One week off?
This was supposed to be a week off and then Summer 1 would begin. Then why do I feel like I'm working just as hard during my time off as I have been working during my time when I'm supposed to be working? I really don't understand this sometimes.

I managed to get the syllabus up for Dr. Kuersten's class today. Aside from that, I've been doing little things here and there just to keep afloat. It seems really strange sometimes.

Tomorrow is Saturday which I'm hoping will actually be a day where I don't have to do anything of importance. I need to do a load of wash (just haven't had time). I actually made it to a store today (Mr. B's) and bought five pairs of pants. I'll be honest; I haven't bought a new pair of pants in a long time. Now, I just have to wait for them to alter them so I'll be able to wear them. Seems no one makes clothing of a size that fits little lego spacemen.

I have my fish tank all ready to put together now. Then, the only thing I'll be lacking will be...let's see...what's the one thing you need for a fish tank to be a fish tank...um...fish? Yeah, I still need to get fish.

I had a strange interaction with a woman at the store today. I was being my usual flippant self, and at some point I began to realize the conversation was turning a bit serious. It was kind of bizarre actually. For some reason, she was taking me WAY too seriously. A few seconds later, I started to realize the conversation went beyond joking into the mysterious world of flirting. So, like any American male, I suddenly turned stupid. That's not the first time that has ever happened. I do just fine right up until I realize the woman might be really interested. Then I suddenly forget how to form sentences.

When I got home, my stuffed penguin started yelling at me. Those kinds of things really bother him, being the party animal that he is.

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Okay, he's evil, but....


At least he's got taste. If I was an evil dictator, I think I, too, would have nothing but female bodyguards.

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I have really got to learn not to do these things
I bought a new book today called Windows XP Hacks by O'Reilly (a company that makes a lot of computer-techy books), so I immediately decided I needed to change my splash screen for when I start up my computer. That ended up causing me to completely lose the ability to start my computer for the next four hours. Now that I finally got back online, through the most ridiculous process one should ever have to do with a computer, I now can't get internet access because of the amount of work I had to do working around my system.

My computer may never be whole again. And how come this stuff never happens at noontime, but at 2am in the morning?

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My list of classics read
I saw this on Melanie's site, and I just had to see how the list jived with my former readings. In bold are the ones I have read.

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - "A Good Man is Hard to Find"
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace--I've tried many times but just kept giving up on it
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

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The Largest City in the Entire World
When I was in Germany a long time ago, I remember driving on the highway, and I remember seeing the signs for this one town that had to be the largest town I have ever seen. It didn't matter where I was heading, I always seemed to see signs for this town. It didn't matter where I was in Germany, I would always see this town sign and think this place had to be HUGE. Although I was always in a hurry, one day I swore I would visit this city and take some pictures to show everyone else the largest city in the entire world.

One day, I intend to visit the city of Ausfahrt.

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Hard to tell when you're actually done
The semester is over. I sent the grades to Dr. K, but at the same time, I get this weird feeling that I'm not done. I don't even know why. Perhaps because it never seemed to end when it was happening. I don't know.

I find myself almost unable to relax because I keep thinking that there's so much I'm supposed to be doing, so I find myself unable to do anything fun.

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Now that school is over, I can focus on more important things....
Well, there are a lot of things I could focus on, but let's just say I realized what's most important to me is that I just realized I have no chance with Shania Twain. Really. I just figured this out. It was while listening to her song: That Don't Impress Me Much. I just realized that being a rocket scientist, Brad Pitt, having a fancy car, being Elvis, wealthy, or having a great sense of humor is just not enough to impress her. My understanding is that somehow you're supposed to impress her by keeping her warm at night.



All right, how am I supposed to do that if I can't impress her first?????

It's just not fair.

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This pretty much says it all

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Today's Articles
This is the editorial I wrote today for the Western Herald:
The Third Wave

This is the quotes & Comments section I wrote for today's paper:
Quotes & Comments

I figure once I start doing this regularly (Summer I), I may have to set up a different way of highlighting my editorials and articles.

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Articles in the Herald
Today is a unique day. Last night I had to act as Opinion Editor for the Western Herald, rather than just submit an article. Well, I also submitted an article as well.

Anyway, here's the editorial I wrote:

Grade Inflation

Here's the quotes and comments section I wrote:

Quotes & Comments

And here's my article for the day!

While In College Embrace Every Opportunity You Can

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the friday five:

1. What do you do for a living?
I'm a full-time graduate student. I beg the government for money for a living. I am also next year's Opinion Editor for The Western Herald.

2. What do you like most about your job?
It doesn't interfere with my career.

3. What do you like least about your job?
It doesn't pay enough to survive.

4. When you have a bad day at work it's usually because _____...
Aliens have stolen my mayonnaise.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in?
Dirt farmer, fireman, legospaceman. But to be honest, I want to be a writer. Nothing more. I don't have aspirations of being recognized as a great anything but a writer.

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Computer problem finally taken care of
One of the technicians on their end finally took care of whatever the problem was (for now), so I am finally back on line again. At least until the next thing happens....

The funny thing is: I have some web work I have to do for my client in California, and I've been putting her off, explaining the problem. Now that the problem is fixed, I realize I can't find the disk she sent me in the mail to update her page. Guess I only got me to blame on this one now.

The Western Herald
I'll be working on Monday's edition on Sunday evening. I have no idea how to do it, but Jason is going to walk me through it. It should be interesting.

Way too much work
Yeah, same as always. I have a ton of papers to grade for Dr. K for Monday. And somewhere down the line, I need to actually start working on the paper I have to have done by the middle of next week. Guess who is going to be living in the library tomorrow?

At least when this is done, it is done. I will be taking an independent study class with Dr. K for the summer where I will analyze the lack of legal representation for indigent civil defendants. At least I'm finally going to be writing about something that's of interest to me. Chances are pretty good that this may start me on the direction to my dissertation topic. As I realized that there was no way to convince the political science department that I needed to analyze the political impact of watching lots and lots of porn or computer games, I have to do something for real.

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Computer Problems at the New Place
I sometimes hate moving in the university system because I always have these kinds of problems. I moved from Goldsworth Valley to Stadium Drive Apartments, and this means I go from a T1 type connection to a cable modem connection. No matter what I do, I can't get the cable modem to work with either of my two desktops. Nothing works. Yet, I can get my laptop to work (which is the one computer I don't want connected through this system because it isn't practical to do the internet work I have to do).

I called the Help Desk, which ironically was no help. Then I was connected to tech services which then set up an appointment for me today. Today, the guy showed up, piddled around the computers for awhile before stating that yes, the connection doesn't work. He then said he'd email somebody and then left. He said I would get a call later that day after they did what was necessary.

No call. No contact. As ALWAYS happens with computer services here, no one will contact me, and I'll end up having to go through someone else because they'll hope that I'll just go away instead.

I really need this connection up and running fast. I have to do some changes to one of the pages I maintain for a client, and she's already throwing a fit. The shopping cart is on one of the main computers, and it can't be configured on the laptop.

Presentation
I did my presentation for the poverty class today. It kind of sucked. I presented a little bit of the information that I had, but I really felt like I was winging it more than doing what I wish I had the time to prepare for but didn't. But it's done, so now I just have to worry about trying to get a topic for my history paper and then researching it before it's due next week. I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.

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Some days just don't seem to work out
This has been one of those days. I have stuff all over the place because I just moved, so I can't find a single thing. I have a presentation I have to do tomorrow for my poverty class on a subject that I've really done zero work on whatsoever, and every time I try to actually start doing some work on it, Dr. K has 90,000 more papers for me to grade that need to be done "tomorrow at the latest." I have a final paper due in my history class in about a week or so for which I am still trying to find ten minutes so I can sit down and figure out a topic to research before I write the thing. To top it off, I can't get these cable modems to work with my regular computers (I'm writing on my laptop) because for some reason a cable modem has the ability to work up to about ten centimeters from the wall and any further distance and no signal can be found. I have some guy supposedly coming over tomorrow to look at that, but I think I've so screwed up my main computer trying to get this cable modem to work that it may never see the internet again.

There was a luncheon today for political science. I'm glad I was there with friends; otherwise, I don't think I would have remained through the whole thing. It was really frustrating listening to them harp on about how great a department they have when I really feel they are the only ones that truly believe that. The department has gone completely downhill, and I'm sometimes embarrassed to be in this department.

Speaking of the luncheon, President Bailey spoke there today, and this was the first time I ever heard her speak in person. All I could think was, shouldn't a university president at least have a rudimentary ability to speak in public? I was actually embarrassed for her because I've never seen such a poor attempt to "rally" the troops or whatever it was she thought she was doing up there at the podium. I remember Floyd speaking a dozen times, and it is such a change in weather to go from a brilliant speaker like Floyd to Forrest Gump.

The new job
Looks like I'll be putting out the Monday Western Herald's opinion section. I imagine it will be a lot like duct tape, as it will be my first one. Emily Walker, the current opinion editor, has proven to be a child instead of an adult about the fact that she is being replaced. She stated that she wouldn't train me (to the current editor in chief) because she's mad that she didn't get picked to be the opinion editor next semester. So, in order to not "cause any problems" they're working it so she and I don't end up having to be in the office at the same time. At what point did I go back to kindergarten? Why am I constantly having to deal with people who react like ten year olds? What really pisses me off is that all year long I have helped her out whenever possible, writing articles at the last minute when she didn't have one to fill the next day's paper. Yet, all of that is completely forgotten, and for some reason I'm the bad guy here?

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Finally, some good news!
Just to inform you, the reader of this weblog, that you are now reading the weblog of the Opinion Editor of the Western Herald for next year. I just received the call a few minutes ago, and let's just say that I am extremely happy about this.

Also, still in the process of moving. Um, where did all this stuff come from? I didn't think it was all here yesterday.

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Sporadic online activity
I'm probably going to be off and on the internet for a short while because I decided to move, and I'm now in the process of doing just that. I just managed to buy some furniture today (which gets delivered sometime tomorrow). Now, I just have to start plugging away on getting all of this junk...I mean stuff...to my new apartment.

Later on today, I have an interview at the Herald for the Opinion Editor position. I get the idea a bunch of people are going to be there, all who have applied, so I'm just going to get it over with and then try to keep on moving. I only have my old place until tomorrow. Otherwise, it would have cost me a fortune. As for the job, I'm not really expecting to get it, but I'll do everything possible to at least try. Either way, it's just one of those things. Not positive...not negative.

Well, all for now. Time to start putting together boxes so I can start attempting to get all of these books I don't seem to ever read. Hmm....

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