divine angst

My alma mater is having their yearly alumni-calling-fest. I spoke with one of the student volunteers last week and told her that, yes, I did intend to make a gift, but it would probably be in the summer. When she asked if I wanted to make a pledge I told her I didn’t know how much I’d be able to give because I was going to grad school. But I told her I always pay attention to the reminder emails and send something before the end of their fiscal year—even if it’s just $20. She was so nice and polite and I hung up knowing that I had dealt with the yearly call.

(By the way, I’m always nice to the student callers because I participated in the phone-a-thon a few times and I had to speak to some not-so-nice alumni and parents of students. It’s no fun to be 19 and have a 55-year old berate you for asking them for money.)

Anyway, back to our story: That phone call was on Monday evening. My cellphone has rung every night since then with another call from them. Each time, I have seen the phone number, recognized it, and hit the cancel button to send it straight to voicemail. They have left no messages. Tonight alone, they have called THREE TIMES.

So, in case anyone from my unnamed alma mater is reading this: I already spoke to someone, said my piece, and she should have marked that down. STOP CALLING ME. I am not going to make a pledge right now!

I found out today that another person I knew from summer camp and church died—he was caught in flash floods in New Mexico.

I managed to go most of my life without knowing anyone my age who died in an accident (suicide is another matter). And suddenly, in the space of a few months, two young men I knew are senselessly dead.

Via Amber, an excellent article about moving away from our current funeral model.

It’s morbid, but I have a keen interest in the funeral industry—keen interest in seeing it go away, that is. I’ve read too many stories about bereaved families with no money being forced into exorbitant caskets and plots when all they really crave is a way to adequately say goodbye.

Anyway, read it.

I note that Blogger now allows comments to appear in a pop-up window. I think there are a lot of Blogger users out there who are going to fall on their knees and thank the stars for this feature. I personally always liked Blogger’s email notification of comments—even while despising the below-post display. Hence I moved to Haloscan, like so many other Blogger users have.

So if you’re a Blogger user and haven’t moved to Haloscan and want pop-up comments, you can have them now, without changing anything but one little radio button in your settings.

And you can still get Haloscan trackback!

I was perusing the boards this morning and noticed a post by someone who was accepted to Northwestern after me, mentioning receiving his admissions packet in the mail a week after getting his acceptance email.

Oh no! I thought. They really did make a mistake!

So I called. Mind you, if this had happened to me in any other situation except silly law school admissions, I would have called weeks ago. But law school admissions seem so arcane, so special—not to mention they always tell you not to call and ask about things, that they’ll just contact you when they’re ready—that I didn’t call. I waited.

Well, it turns out that a batch of admissions packets were just lost. They weren’t returned, they just disappeared into the ether. (They were also sent via FedEx, which seems sort of strange to me—and, indeed, Northwestern has stopped sending these packets via FedEx.) Of course, she kept asking questions to make sure there wasn’t a simpler explanation—”we sent it to a your address in X city,” (no, that’s my only address), “someone in your complex might have picked it up,” (no, it’s not that kind of complex, packages are delivered to our door)—and that’s fine. We determined in the end that, in fact, my packet had just vanished.

So they’re resending it to me, by US Mail this time, and I should get it next week.

All that frustration for nothing.

I’m flush with success right now, so much so that I think I’m going to try and call UT again!

UPDATE: And I talked to UT. It appears that, because I sent my resume under separate cover, the online status check is essentially worthless. It only works if everything comes in electronically at the same time. I was told that my application is “probably” complete, and I can send another copy of my resume if I want but it “probably” won’t make a difference and “probably” won’t cause the status checker to update, and everything is “probably” OK.

In other words, I can just stop checking the status check (which I’ve pretty much done) and wait for the mail. Much like what I’ve been doing with Chicago!