I keep looking at this sad, silly Blog of mine and think to myself, “Shouldn’t you update that right about now? Because you know that millions of your most dedicated readers are just salivating at the prospect of your innermost thoughts and feelings being published to the internet.”
And then I say, “Oooh, look at that shiny piece of tinfoil on the floor!”
But I digress.
Since Christmas, there has been a new year and a few weeks without the pain of grad school. The most exciting thing to happen is that Anthony and I are under contract to buy a condo here in DC. Nothing is written in stone yet, but all signs point to home ownership by Valentine’s Day.
For those of you who haven’t called or written in quite some time (please, don’t bother with the guilt; if I was really crying myself to sleep at night, I would have called you, I promise!), the condo we’re trying to buy is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom (plus parking!) extravaganza about a block away from where we live now. We have big plans for what we want to do with it, but for right now we’re focusing on just getting moved in.
We also recently got into quite the passive-aggressive pushing match with our slumlord because the City finally woke up and threatened him with fines if he didn’t address the heating issues in our building or the fire code violations (Martha, you will be so happy to know that you no longer need a key to exit our building – no getting locked in the vestibule ever again!). Our slumlord decided that it was our fault that he had to spend money to fix all of his violations so he is no longer speaking to us and also decided to raise our rent for the second time in less than six months (that is an almost 29% increase on our original rent – if only he were constrained by rental control laws!). Basically, he wants us to pay for the money he had to spend because he doesn’t take his responsibilities as a landlord seriously.
So now the biggest hiccup with our condo purchase is moving into the new place before the rent increase goes into effect. Because I stand on my principles, gosh darnit. (Which in this case equates to me not paying that man a single penny more than he deserves. And by “that man,” I mean “slumlord.” And by “a single penny more than he deserves,” I mean “he deserves absolutely nothing, but I am legally obligated to pay him for this piece of crap apartment until we can move out.”)
That means I get to harass my realtor every day until we move and then I will have to send him a very big thank-you. I’m thinking strippers, but his girlfriend might not be all that happy about it. Anthony and I will have to clunk heads together and think about this some more.
It also means that I am inventorying our stock, and trying to sell everything under the sun. In fact, this weekend, one of my big plans is to take pictures of all the larger items that we can sell and post them on Craigslist. These things – the age-old futon that Anthony has had since college and has seen more ass than most of us can claim; the too-small bed that can barely fit one of us, let alone a six-foot-four Aryan god, a taller-than-average Ryan, and a mere 45-pound love-puppy that seems to expand to unheard of volumes while sleeping; the microwave that Anthony refused to part with even though most apartments come with a pre-installed microwave and if not, a replacement can be bought for less than $100; a window a/c unit; two televisions, etc. – will be replaced by newer things. At least things that are new to us and of better quality.
Of course, all this selling and shopping and packing must happen while I am simultaneously working full-time, attending school full-time, and maintaining my sanity by preparing for the glory that is the Oscars.
This semester I have upped the ante by taking on three classes: Public Policy Process, Refugees in Contemporary Society, and Public Finance. I am basically determining my own breaking point. How many different but high-priority items can I juggle at once? It’s like challenging my sanity to a duel –sounds like a good, fun idea at the time until you really sit down and think about it.
And that, my friends, is life in the old-fart lane.
By the way…
Highly NOT recommended reading: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-Earth; by Bradley Birzer. It’s a short read, but Birzer takes all the fun out of The Lord of the Rings by talking about the religious background of the characters and events. Like all things academic, the details can be exhausting. It would be a lot more fun to just simply read a biography of Tolkien.
I will, however, say that the book does offer some insight into Tolkien’s character and way of thinking about his masterpiece. So if you are a true Tolkien-ophile, the book may appeal to you. The prose isn’t overly intellectual so it is not too dry a read. For me, it’s just unnecessary to know the symbolism at work. The Lord of the Rings is much a part of my childhood and it is not because Tolkien attempted to reawaken me to the glory of god, but rather because it is a beautiful and powerful epic about good vs. evil. There are characters to love and lands you wish you could see.
Me? I could live without the religion.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Yoinked
I yoinked yet another pointless meme from Rob’s site because it fits in with my love of census surveys and cheap thrills.
Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They must be real places, names, things...nothing made up! If you can't think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You can’t use your name for the boy/girl name question.
My Name: Ryan
1. Famous Athlete: “Rowdy” Roddy Piper
2. 4 letter word: Risk
3. Street name: Roanoke River Road (one of the entrance streets for George Mason University, Fairfax, VA)
4. Color: Red
5. Animal: Rhinoceros
6. Vehicles: Ram (as in Dodge Ram)
7. Tropical Locations: Republica Domincana (an absolutely beautiful country, might I add)
8. College Majors: Russian
9. Dairy Products: Raw eggs
10. Things in a Souvenir Shop: Registers
11. Boy Name: Ringo
12. Girl Name: Rose
13. Movie Titles: Real Women Have Curves
14. Alcohol: Red label Johnny Walker
15. Occupations: Realtor or Rodeo Clown
16. Flowers: Roses
17. Celebrities: Ricky (or Rick, as he now likes to be called – it’s SO grown-up) Schroeder
18. Magazines: Runners Weekly
19. U.S. Cities or State: Rhode Island
20. Pro Sports Teams: Redskins
21. Something Found in a kitchen: Rice
22. Reason for Being Late: Red label Johnny Walker (see #14)
23. Something You Throw Away: Receipts
24. Things You Shout: Rah, rah, rah!
25. Cartoon Character: Rocky (and Bullwinkle)
Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They must be real places, names, things...nothing made up! If you can't think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You can’t use your name for the boy/girl name question.
My Name: Ryan
1. Famous Athlete: “Rowdy” Roddy Piper
2. 4 letter word: Risk
3. Street name: Roanoke River Road (one of the entrance streets for George Mason University, Fairfax, VA)
4. Color: Red
5. Animal: Rhinoceros
6. Vehicles: Ram (as in Dodge Ram)
7. Tropical Locations: Republica Domincana (an absolutely beautiful country, might I add)
8. College Majors: Russian
9. Dairy Products: Raw eggs
10. Things in a Souvenir Shop: Registers
11. Boy Name: Ringo
12. Girl Name: Rose
13. Movie Titles: Real Women Have Curves
14. Alcohol: Red label Johnny Walker
15. Occupations: Realtor or Rodeo Clown
16. Flowers: Roses
17. Celebrities: Ricky (or Rick, as he now likes to be called – it’s SO grown-up) Schroeder
18. Magazines: Runners Weekly
19. U.S. Cities or State: Rhode Island
20. Pro Sports Teams: Redskins
21. Something Found in a kitchen: Rice
22. Reason for Being Late: Red label Johnny Walker (see #14)
23. Something You Throw Away: Receipts
24. Things You Shout: Rah, rah, rah!
25. Cartoon Character: Rocky (and Bullwinkle)
Keeping Abreast
There are a lot of things that have happened since I last wrote, and hopefully I will get to that sooner or later, but in the meantime I am always running across articles that I think are important. Oddly enough, much of my world news lately comes from a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. And I'm certainly not a Republican.
But in any case, the issue of world health is much on my mind lately, so I wanted to go ahead and post this bit by Roger Bate:
Honesty is a Virtue
Efforts to improve global health are often crippled by a state of denial. Failure to consider unfashionable modes of disease transmission or use proven but politically unpopular methods in disease prevention and control is illogical, dishonest, and should be exposed.
There was a great deal of media coverage recently denouncing Moammar Gaddafi's regime for condemning to death five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor. The Libyan government alleged that these health workers had deliberately infected children with HIV in a hospital in Benghazi. The media graphically detailed the personalities in the case and their tragic circumstances (the nurses were allegedly sexually abused and tortured by the prison guards). But certain crucial parts of the story were only briefly illuminated, such as the fact that the unfortunate Libyan children received the virus not through sexual transmission but through poor clinical and hygienic practices.
Such "iatrogenic infections" account for an unknown but possibly large proportion of HIV infections in the poorer parts of the world. A recent study in the British Journal of Obstetrics noted: "There is mounting evidence that rapid HIV transmission is fuelled by parenteral exposures in health care settings, especially medical injections but also including transfusion of untested blood and others. . . . The common belief that 90 percent of HIV transmission in Africa is driven by heterosexual exposure is no longer tenable." Some studies have shown that as many as 40 percent of African HIV infections are linked to unsafe injections. This means that donor-supported vaccination programs, and possibly even HIV treatment programs (through increased testing), have helped spread HIV.
Far from being highlighted as a logical target for advocacy and action, however, such issues are neglected. Western HIV prevention programs, meanwhile, revolve around promoting safe sexual practices. Depending on what generates the least controversy at home, donor organizations promote policies varying from abstinence to effective condom use. These programs are not pointless, but they are an example of how funding is skewed towards what people in the West want to deliver.
And in their bid to keep the aid flow lines open, at all times and at any cost, host governments in poor countries often simply adopt these policies without paying proper attention to revamping their dysfunctional and severely under-funded health systems--the same systems that too often force medical personnel to re-use needles and transfuse unscreened blood. For lack of safe needles and blood-screening equipment, in other words, health workers have no option but to resort to unsafe health practices in an attempt to save patients' lives. The real culprits are undoubtedly government leaders like Gaddafi who do not admit that their own clinics and outdated practices are to blame for these misfortunes. But almost as culpable are those in the West who know about a major cause of infection and do nothing about it.
There are myriad other examples of failure to adopt sound approaches to disease control. Consider the use of the pesticide DDT in malaria control: Until the WHO and USAID recently reversed their positions on it, DDT's use had been discouraged by Western agencies for over 20 years. Alternative methods of malaria control (such as the use of bed nets) can work, and it is simpler for donors to promote one tool. But the best way to help those dying from the disease is to aggressively use all the weapons in one's arsenal, and there is strong evidence that indoor spraying of DDT can control malaria admirably. Yet given the chemical's poor image, the advocacy community has been slow to support its use.
More foreign aid, both public and private, can help promote public health in poor countries. But that will happen only if care is taken to make sure the aid is directed at appropriate targets and used wisely. No one wants to help spread HIV or combat malaria ineffectively, but that is unfortunately where many aid efforts stand today. This is why, as Laurie Garrett suggests, any credible global health aid effort must involve measures aimed at strengthening local health-care capacity. And developing nations themselves must also do better--for example, by doing away with the large regressive tariffs they impose on the import of essential medicines and medical devices, trade barriers that end up keeping the medicines from reaching the poor.
Roger Bate is a resident fellow and Kathryn Boateng is a research assistant at AEI.
With my Peace Corps volunteer service looming ever closer on the horizon, I find that the issues Bate touches upon here, as well as the issues I am researching in class and on my own, are becoming increasingly important to me. It seems clear that US policy has a far reach, and what we do in our country can have tremendous effect - both for good or ill - on a large number of people around the world. Someday I hope to be at the forefront of creating and implementing policies that serve the people who need our assistance most.
Anyway, that is my rant for the morning.
But in any case, the issue of world health is much on my mind lately, so I wanted to go ahead and post this bit by Roger Bate:
Honesty is a Virtue
Efforts to improve global health are often crippled by a state of denial. Failure to consider unfashionable modes of disease transmission or use proven but politically unpopular methods in disease prevention and control is illogical, dishonest, and should be exposed.
There was a great deal of media coverage recently denouncing Moammar Gaddafi's regime for condemning to death five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor. The Libyan government alleged that these health workers had deliberately infected children with HIV in a hospital in Benghazi. The media graphically detailed the personalities in the case and their tragic circumstances (the nurses were allegedly sexually abused and tortured by the prison guards). But certain crucial parts of the story were only briefly illuminated, such as the fact that the unfortunate Libyan children received the virus not through sexual transmission but through poor clinical and hygienic practices.
Such "iatrogenic infections" account for an unknown but possibly large proportion of HIV infections in the poorer parts of the world. A recent study in the British Journal of Obstetrics noted: "There is mounting evidence that rapid HIV transmission is fuelled by parenteral exposures in health care settings, especially medical injections but also including transfusion of untested blood and others. . . . The common belief that 90 percent of HIV transmission in Africa is driven by heterosexual exposure is no longer tenable." Some studies have shown that as many as 40 percent of African HIV infections are linked to unsafe injections. This means that donor-supported vaccination programs, and possibly even HIV treatment programs (through increased testing), have helped spread HIV.
Far from being highlighted as a logical target for advocacy and action, however, such issues are neglected. Western HIV prevention programs, meanwhile, revolve around promoting safe sexual practices. Depending on what generates the least controversy at home, donor organizations promote policies varying from abstinence to effective condom use. These programs are not pointless, but they are an example of how funding is skewed towards what people in the West want to deliver.
And in their bid to keep the aid flow lines open, at all times and at any cost, host governments in poor countries often simply adopt these policies without paying proper attention to revamping their dysfunctional and severely under-funded health systems--the same systems that too often force medical personnel to re-use needles and transfuse unscreened blood. For lack of safe needles and blood-screening equipment, in other words, health workers have no option but to resort to unsafe health practices in an attempt to save patients' lives. The real culprits are undoubtedly government leaders like Gaddafi who do not admit that their own clinics and outdated practices are to blame for these misfortunes. But almost as culpable are those in the West who know about a major cause of infection and do nothing about it.
There are myriad other examples of failure to adopt sound approaches to disease control. Consider the use of the pesticide DDT in malaria control: Until the WHO and USAID recently reversed their positions on it, DDT's use had been discouraged by Western agencies for over 20 years. Alternative methods of malaria control (such as the use of bed nets) can work, and it is simpler for donors to promote one tool. But the best way to help those dying from the disease is to aggressively use all the weapons in one's arsenal, and there is strong evidence that indoor spraying of DDT can control malaria admirably. Yet given the chemical's poor image, the advocacy community has been slow to support its use.
More foreign aid, both public and private, can help promote public health in poor countries. But that will happen only if care is taken to make sure the aid is directed at appropriate targets and used wisely. No one wants to help spread HIV or combat malaria ineffectively, but that is unfortunately where many aid efforts stand today. This is why, as Laurie Garrett suggests, any credible global health aid effort must involve measures aimed at strengthening local health-care capacity. And developing nations themselves must also do better--for example, by doing away with the large regressive tariffs they impose on the import of essential medicines and medical devices, trade barriers that end up keeping the medicines from reaching the poor.
Roger Bate is a resident fellow and Kathryn Boateng is a research assistant at AEI.
With my Peace Corps volunteer service looming ever closer on the horizon, I find that the issues Bate touches upon here, as well as the issues I am researching in class and on my own, are becoming increasingly important to me. It seems clear that US policy has a far reach, and what we do in our country can have tremendous effect - both for good or ill - on a large number of people around the world. Someday I hope to be at the forefront of creating and implementing policies that serve the people who need our assistance most.
Anyway, that is my rant for the morning.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
In the spirit of Christmas
Having heard a lot of stories about lawsuits threatened and ambiguous marketing campaigns to mark the Christmas holiday, I want to post a little something about the 25th of December. For me, it has never been a religious holiday. I have never done any research into the history of the day, nor have I read the Bible. However, scholars vastly more intelligent than I am have done the legwork, and here is what one of them has to say:
"The Lord of Misrule" Is Coming to Town
The Ongoing "War against Christmas" Was Launched Centuries Ago--by Christians Who Despised Its Pagan Roots
By David Frum
Posted on AEI: Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Talk about your "war against Christmas": Until 1869, Boston schoolchildren could be expelled for the offence of skipping school on Christmas Day.
Premature political correctness? Not exactly. The Puritan founders of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had long disliked and distrusted the Dec. 25 holiday--not because it was too Christian, but because they regarded it as not nearly Christian enough.
The carol, The 12 Days of Christmas, reminds us that in medieval times, Christmas in northern Europe extended for almost two weeks of drunken revelry: eating, boozing, gift-giving all presided over by a "father Christmas"--usually one of the poorest villagers elevated suddenly to a kind of master of ceremonies. Yule logs were burnt, holly and mistletoe hung, evergreen trees decorated.
The founders of Massachusetts recognized all these customs for what they were: survivals of the pagan religions of pre-Christian Europe. "Yule" was the name of the winter solstice holiday of the ancient Germans. Mistletoe and holly were symbols of the immortality of the Norse gods. And "Father Christmas" was the "lord of misrule" who presided over the Roman midwinter holiday, Saturnalia.
Back in Europe, the godly Protestants who won the English Civil War had attempted to suppress these disorderly heathen festivities. In 1647, Parliament forbade Christmas feasts outright and ordered the Lord Mayor of London to compel shops and markets to open on Dec. 25.
The parliamentary ban on Christmas did not succeed, obviously. And yet it left behind an impact: Over the next two centuries, the more devout British Protestants downplayed the Christmas holiday. (Or Christ-tide, as they often named it, to eschew the Catholic word, "mass.")
In New England, however, the Puritan disapproval of Christmas exerted much more lingering influence. Well into the 19th century, Dec. 25 remained just another day on the calendar of the Congregationalist churches of Massachusetts and Connecticut.
In the 1840s and 1850s, the British revived some of their quaint medieval customs in sanitized forms. You can see the revival underway in Charles Dickens' famous story, A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843. Notice that when Ebenezer Scrooge wakes up reformed on Christmas morning, it is possible for him to buy a fat goose to give to the Cratchit family: The poultry shops are open. Apparently, the Lord Mayor's ordinances of the 1640s were still having their effect.
Americans took longer to change their minds about Christmas. In the 1840s and 1850s, the United States received a surge of Irish and German immigration. These newcomers, many of them Catholic, often behaved in ways that shocked and threatened their older-stock neighbors--and in reaction, those neighbors clung more firmly than ever to their Puritan beliefs and customs.
But Americans read their Dickens too, and the new Christmas customs were soon being adopted on this side of the Atlantic. The German-American (but staunchly Protestant!) cartoonist Thomas Nast drew his first Santa Claus for Harper's Weekly in 1863.
By the 1860s, New York was overtaking Boston as the cultural centre of America. New York had never had much use for Puritanism. Its Dutch founders had brought with them their own version of "Father Christmas." He was no more Christian than his English counterpart, but he had been retrofitted with the name of a fourth-century saint: Nicholas. An Episcopal clergyman in New York, Clement Moore, had invented the apparatus of sleigh, reindeer, red suit, pipe and fat stomach in his poem, The Night Before Christmas.
Combined with another post-Civil War development--the department store--the modern American Christmas was launched.
Along the way, though, history took an ironic bounce. Christmas, once targeted by the most devout Christians, has instead become the special hate object of militant secularists. In reaction, the spiritual descendents of the devout Protestants who once tried to ban Christmas are now rallying to its defence.
And most ironically of all, the most fiercely contested of all Christmas symbols are precisely those about which Christians have historically been most dubious: the trees, boughs and Father Christmas.
These ironic facts point the way to a historic compromise.
We should recognize: There is nothing inherently Christian about the visual ornaments of the Christmas season. Quite the contrary: They are explicitly non-Christian objects that have been imbued with Christian symbolism hundreds and thousands of years afterward. A Christian can look at the Christmas evergreen and see a symbol of the eternal life promised by Jesus to his followers. But a non-Christian remains free to look at that same tree and see . . . just a tree.
Well, maybe not "just" a tree. These are trees that emerge from the ancient culture of northern Europe and the British Isles--a culture inherited by every English-speaking person, regardless of his or her particular creed or ethnicity. It is from that culture that we have derived our free society, our separation of church and state, and our rights to protest and complain.
So maybe those trees deserve a little veneration from everyone, Christian or not. And maybe, for just a few weeks of the year, those rights to protest and complain should go unexercised.
*****
I hope that next year we experience a little more tolerance around the holidays, and a lot more love and laughter.
"The Lord of Misrule" Is Coming to Town
The Ongoing "War against Christmas" Was Launched Centuries Ago--by Christians Who Despised Its Pagan Roots
By David Frum
Posted on AEI: Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Talk about your "war against Christmas": Until 1869, Boston schoolchildren could be expelled for the offence of skipping school on Christmas Day.
Premature political correctness? Not exactly. The Puritan founders of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had long disliked and distrusted the Dec. 25 holiday--not because it was too Christian, but because they regarded it as not nearly Christian enough.
The carol, The 12 Days of Christmas, reminds us that in medieval times, Christmas in northern Europe extended for almost two weeks of drunken revelry: eating, boozing, gift-giving all presided over by a "father Christmas"--usually one of the poorest villagers elevated suddenly to a kind of master of ceremonies. Yule logs were burnt, holly and mistletoe hung, evergreen trees decorated.
The founders of Massachusetts recognized all these customs for what they were: survivals of the pagan religions of pre-Christian Europe. "Yule" was the name of the winter solstice holiday of the ancient Germans. Mistletoe and holly were symbols of the immortality of the Norse gods. And "Father Christmas" was the "lord of misrule" who presided over the Roman midwinter holiday, Saturnalia.
Back in Europe, the godly Protestants who won the English Civil War had attempted to suppress these disorderly heathen festivities. In 1647, Parliament forbade Christmas feasts outright and ordered the Lord Mayor of London to compel shops and markets to open on Dec. 25.
The parliamentary ban on Christmas did not succeed, obviously. And yet it left behind an impact: Over the next two centuries, the more devout British Protestants downplayed the Christmas holiday. (Or Christ-tide, as they often named it, to eschew the Catholic word, "mass.")
In New England, however, the Puritan disapproval of Christmas exerted much more lingering influence. Well into the 19th century, Dec. 25 remained just another day on the calendar of the Congregationalist churches of Massachusetts and Connecticut.
In the 1840s and 1850s, the British revived some of their quaint medieval customs in sanitized forms. You can see the revival underway in Charles Dickens' famous story, A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843. Notice that when Ebenezer Scrooge wakes up reformed on Christmas morning, it is possible for him to buy a fat goose to give to the Cratchit family: The poultry shops are open. Apparently, the Lord Mayor's ordinances of the 1640s were still having their effect.
Americans took longer to change their minds about Christmas. In the 1840s and 1850s, the United States received a surge of Irish and German immigration. These newcomers, many of them Catholic, often behaved in ways that shocked and threatened their older-stock neighbors--and in reaction, those neighbors clung more firmly than ever to their Puritan beliefs and customs.
But Americans read their Dickens too, and the new Christmas customs were soon being adopted on this side of the Atlantic. The German-American (but staunchly Protestant!) cartoonist Thomas Nast drew his first Santa Claus for Harper's Weekly in 1863.
By the 1860s, New York was overtaking Boston as the cultural centre of America. New York had never had much use for Puritanism. Its Dutch founders had brought with them their own version of "Father Christmas." He was no more Christian than his English counterpart, but he had been retrofitted with the name of a fourth-century saint: Nicholas. An Episcopal clergyman in New York, Clement Moore, had invented the apparatus of sleigh, reindeer, red suit, pipe and fat stomach in his poem, The Night Before Christmas.
Combined with another post-Civil War development--the department store--the modern American Christmas was launched.
Along the way, though, history took an ironic bounce. Christmas, once targeted by the most devout Christians, has instead become the special hate object of militant secularists. In reaction, the spiritual descendents of the devout Protestants who once tried to ban Christmas are now rallying to its defence.
And most ironically of all, the most fiercely contested of all Christmas symbols are precisely those about which Christians have historically been most dubious: the trees, boughs and Father Christmas.
These ironic facts point the way to a historic compromise.
We should recognize: There is nothing inherently Christian about the visual ornaments of the Christmas season. Quite the contrary: They are explicitly non-Christian objects that have been imbued with Christian symbolism hundreds and thousands of years afterward. A Christian can look at the Christmas evergreen and see a symbol of the eternal life promised by Jesus to his followers. But a non-Christian remains free to look at that same tree and see . . . just a tree.
Well, maybe not "just" a tree. These are trees that emerge from the ancient culture of northern Europe and the British Isles--a culture inherited by every English-speaking person, regardless of his or her particular creed or ethnicity. It is from that culture that we have derived our free society, our separation of church and state, and our rights to protest and complain.
So maybe those trees deserve a little veneration from everyone, Christian or not. And maybe, for just a few weeks of the year, those rights to protest and complain should go unexercised.
*****
I hope that next year we experience a little more tolerance around the holidays, and a lot more love and laughter.
Friday, December 15, 2006
All hail the end of the semester!
Ever notice that your enthusiasm for a 4.0 wanes by the end of the semester and your attitude shifts to one of, “I just want to pass this sh$% in and be done with it”? Well, that explains me TO A “T.” (all caps mean, “HELL’S YEAH!”)
Today I pass in my last final. I would use the past tense except for the fact that I have to spend all day at work and then drive out to Fairfax to submit my essay. My professor is technology-adverse so we actually have to hand-deliver our papers. That’s an hour-drive, each way, people. It is a huge pain in the tushie, but the relief I will experience upon giving up this one last piece of my first semester – it will be so beautiful.
Since I spent the whole of last night tweaking my final essay, Anthony and I didn’t get to start on our Twelve Days of Christmas Movies tradition (yes, I’m a sick, sad little person who spends twelve evenings of the Christmas season watching Christmas movies. And if you think that’s bad, you should see what I do to the furry children on Christmas Day!). That means that tonight, it’s on like Donkey Kong. We’re starting with the classic George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol.
And then we’re going to party our tushies off in Cleveland Park to celebrate Eric’s 27th birthday. Well, I’m pretending it’s all for the gloriousness that is the end of my first grad school semester, but I’ll bring a birthday card for cover.
Today I pass in my last final. I would use the past tense except for the fact that I have to spend all day at work and then drive out to Fairfax to submit my essay. My professor is technology-adverse so we actually have to hand-deliver our papers. That’s an hour-drive, each way, people. It is a huge pain in the tushie, but the relief I will experience upon giving up this one last piece of my first semester – it will be so beautiful.
Since I spent the whole of last night tweaking my final essay, Anthony and I didn’t get to start on our Twelve Days of Christmas Movies tradition (yes, I’m a sick, sad little person who spends twelve evenings of the Christmas season watching Christmas movies. And if you think that’s bad, you should see what I do to the furry children on Christmas Day!). That means that tonight, it’s on like Donkey Kong. We’re starting with the classic George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol.
And then we’re going to party our tushies off in Cleveland Park to celebrate Eric’s 27th birthday. Well, I’m pretending it’s all for the gloriousness that is the end of my first grad school semester, but I’ll bring a birthday card for cover.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Brief recap of things you missed out on while Ryan was not writing on her blog:
- Anthony’s mom passed and we had a big party to celebrate her life in Charlotte, NC.
- My little sister turned another year older.
- My office celebrated Halloween by hosting a decorating contest. Us slimy contractors clearly won (I think it was the three-foot carnivorous spider eating the child in a fairy costume on a ten-foot spider web that put us over the top – or maybe the werewolf crawling out of my boss’s cubicle…), but the head of our office now cannot declare a winner because someone on the government side complained that contractors should not be allowed to win. We are now officially keeping up the decorations until Thanksgiving, we’ll give a week’s reprieve, and then we’ll start on our “Nightmare Before Christmas” themed holiday decorations. And they’ll like it, goddammit.
- I wrote three papers and delivered a presentation for grad school. 4.0 here I come!
- Anthony left for Vietnam and Estonia on November 4th – He returns on December 2nd, thereby missing both my birthday and Thanksgiving.
- I immediately got bored and drafted the "12 Days of Christmas Movies" list, which has me beginning to ring in the holiday on my mom's birthday, December 14th. You are SO invited.
- I told one of my professors to stop sucking up to me. You know, one of those times I said something I didn't really mean and will now be living the moment down forever (kind of like the "is steak beef, mom?" incident that my family LOVES to bring up).
- I went out with my fellow grad students and got a number (not to mention a bunch of free drinks). How do you like dem apples?! (Disclaimer: I was in no way attempting to get that number. It was given to me at the end of the night, as we were shutting down the bar. Scribbled on a napkin were this guy’s digits and a little note that said, “You are SO HOT!” Damn, I’m so good I don’t even have to try. (insert snickering here)).
- I lost my mind and made my mom cry while looking for a petsitter for the Thanksgiving holiday (am I the only person who didn’t know that USAirways does NOT allow pets in cargo anymore? – no matter what their website says (look under “Pets in Cargo Compartment”)).
- Ben and his family came to my rescue and volunteered to bring Grace home to Bethesda to share in their happy Thanksgiving gluttony.
- Morgan volunteered to feed and shower Pookie with affection over Thanksgiving (Ben's allergic to cats).
- I did the majority of my Christmas shopping and present wrapping.
- Jeff decided that I was hosting my own birthday potluck dinner this weekend, so if you’re in DC for whatever reason on Sunday, it’s my place at 6:30PM – be there or be square.
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