{"id":961,"date":"2005-06-01T11:48:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T15:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/archives\/961"},"modified":"2005-06-01T11:48:00","modified_gmt":"2005-06-01T15:48:00","slug":"random-brain-bits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/archives\/961","title":{"rendered":"Random Brain Bits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I feel like my head is made out of doggie kibble. Maybe it&#8217;s the result of too many sugar-free, starch-free days (this is my last &#8220;Phase 1&#8221; day &#8211; hoorah!). Maybe it&#8217;s because I&#8217;ve been reading Marian Keyes slightly trashy chicklit novels like they&#8217;re going out of style. Maybe it&#8217;s the mocking look that my employee ID pass gives me, with its opposite-of-Dorian Grey-style face that remains perky, optimistic and skinny as year after year of government employment (it&#8217;ll be three years come Sept 9th) wear on me and transform everything from my wardrobe to my personality into a hollow, lifeless corporate drone. Ugh.<\/p>\n<p>I think I need either a change of vocation or a vacation. Speaking of which, my beloved auntie has FINALLY gotten around to finding lodgings for herself and her husband, my mother, my cousins, and JVL and I to stay in while we&#8217;re in Victoria. It&#8217;s a little on the extravagant side, and technically speaking my poor Mum will have to do without a bed for the balance of the wedding weekend, but who am I to complain? It has a fireplace! And many skylights.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of hotels: I finally found my bloody room confirmation for San Diego &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/cci\/index.shtml\">the Comicon is July 13-17<\/a>, but I did the booking sooooo long ago I&#8217;d forgotten when and where. This is the trouble with being too precocious and &#8220;organized&#8221;. Anyhow, now it&#8217;s up to JVL to book the flights. If anyone has hints for cheap ones, let me know, &#8216;kay?<\/p>\n<p>In academic news, I got my paper (*and* my Stephen Fry DVD, hurrah!) back from prof with remarks. I have to say, I was a little miffed about the A-, but he gave some cogent reasons for doing so, which were about as complimentary as a diss on one&#8217;s writing skills can be. Check it out:<\/p>\n<p><font size=2><i>&#8220;This is an interesting, inventive and witty paper. I particularly admire the last two sections, where your argument is very focused. You are a very good prose stylist &#8212; but I think you need to relax about it. You are often guilty of what Fowler in Modern English Usage calls &#8220;elegant variation&#8221; &#8212; constantly supplying odd synonyms and circumlocutions rather that repeating a simple noun or providing a pronoun. For example, just count the number of ways you refer to money or the lack of it. If you own a thesaurus, throw it away. Also, I think you try very hard to produce interesting verbal flourishes and long, decorative turns of phrase. I wouldn&#8217;t bother &#8212; the risk is verbosity. You will always write elegantly. I suggest the greater challenge for you is economy.&#8221;<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n<p>This pleasant although negative feedback steeled me to call my Old English professor, who was very nice about hearing from me, despite the fact that I&#8217;m asking him to give me a final grade on a course I took almost four years ago. I need to call him again this afternoon to set up a meeting time for next week, but the bad news is he thinks he&#8217;s lost my final translation exam. This is super duper bad, since not only may have to re-do said exam, which gave me nightmares for weeks before I took it, but also I scored an 82% on it the first time around, a feat which I sincerely doubt I can re-enact. Le sigh. <\/p>\n<p>I find myself thinking about buying a Vespa a lot lately. I&#8217;ve been all like, &#8220;Hey, if I could cough up $2000 on a washer\/dryer and dining room set, why not for a motorcycle!?!&#8221; Then I usually follow up that hazy line of reasoning with a little talking-to about the health benefits of bicycles; the environmental damage caused by gas; how ontario is only sunny and warm half the year and then the vespa would sit in a garage all winter and be useless and need expensive tune-ups in the spring; and most importantly how it would INSTANTLY get stolen. Yet still&#8230; I WANT ONE.<\/p>\n<p>Went to my last yoga class for a while (until the studio re-opens) last night. I got all excited because there was a lady there who looked a lot like <lj user=\"chipmonkee\"> and I thought, ooh! we can go hang out and I can show her my condo and maybe we can shop at Winners together! But it turned out not to be her, and in the crushing disappointment, I felt I had to go do some shopping damage at Winners all by myself. I bought some comfy shoes (as a matter of necessity &#8211; my feet were slaughtered from the heels I&#8217;d worn to work that morning, and I needed ones that would give me blisters in fresh, as-yet-unwounded places), and then I decided I needed a new bra. Make that two new bras &#8212; how could I pass up a $40 lime green Lejaby? And of course what with BC and San Diego coming up, two small summery tops were definetly in order. And a little cream cardigan with rosebuds. All in all, I should avoid Winners like the plague. It tempts me in the same evil way that PriceClub tempts JVL. (But, but&#8230; the shoes have little white leather trilliums on them! Our provincial flower! For Ontario government, get it? I *had* to buy them!)<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, in this hideously long update, our old roommate (that&#8217;s &#8220;Mr. Paint Tray Borrower&#8221; to you LJ kids), was supposed to move out yesterday. Yesterday seems to have stretched into today, and I pray to God it doesn&#8217;t sort of lean over into tomorrow too, or so help me, blood may be shed.<br \/>\nI. Need. More. Space. Really, really badly.<\/p>\n<p>ps &#8211; I still haven&#8217;t seen SW:ROTS yet. JVL and I were going to try tonight, but no dice. Maybe on Sunday? Want to seeeeee iiiiit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I feel like my head is made out of doggie kibble. Maybe it&#8217;s the result of too many sugar-free, starch-free days (this is my last &#8220;Phase 1&#8221; day &#8211; hoorah!). Maybe it&#8217;s because I&#8217;ve been reading Marian Keyes slightly trashy chicklit novels like they&#8217;re going out of style. Maybe it&#8217;s the mocking look that my <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/archives\/961\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consciousness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}