Yes!

I just received an email from USF telling me that I am a recipient of a H.W. Wilson Foundation scholarship for the fall semester!! Yay! Yesterday I was about to quit school and become a janitor but now my resolve is renewed. It's amazing how one thing can change the direction of your life, or, at least, your attitude.

Rainy Friday

a quiet day. rain in the air, on the earth. the sound of a flute in the background. cats sleeping. dog dozing. me, well, i'm bored, restless, anxious. not doing so well in one of my classes. that makes me sad, but it's just beyond my brain to grasp fully and, honestly, i just want out. wish i had the guts to empty my bank account and get in my car and go. anywhere. on an adventure. last week i was wondering when i'm going to have fun in this life. not just a day here, a day there, but many days, weeks, months, years. i look in the mirror and i don't know who that person is staring back at me. i used to be young, and now i'm not, and it seemed to happen overnight. i wasted so much time trying to find the meaning of life, to discover who i am. i never did find the answers and now it doesn't matter to me. i miss being young. i miss the ease with which i used to change things up. i now feel cemented to the earth, perhaps because i'm so much closer to becoming part of it. dust to dust, as they say. it's kind of strange to back away from your life and realize that you're about 3/4 of the way through it. when people say time flies as you get older, they're not kidding. i should be reading more chapters in my textbook, but i would rather drink tea and eat chocolate on this rainy day in february.

Interesting Ad

The other day I saw a McDonald's commercial featuring an entire Asian cast. Never seen that before. I've seen all white, all black, and a mixture of races, including Hispanic, but never all-Asian. I kept waiting for an Asian plus white and/or black composition, but every scene featured a young Asian man or woman. Very interesting. And it's about time. There is a rather large Asian population in this country and it's nice to see at least one company out there realizes that. Does this make McDonald's a trendsetter, or is the company merely trying to lure Asians into fast food unwholesomeness? Hmmmm.

It's Friday, baby

Not that TGIF means anything to a grad student. I have mega homework this weekend. My web archiving professor gave me the opportunity to redo my technical report because apparently one of the web archives I wrote about is not a true web archive. I don't understand how the National Archives of the U.S. is not a true web archive, but the Archives Canada website is. Anyway, since the Canadian archival site is "good" I now will amend this hair-pulling report in the hopes of receiving a better grade. And I have sooooo many chapters to read for both classes as well. Got bogged down in one Research Methods chapter. It's taken me days to read it and I still haven't finished. I have no idea what's going on in that chapter, but there's a quiz waiting for me when I'm done. Oh joy.

I bought a Fantasy Five ticket the other day. I haven't looked up the results. Maybe I'm a winner. Maybe I can run away to Tahiti or Hawaii or Key West (depending how much money I won). Maybe . . . oh well. I think I'll take a nap or maybe I'll drink a glass of chocolate wine. Sounds horrendous, but, man oh man, is it goooood!! Maybe that will get me through this long grad schoolwork weekend.

More Kvetching

I have a web archiving report due tomorrow, and I don't understand how to answer at least half of the queries my professor has posted on her two-page checklist. I should have known that anything to do with the Web was going to be way too technical for my wayward brain (which constantly tells me to run outside and play, play, play). I toyed with the idea of simply not doing it, but then for sure there would be no "A" grade for me. Probably isn't going to happen anyway. If this is the first report, what are the others going to be like? And I'm not even going to mention the 1,000-word research paper due in April. Should have become a kindergarten teacher. Then I could play with paints and colors and picture books all day with a room full of busy (and, no doubt, noisy) five-year-olds. Nah. That wouldn't have worked either. Guess I just better keep on truckin' on the path I've chosen.

Sucky Day

Today is a sucky day. I couldn't get to sleep until 4:00am. (One good way to urge the sleep to come is to read a textbook - snore. . . .) My cat Paquita woke me up at 9:00am, complaining bitterly about the lateness of breakfast. I commiserated and closed my eyes. An hour later, with Paquita practically sitting on my head, I crawled out of bed and opened the cat food tin. Ah, peace. Then it was time to feed my dog Sully. (He was not impressed. It's now 3:33pm and his uneaten breakfast is withering in his bowl.)

After the feeding of the zoo, I sat outside in the warm morning air and continued reading the textbook that put me to sleep hours earlier. I actually finally finished that long technical chapter, amid airplane after airplane bellowing over my house, which is in the flight path for Tampa International Airport. Then I decided to go grocery shopping before the lack-of-sleep tiredness came calling. While I was getting ready, I heard the ugly sound of booming bass. I looked out the window to see one of my neighbors vacuuming the inside of a pickup truck, doors open, windows down, thundering music blasting over the loud burr of the vacuum cleaners. So, I put on my white bitch jeans and went outside to ask the guy to turn it down. He apologized and did so, but then turned it back up after I was back in my house for a few minutes. Man, I get so tired of dealing with these ignorant, belligerent assholes. So I wrote down the number of the villa when I left to do grocery shopping because that made me feel better. When I came home, the music was tolerable, but it became loud again after I was ensconced in my villa for a few minutes. I found out on the property appraiser's website that that particular villa is a rental, so if I continue to have problems (it was quite a noisy place when I first moved in, but then it became quiet - that may be over), I will contact the owners and let them know what's going on. I know people say live and let live, but if your living is booming into my house and I'm forced to listen to your crap against my will, especially when I have tons of research to do for a paper due Wednesday, then I'm going to do something about it.

On top of all that, two team members in my Research Methods class haven't yet posted the answers to their assigned questions and the whole shebang is due today. I'm team leader this week and I guess if they don't send in their answers, I'll have to do their assignments; otherwise, our whole team will receive a not-so-good grade. It's definitely time for a glass of wine. Ciao.

January Wake-up

Yep, it's that time again. The beginning of another semester. A few days of maneuvering around, trying to coordinate classwork and homework and assignments, and to get to know the professors and what they want. And it's all online. Sometimes I feel like I'm all alone in the universe, stretching really hard to hear, but there's no one there. I like online classes, but it's kinda weird when you have no idea what your professors and classmates look like and sound like. It's all okay. I'll get used to it again. I always do.