And we all enjoyed the weekend for a change
So, at the skepticism of my mother, I decided to write an LJ entry. It asked me if I wanted to restore from saved draft. Puzzled, I clicked yes and found the following:
So, I haven't posted in a while because I am either a terrible person, easily distracted, or both. Most of my friends will tell you one, a few would argue two, and it's probably both.
So, life. I've been inducted into the Dialectic Senate, which is the preferable half of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is an absolutely absurd mouthful, so we're the Di's of Di Phi. Despite the running jokes that Di Phi is the cheapest frat on campus, it swings from startlingly formal and serious to hilarious and back again in the space of a few seconds. I love the mood, I love most of the people, and I love the debates. I also really enjoy the way you'll run into another member of campus and wander around having a four-hour conversation about perceptiveness, gravestones, Dungeons and Dragons, past Di Phi gossip, study abroad, and explosions. Frankly, it's a great group of people and we all run into each other as friends even when we've barely had time to talk at meetings.
People, this is from late January or early February. Do you know what that is? Hilarious. Given that my last entry was New Year's, I have to wonder where the habit of posting at least once a month went.
So, assorted tidbits that you can poke if you want more details.
-I'm now actually Di President, which effectively means very little. I sit in a desk up at the front of the room, fine people small amounts of money if they forget to wear their society pins (this hasn't even come up yet,) theoretically organize Di Phi Challenges (which the Phi President is too lazy to help with because he is "busy" with his nymphomaniac vampire girlfriend,) and get a seat on the Executive Committee. ExCom consists of the officers showing up and discussing problems. This semester all we do is hear about the latest in the drama of a resigned member who is threatening to sue us for $20,000 because we ruined his life.
-I have some more reading time this semester, but I'm not getting to any of the books I planned to read because I know too many nerds who have discovered that the best way to make me read something is to put a copy in my hands and make earnest faces while raving about the book. This in no way means that I don't like the books, just that if I told you I'd read something a while ago then it'll be a while.
-My job at the Bull's Head Bookshop (campus bookstore) is panning out well for the most part, though I kind of hate stupid customers. Do not walk up to the counter, say that you think there was a book out a while ago that might have had something to do with some woman whose name you sort of remember and can't spell but that it was by a local author and surely I have it and where is it. Politeness dictates that I not say "I am neither psychic nor omniscient and if you cannot provide me with useful keywords then please fire yourself out of a cannon or go away." Alas. The old people who bang their canes at me while asking these things are absolutely the worst. Old people? Fairly cool for the most part if you get to know them. Impatient cane-tappers? (facepalm) Look, I promise you can use the internet for yourselves if you want to find these books so badly. I know it's confusing and made of tubes, but at least try.
-Lest I rant too much, my co-workers are excellent people. We tend to hang out together behind the counter avoiding shelving as hard as we possibly can and muttering about the crazier people. Christiana inevitably has a good weekend story and Roscoe is a bit of a crazy man with good taste in comics. Jon Davies wears those skinny-jean emo pants, so I have christened him Spookypants (yay for Questionable Content) and am waiting for this nickname to take hold. He doesn't seem to care; in fact, he thinks it's funny and acts a bit like an honorary younger brother. Now I know why my mother kept telling me to be grateful for my younger sister. Having both him and Ian (who recommended me for this job) there is obnoxious because they're both well over six feet tall and like to loom over my five-four self. Silly boys.
-My classes are rather neatly split into two lametastic, two awesome, and one mediocre. This is due in large part to the professors in each one. My symbolic logic professor talks like a Muppet and is incapable of making logical sense (a rather depressing quality in a logic teacher.) My anthropology professor is...gah. Ever known someone who was so politically correct you wanted to kick their teeth in? This guy is: he's also pretentious, inane, incapable of writing good essay prompts, and prone to teaching lots of things that are totally irrelevant to both the class and the tests. I keep expecting him to say "So, you guys are aware that white people are the bad guys and American culture sucks, right?" just so he can stop dancing around it the way he does EVERY LECTURE. (For the record, the dude is a white American.) I do not understand how the man got put in charge of teaching, because he's terrible. My lingustics professor is the average one: the material's not great, but he's good at simple explanations.
-The good professors are Goldberg, who teaches my more-recent British literature class, and Caddell, who teaches History of Air Power. Goldberg will ramble a bit and come out with great statements like "and one day you'll see people copulating in the Pit." Sidenote: who says "copulating" anymore? Other great moments include discourses on media violence, the despair we're all going to feel as life crushes us when we age, and how our parents putting our pictures on the refrigerators have made us think we're demigods. Caddell, interestingly, also launches into odd stories at the drop of a hat: he was an Air Force captain and a bartender when he was younger, so he's got a lot of good things to talk about. I'd recount his "elephants in the tomato patch" story, but it's long and I don't want to type it. Remind me and I'll tell you in person.
-I've discovered that I really like having a friend or two in class for notes codependency and chatting at the margins of class. Symbolic logic is a parade of whispering "I have no idea what he just said" and helplessly trying to take notes on nonsense: a girl in my physics class from last year and my old suitemate are both in there, and we all mooch study help off each other. Air Power is also excellent fun, given that Ian and Sarah Settle (Di Phi freshman) are both there and we all banter with each other. There was a good bit of cheerful encouragement of Sarah's gunning after one of the older Di Phi boys, but that came to an abrupt halt after he led her around and then said that he just wanted to be friends. Sarah has decided that it's apparently her turn to keep suggesting that Ian and I should date. Since she and Elyssa, her future sponsor and the other primary offender here, have yet to provide any reason besides that we hang out, we're a bit bemused.
-Homemade three-cheese pasta is essence of delicious, and I must steal the recipe.
-My midterms that I've gotten back thus far have all returned with good grades, which is excellent. Given that my linguistics midterm fell on the day I was vomiting phlegm and wanted to destroy everything, I'm amazed that it didn't come back marked EPIC FAIL. My guess is that my tired brain auto-recalled most of the stuff I need to land my low A. Good memory for the win. English was harder because Goldberg picked a lot of difficult passages, but I took good notes and paid attention, which put me much higher up on the bell curve than the people who skip almost every class. Way to go, guys. My only midterms left are anthropology and air power, with air power tomorrow. He's given us a lot of information and the midterm is around 20% of our grade, so I'm a bit nervous.
-Running programs committee has been a right pain in the...I'd say neck, but it's more annoying, and swearing makes people cross, so let's go with spleen. Pain in the spleen. Normally the Di Phi critic is in charge of having meetings to find topics for future debates, but our critic is what we call stewwwwwpid and does no such thing, so a few months ago the president put me in charge of the programs bit. People are lazy and evil. They don't say when they can be at meeting and then whine about the times, don't contribute to topics and then complain about them, don't volunteer for speaking spots and then say that low volunteering means that I picked bad topics. Daniel Friedman and Ian and I have dubbed ourselves the Programs Trifecta for the being the only ones to show up at most (read: all but one being the largest attendance hole for anyone) of the meetings. Screw Spiderman's spiel, with great power comes great headaches, rage, and misanthropy.
-The weather is finally actually being cold, which is lame beyond human comprehension because I can no longer wear all of my excellent summer clothes. Bundling up and getting sick is not my idea of a good time. Winter is the lamest season ever. If you disagree with me then you are wrong. Christmas helps, but cold rain, cold air, and sickness are clear signs that winter is a terrible season, quite possibly introduced into the world along with angry snakes, death, and pain in childbirth.
-Stupid weather means that my usual lunch group has to move inside. We normally chill on the steps of Wilson Library and yell at the people who walk past, but it's getting way too cold for that given that the rock steps are made of heat-stealing death ice.
-This break (Thursday to today) has actually been quite fun. Thursday Ian wanted to make chocolate chip cookies before he went to Kansas for a family thing and asked if I wanted to join him to help dispose of said cookies. My response was "Cookies? YES." I came over and was forbidden to touch the cooking process because this is apparently his traditional job. However, I took a look at the recipe and it is apparently the same recipe that I have been using for brownies since I was much smaller except that his family uses the batter for cookies instead of brownies. Hilarity ensued, the cookies were delicious, and we polished off the leftover batter (about three cookies' worth.) We also watched Flight of Dragons, which is a slightly horrible kids' movie loosely based on The Dragon and the George by Gordon Dickson because this is also part of the cookie tradition. I eventually had to be threatened with bodily harm if I did not stop "trashing his childhood." Given that all I was doing was snickering at the dialogue (okay, and picking at the plot a tiny bit,) it was rather unfair. However, cookies prevail. Except over illness, given that Ian spiked a fever and did not go to Kansas after all, poor guy.
-I've just realized that I'm two books behind in my anthropology reading because it is just that terrible. I'll skim through it and be okay, but this class could really use some reading that is not more boring than watching the grass grow.
In the immortal words of people in Di Phi, queries?
So, I haven't posted in a while because I am either a terrible person, easily distracted, or both. Most of my friends will tell you one, a few would argue two, and it's probably both.
So, life. I've been inducted into the Dialectic Senate, which is the preferable half of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This is an absolutely absurd mouthful, so we're the Di's of Di Phi. Despite the running jokes that Di Phi is the cheapest frat on campus, it swings from startlingly formal and serious to hilarious and back again in the space of a few seconds. I love the mood, I love most of the people, and I love the debates. I also really enjoy the way you'll run into another member of campus and wander around having a four-hour conversation about perceptiveness, gravestones, Dungeons and Dragons, past Di Phi gossip, study abroad, and explosions. Frankly, it's a great group of people and we all run into each other as friends even when we've barely had time to talk at meetings.
People, this is from late January or early February. Do you know what that is? Hilarious. Given that my last entry was New Year's, I have to wonder where the habit of posting at least once a month went.
So, assorted tidbits that you can poke if you want more details.
-I'm now actually Di President, which effectively means very little. I sit in a desk up at the front of the room, fine people small amounts of money if they forget to wear their society pins (this hasn't even come up yet,) theoretically organize Di Phi Challenges (which the Phi President is too lazy to help with because he is "busy" with his nymphomaniac vampire girlfriend,) and get a seat on the Executive Committee. ExCom consists of the officers showing up and discussing problems. This semester all we do is hear about the latest in the drama of a resigned member who is threatening to sue us for $20,000 because we ruined his life.
-I have some more reading time this semester, but I'm not getting to any of the books I planned to read because I know too many nerds who have discovered that the best way to make me read something is to put a copy in my hands and make earnest faces while raving about the book. This in no way means that I don't like the books, just that if I told you I'd read something a while ago then it'll be a while.
-My job at the Bull's Head Bookshop (campus bookstore) is panning out well for the most part, though I kind of hate stupid customers. Do not walk up to the counter, say that you think there was a book out a while ago that might have had something to do with some woman whose name you sort of remember and can't spell but that it was by a local author and surely I have it and where is it. Politeness dictates that I not say "I am neither psychic nor omniscient and if you cannot provide me with useful keywords then please fire yourself out of a cannon or go away." Alas. The old people who bang their canes at me while asking these things are absolutely the worst. Old people? Fairly cool for the most part if you get to know them. Impatient cane-tappers? (facepalm) Look, I promise you can use the internet for yourselves if you want to find these books so badly. I know it's confusing and made of tubes, but at least try.
-Lest I rant too much, my co-workers are excellent people. We tend to hang out together behind the counter avoiding shelving as hard as we possibly can and muttering about the crazier people. Christiana inevitably has a good weekend story and Roscoe is a bit of a crazy man with good taste in comics. Jon Davies wears those skinny-jean emo pants, so I have christened him Spookypants (yay for Questionable Content) and am waiting for this nickname to take hold. He doesn't seem to care; in fact, he thinks it's funny and acts a bit like an honorary younger brother. Now I know why my mother kept telling me to be grateful for my younger sister. Having both him and Ian (who recommended me for this job) there is obnoxious because they're both well over six feet tall and like to loom over my five-four self. Silly boys.
-My classes are rather neatly split into two lametastic, two awesome, and one mediocre. This is due in large part to the professors in each one. My symbolic logic professor talks like a Muppet and is incapable of making logical sense (a rather depressing quality in a logic teacher.) My anthropology professor is...gah. Ever known someone who was so politically correct you wanted to kick their teeth in? This guy is: he's also pretentious, inane, incapable of writing good essay prompts, and prone to teaching lots of things that are totally irrelevant to both the class and the tests. I keep expecting him to say "So, you guys are aware that white people are the bad guys and American culture sucks, right?" just so he can stop dancing around it the way he does EVERY LECTURE. (For the record, the dude is a white American.) I do not understand how the man got put in charge of teaching, because he's terrible. My lingustics professor is the average one: the material's not great, but he's good at simple explanations.
-The good professors are Goldberg, who teaches my more-recent British literature class, and Caddell, who teaches History of Air Power. Goldberg will ramble a bit and come out with great statements like "and one day you'll see people copulating in the Pit." Sidenote: who says "copulating" anymore? Other great moments include discourses on media violence, the despair we're all going to feel as life crushes us when we age, and how our parents putting our pictures on the refrigerators have made us think we're demigods. Caddell, interestingly, also launches into odd stories at the drop of a hat: he was an Air Force captain and a bartender when he was younger, so he's got a lot of good things to talk about. I'd recount his "elephants in the tomato patch" story, but it's long and I don't want to type it. Remind me and I'll tell you in person.
-I've discovered that I really like having a friend or two in class for notes codependency and chatting at the margins of class. Symbolic logic is a parade of whispering "I have no idea what he just said" and helplessly trying to take notes on nonsense: a girl in my physics class from last year and my old suitemate are both in there, and we all mooch study help off each other. Air Power is also excellent fun, given that Ian and Sarah Settle (Di Phi freshman) are both there and we all banter with each other. There was a good bit of cheerful encouragement of Sarah's gunning after one of the older Di Phi boys, but that came to an abrupt halt after he led her around and then said that he just wanted to be friends. Sarah has decided that it's apparently her turn to keep suggesting that Ian and I should date. Since she and Elyssa, her future sponsor and the other primary offender here, have yet to provide any reason besides that we hang out, we're a bit bemused.
-Homemade three-cheese pasta is essence of delicious, and I must steal the recipe.
-My midterms that I've gotten back thus far have all returned with good grades, which is excellent. Given that my linguistics midterm fell on the day I was vomiting phlegm and wanted to destroy everything, I'm amazed that it didn't come back marked EPIC FAIL. My guess is that my tired brain auto-recalled most of the stuff I need to land my low A. Good memory for the win. English was harder because Goldberg picked a lot of difficult passages, but I took good notes and paid attention, which put me much higher up on the bell curve than the people who skip almost every class. Way to go, guys. My only midterms left are anthropology and air power, with air power tomorrow. He's given us a lot of information and the midterm is around 20% of our grade, so I'm a bit nervous.
-Running programs committee has been a right pain in the...I'd say neck, but it's more annoying, and swearing makes people cross, so let's go with spleen. Pain in the spleen. Normally the Di Phi critic is in charge of having meetings to find topics for future debates, but our critic is what we call stewwwwwpid and does no such thing, so a few months ago the president put me in charge of the programs bit. People are lazy and evil. They don't say when they can be at meeting and then whine about the times, don't contribute to topics and then complain about them, don't volunteer for speaking spots and then say that low volunteering means that I picked bad topics. Daniel Friedman and Ian and I have dubbed ourselves the Programs Trifecta for the being the only ones to show up at most (read: all but one being the largest attendance hole for anyone) of the meetings. Screw Spiderman's spiel, with great power comes great headaches, rage, and misanthropy.
-The weather is finally actually being cold, which is lame beyond human comprehension because I can no longer wear all of my excellent summer clothes. Bundling up and getting sick is not my idea of a good time. Winter is the lamest season ever. If you disagree with me then you are wrong. Christmas helps, but cold rain, cold air, and sickness are clear signs that winter is a terrible season, quite possibly introduced into the world along with angry snakes, death, and pain in childbirth.
-Stupid weather means that my usual lunch group has to move inside. We normally chill on the steps of Wilson Library and yell at the people who walk past, but it's getting way too cold for that given that the rock steps are made of heat-stealing death ice.
-This break (Thursday to today) has actually been quite fun. Thursday Ian wanted to make chocolate chip cookies before he went to Kansas for a family thing and asked if I wanted to join him to help dispose of said cookies. My response was "Cookies? YES." I came over and was forbidden to touch the cooking process because this is apparently his traditional job. However, I took a look at the recipe and it is apparently the same recipe that I have been using for brownies since I was much smaller except that his family uses the batter for cookies instead of brownies. Hilarity ensued, the cookies were delicious, and we polished off the leftover batter (about three cookies' worth.) We also watched Flight of Dragons, which is a slightly horrible kids' movie loosely based on The Dragon and the George by Gordon Dickson because this is also part of the cookie tradition. I eventually had to be threatened with bodily harm if I did not stop "trashing his childhood." Given that all I was doing was snickering at the dialogue (okay, and picking at the plot a tiny bit,) it was rather unfair. However, cookies prevail. Except over illness, given that Ian spiked a fever and did not go to Kansas after all, poor guy.
-I've just realized that I'm two books behind in my anthropology reading because it is just that terrible. I'll skim through it and be okay, but this class could really use some reading that is not more boring than watching the grass grow.
In the immortal words of people in Di Phi, queries?