Andare, Partire, Tornare ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hawaiian pop to start the morning right! I rode in this morning with a big, blousy woman with a great head of hair who was blasting hawaiian-language pop music out of her car's tinny little speakers. It would have been an entertaining ride, too, if she hadn't been wearing so much perfume that merged with the ungodly pollen levels we've got going right now to cause my head to fill up with mass quantities of snot. So I'm once again coughing like a tuberculosis patient. Had a group of high-schoolers in to tour the museum and the gallery. They are getting precisely zero educational value out of their trip, which I'm sure was not exactly their teacher's intent. The exhibit, which is a cool one of children's clothing and games, is getting ignored, while they sit down at the little kiddie tables and put together a giant puzzle of the United States, or play with the topsy-turvey dolls as they discuss the sort of crucial high-school gossip that I was never privy to. But then, that's a different story, and a different ugly chapter in my personal life, innit? I should have put money down on the probability that my roommate would choose to get by our little scrap by pretending it never happened. She was cheerful and chatty yesterday evening, and although she did offer a six word apology, I don't think it counts because it was buried in a torrent information on precisely how badly her day sucked yesterday (which presumably served to justify her taking my head off). The apology was, "sorry for snapping at you yesterday..." and, as I said, was the tiny buried nugget within a thick chocolaty coating of how bad her work day was. I did not point out that Delta canceling their flights and sending their people over to her airline was in any way my fault, which took an act of great restraint on my part. But anyway, we're all happy again, more or less, which means I don't have to really get evil and give my other ticket to Bonnie Raitt for the Sunday concert away to somebody else. Still struggling with my Anita Blake fic, which refuses to take shape. I'm having problems writing about Venice (where I'm setting the story) without sounding like an overwrought cliche - Venice encourages that sort of thing, really, so I can probably get away with some of it, but I still want to sharpen my edges a bit more. The thing is, there have been acres and acres of books written on Italy, (most of them live on my shelves) and it's difficult to say something that's original, not patronizing, descriptive, and still allows my story to move forward. Still and all, the quality of fanfic is so widely varied that I flatter myself I can write something that, while not great, is still more readable than 80% of the stuff that's out there. Not that spending time on a fanfic is in any way helping with the thesis writing. Oh, but I did find that Chessica, one of the Italy Four, is going to North Carolina for her doctorate, so go her. She said Rutgers flat-out lied to her about some stuff, the grad students ignored her, she was told she'd be a "lesser student" (HUH?) and the town was a shithole. So screw them, they're losing a great person and an awesome scholar and teacher. Hopefully we two can go up to Boston to visit Kateh and Chessica's old roommate NascarElvisFan at some point, too. I've never been to Boston, and I'm really interested in seeing it. 10:53 a.m. - 2002-04-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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