Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
It's been a rough night for a few different reasons, and I slacked around reading blogs for a long while before studying. But I did study -- just verbal -- and took another diagnostic. Still being careless in the reading comprehension questions. Gotta stop that. Gotta arse myself to be methodical about this drivel. It's not beyond me; I'm just being an impatient git. Anyway, should be meeting a GRE tutor dude tomorrow morning, and I'll see if he can help me out at all with the math stuff, which is beyond me, but will, I hope, get less so by the end of the month.
The weekend, by the way, was wonderful. K. and I ate groaning boards full of Vietnamese and Greek food and watched The Magic Flute and slept and did Greek (well, she did Greek and then let me sound out the words and try to reverse-engineer them using my sketchy memory and her excellent translations) and read novels in the bathtub. Then the rest of the Coven of Doom came over and we had bruschetta and deviled eggs and zucchini fritters and exceedingly caprine cheese. After that, we watched the Puppy Bowl, about which I can say only... well, uh... I... I got nothing. It was so profoundly profoundly wrong in so very many ways. I couldn't lay out a fraction of what a solid hour and a half of the thing did to our poor vulnerable little minds. Mein Gott in Himmel. The WRONG!
There's one more thing. Today's a year since K. and I both shuffled our feet and blushed and muttered to each other (over IM) that sight unseen and of all confounded notions we both sort of well um seemed to be developing a bit of a thing for one another in some manner of speaking if one takes one's meaning and it's not horribly importunate to say so.
Man.
What a life this is.
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(3)
04:48:02 AM,Monday 7 February 2005
It's 3:00. I've been screwing around on the internet for an hour and a half. Booo. But now I'm gonna log off and study. Yaaay.
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(2)
02:53:44 AM,Friday 4 February 2005
Dum-de-dee, rubbing Ralph Lauren brand Paw Balm into the hind foot of what may or may not be a malingering westie. Ok, I'm actually pretty sure he's not faking, 'cause he's pretty guileless, even for a puppy, but I don't know what the problem is, or why he sometimes seems unable to put any weight on it and sometimes gambols about on all fours like a fat little weanling. Hm. I don't know how this is gonna work. I now have to walk the dog every morning, which adds a half an hour onto my day (still unclear whether I'm being paid at my regular rate or at a lower dog-walking rate). My coworker is sometimes on time and sometimes up to forty minutes late. My commute is about forty minutes. It adds up. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have to be at class by 5:30, which usually means I need to be up by 4:00. If I get to sleep right at 10:00, that gives me six hours, but that's sometimes impossible due to, y'know, food and showers and errands and insomnia and stuff. But assuming I do get six hours for those two days, I'm not badly off. Trouble is, I tend to need about eight to function at peak efficiency. I can store it up by sleeping for twelve hours at a time on weekends, but that's a drag, 'cause I wanna do stuff. Fridays I'm totally beat; I usually spend the night at K.'s, so that means I can't sleep more than about three hours during the day unless I want to be keeping vigil all night. So that leaves Mondays and Wednesdays to make up the debt. And they keep being spoken for, one reason or another. I guess I'll have to be either a twitchy psycho or a slug again this weekend. Draggage.
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(5)
08:00:05 AM,Thursday 3 February 2005
So I didn't actually get to the test, but I did several hours of drills and lessons and am now exactly at the 50% mark in the Kaplan review plan. It's just as well, really, 'cause right when I finished my employer started calling me about every ten minutes, and I don't know if it's possible to pause those things so I might have just screwed it up if I'd soldiered on. And, um, ok, I admit that I did take a few breaks in the middle to furtively glance through the bloggage... but I still count tonight a success.
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06:36:25 AM,Thursday 3 February 2005
The noise my Kaplan review program thingie (which is currently doing me a world of good, in that sock-fulla-quarters kind of way) makes when I get a right answer sounds just like the Bad Idea Bears.
"It's only a Long Island Iced Tea! They're so sweet and delicious!" ("Yaaaay!") "Take her home -- she's wasted!" ("Yaaaay!") "We became Scientologists!" ("Yaaaay!")
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(7)
03:56:38 AM,Thursday 3 February 2005
I know this is a little late, but -- how goddamn awesome is my brother?!!?
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08:20:20 AM,Wednesday 2 February 2005
Vote for Fr. Tommy at WereTheyHot or it's twenty minutes in the vellum hut!
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05:54:39 AM,Wednesday 2 February 2005
Took the test. Wow, I suck. My most recent score is 240 points lower than my original score. The good news is that I was trying to do things as slapdash as possible (since, on the last diagnostic I took, I ran out of time), and finished up with a good 15-20 minutes left on each test. A lot of my errors were dumbass careless ones (though several on the math were due to procedural misconceptions, which I have to watch), so if I work at a more measured pace next time, I should be able to bring it up a little bit. Here's hoping. Guh.
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03:34:25 AM,Wednesday 2 February 2005
Ooh! Manga-style Chick tracts -- all the misinformation, just half the hate!
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(9)
06:23:04 AM,Tuesday 1 February 2005
I have some distressing news. Over the weekend, I was provisionally diagnosed with Idiopathic Adult-Onset Youthful Tendency Disorder. Prognosis remains uncertain.
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(1)
06:02:16 AM,Tuesday 1 February 2005
I did the diagnostic. I'm currently writing Lycidas out in long-hand. But I paused for a second to skim-over this thread and especially to re-read this article. It's all very sobering. But look: I don't want a job in academia. I'm reasonably sure I don't want a PhD. I want to read books closely, and I want to be forced to think and write about them. I know that, left to my own devices, I'll never stop reading, but I'll never start writing again, either. If I were to go to graduate school, it would be with the expectation that I'd go back to the MacDonald's line two years later. That's fine with me. I certainly don't have any higher aspirations, money-wise. I'm resigned to being a minimum-wage schlub for most of my life, and I'm sure it'll be better for my soul in the long run. I just want to see. I've got a job for now, and it lets me apply to other jobs without sweating and panting. So one among 'em will be the job of English Lit Monkey; if they make me pay them, there's a good chance I won't be able to go, though in-state tuition costs at Hunter are almost low enough that I can fantasize about it anyway. But if my tests come out all shiny and I do well in this class and I write a defensible, polished essay for the first time in my life and it all makes 'em think that they might as well pay me, what's it to me to stop 'em? I went to St. John's to be trained as a generalist. Now I've found a nice narrow field I'd be happy to roll about in for as long as it can stand me -- why not take a brain-grazing idyll, and consequences be damned?
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(10)
04:58:52 AM,Tuesday 1 February 2005
THE DOG ATE MY MILTON.
Took it right out of my goddamn backpack while I was attending Mrs. A. He drooled on my wombat, too. Good thing he didn't get the cashmere sweater. Little finchface. Arrgh. It's only page 22 that's obliterated, but it's still a GIANT PAIN IN THE ARSE. {looks daggers}
Resolution for the month of February:
Every night, when I get to work, I won't be allowed to read the blogs or ljs until I complete a GRE practice test. I can read my email, but that's it. No random web browsing, either. I'll start with the paper diagnostic the tutor dude sent me, then the Princeton Review CD-ROM, then the Kaplan tutorial system, working through the drills and lessons and only stopping after I've gotten to and finished a test, and then when that whole system is up, I'll finish with the official ETS computer tests. If it ain't quite February 25th by the time all the computer tests have been worked through, I'll go onto the pen-and-paper ones. It's a short month; I've got enough to hold me. After each one, I'll go through the math questions I got wrong and make a list of the concepts I need to review. I've noticed that my friends have been keeping up with their New Year's Resolutions by blogging updates on their progress. I'll do the same; if I do it, I'll say so, and if I don't, I'll say so too. I won't castigate myself or try to do two tests the next night, but I'll make it all a matter of public record, and we'll see how that'll work. Awright? I think I'm gonna give myself weekends off, though if I want to swap out a day from the workweek (if I have lots of homework or something) with a weekend, that'll be fair.
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06:37:25 AM,Monday 31 January 2005
Ha-Ha! It was prescient of me to name the wombat R. gave me last night Caractacus, 'cause now I can say with confidence that his uniform consists of a pair of slightly kinked whiskers and a tag reading "Harwil Melbourne". I've made it a special study of mine to remember scientific names of beings animalculous like the song thrush, Turdus turdus, and the European grosbeak, Coccothraustes coccothraustes coccothraustes, which provide a sterling memory-to-species ratio. I don't think I'm at liberty to show you any of my acrostics, but I'll solicit independent confirmation that there's a butt-load of 'em. Let's see... eligiacs? Hm. I promised K. I'd find a more specific definition of bucolic diaeresis for her, and it turns out I had it totally wrong, so it's as well that I looked it up. I thought it had something to do with yokels hypersyllabificating their diphthongs or something, but it turns out it's just that rustic poetry gets recognition credit for "shave and a haircut" endings. Awright, so where was I? My Latin ain't what it used to be, so I'm doing it limeystyle; I hope you'll forgive me. And his crimes are many and varied, as I'm sure you know, so here's just one couplet, containing a representative sample. (Props to Mr. Gaiman for my knowledge of the subject.)
Smothered his guests. Gave appointments to men with gargantuan winkles.
Killed little boys for their guts. Said he was "Mom of the Gods".
I regret to confess that I can't tell you what is meant by "mamelon" and "ravelin", though I must have looked 'em up a half-dozen times in my young life. Here goes Google: oh, yeah, that's right -- a mamelon is a manmade mound used in fortifications, and a ravelin is the same, except that it's rather more of a ridge. Novices seem to be all over Tactics these days, so I can't hope to keep up. Never sat a gee in my life, so that's another strike against me -- but, damnit, I've still got my pride.
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(5)
05:47:15 AM,Monday 31 January 2005
I did nothing but sleep all day while my girlfriend studied Greek and wrote an essay on Erasmus, though I did wake up once for a brief but operatic egg-poaching adventure around 4:00. Tonight, she kissed me awake, loaded me up with the last of the pizza she'd saved from dinner, and gave me full usufruct of her shower before I trundled off to work. I felt loved but terribly indolent, like a grub. Now I'm here, looking up words from Lycidas and wrangling my employer's new puppy, who won't stay in his crate and keeps piddling on the corkboard. Also, I dreamed that the Devil was a four-foot-tall brass doorknocker encrusted with red and purple rhinestones.
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04:51:36 AM,Monday 31 January 2005
My brother just sent me a link to this: How to Defend yourself With An Umbrella. Brilliant, wot?
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(5)
02:39:28 AM,Monday 31 January 2005
Ok, so I wasn't actually writ upon in firey letters by a ravenous chitinous radiator. It was (as you'll know if you followed the link) Through The Rabbit Hole Day, and I totally would have come up with a brilliant denoument for the whole thing except I was busy from 8:00 on and didn't have a chance to blog again until it was all over. Not that the day was empty of incident. I got frenched by a particolored pitbull ("She likes to jump", her owner said. So she did. Sweet pup. Yeeucch.), the super came by and fixed not only our rotten plaster-balloon ceiling but also our mailboxes, so we were able to get our mail for the first time in two weeks! A check from Mount Sinai, a free GRE diagnostic, and pre-approval for a Gold American Express Card (would there be any advantage to getting one, or is it just something rich people do to make the insides of their wallets shinier?) Then I slept and dreamed I was riding on a bus, making people grand presents of laboriously hand-whipped (I mean hand, like, no egg-beater or nothing) bowls of butterscotch pudding. I woke up and went to class and GLORY, it's gonna be fantastic. There are two other post-baccalaureate students, so I don't feel too out of place, and the professor (the ex gay 70's porn star, though to be honest you wouldn't know it to look at him) is in sight and sound a perfect body double of Robert Preston from Victor/Victoria. Smart as a clipper ship, crazy exuberant, and so in love with Milton it puts pickles in your eyes. We're starting with Obsequies to the memorie of Mr. Edward King, Shipwrecked, which is why I posted the previous. A seminar class again! I could plotz.
Oh, and Antony, damnit, went sweet on me after two hours of glorious raunch. Rrrgh. But now I'm wearing Scarecrow on my wrists and Roadhouse on my neck and I can't stand it I smell so good. Like back-alley weeds in an empty old beer bottle. Just perfect.
Er, p.s. to anyone reading myrrhash: Sorry for spamming your friends' lists; I used an errant umlaut and messed up the feed. It's back now, and shouldn't happen again. Many 'pologies.
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(1)
05:38:00 AM,Friday 28 January 2005
Lycidas, read aloud.
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04:49:56 AM,Friday 28 January 2005
She's awake. If she thought it was strange that I was wearing my hoodie, she didn't say anything. Back in the kitchen. Ok, what you're supposed to do when something happens to you is turn your diary from daydreams and kvetching into a log for posterity. So I made an assessment of my senses.
Taste: Ate a cookie from the cookie jar. Tastes pretty good, though I wish they had flavors besides oatmeal raisin. No dulling or heightening that I can tell, though my mouth seems to be watering a little more than usual. May be able to chock that up to hunger.
Smell: I come not to praise Caesar, but to shag him senseless. Faux ambergris = mmmph!
Hearing: Nope. Starting to think I haven't gotten any superpowers. Damnit.
Sight: Took my glasses off. No dice. The world still looks like a #*&$@ Monet painting.
Touch: Ok, yeah, I guess... but no, still, not exactly, y'know? Like I said, it's in my flesh, or rather, under it (It's kind of a tactile illusion; sometimes when I run my fingers over it, it seems ever-so-slightly raised, and sometimes ever-so-slightly sunken. Like one of those box puzzles.), but it's not like anything's altered. I'm no more or less sensitive to heat, cold, pressure, pain... I dunno. Oop, my coworker's here. On with the hoodie.
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07:59:27 AM,Thursday 27 January 2005
There's cagey and then there's cracked.
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07:28:03 AM,Thursday 27 January 2005
The baby monitor is making a noise like the West Wind. Or maybe I'm just getting paranoid.
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07:21:54 AM,Thursday 27 January 2005
