|
Avarhuaniel
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Country: United States
Birthday: 10/15/1985
Gender: Female
Interests: Philosophical debates where one sharpens arguments like daggers, struggling to rapidly hone ideas into words, make my eyes shine with excitement and thrill my very soul. I am a lover of books who's aspiring to the status of a good writer. I'm entranced by faeries, all things Scottish, and adore woods.
Expertise: Getting embarrassingly passionate in discussions (causing others to shush me), calming small babies, reading aloud, sistering, and adventuring.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Nonprofit
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
12/5/2003
|
|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| Well, here I sit on this scorching day, perched on a stool and in an embarrassing state of personal disarray. Mom and Christin are presently on a cleaning kick, so I cleared out of the way, figuring to indulge my writing urges, but every so often, Mom chunks variegated shoes and books up the steps into my room while muttering dire threats against my unfortunate brother. His room, in which we are upholstering a couch, has deteriorated into a warehouse of homemade weaponry and supplies, like duct tape and lengths of metal pipe.
[My one concession to summer is that I'll not even attempt a transition here.] Erin Hermana was here for the weekend, an unexpectedly wonderful delight. I didn't realize how much I missed her till she had been here a couple of days.
We ended up going to IKEA on Sunday, a grand pilgrimage that we make approximately twice a year. Poor little Mom had worked the night shift at the hospital, twelve hours caring for the dying, and she wasn't alert enough for the hour-long drive, having slipped into the loopiness of sleep deprivation that always results in cracking lots of jokes. So she sat shotgun while I drove the van filled with sisters and Hoopers. We listened to rap (thanks to Shannon) till the protests grew too loud, then switched to a Spanish station. Shakira's Hips Don't Lie came on and we danced to it with our shoulders, singing along loudly and badly.
Our stay at IKEA was long and I feared that Bryan as the only male on the trip would slip over the edge of madness. But he held together admirably, explaining his desire for a space-age living space, making dead fetus jokes, and cringing with me at the expressions of couples checking out the round bed. Toward the end of the trip, he seemed to become preoccupied with the dangling price signs. Snapping their springy elastic hangers proved too strong an allurement for him to resist and he broke about six before we bodily wrestled him toward the safer Home Organization section.
We finally checked out with an array of desirable homey equipment. A sturdy folding stool and an ironing board were my suburbanite purchases. Bit by bit, I'm accumulating a household of items with stories, adhering to my mother's declaration that "You don't need a husband to get good china!" As I drove home, I pondered my penchant for homemaking. For all my liberated theories, I'm deeply domestic. I just like planning environments, whether fish tanks, guinea pig cages, or next year's dorm. This hobby comes from far down on Maslow's Needs: environmental control as not only crucial to the human psyche but a pure source of enjoyment.
With that bit of introspection we can credit to my freshman psych book, I'm off to upholster. | | |
| The issue with writing about Mexico is that doing so properly would take up several posts of complain-worthy length. Por eso, I have put off doing so.
In fact, writing has not been on my mind much of late. Instead, I've spent my days sitting around the house studying Spanish and staring at Erin's very thick Psych book. The plan to master the entire tome in order to vanquish the CLEP still lingers in my mind, but the sheer size of the knowledge base is intimidating. (Is anyone noticing a pattern?)
The other task of the summer - employment - also has yet to be realized. The initial difficulties with securing a job (i.e. I wasn't here) passed, but then came the whispery inner voice saying that no one would hire me for two months of work. This has not rested peacefully with my commitment to good daughter-ship. The various hints at employment dropped by my siblings have added to the unease (though Matt's been so kind as to say: "You're so beautiful, they should hire you even if they don't need another employee!"), and I've begun to notice the vast media coverage of slacker young adults mooching of their enabling relatives: not only do I daily read articles on the epidemic of stay-at-home adult kids, but the last two movies I've seen have dealt with them.
This has little detracted from my summer, though. As silly as it sounds, the implausibly dramatic list of very adult issues that attacked me last year had worn me completely out. I haven't figured everything out yet, but the security and rest of being home has been inexpressibly wonderful. I don't go anywhere, and I'm perfectly content with that.
Tomorrow morning, however, I go for an interview at a temp agency. I'm hoping they can place me in some swift and varied jobs so as to ameliorate the debt into which I'm sinking for my education. Oh, liberal arts. It's training me to be a splendid gentleman farmer.
P.S. Erin was assigned The Kite Runner for her summer reading. A beautifully crafted book about an Afghani boy and his servant, The Kite Runner broke my cynical ideas of a coming-of-age story. A proper review would be far longer, but if my recommendation carries any weight for you, here it is. I haven't been so surprised or devastated by a book in years.
| | |
| Yet again, I've slacked on the xanga. I do have plans to still post, but the past few days since returning from Mexico have been filled with sleeping and reading children's novels. Not the most productive of past times, but I think rather necessary, all things considered (a phrase that happens to also be the name of a delightful NPR talk show).
Erin's spending the night in Arlington Hall on the UTA campus. "I can't wait till Erin moves out," Shannon told me the other day. "I'll have a chance to find myself. Right now she's a crutch." Shannon eagerly anticipates being the oldest at home. The malevolent chuckles threaten to spill.
Buenas. | | |
| Well, chickens, it's Tuesday night. Only three exams and a dumb porfolio stand between me and the summer.
If you would like to see a compilation of some of this semester's work, you can go HERE to see my website. Thank God, I somehow pulled out of the Educational Technology pit of horrifyingly stupid expectations. No more Education classes for this pseudo-intellectual. They simply make me too angry. Note the pictures of Dante's Circles of Hell on the personal reflection page - an apt depiction of my sentiments on the class experience.
It's been an odd day. I should study for Spanish, but all I want to do tonight is write. I'm starting a story. I haven't written one in nearly five years... we'll see how it goes.
I'm so bleeding tired and I want to go home. Hence the terse sentences. | | |
| I'm learning a lot of new words. My roommate has lent me one of her books: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Though it sounds conceited, I don't often come across English words I don't know. Stephenson, however, had me running to a dictionary every twenty pages or so. Thrilling word-use. I'm a fan.
This method of capital punishment reminded me of Millicent meetings. "Chuck her out the window!" we used to say when deciding on a character's fate. The last usage definition reminded me also of dear Llewellyn, who I'm glad to see back on Xanga.
defenestration
n. [mythically from a traditional Czech assasination method, via SF fandom] 1. Proper karmic retribution for an incorrigible punster. "Oh, ghod, that was _awful_!" "Quick! Defenestrate him!" 2. The act of exiting a window system in order to get better response time from a full-screen program. This comes from the dictionary meaning of `defenestrate', which is to throw something out a window. 3. The act of discarding something under the assumption that it will improve matters. "I don't have any disk space left." "Well, why don't you defenestrate that 100 megs worth of old core dumps?" 4. Under a GUI, the act of dragging something out of a window (onto the screen). "Next, defenestrate the MugWump icon." 5. The act of completely removing Micro$oft Windows from a PC in favor of a better OS (typically Linux).
Another wonderful word I finally looked up was "homunculus". I'd had a vague idea of it for a while, but was delighted to find that it comes from a medieval belief that inside every sperm is an infintesimal man who grows into a baby. A homunculus is such a tiny man. Amazing.
In other news, I was talking to someone just now in English and the appropriate Spanish word popped into my head before the English one. I was trying to say, "She shut herself in her room" and all I could think was "encerrarse". I eventually came out with "barricaded herself". This code-switching is a strange thing. | | |
|
