general update

because i've been overly philosophical/meandering lately, i haven't been a very good general update-er.
so, here goes.

though i've already covered this somewhat, going home for easter was great. i left state college thursday afternoon and spent a pleasant few hours on the greyhound alternating between speaking with an enlightened pro-lifer (yes, they exist!) and sleeping/reading/knitting. i finally arrived in king of prussia around 5pm and waded across several lanes of very scary kop traffic before stopping at the chili's and waiting, impatiently, for mike paul. *squeal* mike paul!
we had a wonderful time hanging out before gathering matthew from the airport. and i had a quite pleasant experience in the ladies' room in the airport marriot (mostly, it was clean and well-stocked with soft toilet and facial tissues). matt's flight came in on time and we all headed home to be dropped off by wonderful mike paul and spend some quality snuggle/movie watching time in matt's basement. it was good to see my baby. and, yeah, he thought the socks were sweet.

fast forward a few days and i'm again departing state college on a thursday, though this time early evening and accompanied by a friend of anita's and nick: andrew. he was headed toward tekkoshocon in pittsburgh and made for pleasant conversation along the road to 'toon town. we, unfortunately, had to strike up a talk with a rather bigoted (and possibly nutty) older gentleman who insisted on telling us about his UFO experiences and ..other things that i'd rather forget.
upon reaching altoona, i ended up riding the local inefficient bus system for about three hours (not exaggerating) until i could finally get to the campus where i had some nice coffee along with a mediocre sandwich. i also caved and bought a cookie. and realized that i "lost" my keys (turns out i actually just forgot them in my room in state college.. thank goodness!).
kira came and collected me and we went to her house, made a beer run, stayed up late.. in general, had a good time.
the conference went very well, but since i've already bored you with tedious details.. it was good. i presented (arguably better than any of my peers), was recommended for submissions to gertrude, a queer literary magazine, and praised for my criticism. my friend/acquaintance/peer cameron (of "medea" fame.. he was jason) said that he expects to read my criticism sometime in the future in some vastly published journal. he requested, in fact, that i take it easy on his works (he's going for an m.f.a. in poetry). it impressed me that someone, a peer, could recognize my worth like that and project such impressive things for me. needless to say, i was in a perfectly fantastic mood after that.

saturday, i went home and dealt briefly with a very unpleasant hispanic girl from philly. she insisted on tapping her foot in the air. the foot, raucously clad in 4-inch heeled, patent leather (read: shitty and cheap), squeaked everytime she tapped. i caught her eye and let her know that it was squeaking and she says "so, what about it?" in the meanest tone she could conjure. "could you please stop?" and her response? "well, it's a habit, so ..no" in similarly bitchy fashion. it was really uncalled for. i was very polite, i think and she just.. grrr. made it seem like i was asking for something completely ridiculous. i don't understand why people can't just be polite. i was trying to read for goodness sake! and she was squeaking!

in any case.. i'm back from that conference and i've been trying to catch up. italian studying (i have an oral exam thursday) is going well and reading is going equally well: finished the vulgar streak and working on mr. sammler's planet along with the puttermusser papers which i much enjoy. cynthia ozick = HEART. "paradise lost" is, unfortunately, not faring so well and i find myself uncomfortably relying on sparknotes.
today, i had an interview for the peer tutoring class. it went very well and i'll be scheduled for the class very soon. yay!
shortly after that, i studied for the italian oral exam with a classmate. we spent a great deal of our time together with me teaching her, through various methods, how to pronounce italian. it was fun for me to teach and i definitely helped her. it was also good to get a little practice with the language. while christine didn't help me, really, with my italian.. it was exceedingly flattering for her to praise my teaching ability and for me to be able to see her progress in her pronunciation. i'm proud of myself.

later today, i went to see janet lyon, english honors advisor who finally got back to me about applying to the honors college. she recommends i go ahead, though it'll be tough. after a brief conference with her, though, we both realized that it won't really be that much work: just 14 credits, 3 of which will be my thesis. so, 11 credits (roughly 4 classes) can easily fall into the two regular semesters i'm going through. if accepted (and i think i will be ::crosses fingers::), i'll schedule one honors course for next semester and hopefully honors option my peer tutoring class into counting for honors credit. otherwise, i'll hopefully work out other options. the thesis i can complete over the summer. yay! i even have a basic idea for it. something that i think will be both enlightening and wonderfully fun to work on.



this morning i was accosted by a squirrel. but, for the readers who may be faint of heart, i'll leave out the details only to say that i defended, verily, my bagel and did not catch rabies.

so, not that i've spent far too long typing this and wasted way too much of your time.. back to work! (links to come as edits later)