Random Ramblings

Finals week was intense. I have no idea on how I did on two finals, or on my paper for feminist theory, though I had a "B+" (as far as I can tell) going into the exam/final paper. I got two "A"s back on a short story and a literature review I did for Tolkien. I also found out I had a "B" going into the final paper for linguistics. I've no idea at all where I stand with regards to the senior seminar.

The torchlight ceremony the night before graduation was lovely. Graduation started out on a gloomy day, but by the time we got out it had cleared out to a crisp sunny day with a blue sky and streaks of clouds. I'm not going to celebrate until I get my grades back, though -- the professors' deadline for getting them in is Thursday.

Tomorrow I go to meet my favorite (former) professor for dinner and present her and her partner with their wedding presents -- necklaces with stones I set. The professor's is an emerald surrounded by eight tiny sapphires, and her partner's is a sapphire surrounded by eight tiny emeralds -- the professor's favorite color is blue and her partner's is green.

On Tuesday callicrates and I go home and spoil the purr out of some kitties. At this point I don't know what I will be doing next other than spoiling callicrates and kitties.

And we're now entering on our final stretch (not the royal "we", but in terms of Oswego students). This is the last week of classes, and for two of my courses without finals, the very last week.

As might be expected, I'm a bit swamped; in fact I'm currently procrastinating on finishing the third take-home test for linguistics. Once that is finished I have a 4-6 pager due on Thursday.

On Tuesday we're having a final feast in senior seminar. I went to Pamela's house on Saturday and baked a midnight chocolate cake as my contribution. I also have my 10-15 page paper due.

On Thursday we're having a Hobbit Feast in Tolkien. I baked cookies at Pamela's for that. I modified a recipe for cookies we usually make at Christmas called snow caps. They're basically meringues, but for this I purposely flopped them so they don't have points, and I'm calling them mushroom cap cookies. Along with the cookies I need to turn in a short story I wrote, a reaction piece about writing the story, and a six-page literature review.

Finally, in feminist theory we're having normal classes, with journals due on Thursday. I've sort of let those lapse since we last handed them in, so remembering what we discussed in class should be fun.

Saturday was fun. Pamela did a lot of the baking, but I'm not complaining. We got to see her sugar gliders (Gizmo and Widget), and Widget even walked on my hand. My mom also came up and the three of us had lunch before I caught the bus back to Oswego. The driver was disappointed that I hadn't brought the food to pass around on the bus ;).

This week was somewhat calm, which is overall a good thing. I got back a B+ on a feminism journal and an 88 on a linguistics essay. On Thursday I went to the annual Pride Alliance banquet and I had a great time talking with two professors from a different department and with my feminism professor, who was invited along at the last minute by the keynote speaker. I didn't realize it, but the Pride Alliance gives out rainbow tassels for seniors to wear at graduation, so now I have one. On Friday I participated in the day of silence, as noted in a separate post.

This week is going to be busy. Andy arrives at about 8:15pm Monday, and will be here through Saturday. In the meantime I have a class facilitation on Tuesday, a poster for senior seminar (aka food and identity) during which I'll be giving out astronaut ice cream samples on Wednesday, and a presentation on Thursday for linguistics. After class, Andy and I are going out to dinner with my feminism professor.

On Friday we plan on heading back to Syracuse to stay at with Pamela, and Andy will probably need to be at the airport somewhere between one and two for his flight home. This time saying goodbye won't be quite so hard; he'll be back on May 13th for graduation on the 15th. If I survive this coming week and the week when all of the ten-twelve page papers are due.

I survived the week!

( At times it felt like it would be a close thing. )

Oops. I completely spaced posting the past two weeks. In a nutshell, I've been swamped. Four upper level English courses ramped up = a lot of writing. Only one grade, though -- 14 out of 15 for an annotated bibliography.

In other news, my grandmother died two Saturdays ago, and this past weekend was spent at her wake and funeral. My dad showed up for the wake and managed to come in, talk to my aunt and uncles, and then leave without even looking at Pamela or me.

It was mostly a quiet week. I attended classes, read, and did some writing. My feminist theory instructor held a surprise collection of the journals, so I'm glad I had actually brought mine.

On Friday I got two pink slips in my dorm mailbox; the first was a care package from Andy and the second was an adorable vase with a teddy bear hugging it bearing purple-tipped white lisianthus. Then today, I got a call from the front desk that there was a package, which mystified me since nothing is usually delivered on Sundays. It turned out to be two pink-tipped white carnations and a balloon with a note apologizing for forgetting the balloon when they delivered the first bouquet. I feel so loved!

Not really much of a week, since the dorm technically didn't re-open until today, but just to keep things symmetrical with last semester, here is my "moving back in" update. The plane rides were full of delays and such, and I didn't get into SYR until a little after 22:00. Pamela and Christian picked me up, and Pamela had chicken over rice in the oven for the three of us. Yum!

Today she drove me back to Oswego and also met someone from Craigslist to buy a sugar glider cage. She fell head-over-heels for the one a co-worker got, and is hoping to get one herself. She even has a video of the co-worker's glider with the unique clicking sound they make. I hope it works out for her.

Getting back into the dorm was painless; unlike the fall session my ID card worked to open the doors as soon as I got here, but then again I wasn't trying to move in early this time. I had a bit of a surprise to discover there was a new RA. She seems nice. I hope she doesn't expect this floor to be too social -- last semester I was quite happy with the level of socializing, which hovered somewhere around 0%.

MOLL*E, aka robo-kitty, was happy to have company again. Andy said the kitties at home have been velcro since he got back from driving me to the airport. I already miss all three something fierce.

This semester I have one class on MWF, and four classes on T/TH. I may drop one of the T/TH courses if the load seems to be overwhelming me too much, but the one elective and the one extra course seem to be interesting. ( Overly complex explanation of what I mean by that. )

That's about it. I have a little unpacking and a bunch of little things (like setting the time on my alarm clock and such) to do before the hall meeting at 7. I hope the hall meeting is short so I can catch up on sleep.

Our last day of classes was Friday. It was also a day of the Oswego winter weather I remembered -- not much snow, but what we had being blown by a biting wind. Both classes let out early, though not because of the weather.

( Current standings )

And, with that, I'm off to work on the essay due Tuesday.

Papers... gasp... papers. I'm drowning in papers, but otherwise ok. This will be a short entry due to a paper due on Thursday on which I hope I can get enough done for the professor to vet it tomorrow during her office hours.

Last Friday I took a test, no results yet because several people weren't in class and had to do make-ups today. He hopes to have the results back by this week.

Turkey Day was nice. Andy arrived on Monday in the evening and went to class with me on Tuesday. My other Tuesday class was cancelled for student conferences. I got some really good feedback during my conference. Then we went and visited my sister. We stayed at the hotel her partner works for for most of the stay -- very nice suites and the employee rates are equally nice. Mom and Pamela set the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes on fire. Oopsie. The sweet potatoes themselves were salvageable, and the rest of the meal was good.

We exchanged gifts early so Andy could see the reactions. Pamela liked hers, a life-sized Gonzo photograph replica in a snazzy maroon suit. Then we decided to watch a movie, and Andy casually mentioned that Star Trek was good, but Christian said they didn't own it. Andy asked "Are you sure?", and Christian went over to the shelf and said he thought we were messing with him. It turns out we were, but not in the way he was expecting -- Andy had put the blu-ray version on the shelf earlier in the day.

Mom got a sister of MOLL*E. She is white with green eyes (MOLL*E is gray with orange eyes), and Pamela and I had been calling her POLL*E (Purring Oddly Life-Like Entity). Mom said she might have kept the name Holly, but that she was going to name the robo-kitty Snowball. I've been toying with suggesting "HOLL*E", Happy Oddly Life-Like Entity. Mom had almost got a rescue kitty who looked like Snowball, but she's never gotten a kitty since Noia (the one who always beat me up) died. Andy said she almost looked like she was crying while she petted Snowball.

Andy and I got Border's gift cards from mom. He also got a Panera gift card, but I'm not sure who from. He got a stuffed dog and I got a white teddy bear in a gray and red sweater and jester cap. The proceeds benefited St Jude's. Like fresh snow, my bear's fur sparkles in the sunlight. She is not a mutant vampire, however. I'm calling her Jess because of her jester's cap.

Ok, so the entry went a bit longer than I expected. Back to writing my paper. This time for sure. Honest.