Oh my god I am SO HELLUVA BUSY right now. I have way too many things on my plate, with trying to organize a conference, trying to write a paper for a different conference, trying to organize my mini-internship in Boston this summer (yes! I'm spending a month at Boston College, working in their main research library!), and somewhere in there working on my actual thesis. Oh, and selling tickets for my upcoming year-end Orchestra concert. And doing yoga. And hanging out with friends.
My main hobby these days, when I'm not doing any of the aforementioned things, is reading. Like, for pleasure! Wow! I discovered that I can easily pirate books, find them in pdf format and download for free. Since I have an ipad, it makes reading pdf formatted books very easy. Though I also actually bought Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind on the ipad, and read it. No, not read, devoured. Excellent book, excellent writing. Sometimes I think the standards in genre fiction, like sci fi and fantasy, tend to be a bit lower; the focus tends to be more on the premise of the story, rather than the writing itself. But Patrick Rothfuss is actually a great writer, regardless of the fact that what he writes about occasionally involves magic or elves. I'm currently reading The Time Traveler's Wife, on the recommendation of a ton of people, and enjoying it too. Not what I expected, and I like the structure.
Anyway, I've been doing a lot more microblogging than proper blogging these days-- using facebook and the twitters a lot more. So I decided to post a few of my choice twitter updates here. (If you have twitter and want to follow me, my twitter name is @ephemerayla. See what I did there? I thought it was clever, anyway.)
-Just sitting around the flat, learning to play Rocky Horror's "Touch-A Touch-A Touch Me" on the ukulele. #TypicalFridayNight
-AUTOPLAYING VIDEO ADS WITH SOUND NEED TO DIE IN A FIRE. #SoFuckingAnnoying
-I just learned a new word! "Oppugnant," antagonistic/combative, from L. "ob-" against and "pugnare" to fight. <3 words.
-I don't FEEL that tired, but writing a paper I couldn't remember the word "protagonist." I study theatre history. Yeah. #5HoursOfSleep
-Why do I have such a hard time writing professional emails? My shyness about talking to strangers comes out tenfold whenever I try.
-My phone's touchscreen has chocolaty fingerprints smeared all over it. #WhyICantHaveNiceThings
-I keep getting distracted by articles about breastfeeding; last night I dreamed about holding an infant. Biological clock much?
-NEEDZ MOAR YOGA PLZ.
-Discovery: a google image search for "chicory" will make me unutterably homesick.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Weird experiences
I'm sorry for neglecting this 'blog so much. I have been incredibly busy, and probably have 1,001 things to write about. Today, though, had some particularly weird experiences that demand notation. In chronological order.
-This morning, when trying to leave my house to walk in to college, I discovered that I was locked in. My house has a front door, a porch shared with both apartments, and then the two separate doors to the individual flats. The front door, whose lock has been sticking fr a while, wouldn't budge. The handle turned but nothing happened. The key wouldn't turn in the lock. I called the landlord, who luckily is a handyman. He came over and after about five minutes of tinkering that included pounding a key into the lock with a hammer (!!) was able to get the door open. Apparently the pins in the lock's tumbler had gotten bent over time. The whole cylinder needed to be replaced, which my landlord luckily could do himself. After Frank arrived, the whole adventure was sorted in about 20 minutes. But it was a strange thing to start my day with.
-I got a fancy new cell phone in January, and I'm still figuring out all it can do. I've recently started using the predictive text, and to do so I have to add all kinds of words that aren't in the standard dictionary-- like "Ayla" and "fuck," both equally important in my lexicon. Just now I added the word "yay" to the phone's dictionary. That it wasn't already in there struck me as very odd, and then it struck me even further that my frequent use of "yay" is probably non-standard. I feel like I'm teaching someone to talk the way I do. When I get done with it, the phone's dictionary will be full of my particular variety of colloquialisms. For someone who is both a tech nerd and a language nerd, this is really fascinating.
Most significantly:
-I just found out an hour ago that someone I knew in high school was killed today. He was walking to work and was hit by a car. It's a weird thing to try to understand, emotionally: I hadn't seen the guy in over 10 years. We were never close, or even really friends, just acquaintances. But he was always a nice guy. He dated a friend of mine. He was a gamer, and even though he was a full 4 years older than me (which is important when you're 13) was always nice to this little geekling. I feel like I don't have a right to mourn, because after all I haven't seen, or even thought about, the guy in a long time. And he leaves behind family and a wife. I'm sad, of course, but it's more the normal human pity at a life cut short. It's just odd that I once knew this particular life.
-This morning, when trying to leave my house to walk in to college, I discovered that I was locked in. My house has a front door, a porch shared with both apartments, and then the two separate doors to the individual flats. The front door, whose lock has been sticking fr a while, wouldn't budge. The handle turned but nothing happened. The key wouldn't turn in the lock. I called the landlord, who luckily is a handyman. He came over and after about five minutes of tinkering that included pounding a key into the lock with a hammer (!!) was able to get the door open. Apparently the pins in the lock's tumbler had gotten bent over time. The whole cylinder needed to be replaced, which my landlord luckily could do himself. After Frank arrived, the whole adventure was sorted in about 20 minutes. But it was a strange thing to start my day with.
-I got a fancy new cell phone in January, and I'm still figuring out all it can do. I've recently started using the predictive text, and to do so I have to add all kinds of words that aren't in the standard dictionary-- like "Ayla" and "fuck," both equally important in my lexicon. Just now I added the word "yay" to the phone's dictionary. That it wasn't already in there struck me as very odd, and then it struck me even further that my frequent use of "yay" is probably non-standard. I feel like I'm teaching someone to talk the way I do. When I get done with it, the phone's dictionary will be full of my particular variety of colloquialisms. For someone who is both a tech nerd and a language nerd, this is really fascinating.
Most significantly:
-I just found out an hour ago that someone I knew in high school was killed today. He was walking to work and was hit by a car. It's a weird thing to try to understand, emotionally: I hadn't seen the guy in over 10 years. We were never close, or even really friends, just acquaintances. But he was always a nice guy. He dated a friend of mine. He was a gamer, and even though he was a full 4 years older than me (which is important when you're 13) was always nice to this little geekling. I feel like I don't have a right to mourn, because after all I haven't seen, or even thought about, the guy in a long time. And he leaves behind family and a wife. I'm sad, of course, but it's more the normal human pity at a life cut short. It's just odd that I once knew this particular life.
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