|
| Update: short
No more internet at home, so am writing this very quickly. Dentist tomorrow to fix cracked tooth. Incredible headache the past few days, really a jawache but it's spread to my cheekbones, so basically my face just freaking hurts. Haven't been able to chew on one side of my mouth since before Christmas due to untreated crack. So tomorrow's drill will be mixed blessing.
Applications still kind of a disaster (so, pretty unfortunate time to have internet crash at home). One of the already-applied-to places sent me an email yesterday informing me that I "might" want to submit a new research proposal since the current one is totally incomplete and "gives no indication [I] have an understanding of existing arguments in [my] field." You know, I forget how competitive academia can be, and when I remember I really wish I'd set myself up for doing practically anything else in the world with my life. Anyway so I'm re-writing for that place, and fretting about what other places are thinking of my ridiculous little 500 word proposal, and stressing about how others aren't writing back to me or sending out my transcripts or references. Typical.
And now, my hour of internet is just about up. It's almost like the old days at internet cafes, except waaaay less fun. | | |
| PS Christmas: snowy, sweet, small. | | |
| Am now in the midst of complete PhD-app frenzy. Looking at this as an exercise in "just getting it done." My first deadline is January 15th, which seemed like a long way off-- it's a whole other year!-- until I suddenly realized how close Christmas and New Years' Eve are. Oh, dear. So! Christmas stuff's in the mail, presents all ready to be wrapped, all online applications underway (times six), and of course the one due first is a paper one that has to be in the mail by... oh... pretty much now. Meanwhile, fortunately the visa application is all filled out except the "essay," which I finally looked back at and realized, it's optional, and should basically just say, "hey, I'm trying to get a phd over there, all right? Let me have a visa please, so I can start working and be able to feed myself as a student!" hm, or maybe not even that.
So if I'm not as communicative in the very near future, please don't be offended! I miss you all lots and will be making great strides to be where you are. Well. Depending on where you live. Otherwise, I'm thinking fondly of you while scheming to live even farther away from you again. But don't take it personally. Alas, how I miss everybody! -Il Typhoon | | |
| About a month ago I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I'd just swallowed a bug- but didn't think much of it, since people swallow spiders pretty often in their sleep (sorry, but it's true) and I tend to wake up a lot anyway. Turns out it was a chunk of one of my back molars, which I've been gnashing together in my sleep for years now, but the casualties are just starting to roll in. I had a crown put on a tooth in February, and now I have to have one put on its next door neighbor. The really unfortunate thing- besides the size of the bill for crowning a tooth- is that the dentist's office is booked until January, so I'm not allowed to chew on the left side of my mouth for the next three weeks. Oy ve.
So now I have to sleep with a mouthguard, which is pretty hilarious- I feel like I'm waiting for my college rugby team to wake me up in the middle of the night for tackling drills or something. (totally something they'd have done) It's extremely uncomfortable, and I'm not great at sleeping to begin with, obviously. So, new adventures.
I'm now applying for *seven* PhD programs, not 3. Oops. It's a lot to get done by next month, but actually most of the applications are online, and I'm almost done with the first few (and will be cutting and pasting a lot from there). Wow, good thing! My first deadline is January 15th... next one February 5th... which really isn't long now, and that one has to be by mail! Yowzer. See what would happen to me if I didn't blog. This and my actual journal are the only things keeping track of actual dates and times in my life right now.
I have to say, there is one aspect of this generally tough year that's been pretty amazing. Just in the past month or two, I've been in actual correspondence with literary theorists (in my favorite little micro-field), great minds and good people, some of them people who have inspired me for years. And this morning's email took the cake. There was this one guy who initially got me into said micro-field, or at least, the first person I saw articulate what I'd already been thinking- I read his book in 2004, and started emailing him in 2005. For whatever combination of reasons, he never wrote me back- including earlier this year. But last night, on a whim I just popped him "one last email," which was short, direct, and totally informal: "I want to study x. Are you interested?" And sure enough, this morning I had an email from him saying, "Sounds very interesting. Looking forward to meeting you." !!! Ah, closure. And sometimes, opensure. | | |
| What the rest of my family eats for Christmas dinner:
ham
bread rolls
wild rice or other hearty soup (full of cream)
mashed potatoes
pickled herring (all of 2 people in the family actually like this stuff, but we always have to serve it anyway)
midwestern "fruit salad" (grapes, strawberries, mandarin orange bits, jello, lots of whipped cream)
cherry pie with whipped cream
at least one glass of milk
Swedish rice pudding, with cinnamon and lingonberry jam
(every year, the chef- usually my mom- hides an almond in the rice pudding, and whoever gets the almond is supposed to have the luckiest year. once my dad got it twice in a row, and ended up having heart surgery, a new job that required a move, and all the extra stress that both of those things entailed. we've taken this to mean something about unexpected chances to count our blessings!)
What I ate for Christmas dinner this year: (we had it early due to scheduling constraints- humbug!)
a lovely hearty noodly soup my mom made (no cream)
bread roll with no butter
fresh strawberries
mashed potatoes with soy margarine
non-dairy cherry pie with no stuff on it (thanks, Mom!)
generous helpings of ice water
rice pudding made with soymilk :)
It's a lot of extra work for my mom, but the reward is that nobody gets sick at Christmas dinner- so worth it!
The gang included my cousins-- aged 8 through 41-- my aunt and uncle, who will be in Alabama by New Years', my cousin's new girlfriend who has two young kids and was awesome, we hope to see her again-- and me and my folks. Christmas with the cutest branch of my family (I know I'm biased, but what can you do!), including my little nephew, was really when we went to see them for Thanksgiving. Christmas Eve this year will be me and my folks, perhaps with a phone call to my nephew and his parents. I'm grateful to be here with my parents for it, though. A year ago it took me a few long flights, and an even longer night spent in the airport in Chicago, snowed in, before I made it home for Christmas Eve. Several human angels helped me through, that time; hopefully this year I won't be asking so much of the Universe.
I don't know how many of you out there are celebrating Hannukah, but if that's you, Happy Hannukah! Enjoy. | | |
|
