Well, Thanksgiving break was good. I mean, I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate air travel. So that was no fun whatsoever. Wednesday, when I was leaving to head home, the traffic was ridiculous. It took me almost two hours to make the half-hour drive to the Fort Lauderdale airport. Fortunately, I had left about three hours ahead of time in case the airport was insane due to Thanksgiving, so I was still on time. Thankfully, for some odd reason, the airport was nearly empty when I got there. The world makes no sense.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Eating way too much and watching football. Those really are the only two activities included, and what else is better than eating way too much and watching football? I also saw some great movies. No Country for Old Men and I'm Not There were both absolutely brilliant. I slept in a real bed for the first time in months. So all in all it was a good trip.
Of course, flying back was even more painful than the trip home. First of all, it was pouring down rain in Nashville when I left. So the takeoff was a bit of an adventure. Secondly, it was freezing on the plane. It was to the point that when we landed, my feet were so cold that I had trouble standing up. Then, once I got to the airport, I had to wait over 30 minutes to get my bags. Then I had to wait another half hour on the parking shuttle. Then I had to wait another half hour for the parking shuttle to get to the parking lot. So with another half hour to drive to Coral Gables, it was over two hours from landing to getting home. It's enough to make me never want to fly again. Of course, I didn't need anything new to reach that opinion. Oh, and I forgot, there was a kid in the seat behind me that never stopped kicking my seat or hollering in Spanish the entire flight. And then when we landed I heard the people sitting two rows back complimenting the kid's father on how well behaved the kid was. Kids under the age of ten should not be allowed on airplanes. Or at least they should have their own special section. Flying is bad enough without loud, annoying kids. At least now Southwest doesn't give parents with kids pre-boarding rights. It was ridiculous that parents who were stupid enough to bring their little kids on the plane were rewarded with first pick of seats. The new situation is much better.
I'm sorry, I just hate flying.
Oh well, I'd better get over it. I have to fly again in less than a month. Life.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Almost There
Oh man, it's almost Thanksgiving break time. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I need a break. Just have to make it through two more days and then I can just kick back for the rest of the week. And then when I come back to school next week, it's already practically time for winter break. If I can just survive a few more weeks, I'll be done with the semester. As I said, I'm ready for it to end. Granted, I have two papers, four tests and a quiz between me and the finish line, which is a little daunting. But it could be a lot worse. I'm definitely looking forward to eating well for the first time in months this weekend. I'll put on five pounds this week, and then lose it before winter break. Oh, that fluctuating weight...so good for the health. Man, there really is very little going on in my life right now. I wish I had more to write about, but I just don't. Next week I'll be able to tell you all about my exciting Thanksgiving, but right now...there's really very little to say. I'm reading Jhumpa Lahiri's brilliant short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies in one of my English courses, and I'm enjoying that. I've read the book before, but it's been five years or so, and I don't remember it very well. It's definitely one I recommend highly. OK, as I said, I'll hopefully have something worthwhile to talk about next week; this week was kind of a bust. See you then.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Another Monday
First off, a book recommendation. If any of you are in fragile emotional states, do not under any circumstances read The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat. This is one of the most depressing novels I have read in quite some time. It deals with the mass slaughter of Haitians that occurred in the Dominican Republic in the 1930's. The narrator is a Haitian woman who finds herself in the middle of the carnage. I haven't finished it yet (I'm reading it for class and we're only about two-thirds or so through) but so far it is a beautifully written, riveting, extremely disturbing novel. I recommend it to anyone who is not afraid it will send them into an emotional downward spiral.
Wow, it's hard to believe it's November already (Wow, that was an abrupt and not-so-smooth segue). And yes, I know it's been November for almost two weeks already, but I am still baffled by how fast this semester has gone. I mean, I leave for Thanksgiving break a week from Wednesday, and I take my last exam one month from today. That's crazy. And of course, living in Miami, there's this sort of temporal vortex where the weather never changes so you don't notice the progression of the seasons. I mean sure, it's a little cooler than it was when I got here in August, but I'm used to at least wearing long pants by Thanksgiving. I'm still in shorts and a t-shirt. Of course, I have no concept of time to begin with. I generally can tell you what day it is, and even maybe the date, but the chronological relation between two events? I'm clueless. In my mind, two weeks ago and two months ago seem about the same. I never said I wasn't crazy.
So, I've got one month to make or break my first semester back in school. Fortunately, I've put myself in a position where I think it's essentially impossible to fail any of my classes. So I've got that going for me, which is nice. I still have so many major grades left in the semester, though, that I can't really guess what grades I'll have at the end. I have one test left in one class, a paper and a final in one class, a test and a final in one class, two major quizzes in a fourth class, and (here's the crazy one) in my fifth class I have a paper and a major quiz left to complete, but I also have another quiz and another paper that I turned in three weeks and two weeks ago respectively and for which I still have not received grades. My concern is that if my professor can't grade a set of quizzes in three weeks, how is she going to grade all of our final papers before grades are due? Well, I guess that's not my problem. Although I would like to get those two grades back sometime soon so I at least have some idea of my standing in the class. Oh well. As someone who wrote much better songs than I once said, you can't always get what you want. Ain't it the truth.
Until next time, drive safely. And don't pollute.
Wow, it's hard to believe it's November already (Wow, that was an abrupt and not-so-smooth segue). And yes, I know it's been November for almost two weeks already, but I am still baffled by how fast this semester has gone. I mean, I leave for Thanksgiving break a week from Wednesday, and I take my last exam one month from today. That's crazy. And of course, living in Miami, there's this sort of temporal vortex where the weather never changes so you don't notice the progression of the seasons. I mean sure, it's a little cooler than it was when I got here in August, but I'm used to at least wearing long pants by Thanksgiving. I'm still in shorts and a t-shirt. Of course, I have no concept of time to begin with. I generally can tell you what day it is, and even maybe the date, but the chronological relation between two events? I'm clueless. In my mind, two weeks ago and two months ago seem about the same. I never said I wasn't crazy.
So, I've got one month to make or break my first semester back in school. Fortunately, I've put myself in a position where I think it's essentially impossible to fail any of my classes. So I've got that going for me, which is nice. I still have so many major grades left in the semester, though, that I can't really guess what grades I'll have at the end. I have one test left in one class, a paper and a final in one class, a test and a final in one class, two major quizzes in a fourth class, and (here's the crazy one) in my fifth class I have a paper and a major quiz left to complete, but I also have another quiz and another paper that I turned in three weeks and two weeks ago respectively and for which I still have not received grades. My concern is that if my professor can't grade a set of quizzes in three weeks, how is she going to grade all of our final papers before grades are due? Well, I guess that's not my problem. Although I would like to get those two grades back sometime soon so I at least have some idea of my standing in the class. Oh well. As someone who wrote much better songs than I once said, you can't always get what you want. Ain't it the truth.
Until next time, drive safely. And don't pollute.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Shocked
Wow, I must say, I am, as in the title, shocked. Shocked.
Let me backtrack for a second. At Wesleyan (which, if you remember, is where I last went to college), registration was a nightmare. I have no proof of this, but I just get the feeling the school's board of directors sat in a room for a day scheming to come up with the most painful, anxiety-inducing, stressful, and inefficient way to pick classes humanly possible. The process went something like this. At your appointed time on your appointed day, you packed into a small computer lab with a bunch of other students (essentially the number of computers in the lab plus one or two) and sat down at a computer, bringing up the registration website. With 30 seconds to go before your scheduled registration time, the person in charge would start the countdown. 30 seconds...25 seconds...20 seconds...15 seconds...10 seconds...9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1...CLICK! At the moment the word click was spoken, it became a mad dash to try to secure spots in your classes of choice before they filled up. If you clicked a hair too early, you would lose a couple of seconds before you could re-click, and if you clicked a hair too late, most likely your class would be full. If you were really fast, you could maybe get into two popular classes. After these two clicks, all that was left were the dregs. Classes nobody wanted to take. So you had two choices: take the crappy classes, or go with a 2-class schedule and hope to pick up the rest in drop-add. Not good times.
So, you'll understand if I approached this morning (my registration time) with trepidation. I didn't know the exact process of registering at UM, but I just assumed it would be some variant on medieval torture. So, I walked to the registrar's office with my class-request-sheet. I waited in line for about five minutes, then I sat down, handed my sheet to a woman at a computer, showed her my ID, and waited for another minute. She handed back my sheet and said, alright, you're good. No stress, no anxiety, and I got all five classes I wanted. As I said, I was shocked. There's an episode of the short-lived but brilliant television cartoon version of the comic strip Dilbert in which Dilbert is fired from his terrible job at his terrible company. With a little help from Dogbert (and of course help means completely bs-ing his résumé) Dilbert gets a job at the top engineering company in the country, Nirvana Corp. The name essentially describes the experience of working there. Dilbert cannot believe that he doesn't have to fill out forms to obtain pens, or that more than one copy machine works, or that there is no marketing department. Of course, when the boss hears his marveling at the lack of a marketing department, one is immediately created, quickly and totally destroying the company. But what matters in this rambling comparison are the feelings Dilbert experiences at the way things work at his new job. He doesn't so much feel happiness as shock and incomprehension. This is how I felt today after registering for classes.
Now I just have to be sure and not screw up the rest of this semester.
Let me backtrack for a second. At Wesleyan (which, if you remember, is where I last went to college), registration was a nightmare. I have no proof of this, but I just get the feeling the school's board of directors sat in a room for a day scheming to come up with the most painful, anxiety-inducing, stressful, and inefficient way to pick classes humanly possible. The process went something like this. At your appointed time on your appointed day, you packed into a small computer lab with a bunch of other students (essentially the number of computers in the lab plus one or two) and sat down at a computer, bringing up the registration website. With 30 seconds to go before your scheduled registration time, the person in charge would start the countdown. 30 seconds...25 seconds...20 seconds...15 seconds...10 seconds...9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1...CLICK! At the moment the word click was spoken, it became a mad dash to try to secure spots in your classes of choice before they filled up. If you clicked a hair too early, you would lose a couple of seconds before you could re-click, and if you clicked a hair too late, most likely your class would be full. If you were really fast, you could maybe get into two popular classes. After these two clicks, all that was left were the dregs. Classes nobody wanted to take. So you had two choices: take the crappy classes, or go with a 2-class schedule and hope to pick up the rest in drop-add. Not good times.
So, you'll understand if I approached this morning (my registration time) with trepidation. I didn't know the exact process of registering at UM, but I just assumed it would be some variant on medieval torture. So, I walked to the registrar's office with my class-request-sheet. I waited in line for about five minutes, then I sat down, handed my sheet to a woman at a computer, showed her my ID, and waited for another minute. She handed back my sheet and said, alright, you're good. No stress, no anxiety, and I got all five classes I wanted. As I said, I was shocked. There's an episode of the short-lived but brilliant television cartoon version of the comic strip Dilbert in which Dilbert is fired from his terrible job at his terrible company. With a little help from Dogbert (and of course help means completely bs-ing his résumé) Dilbert gets a job at the top engineering company in the country, Nirvana Corp. The name essentially describes the experience of working there. Dilbert cannot believe that he doesn't have to fill out forms to obtain pens, or that more than one copy machine works, or that there is no marketing department. Of course, when the boss hears his marveling at the lack of a marketing department, one is immediately created, quickly and totally destroying the company. But what matters in this rambling comparison are the feelings Dilbert experiences at the way things work at his new job. He doesn't so much feel happiness as shock and incomprehension. This is how I felt today after registering for classes.
Now I just have to be sure and not screw up the rest of this semester.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Back Among the Living
As I said in my post last week, I hate being sick. But as I have always been one to look on the bright side of life (and anyone who knows me at all is doubling over laughing at this comment), I've been trying to think of a positive to being sick. I think I've found one. After being sick, when you start feeling better, you feel better than you ever have before; you feel like Superman. At least I do. When I've been healthy for a while, I start to take my health for granted. I don't understand just how good I have it until I get sick for a week, like last week. Then, on a day like today, when I finally start to feel right again, it's like someone stuck me with a shot of adrenaline. I feel ready to take on the world and reassert my authority over my own life. I feel like an imposter has been inhabiting my body for the last week, and it's time to take back over. All in all, today I feel better than I have in quite some time. It's an odd feeling. Granted, at this point, last week is so foggy that I can't even be entirely sure it happened at all. If someone told me I had dreamed my entire sickness and that it was actually last Monday, I would believe that person without too much argument. I mean, my memory's not so good to begin with. Add in a disorienting sickness and I start questioning the very fabric of reality. Maybe I should change subjects before I get really confused. Or maybe it's too late already. Probably the second choice.
So, I don't think anyone would have blamed me if I had just stayed inside and lamented my poor health all weekend, and under normal circumstances that is exactly what I would have done. However, Friday night, despite the insistent complaints of every single bit of my physical being, I dragged myself down to campus for the UM Homecoming concert. Talib Kweli and Robert Randolph and the Family Band were there, and I never miss an opportunity to see Randolph, so feeling about 70% (generously) was not going to stop me.
As always, Randolph's set was an amazing experience. The healing powers of seeing that band tear into a set cannot be overestimated. I think if the losers organizing the event (I'm just kidding, I have nothing but respect for those who put together such a great free concert) had let them play for more than one short hour, I might have been cured there and then. Sadly, to be completely honest, an hour just isn't long enough for the full Robert Randolph and the Family Band experience. Shake Your Hips was noticeably abbreviated, with an awkwardly abrupt ending. The biggest problem is that a great jam band just continues to gather momentum as they continue to play, and Randolph is no exception. By the 1-hour mark, the band was firing on all cylinders, and another four or five songs would have been completely mind-blowing. As it was, the show built and built and built...and then ended. Alas. Nonetheless, it was a great hour. Those guys never cease to amaze me. Bringing out a (very) small horn section to kick into a cover of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" was an inspired new twist. I can't wait to see them again, hopefully next time as a headliner.
As for Talib Kweli, well...I'll preface this by saying that with a few exceptions I am not a fan of live hip hop. Don't get me wrong, I like hip hop; I like it a lot...on album. I have only really been impressed by three live hip hop acts: The Roots, J-5, and Cypress Hill. Talib wasn't bad by any means, but it just wasn't anything to write home about. It was highly entertaining for about a half hour, and then it got rather boring to just watch a guy rap over canned music, as is usually the case in such shows. That is just my opinion, of course. The crowd seemed to be enjoying the show just fine when I left.
Let's see, anything else? Go see American Gangster, it's fantastic. I register for classes on Wednesday for Spring, so I'll let you know how that goes.
So, I don't think anyone would have blamed me if I had just stayed inside and lamented my poor health all weekend, and under normal circumstances that is exactly what I would have done. However, Friday night, despite the insistent complaints of every single bit of my physical being, I dragged myself down to campus for the UM Homecoming concert. Talib Kweli and Robert Randolph and the Family Band were there, and I never miss an opportunity to see Randolph, so feeling about 70% (generously) was not going to stop me.
As always, Randolph's set was an amazing experience. The healing powers of seeing that band tear into a set cannot be overestimated. I think if the losers organizing the event (I'm just kidding, I have nothing but respect for those who put together such a great free concert) had let them play for more than one short hour, I might have been cured there and then. Sadly, to be completely honest, an hour just isn't long enough for the full Robert Randolph and the Family Band experience. Shake Your Hips was noticeably abbreviated, with an awkwardly abrupt ending. The biggest problem is that a great jam band just continues to gather momentum as they continue to play, and Randolph is no exception. By the 1-hour mark, the band was firing on all cylinders, and another four or five songs would have been completely mind-blowing. As it was, the show built and built and built...and then ended. Alas. Nonetheless, it was a great hour. Those guys never cease to amaze me. Bringing out a (very) small horn section to kick into a cover of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" was an inspired new twist. I can't wait to see them again, hopefully next time as a headliner.
As for Talib Kweli, well...I'll preface this by saying that with a few exceptions I am not a fan of live hip hop. Don't get me wrong, I like hip hop; I like it a lot...on album. I have only really been impressed by three live hip hop acts: The Roots, J-5, and Cypress Hill. Talib wasn't bad by any means, but it just wasn't anything to write home about. It was highly entertaining for about a half hour, and then it got rather boring to just watch a guy rap over canned music, as is usually the case in such shows. That is just my opinion, of course. The crowd seemed to be enjoying the show just fine when I left.
Let's see, anything else? Go see American Gangster, it's fantastic. I register for classes on Wednesday for Spring, so I'll let you know how that goes.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
I Hate Being Sick
I mean really, is there anything in the world worse than being sick? Especially that kind of sick where you can't really legitimately skip class or work, since you're not that sick, but you're just sick enough to make your life completely miserable. That's been my week thus far. And it's that great kind of sick where you're just completely dazed and in a fog all the time. Gotta love that. Class is really fun when you can't focus on anything for more than a couple of seconds. And work has been even better. I'll be working on a project and then just completely lose my train of thought. Or have problems that I should easily be able to fix but don't even know where to start. Not to mention, this is how things are today, when I feel the best I have all week. Oh well, I should feel better soon. The doctor told me it was some kind of viral infection that should run its course in a couple days. I hope he's right because I am tired of this.
On a brighter note, I met with my advisor yesterday to talk about classes for next semester. Of course, once again, this was made more difficult by my current condition, but I think I survived it. At the moment, the plan is to take two English courses, one French course, a history course, and some kind of easy science course to (finally) finish off my gen-ed requirements. I have decided (at least for the moment) to minor in French. If anything, doing so will force me to stay competent in the language, and I might lose my ability otherwise through not using it. Plus, literature's my thing, and taking French courses at the college level is pretty much like taking English lit courses in a different language, so I think I can survive the four classes or so necessary for the minor. Wish me luck. Next semester is going to be interesting. It should be easier in some ways, in that I'll be more into the rhythm of being in school, but it will be more difficult since, if my plans stay the same, four of my five classes will be 300-level classes. I've only taken one 300-level course in my college career thus far. I know I'm ready, but it should just be a large jump in the amount of work. Well, I guess at least that will give me an excuse for my lack of a social life. Hopefully the next time you hear from me I will be completely conscious.
On a brighter note, I met with my advisor yesterday to talk about classes for next semester. Of course, once again, this was made more difficult by my current condition, but I think I survived it. At the moment, the plan is to take two English courses, one French course, a history course, and some kind of easy science course to (finally) finish off my gen-ed requirements. I have decided (at least for the moment) to minor in French. If anything, doing so will force me to stay competent in the language, and I might lose my ability otherwise through not using it. Plus, literature's my thing, and taking French courses at the college level is pretty much like taking English lit courses in a different language, so I think I can survive the four classes or so necessary for the minor. Wish me luck. Next semester is going to be interesting. It should be easier in some ways, in that I'll be more into the rhythm of being in school, but it will be more difficult since, if my plans stay the same, four of my five classes will be 300-level classes. I've only taken one 300-level course in my college career thus far. I know I'm ready, but it should just be a large jump in the amount of work. Well, I guess at least that will give me an excuse for my lack of a social life. Hopefully the next time you hear from me I will be completely conscious.
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