Quick Update

Yeah, I suck at this, i know.

So here's what's happened since last i posted:

I got the job of science fiction editor at macabre mansion (which i have yet to do anything for 'cause i just suck that much)

I got kicked out of my apartment with 14 days warning (rent was raised and my Mysterious Roomie couldn't afford it anymore)

Choral Director moved to Snooty College

Got a new apartment

2min2late got married (i sang at his wedding. it was AWESOME)

2min2late and his new wife moved to florida

My parents moved to florida  (same weekend i moved into my new apt)

I got a real job as an admin assistant at Small Company

I visited florida

I have yet to turn in my honor's thesis final draft - my plan is to print the final version (a few mistakes were present during the defense such as a missed citation, kinda important), take it dragoncon, get the actors from SG-1 to sign it since it was based on their show, get it bound, and take it back to school where i will beg for them to accept it cause i lost the original signatory page.

I got an Awesome Roomie who i know from The Coffee Shop

I now own my mom's cat Stupid, and she's being bitchy about Awesome Roomie's cats.

The end

Fat Lady Much?

So, it's all over. HUGE FRICKEN SIGH!!!

I graduated (magna cum laude, and departmental honors mofos!) last Saturday, and am now drifting aimlessly in the world.

I figure i'd try and get a job in my chosen career, and eventually (like in 10 years or so) come back to grad school and get a masters in library science, and eventually a doctorate in something or other. My largest problem about gradual school (as Robin Williams said in Life According to Garp, it's where students go to gradually realize they don't want to be in college anymore) is that i have no idea what i'd be focused on. I like English, but i don't want to get a doctorate in teaching or any specific area. Not to mention the idea of a dissertation makes me want to run away screaming.

My honors thesis ended up at a solid 35 pages, 40 with work cited. I still need to put in a source (yeah, imagine my horror during the defense when I was asked about a source that was not in the freaking works cited page) and restructure the introduction a bit to show how it ended up changing, but it's purty good.

I'm done at Big City Magazine, and managed to end up with a byline in the latest issue (suweet!).

And oh yeah, i'm done with school!!!!!...!!!. (that punctuation sums up my feelings pretty accurately). I got my grades back and it turns out i managed to break my annual spring slump, rounding out BOTH semesters at my university with 4.0 scores. yeah, i'm badass.

Coffee House is working out ok, but I really need to get a career type job soon if i'm going to continue to afford my apartment. Yeah, i have an apartment, and not with Crazy Lady, Friends to Horses, or Once and Future Roommate. It's with someone I found on Craigslist, Law Student. She seems nice so far, but we'll see, I guess.

Well, that's my life in a nutshell. What's up with you?

What i should have said

Dear Guest,

I appreciate the fact that you wanna buy a cup of coffee and enjoy it while sitting in the coffee house on a Sunday afternoon. It's a gorgeous day, and obviously a lot of other people have had the same idea. However, being rude to me because I don't have the authority to request people who have paid for a drink to leave just because they are taking up all the seats is inappropriate. I know that it looks as if they are poor college students just taking advantage of our free wifi, but the guests you are disparaging (not nearly as quietly as you think) have in fact bought food (around 6 dollars) and drinks (2 bucks give or take) and will most likely get something else before they leave; and are sitting with people they may or may not know in accordance to our signs requesting wifi users to share space. You on the other hand are planning on buying 2 small coffees (for a grand total of 3.60) and then hanging out two to a table, basically doing the exact same thing you are so peeved at me about, but without an excuse of internet. Frankly, at the moment they are worth more to us than you. There are tables available outside, and if you don't want to sit there (on this, as before mentioned, beautiful day), then that is not my problem. I'm sorry you don't want to buy a coffee from us anymore, but if a lack of chairs really influences your decision to buy it that much, you must not have wanted it.

And no, the manager does not come in on Sundays. He's here every other day of the week, and wants to spend the weekend with his family. I make minimum wage, and the fact is every guest with an attitude problem picks me to bitch at 'cause i'm a chick, and i'm tired of it. 2 dollars in tips is not enough for me to take your shit.

Have a nice day, and sorry we couldn't accommodate you today.

Sincerely,
Parenthetical

An interaction where 2 worlds collide

This happened to me this last Sunday at the Coffee Shop:

Guest walks in, with some very specific ideas of what he wants (tea is apparently at optimal brewing temperature at 160 degrees Fahrenheit, which explains why a chai tea abomination tastes so darn good), so I am (as always) cheerful and helpful as i can be. This guy is one of those guests that can make you feel incompetent just by having to remind you to get a glass of water (which doesn't show up on the ticket as it is free and is frequently a pain in my butt- if you aren't paying for it, why get bent out of shape over reminding me about it?) - not maliciously, mind you, he's just so dang nice about it.so, i handle his order (green tea, strawberry cake, and large latte which i make with 2 separate 2 shot pulls for the requisite 3 as he strikes me as the type to be able to taste how much longer the 3 shot head takes to make the freaking espresso (oh, and water)) and bring it out to him. Later, he orders another, more froufy drink for his daughter, then chats with me as i'm making it. We actually kind of encourage this, tho our counters were ordered too high so it's like being in a freakin' fortress when you are under 6 feet (Long John doesn't have to worry about this). Anyway, while waiting in line to order his drinks, one of our other, off duty baristas was at the counter ordering for herself, and had asked me about my internship. Guest starts making small talk, asking about what kind of interning i was doing (mistakenly believing i was interning at Coffee Shop. man, that'd suck). I explained i interned at Magazine, and he verifies that i am, in fact, an English major, about to graduate no less.

Guest starts relating this story of his son, who went  to a college he hated as an English major, because the college was renowned for making contacts. Son of Guest lands an internship for a magazine in freaking Paris, then comes back and lands a job as an editor at Penguin Books (one of my many hopeful future employments). I am fascinated and try to tell guest that that is my dream job, but he talks over me to elaborate on his son's (perfect) job and how making connections is how he got there.

I try to introduce myself. Guest talks over me, giving me advice to make connections.

I try to introduce myself again, Guest wishes me luck and walks out the door, all without letting me know his name.

Ironically frustrating.

Note to self

need to stop talking out loud when writing/typing.

Sound like Doogie Howser. not enough synthesizer in personal theme music.

Lotta Stuff Going On

I've been asked (well, actually, i've been told, more or less, by the director of the honors program) to present my thesis at two separate expos towards the end of April. the actual expo dates are fine for me, i should be done with everything but the defense and the crying at that point. My problem is that the abstracts/applications are due in at the end of March. yeah. this month. the month wherein the bulk of my writing is occuring. i've got section 1 and 2 to finish before next wednesday, as well as a magazine article to write and edit, and another article to research for the shared byline. Plus, you know, work and junk.

On the other hand, i have spring break coming up, which is a nice chunk of time where all i need to worry about is the thesis and work: no internship, no classes, and some theoretical free time. And i've been told that it'd be a good idea to get practice presenting my paper, and there's the possibility for cash prizes at one of the expos.

On the other hand (man i feel like tevye), this is my LAST SPRING BREAK. i've never gone out and done crazy college stuff over spring break, and i won't ever get another chance (unless i go into teaching; a definite "hell no" there) to do an epic road trip of movie proportions.

meh. what will be will be. que sera and all that jazz

First interview high! WOO!

So Landscaper Dude totally called me back right before choir, but i handled it. I set up a phone meeting for when i'd get back into the office, and kept to it.

It was odd giving a phone interview. i've done radio interviews before of tv celebrities for Macabre Mansion but never had to interview someone over a phone, and for an article rather than for the interview itself. not to mention, the radio interviews are by their very nature recorded, versus my desperate listening and scribbling being our only material.

Overall, i think it went well. i had some incredible shatner moments with the pausing and the verbal stalling and the stuttering, but also managed to get everything i needed. Landscaper guy was fantastically nice and understanding, and i got a total performance high out of the whole deal. woo!

Article assignation

okay, so this has nothing to do with an assignation. but it sounded cool.

Just got an article punted to me by Boss Lady - she wants to make sure i get a byline in my time at Magazine. Ironically, i then got hit up by Other Magazine Boss Lady to help her out with her spotlight feature for Other Magazine, so i'm going to get a shared byline there as well.

The article will be a before/after deal about this pool out in Suburbia that has been pretty radically awesome-ified. To start off with, i called the landscaper, terrified that i'd screw up a phone interview (as previously noted, i suck at phone conversations). I did all this pre-call stuff, making sure i understood what had changed, figuring out what i'd need to know, writing little reminders of what to check (name spelling, comp list address- the comp list being the Mailing List from Hell that apparently is done every issue), getting the resource info from the landscaper's website, and generally psyching myself up.

of course, then the call went to voice mail and i freaked out. I managed to get my message across (i hope) and left my cell number, but now i'm worried he'll call back either during my one class of the day (yay choir!) or sometime tomorrow, when i won't be interning and will in fact be doing that whole "graduating" academic thing.

so yay for worry.

written while writing the thesis of doom

As i get further into my thesis (i'm in section 1 of 3 right now, excluding intro and conclusion) i realize that the reason i'm having so many issues with just writing is that i'm fighting the discourses taught to me throughout my academic career. Using I without retribution in an academic paper is blowing my mind, but it's a component part of explaining my purpose and use. since i'm not writing literary analysis, most of my argument comes from other people (esp in sections 1 and 2, section 3 is my contribution) and that's difficult to stick with. i was taught to avoid saying "in this paper, I will show" but that is EXACTLY what i'm supposed to be doing.

i understand why we are taught this way (especially after reading and editing some of my peers' papers who aren't inclined to writing) but it's kind of like going to calculus after pre-cal. You've learned the hard, difficult way, and now it's time for the short cuts; only problem is it feels like some kind of cheating or cheapness.

very frustrating. (my general writing kinda sucks today anyways - cheapness? really?)

Short and angsty

Last post of boring crap, i promise.

Yesterday  (as in the 18th, not actually yesterday) i had no work to do for my magazine 'cause we were waiting on printers, so Boss Lady lent me out to Assistant Boss Lady. Assistant Boss Lady is head editor of Other Magazine. I had to call oodles of people i didn't know, but i got the assistance of an aunt of mine who works as a clerk. It was a long day of crapola. i don't want to do this forever. the end.

Of Poets and Parts of Speech

As an aspiring editor and an avid lover of the phenomenon of Language, not to mention a person immersed in the literary world of an English major, I occasionally have a geek out in which i start to think of Stuff I'd Like to Write a Paper On - or rather, Things I'd Like to See Other People Write Because I'm a Lazy Sonnuvagun. One such geeking occurred yesterday, so i thought i'd blog rather than actually do research and junk :D (oh emoticons... how i love thee).

In my 200 level Linguistic class (the introductory class to linguistics rather than a grammar or history of the language course) we used the first two lines of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky to emphasize the way we can classify parts of speech by using an innate sense of sentence placement, so we can recognize words that we have never heard before as a noun or verb as long as it is in a context using function words. The example was :

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 


Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;


All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky" lines 1-4

Things I've learned as an intern - so far

1. How to ask people who aren't my boss how to do what my boss has told me to do.
2. How to read Boss Lady's mind (this is more of an upgrade of my previous skill: How to read my conductor's mind)
3. How to anticipate problems that the Boss Lady hasn't thought of yet (see previous parenthesis)
4. How to use the cool stamp maker thing for postage
5. How to make labels in Excel/Word
6. How to find things to do once i've finished my "big project" - which usually takes all of 10 minutes
7. How to talk to complete strangers and incite enough pity at my horrible phone business skills to become overly helpful and, in fact, engender the help of my coworkers who can hear my horrific attempts from their offices.
8. How to over use post-its. love the post-its.

Snow my god!

It's snowing. In our state. in our portion of our state. this is not a frequent event. Actually, it's sticking as i watch, which leads me to believe in global warming (apparently, it's not just for heat anymore!). So, seeing as how i don't particularly want to read over my linguistics stuff (even though i love it), and hell has apparently frozen over (see beginning statement), i thought i'd take the opportunity to update my rather lame blog.

Bitch Bitch Moan Moan

i'm a horrible student.

well, not really. i'm a fabulous student... when i go to class. i'm one of those people who cannot STAND the awkward silence when a professor is desperately trying to avoid flat out giving all the answers and the students are desperately trying to avoid flat out thinking. This occasionally makes me "that guy" - you know, that one person who always has to say something and you can tell he just hasn't prepped or loves hearing his own voice (usually given nicknames by the rest of the class without their knowledge like "that girl with the teeth" or "stupid guy" or "y'know, the one that keeps bringing up sexual preferences?")- and i have to admit one of my biggest fears in the social scene is being labeled "that guy." At the same time, I still just can't let the silence build. It may be a linguistic thing (did you know that Americans cannot let silence be? after an average of 4 seconds of silence, an American will blurt out whatever they can to just... end... the... silence) but whatever the reason, i'm big on class participation. I love to learn, I don't really mind the reading (except when i do), and i'm of a quirky mindset that routinely leads to odd metaphors that helps others grasp concepts... like Robert Brown's Schroedinger's cat of morality (one of my favorite papers ever, even if it was for a 200 level class).

On the other hand...

No Such Thing

So, I love reading blogs that are "anonymous"-- cool nicknames for people and places, vague references to things, it's kinda like getting all of the human condition without having to deal with reality. Obviously others feel the same, or that "i don't know who you are and its attractive to me" thing in chat and im messages and movies wouldn't have taken off. In practice, however, this is freaking impossible.

seriously. i fix one thing so it's all cool and super-spy, and i just freaking expose myself to someone else... and that sounds way more sexually deviant than i intended.

So, if you do recognize me, help me with my denial and don't let on, k?

An Update in which Capitalization is Arbitrary

When I walked into the office this morning at Big City Magazine, my boss (the editor) wasn't in, so i decided to do the young go-getter trawling for work thing (but with less hooker overtones). I went and talked to Ad Lady, who is Boss Lady's bud in the magazine and much more organized. She set me up with some advert busy work involving reminding a list of clients that our deadline for production is this Friday. I was grooving along, calling random strangers and struggling to keep my verbal stalls to a minimum, when Boss Lady walks in late to an Important Lunch Meeting that AL and BL both need to attend. BL tells AL that i'm doing work for her (i'm on my last name at this point) and they head out the door.

So now, I have nothing to do because Boss Lady is one of those fabulously creative tragically disorganized people, and she left me with nothing to do. I'm about to go ask Editor Lady of Affiliated Magazine if she needs anything done, but first i thought i'd do a post so i wouldn't forget too much stuff for my end of term intern project (what i actually get graded on by the university).

This looks difficult

Tuesday:

9:30am: go to first day of interning

10-noon: meeting with Community Thing Association- let the bs fly!

1:45pm: hoof it to Big City University to make it to choir

2:50pm: cut out of choir early to keep within that 1 hour lunch time thing (tho it's more like an hour and a half)

3:15pm: do intern work

4:45pm: hoof it to Coffee House for closing shift

??pm: parents bring me food. I love parents.

11pm: go back to dorm, shower, try to read Henry IV.

Wednesday:

2am: give it up as a lost cause, drop into bed.

8:30am: Once and Future Roomate makes sure I'm up for my 9am class. I love Once and Future.

9:03am: be late to class

10am: try and read Henry IV, again give it up as a lost cause. Try to prep for my first meeting with my thesis advisor (not Dr. Prof but Lone Linguist) for this semester, only to realize I have left my notebook of notes and brought a ton of sources instead. Nevermind about that.



Then I wrote this post! I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed already, and its only the 2^nd week of class. Good times. The good news is that the blog function of Microsoft Word 2007 totally works.

First post

I was given the advice by both Dr. Prof and Professor Doc that a journal would be a good idea to keep track of my capstone thesis and my internship requirements, respectively. So what do I do? I decide to embark on a blogging expedition of mystery and late postings... which i'm currently doing while at my internship at Big City Magazine, so this'll be it for post one.

Really, I just wanted something on the stupid page. I should write more later, for a proper post. We'll see if King Henry the IVth trumps semi-legitimate internet tomfoolery tonight.