Bumbershoots and Ladders

I am such a southwesterner...
I was sitting in my room wearing this giant men's cardigan, warm pants, two pairs of socks, and a scarf and couldn't for the life of me figure out why the room wasn't warmer if the thermostat was set to 78 degrees. (So logically, I refused to turn it up any higher because I knew it had to kick in at some point and instead sat and shivered.)

Then I realized that it's negative four out.
....So that's why.

I love The Format's "On Your Porch."

That is all.

"Things are more like they are now than they ever were before."
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

"I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after the IRS."
Robert Bakker, paleontologist

"Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious."
Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)


Aaaand the quotation that best represents today is:

"Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk."
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Three Doctors, 1993

Jeanette Winterson Quotations
from Written on the Body

"Dear Friend, Let me lie beside you watching the flowers until the earth covers us and we are gone." (90)

"I wanted to say something cruel to expiate my anger and to justify myself. But it's difficult with old friends; difficult because it's so easy. You have to know one another as well as lovers do and you have had less to pretend about.” (28)

“Yes we are and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn’t mind waking up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you rerad the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you, and think of you very often.
-
I don’t want to lose this happy space where I have found someone who is smart and easy and who doesn’t bother to check her diary when we arrange to meet.” (38)

“You never give away your heart, you lend it from time to time. If this were not so how could we take it back without asking?” (38)

“I am drowning in inevitability.” (40)

“Good sense, common sense. Good dog.” (40)

“…especially when you love them.” (50)

“With a stream of superlatives… Naturally this model had to be the best, the most important, the wonderful, even the incomparable.
-
Nouns have no worth these days unless they bank with a couple of Highstreet adjectives.” (52)

“THINGS HAD CHANGED what an arsehole comment, I had changed things. Things don’t change, they’re not like seasons moving on diurnal round. People change things. There are victims of change but not victims of things. Why do I collude with the mis-use of language? I can’t make it any easier for Jacqueline however I put it. I can make it easier for me and I suppose that’s what I’m doing.” (56-7)

“Why is the nature of love loss?” (1)

“You said ‘I love you.’ Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? ‘I love you’ is always a quotation.” (61)

“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no.” (1)

“It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love?” (1)

“Cut to the en-suite bathroom. The lover is crying. End-scene.” (15)

“You said, ‘Why do I frighten you?’ Frighten me? Yes you do frighten me. You act as though we will be together forever. You act as though there is infinite pleasure and time without end. How can I know that? My experience has been that time always ends. In theory you are right, the quantum physicists are right, the romantics and the religious are right. In practice we both wear a watch.” (15 or 18…)

“If I rush at this relationship it’s because I fear for it. I fear you have a door I cannot see an that any minute now the door will open and you’ll be gone. Then what? Then what as I bang the walls like the Inquisition searching for a saint? Where will I find the secret passage? For me it will be just the same four walls.” (18)

"The truth is after so many years you begin to lose more than just your appetite. You wear a mask for so long you forget who you were beneath it."

~ Gordon, (played by Stephen Fry in V for Vendetta.)

Apparently the star Vega (Part of the Summer Triangle) is parked in the constellation Lyra, which, awesomely, is named after Orpheus' lyre.

Also, the Sombrero Galaxy I'm so fond of (M104) is parked rather near to Spica (which is at the end of the imaginary curved line through the Big Dipper and past Arcturus as the midpoint...)


Astronomy Websites:

Naming Game:
http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/science.cgi

Print your own sky!!!
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Yoursky


Things to Look Up: Exact location of Teapot Asterism in Sagittarius (And where in relation to good pointing stars I could find it. It doesn't seem very visible from main charts.)

It's confirmed. After a certain number of hours at home I automatically head for the kitchen and preheat the oven. I can't resist it's siren call. I am spineless.

On the bright side, I just diced a yam of truly epic proportions, and that's always nice.

Throoooat.
Ribbit.

I got a letter in my mailbox today to the tune of "Hello, undeclared student! It's a good idea to declare your major and advisor by... the eighteenth if you want to graduate two years from now!" Which... is a bit overdue, rather. Oh well!

I've been having a bit of a quandry lately regarding the whole major business. I mean, I love and want to teach British Literature, so literary studies seems like a good idea, but then, I'm terrified of random strangers, so maybe teaching doesn't seem like a good idea. On the other hand, there's more of a social script for teachers to work with, etc. so I could probably wing it, maybe. If I decided to own a used-book store (knit and sell scarves behind the till, serve coffee, chat about literature, have a store cat, keep ridiculously detailed logs), so, you know, the English major wouldn't be a bad plan either, however 1) I'm terrified of random strangers, 2) I would quite possibly go mute with the quiet (like those fish tha swim into subterranian lakes and recieve no visual stimulus for a while and go blind), and 3) my business skills are severely challenged. Which may not be a boon to survival as the owner of... a small business. Oofta.

Also, some aspects of studying it make me want to tear out my hair. The seasonal affective disorder / whatever that hit me harder this year might have played a more-than-incidental role in this, but I've had to struggle, fight, and bribe my way through a great number of the readings in my English classes, which does not a fortuitous sign make. Of course I didn't want anything to do with Beowulf for the sixth time, but I even had authors and eras I rather loved. If I'd had my way I would have spent nearly every waking moment wallowing on the rug in a formless pile of blankets, listening to Agatha Christie audiobooks with my eyes closed. (Hey! Literature!)

But English is what I love. I live and breathe it, really. (Linguistics too. The wonderful little specialized bits and baubles of both make my toes curl with happy.) Furthermore it's the only thing I'm really good at, so it really kind of wins by proxy. Yes, I plan to declare Lit Studies. Yes, I'm still ambivalent about that.

Mentor time.

Prof. Lisa is one of my favorite professors ever. I could never have imagined her, she's too good for fiction- she's the craziest, most intelligent, enthusiastic woman I know. Her class is full of so many wonderful tangents I usually grin throuh half of it- she has this way of stopping mid-sentance, blinking a few times, and then going off on some completely different trail, arms windmilling in the air while she makes her point.

I really, really want to ask her to be my mentor. Part of me was super worried about never getting any advising done because we'd talk about the Anglo Saxon root for "Ethelbert" instead of going over my future plans, but part of me is thinking that's ok. She is the person that best reminds me of why I want to do this. I'm thinking maybe that's what I need most of all.

I hope she accepts me as a mentoree.
Fingers crossing! Toes too.

Headache. Again.
Let's see what point it gets to before I feel the need to take something.
(I'm going to cut back in situations where I can function through the pain because I pop painkillers like candy and it freaks me the heck out.)

I love this line:


"...What did you think, that joy
was some slight thing?"