinner tomorrow night for me. I really really don't want to go sit there and listen to somebody talk about nothing for several hours. Not what I have in mind for a Wednesday evening that could otherwise be spent I don't know, doing homework, sitting on my rear end, reading _Special Topics in Calamity Physics_ I don't know. Bollocks!

Graduation

I remember when I graduated from high school that I didn't really feel like I was done, that there were more things I could learn at that level to prepare myself for college. I really don't feel like that as I'm finishing my undergrad. I keep being told by professors that there are no comments that they can make on my papers to help me improve on them at the undergraduate, 500, level. It's terribly frustrating. What's the point of all of these exercises if I don't receive any constructive criticism? I literally sighed out loud when I got an A+ on my last paper. There were no comments, just an A+ from a professor who used to give me more comments than anyone else. No comma corrections, no "you could do this better," no "when you go to grad school, you might want to try X"
I'm really ready to be done, I must say. At least a year after high school I still missed being there, but I don't feel that with college and I don't really like it. I verified with my advisor again today that all of my paperwork was in order for graduation, hallelujah. I have this fear in my head of being finished and not being allowed to graduate for whatever reason for not filling out my forms properly or something. Now all I've got to do is finish my thesis work and I'll be done with it all.
I hope I'm not let down by grad school. I really want to work hard and be challenged. I wouldn't continue to choose the work that I do if I weren't concerned with being challenged. If I wanted to coast through school I'd write on Austen or the Brontes or Mark Twain, I'm reading Joyce and Woolf and Pynchon because their writing is really hard! I want to work at it more than anything.
Okay, that was my rant for the next few months. If you made it to the end of this, thanks for your patience with my insanity.

My laptop

I was just commenting to someone earlier today about how I have about 70 television episodes and movies on my laptop and how I didn't even have to move to change a DVD if I wanted to watch hours and hours of TV. Alas, I spoke too soon. I've had this laptop since just after Christmas, so what is that, three months? I successfully managed to run a 100 gig hard drive down to about 700 mg. Oops.
I just deleted all fourteen episodes of Firefly from my hard drive (I do have them on my external though) :( That brought me up to about 4 gigs of space. I might have to resort to deleting more shows as need be, but I'm going to hang onto my BSGs for as long as I can.
I'm trying to decide what else I can delete. Sigh.
Now I'm running a backup. I'm not waiting until 3am for it to be done though. Who waits until 11:45 to run a backup though? Me, that's who.

ice cream

Anybody ever notice that ice cream tastes better when you eat it with a plastic spoon? Maybe it has something to do with it being more pliable. Hmm

grad school

I think I'm the only person alive who'd think a call directly from the director of English graduate admissions at a university could be a bad thing. I was completely horrified, and somehow I managed to convince myself that she was calling to tell me my application was missing something or that there was a problem with my records, as if the director of admissions had nothing better to do than call applicants about missing files and so on. Sigh.
Well, I'm still pretty shocked about the whole thing. The idea of getting to go to grad school, let alone getting to be a GTA with a decent amount of money, is pretty surprising to me.
I haven't made any final decisions yet, I'm still waiting to hear what other schools are offering me. I feel oddly like a high school athlete being recruited by major universities. It's weird to think people actually want me, me personally to go to their school. I don't quite know what to make of it.