Bit of Ivory

So. Who all’s going to Lumos?

The registration price will go up after Halloween, so I’m trying to get things coordinated. I’m totally there, but I’d like to figure out rooming arrangements before I make any hotel reservations.

Jen and I also want to take in the Utah Shakespearean Festival right before. Cedar City is about 2 hours away from Vegas. We’d go to Cedar City on Monday, see the plays until Wednesday night, and then drive on to Vegas Thursday morning. Anyone who wants to join us is certainly welcome.

So who’s up for some William and Harry next July?

Went with my sisters and their friend to see Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit tonight.

Dude. So. Funny.

I haven’t laughed that hard in the theatre since we saw Finding Nemo in Orlando and I was almost on the floor at the whale-speak part. I’m still giggling over a few parts. I want to see it again!

Except that I have to see Serenity again first. Luckily, I’m seeing it tomorrow morning with . Which means we can drag the rest of the fam with us on Monday night to Wallace and Gromit.

And then I have to see Elizabethtown this coming weekend. And then I have to see the new Pride and Prejudice. And after that is Goblet of Fire.

Dude. Jordan Commons is going to be getting a LOT of my money in the coming weeks.

Well, almost. I asked Dr. Mason to sign it tonight, and he said he’d look over it and pass it on to the other two signatures I still need– and that I didn’t have to worry about losing my funding, ’cause they’ll consider it in. I may have to make a few small proofreading-type changes, but otherwise I’m sure I’m good.

And I’m 48 hours early! Go me!

So, for those of you who are even remotely interested, here it is in all its nearly-final glory:
[Read more →]

I officially have one signature out of six on my prospectus, and have made the necessary changes he recommended. The second is promised, I just need to get it tomorrow. I still have to pitch the idea to the prof I want to be my second reader–he’s got office hours tomorrow, so I can ambush him then. Maybe I should send an e-mail to make sure he knows I’m coming?

After that, well, we’ll see. I’ve got a PhD application workshop tomorrow that’ll be run by the owner of one of the other signatures I need. Luckily, I’ve had all three of the remaining profs as teachers recently— the British Lit emphasis advisor was my Victorian Lit teacher last semester; the Assistant Chair taught my Critical Theory class in spring, and the Graduate Coordinator taught the undergraduate 18th-century lit class I took my first semester. Also luckily, those three signatures are usually just hoops you have to jump through. Getting a hold of them all will be the hardest part, methinks.

And then my prospectus will be IN, and the real fun– writing the dang thesis itself– will begin.

In the meantime, my grandpa’s been in the hospital since Sunday with internal bleeding. Not good. They’re hopeful they’ve solved the problem, but man– he’s the only grandpa I have left.

Dude. Good movie.

Umm. Wanna go see it again. And maybe I’ll understand Mal better the next time around. Took me awhile to figure out what in the heck he was saying.

And. . . DVDs are in my future. Yeah.

When did it turn into fall? This is bad. Not that I don’t like fall– I do. I just have too much I was supposed to do this summer. Now I’m scrambling at the last minute.

I know, I know. What else is new?

I’d like it better, though, if it was a nice fall. Sweater-weather, you know? But no. Instead we get freezing winds, and I can’t even enjoy crunching the leaves, because it rained all day and soaked them. Hmph. And I could see my breath when I walked home from work today.

Draft of prospectus is nearly done. Going to finish draft of Justification portion tomorrow, when I’m not so tired. Got 3 hours of sleep last night, after being up till four working on a presentation on Dorothy L. Sayers and her contemporaries. Must sleep soon. Presentation went well, though. At least I’m keeping up with my coursework, even if it is coming down to crunch time with the prospectus thing.

In the meantime, I’m moved to do a rhetorical analysis of Dumbledore’s persuasive discourse in Harry Potter. Except that I know next to nothing about rhetoric. And I already have three papers I could/want to write about HP.

I’d also like to analyze the rhetoric of shipper essays.

And I’m considering going for a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition rather than literature.

Gah.

Stay safe, Susan (and family!) and Christine (and family, including new baby!), and everyone else that’s in the path of Rita. I depend on hearing from you all as soon as possible after the storm passes.

In other news, I signed up for a PremiumListener account at Audible, and I qualified for two free books right away. So I downloaded Pride and Prejudice (unabridged, of course) and The Eyre Affair. Got about 30 minutes left on the former, and will start the latter next week. Excellent. They’ve also got a “My next listen” thing which works pretty much like a Netflix queue, so if I haven’t used up my two audiobook credits, it’ll automatically download the next thing on my list. Right now Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is at the top (unabridged, it’s like 32 hours long. :P), followed by The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy read by Stephen Fry. I think I’ll put The Curse of Chalian and Paladin of Souls on there next. Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility are waiting as well.

Yeah, I love having an iPod.

Saw Corpse Bride tonight. Quite enjoyable.

So last night I was driving home from school, listening to KSL to get traffic and weather together on the nines (a lifesaver when you commute, that). One of their morning DJs (although, if it’s a talk station, I guess you can’t really call them a DJ– morning personalities, maybe?) was doing a remote advertisment at the NordicTrack Workout Warehouse, which was having their Grand Opening that day. Amanda was gushing and flowing (as she usually does; Amanda gushes and flows over everything) about the great deals on home exercise equipment– including ellipticals starting at $200. I’ve wanted to get an elliptical, and have discussed it with mom. So I let mom know, and we dragged dad over last night to look. The $200 model was a small HealthRider. It doesn’t have power incline adjustment (it’s manual), and the tension runs off battery power rather than on a power cord. This suited us just fine, as we don’t really have room for the big models, and we’re all so out of shape that I doubt we’ll be much interested in doing any sort of an incline for a while yet. So, we bought one. Here’s to getting fit and thin again!

I’ve been thinking about buying an iPod for a while. I’d intended to get myself one as a graduation present to myself, in April. When I took out my student loan, I included $200 to buy the student edition of the Adobe Creative Suite (you just can’t beat that price, and my version of the software is now 2 versions old). But the last two weeks of driving back and forth with bad radio, sitting in a quiet office while editing, etc., made me change my mind. I’ll get the software as my graduation present.

I bought my iPod today.

It’s a 20 GB color model. I bought it at the BYU Bookstore, because I could get academic pricing there– $30 less than retail. It’s shiny and lovely and I’m naming it Hermione. I figure, I have a Harry (my desktop), three incarnations of Ginny (Ginny I, Ginny II, and Ginevra, all laptops), and I named a pine tree Ron. ‘Bout time I had a Hermione. Can’t wait to listen to Pottercast on her. Maybe, it’ll be while I’m working out on the elliptical.

Dad pointed out that it’s been 2 weeks since I posted. Oops. I really meant to post more often; I have the leisure time (well, not really, but I waste plenty of time procrastinating, and if I’m going to procrastinate I might as well procrastinate by writing an LJ entry as by doing anything else, like playing HP computer games or watching mindless drivel on TV), and I know how much I still like reading about all of you. So yeah. I need to post more.

The problem is that I don’t know what to write about. My day-to-day routine is pretty boring and static– I go to school, go to work, do homework, and– that’s about it. School itself is good. Classes are interesting, workload isn’t too heavy. I do need to buckle down and do my homework. Especially work for my thesis. I really need to get my prospectus in. This weekend is BYU-game free (hooray for bye weeks, and yet sad for bye weeks, ’cause, you know, no game), and I plan to spend most of it working on it. Work is pretty good, too. The stuff I’m working on is interesting to me, which makes the monotony of editing bearable. I desperately need the money (which is $1 more than I was told to expect, because I’m a grad student, yay!), though, so even if it wasn’t interesting, I’d stick it out. Looks good on my resume, too. Which is important.

The first payment of my student loan came through. Most of it went straight to tuition, but I got about $200 extra from it. Which is good, because I have to pay off my credit card soon, which has my bike on it. My bike that I’ve ridden once, becasue I’ve been either busy or sick almost every night since I got it. Best intentions. *sigh* Hopefully the second payment will come before the bill for my books is due. If it doesn’t, I’ll have to use my money that I’m making from my job, and save the loan for tuition next year. I guess it doesn’t really matter that much either way, as long as I don’t have to carry a balance on the card, or get another loan for next semester.

Gilmore Girls started again last night. Whee!

Considering that at about this time last year I was bawling my eyes out, the first week of school has gone pretty well. First there’s the job (which I haven’t started yet, but still), and just knowing that I have a way to earn money this semester that will look good on my resume and give me a heckuva lot of great experience makes me happy. Then there’s my classes. I’m taking the British Mystery Novel, in which we’re reading such things as Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dorothy Sayers’s Strong Poison, and Anne Perry’s The Cater Street Hangman. The reading schedule is going to be extremely light, and all the assignments sound like a lot of fun. So that’s good.

My other class is Research in Rhetoric, where we’re doing a survey of research methods used in the rhetoric and composition area. I’m the only person in the class (all 5 of us) who isn’t a rhetoric and comp major, or at least a English 115 teacher, so they have some practical applications for such a study. Me, not so much. I still think it’ll be good, though. I can always store the knowledge away for future use when I am a teacher. And who knows? Maybe I’ll figure out some new cool way to do research for literature.

And then I have thesis hours. This is the one area where I’m worried. Because I haven’t submitted my prospectus, you see. And I really need to. I’m going to spend most of the weekend reading Tolkien criticism, and I’m meeting with Dr. Walker on Tuesday, so hopefully I can get it in by the add/drop deadline. Once my prospectus is in, you see, I can take 3 thesis hours rather than 2, which would bring my total hours up to 9. Which is a good number.

I’ve already got my homework done for Tuesday, which is unheard of. So go me.

First BYU football game of the season tomorrow. Go Cougs.

Thoughts and prayers going out to those affected by Katrina. It’s all so horrible.