it’s no wonder I love this story considering how much I love the water.
If you love the water, too, don’t miss Denise’s newest feature: sea stories!
Oh, and Denise, I got very excited by your brief mention of the Marianas Trench! I just think the ocean is so cool.
Today’s quickie horoscope:
Your efforts have not been in vain. But they may take a while to bear fruit.
Um, OK. Nice to know the stars are behind it all, but it doesn’t really help. Especially since today is a no-mail day.
Now here’s something I think would be cool:
What if there were a database of blog post ideas? Any blogger could go to the database when the creativity fountain was getting dry, check certain options based on what kind of post he or she wanted to write (”serious,” “funny,” “about your pet”), click Submit, and get a list of possible post ideas returned.
Maybe it could even have a submissions request, so people could add post topics to the database.
If anyone knows how something like this could be implemented technologically, let me know! I’d never run out of ideas again!
It appears that, after speaking to someone helpful at UT last week, they’ve fixed their online status check problem (at least where it concerns my app). Now my application shows as complete—two months later.
It’s funny that I’ve been so worked up about this particular problem, especially considering that once Mr. Angst got into a program, we knew we’d be moving somewhere. I guess that’s just me, though, needing all the ducks to be lined up.
Stiff, by Mary Roach. (Thanks for the recommend, Emily!)
Good book. All about dead bodies—how they decompose, the things that might happen to them if they aren’t buried traditionally, and what kind of tales they tell. Roach’s tone is light but respectful, and her humor certainly helps the book to be an enjoyable read rather than a morbid one. I will admit that it threw me off at bit at first, but I was very quickly captured by her writing.
A more extended review of the book is probably unnecessary—the subtitle pretty much says it all: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Roach treats the material well, and I recommend it.
Tonight we’re getting out of the house! First for Mexican food and margaritas, then for big-band music and dancing a divish bar, and finally for a Buffy sing-a-long at a local movie theater (we’ll be enjoying “Once More With Feeling,” the famous musical episode).
I’m also wearing sassy shoes. No evening is complete without sassy shoes.
My review of Book #3 is coming tomorrow; I just don’t have time to write it up right now. Toodles, duckies!
UPDATE: E. McPan requested a picture of the sassy shoes:
Mine are actually not pink, they are a steely gray and I. Love. Them. They make me so tall.
Watching Monsters, Inc.. Mr. Angst asks, upon a succession of “awwwwww”s, “The little girl makes your ovaries ache, doesn’t she?”
I won’t answer that question, but I will say that she is…awwwwwwww!! So! Cute!
…OH MY GOD! What’s going to happen to Boo!!!!!?????!!!!
….GO BOO! She’s being FIERCE!!! (She even said “rarrrhhhrrr”!!!)
…..YAY! Boo gets to go home! WAY. TOO. CUTE.
OK, maybe my ovaries are twinging. Just a little.
Can I have a dog?
Edited to correct the name of the movie, which LawMom was kind enough to point out was wrong.
Beginning with foxes and Janine, posts about the LSAT have been floating around the ’sphere. Foxes thinks that schools don’t really look beyond the numbers (i.e, LSAT). Janine is glad that some schools pay attention to the LSAT to the exclusion of other numbers (i.e. GPA). Bad Glacier chimes into say that he thinks that numbers-based admissions aren’t a bad thing until prestige-whoring comes into play.
Let me add my two cents.
I did pretty well on the LSAT. I did better than the vast majority of other LSAT takers. But I didn’t do well enough to make me a lock at some othe top schools I wanted to apply to. My LSAT score was the result of ONE thing: I missed more questions on the first section of the test than I missed on the rest of the WHOLE test.
I am not making excuses for this. I earned my score, and it was a good score. Not as good as I hoped, absolutely—c’est la vie. Yes, I know it’s easy to say that now, with some good admissions under my belt. But it’s still an honest statement. I don’t think I ever considered writing an LSAT addendum or trying to excuse that first section as being due to the crappy room, or being tired, or loud people. None of those things made my score what it was—I did.
And I gradually came to realize that my score wasn’t going to ruin my ambitions.
But I still have a problem with numbers-based admissions. Yes, at least one school has obviously looked beyond the strict numbers at the rest of my application and said, Yes, we want her to be a student here. That makes me very happy—this is the way law school admissions should work!
But other schools have not. Yet. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Somehow I suspect that if the one school I’m thinking of doesn’t admit me, it will be because of the strict numbers. Oh sure, I bet my app will have been read by many people, but I still somehow think that it will be the numbers that will get me dinged. Why? They want to rise in rank. My “soft” factors, out of 13,000 other applicants, won’t set me apart enough to outweigh the possible dent to their ranking.
THAT is what bothers me.
I think foxes, Janine, and Bad Glacier make very good points—yes, numbers matter; sometimes that’s good for people; when prestige-whoring is the impetus it gets bad.
I’m going to throw in my own point, then, and say that, in the case of the latter point abot prestige, unfortunately, not all schools admit alike. Some pay more attention to “soft” factors and some don’t. And that’s what makes the whole process so maddening for me.
Here’s what I wish—that LSAT takers and admissions committees would all commit to paying more attention across the board to the soft factors. That’s a given. But if they have to consider LSAT as a big factor, remember that a single score is part of a “score band.” Statistically, the score band is a better predictor. Wouldn’t it be great if we all could tell our friends, “My LSAT was in score band 8,” instead of, “My LSAT was a 1xx, and let me explain that to you as being in x percentile, and, statistically, it’s in the same band as scores from 1xx to 1xx.”
I think people on the boards are themselves only looking at the numbers. And they wail on people with low numbers who get into good schools, berate them for being minorities, perhaps. Grow up, people. Some schools look at numbers more than others, just like some applicants think more about prestige than others.
This whole law school admissions process is pretty uncomfortable for most of us, and I know a lot of the meanness out there is probably posturing and insecurity and sour grapes. I accept that, even if I’m not strictly OK with it. I guess I just wish that we’d all admit our ignorance instead of running around being hateful about things as stupid as numbers.
As my best friend said to me when I was moaning about my own LSAT score, “You know what they call the guy who graduates at the bottom of his class? A lawyer.” I’ll amend that to add—”at whatever school.” Go to law school. Become a lawyer. Stop being bratty.
I just finished reading From Jesus to Christianity by Michael White. Obviously, non-fiction, and a very good read for me, since I majored in Religion and focused as much as I could on early Christianity, the texts of early Christianity, and the split between Christianity and Judaism.
In a lot of ways, this book is a nice companion to another I read a few years ago, Constantine’s Sword, which basically covers Christian history as it relates to Judaism from the time of Constantine (ca. 400 or so) to the present.
From Jesus to Christianity covers a fairly narrow historical scope: essentially from 5 or 6 BCE to the end of the second century, CE. And of the first part of that span, from 5 or 6 BCE to about 50 or 60 CE, he really only sketches out the social, political, and religious environment, creating context for the meat of the book—dealing with the various texts that were written in the early Jesus movement that shaped what we know as Christianity today.
The best thing about this book is that the author does not restrict himself to the canonical documents—those in the New Testament as we know it. He spends a lot of time on the other writings that did not make it into the Bible, as well as on how our notion of “scripture” evolved in the three or four generations after the death of Jesus. He also delves into the authorship issues that are rampant in the New Testament, presenting various theories as to dates and locations that I hadn’t read previously.
I really enjoyed this book, though the middle third was a little slow. The book is dense and in many places presupposes a knowledge of the New Testament as well as of modern scholarship on early Christianity. That was OK for me, since I have a solid background in a lot of the theories he was referring to, but it might make this a difficult read for someone without that educational background.
My only regret with this book is that I didn’t buy two autographed copies—I only bought one, and gave that one to my mom for Christmas. I’d like to have my own signed version, but ah well.
I woke up no fewer than eight times last night, each time in a mild amount of pain because my hips were cramping. I was curled up as tightly as an over-tense adult woman can be because it was cold in my bedroom. Each time I woke, I would reposition myself, only to wake up an hour or so later aching in the hips, and I’d unfold myself again and roll over and try to go back to sleep.
So I’m not at work today. I didn’t even hear the alarm the first time it went off, which is way unusual for me. So I went back to bed, only after adding a blanket, and slept again—this time, waking up every half hour.
Something about being back in a good mood has disrupted my sleep.
To counter this, I am making espresso (yum, stovetop espresso) and plan to dive into the last 75 pages of Book #2. Did I mention that Book #2 is not fiction, is on the subject I would have done a senior thesis on if doing so would have made a difference to my degree (it wouldn’t have without my also being able to read competantly in German or French, which I cannot), and despite starting out in a tone accessible to laymen, has rapidly become very dense? SO interesting, but not reading to be done with the TV on.
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!
Everybody stop by and tell stag congrats on getting into law school!
And then light some good luck candles for sui generis, ’cause he’s next!
This is so sad. Perhaps even pathetic:
You want a more urban experience, but you don’t want to give up your suburban trappings. The answer? A house in the suburbs that looks like it belongs in the city. Exposed brick! Floor-to-ceiling windows! A mezzanine bedroom! And just look how much space! Why, it’s just like the place we always wanted in college!
I’m not even really sure where to start with how wrong this whole way of thinking is. I love big cities, I love urban living, I love all the things that the suburbanites presumably hate about downtown:
…downtown still lacks the amenities that most Americans crave, such as good schools, convenient big-box stores, and, most importantly, a sense of personal space all but impossible in the big city.
(To this I say, A sense of personal space is not dictated by the size of one’s home’s lot, it’s determined by how well you mesh with your surroundings. And don’t even get me started on big box stores.)
So the concept of living in a “loft,” handily ensconced in a gated community several miles outside any area that could be considered urban, makes my stomach hurt. Isn’t yucko stucco bad enough? Now all the little developments will be peppered with corrugated metal and brick facades.
The only authentic aspect of a loft in such environs is the ability to see into one’s neighbor’s living room, due to microscopic suburban easements.
Janine was so right about grilled cheese sandwiches. See, after yesterday, I’ve decided I need comfort food this week, so I came home at lunch today and pulled out my nonstick pan and shredded mozarella. Grilled cheese goodness.
My tummy feels all warm and happy, and that is definitely a Good Thing.
…if anyone ever uses “troubleshoot” in the past tense?
Due to the aforementioned tetchiness, I think I need to hiatus for a while. I think I’m becoming a bitchy whiner, and I can’t stand bitchy whiners.
I need to get out of my head. Job doesn’t really provide a break from my own neuroses, because what I’m doing right now is a lot of repetitive coding—ideal for ruminating, unfortunately.
CM mentioned the FlyLady program; I think I may give it a shot. Anything for an outlet.
Guaranteed, if I do hiatus, it will be short-lived. I do think that I probably will not be as prolific as I have been lately.
Over at Magic Cookie, CM and Janine and I have a little comments conversation going on that basically boils down to, “Hey! I’m stressed!”
Janine, specifically, used the word “tetchy.” And I am so glad she did, because that is exactly how I am feeling right now. And most of yesterday. And last week. Tetchy. That sums it up nicely.
It’s not just about the waiting—which sucks, but I’ve dealt with waiting before. No, there’s something about this whole process that has thrown me for a loop. Not only are we going back to school, but we’re also planning to uproot our lives—yet we don’t even know exactly how that’s going to play out! Even once we make a decision, we still have to sell our house. We still have to find an apartment somewhere in the city we’re moving to. We have get rid of some of our things, leave our jobs, take out loans, and the weight of all of it is driving me crazy.
I’m glad to know I’m not the only one. I just wish none of us were going through it.
Latest Bin Laden Videotape Wishes America ‘A Crappy Valentine’s Day:
Come Monday, as you pry open your fancy, red Russell Stover box, take heed,” bin Laden said. “For in the place of tasty caramels and buttercreams, you will find the flaming sword of righteous jihad!
Look, I know there are a million of you out there who despise Valentine’s Day, so I’m sorry for afflicting you with this story. If it’s any consolation, it’s not really a Valentine’s story. I hope everyone has a lovely Monday, whether you’re spending it watching Las Vegas or going to Las Vegas for a quickie wedding. Whatever floats your boat.
Two years ago, Mr. Angst and I were troubled about how to celebrate V-Day. He’d just gotten a new job after having been laid off for a while, but it wasn’t a great job, and we were both pretty broke. So we decided that we’d do V-Day sort of low key. Mr. Angst took me up to a local lookout to watch the sunset and we had a relatively inexpensive bottle of Champagne and some chocolate-covered strawberries. Then we went Dutch on dinner at one of the nicest restaurants in town, where we ordered a measly two courses and the cheapest bottle of wine they sold.
Six weeks later, Mr. Angst was in a new, much-better paying job (aside: the caveat that it is easier to find a job when you have a job is so true.) So he asked me what our plans were for the weekend, and I said we didn’t have any, and he said he wanted to “redo” Valentine’s Day, since on the actual holiday we’d both been so stressed about money. (And the dinner wasn’t all that great, since we only had two courses and it was one of those restaurants where, if you want to fill up, you have to have at least four courses, because everything is in little towers with drizzle on the plate).
I agreed and we made plans to go out Saturday night.
He picked me up and took me back to the local lookout, but this time had a giant picnic basket from our favorite wine store: pate, excellent cheese, gourmet crackers, and another bottle of Champagne (a very yummy Veuve Cliquot).
We were chased from the lookout by the swarms of gnats that tend to form in early spring, and off we went to dinner at a different restaurant, one with larger portions and less ego. I had sea bass and he had steak. We had cocktails, we had wine, and the evening was just perfect.
We topped the night off with a stop at a local music joint where a friend of ours was playing. A couple of beers, some chatting, and we started to head home. But Mr. Angst suggested we stop by “our stairs” on the way back to the car.
“Our stairs” is an outdoor staircase across the street from a courtyard with a fountain where we used to stop all the time on the way back to the car, usually because I was giddy drunk and thought plants were attacking me. (No, I am not kidding.) We would always kiss on the steps. These stairs are nothing special—they don’t have great railings and the building they belong to isn’t particularly noticeable—except they are special because they are “ours.”
So we stopped, and we sat, we kissed, and (if you haven’t guessed what’s going to happen next, God help you) Mr. Angst proposed. I spent the rest of the walk back to the car in a stunned disbelief and didn’t sleep at all that night. The next morning, the ring was still on my finger and we were trying to figure out when the Super Bowl was so we could pick a wedding date.
This is why I like Valentine’s Day—not because of the merchandising or the chocolate or the flowers or the expected gifts—I don’t really buy into any of that. Rather, I love Valentine’s Day because it always reminds me of that other day, when we “made up” for a mediocre holdiay and got engaged.
Backstory: I attended a benefit dinner with my dad on Friday night, and the dinner was to benefit a local school for special-needs children. There were a variety of party favors on the tables, including my new friend, Steve. I think this picture particularly shows off Steve’s ferociousness:
Isn’t he the coolest? He’s like a maraca—I’m pretty sure he’s filled with beans and made of plastic soda bottles. HE HAS GOOGLY EYES. Steve is the coolest.
