in memoria

I have no time to think about things such as old friends and death because I have papers to write! But alas, life throws you curve balls when you least expect it.

I worked with Marge in Tampa and she was a good friend. You knew she was a good friend because she always told it like it is, never held back to save your feelings, but loved you despite your faults. That was Marge. She worked until the end, when cancer finally took her. She even wore her Kerry/Edwards shirt as a gown in the hospital for surgery. I'm sorry we couldn't give her Florida this time around either. I wish I could have been there to see her make the doctors so mad.

An old friend called me last night, one of the oldest of friends, to tell me that Marge passed away yesterday morning. I haven't seen her in two and a half years, and somehow I always expected she'd be around. She's gone now, but as she gave life abundantly, I will continue to give the same wherever I can. I am priviledged to call her my friend.

27 things i want to do when i'm 27

Stolen from E (although I get 27 and she only gets 25):

*Sidenote: I've stolen this with the understanding that if I don't realistically get to all this stuff this year, it just gets bumped back to the next.

1. Get married
2. Travel in Europe
3. Finish the Lord of the Rings books
4. Go dancing at a gay club
5. Go to the beach
6. Eat really healthy food and maintain weight loss
7. Rearrange all the furniture in my house
8. Get new glasses
9. Cut my hair short again
10. See Melissa Ferrick at least twice
11. Get my own radio show on WEFT
12. Continue singing with Amasong
13. Watch all of the remaining seasons of Star Trek that I haven't seen yet
14. Go to the movies alone a few times
15. Visit Memphis, St. Louis, Madison, San Francisco, and Chicago
16. Do the Serenity Prayer cross-stitch I've been wanting to work on forever!
17. Read Bust, MacWorld, and Paste magazines
18. Spend a lot of time at Pages for All Ages
19. Ride a bike to campus and back
20. Plant a garden
21. Forgive all of the people who've hurt me
22. Fall recklessly in love
23. Publish an article in a journal
24. Read 4 academic books outside of classes
25. Keep up with blogging
26. Do the collage that's been floating around in my head for 2 years
27. Actually write a novel for NaNo month this year!

Wow, that's quite a list. I guess I won't have any time to talk to any of you when I'm 27, cause I'll be very busy!

scholarship

I just wanted to share with you the joy that is Google Scholar. I used it yesterday for research, and what is wonderful about it is that it gives you a list of where the source that you're looking at has been cited. Brilliance! I know WorldCat can do this, but it's soooo slow. Google does it in seconds. So if you need a quickie approach to research, this is the way to go (or one way to go)

i must be doing the wrong thing with my life!

Sarah asked me to tell you this story:

The other day I was in the grocery store, talking to this rather older lady about squash. Without knowing anything about me, she says "Too many women these days are getting masters degrees and PhDs and not getting married." When I told her that was me, she says "Well you better hurry up and get married and have babies because if you don't soon you'll be too old and you won't even know how it happened."

Well, folks, I guess I better quit grad school and start having babies. Those things are sure to make me happier than any of this learning nonsense does. What was I thinking?

resolutions

I must finish my cross-stitch before I can work on these papers. Cross-stitch allows me to procrastinate for hours at a time, so if I finish it and I haven't started a new one yet, than I can focus right? The problem is, the idea of spending another day on the couch watching Babylon 5 and cross-stitching seems far more appealing than the idea of work. Where has my discipline gone? Why can't I just buckle down and get it all done. Another problem is, as I've been told, procrastination is fear. And I'm procrastinating on this one big time, because I'm pretty afraid of not being able to achieve greatness and getting a bad grade. And believe me, this is unfortunately not outside the realm of possibility. I'll be thrilled when this semester is over.

Right now, I'm glad it's break, and that I took a sick day yesterday because I really needed one. I need to sort out some things now, think about papers and what I can get done before I go spend 4 days in Philly. Why didn't I leave yesterday? I wish I had. I'd much rather be on vacation, already.

So kids, I best be off to working. I was up at 6:00 this morning, so I'm ready to start the day. It looks a bit dreary, but I'll make my way to the library and hit the books. Hurrah!

stitching

This gives a whole new name to communal sewing. Wish we had one of those in Champaign! I might actually learn to make my own clothes...

post of substance

I haven't had a post that says anything in a long time. I don't know why it seems much more productive to just post pictures of the cats, but alas, that's where it's been recently. But I thought it was about time I said something about something.

I finished Wasted, a memoir by an anorexic and bulimic woman that had me glued to the pages, literally. I thought the best part about this memoir was how she absolutely captured perfectly how crazy having an eating disorder makes you. It wasn't even so much the actually binging, thinking she was fat, throwing up, or starving herself that truly demonstrated her insanity. It was the fact that she thought this was the only option for a way of life, the way she lied to herself that she had to live that way to remain sane. She talked about the way our culture might have promoted her eating disorder behavior, but that ultimately it became an addiction, and then it didn't matter how society pressured her, because she was compelled to do it from something internal.

Anyway, for as much as feminism questions the origins of eating disorders and blames the media for them, I wonder what effect that kind of critique can really have. Ultimately, an individual woman has to choose to live, as Marya Hornbacher says in this book. And even when they make the choice to live, they still live with the thoughts of the eating disorder every day. Such is the nature of addiction. Her experience was really an interesting critique of feminism. She studied and studied, but it was never enough to help her take care of herself. Interesting.

crockpots

In honor of my hard work towards better health, my mom sent me this lovely crockpot in the mail. I can't wait to make my baked apples in this later this week. I think I can cook a whole chicken in here!



Also, Elijah promptly jumped in to guard the box.



He's very helpful!

Happy Halloween!

Here's my Pippi Longstocking hair. I didn't go to any parties, but I dressed as Pippi for work yesterday, and lots of people didn't even know who she is. Sad!

Anyway, I put on a skirt that hasn't fit me in a long time, and found out today that I lost 7 lbs this month. Go me!