La Vie En Rose for 2007 February

So...

Now I have something to plan my summer around. (Being in an English speaking country on July 21)

Is it sad that I am almost as excited about this as I am about phd programs?

HELLO!!! YOU HAVE WON 250,000POUNDS

Now I don't have to worry about paying for grad school!

One-way flights to London! Wish I could book now!

I found two pennies in the parking lots AND I was offered a place at Birkbeck!

Yesterday I went to the gym. Today I feel like crap.

in other news poor little Dave is on the fritz. I don't know what I've done or how to fix it. So I am in the computer lab. At least they have decent computers on the ground floor. Trying to decide if I should wait around for the history forum at 3:30. Going home & going to bed will accomplish nothing, but if I stay here I can find a CBEST book & review my math for tomorrow. Plus they will have snacks. I can eat a lot of them & not have lunch. I am so cheap (poor).

I booked a flight to London July 30th. One way.

One way!

So here is my plan, set in motion ever since I recieved my offer from Birkbeck earlier this week: travel around eastern europe and take another course in Serbian, then jaunt back to London to start my MPHIL/PhD in October.

I am not certain about where I'll be (London, Edinburgh, elsewhere in England or NYC) , but in all situations this plan is workable, and the price was too great to pass up. so I just went ahead and booked it!

I learned a long time ago that if you want to do something you just have to do it. For me, a lot of this involves booking tickets. But I guess this is a little bit more than that. It involves moving to London for three years, at least. The scariest part is, I might fall in love with someone, I might get a job, or any amount of other possibilities that would mean I might never buy a one way ticket back.

I'm afraid Dave has passed the mountain of the on the fritz and into the valley of the seriously doomed! Whatever did I do to him! Luckily today when I turned him on he started, booted up on the fixing CD that was stuck, went through the whole thing being fixed, then kindly restarted and I was able to transfer all of my documents and most of my pictures onto mom's computer via my thumb drive before he startd getting hungry for power and I started getting hungry for the pizza that was cooking in the oven. I should have just shut him down but I wanted to get the rest of the pictures so I carefully carried him into the kitchen where I could plug him in & keep an eye on him. I turned my back for a minute and when I turned back around he was in "dead" mode. I pressed the off button to turn him all the way off and there was a nasty little shock. *frets*. Actually I wonder if its something wrong with the power connection since everytime I tried to turn him on before (and it didn't work) he was plugged in. Anyway, I am going to see if they can help me at school and if not take him to an apple store or somewhere to see what needs fixing or if I should just buy a new computer *woe*. If I do I might just wait.... Luckily a friend has a firewire drive with OSX installed so supposedly that will help me get the rest of my pictures, music, and emails down if all else fails.

The internet is not as interesting on someone else's computer. I suppose that is a good thing. Time to go home and cuddle with the kittens & read.

I am convinced there is something living in the walls. I can hear it quite distinctly when I am quietly standing at the vanity. There is nothing in my room to be making those scampering noises so it must be BETWEEN the walls. Rats, I think. Not very reassuring. But then I also keep hearing random noises throughout the house (though not as distinctly) so maybe I am just going crazy. Also, not very reassuring.

Only one more month of being 23! What a year... such changes, and even more to come. I don't really know what to think of it. On the surface it seems that the age 23 ought to be the perfect combination of adult experience and youthful optimism and energy. In actuality I don't know; I certainly wasn't (am not) the average 23 year old. I sometimes think I'll always be ambivalent about my age. I like being young, I look young, but sometimes I feel so old, and so tired.

(The real point of this post) In case you are in the mood to buy me something at the approaching celebratory juncture, here are a few things I would like:

French for Reading by Carl Sandberg (on my amazon wishlist)
A copy of HP 7 reserved for me at Russo's
An REI gift certificate

Ending sentences in "so...." and generally being as inarticulate as some of my classmates. Unfortunately I only seem to think about this when they are talking, not when I am.

I'm going to go home and think about what it means to be a feminist historian, and how it is different from being a women's historian (or is it?).

French for Reading came and went on Bookmooch before I had a chance to grab for it. Sad sad. There was something else I thought to put on my wishlist but now I've forgotten.

I feel like I'm not getting anything done. But then where does all my time go?

Poor Dave is still broken. I am slowly transferring stuff from him to mom's old computer because I fear that when I take him in he might come back more dead then ever.

I am busy with my second round of applications--for funding--and sending in endless paper proposals. There must be a secret trick to getting these accepted that I don't know about, because I have seriously submitted to like 5 or 6 conferences and not one has said yes. Lucky I am good at handling rejection. Just keep on trying...

I can't believe it's already 8th week. I still have 3 short papers, 3 books to read, one longer paper, one thesis chapter, and one lecture to do... in the next three weeks. help.

I guess one good thing about using the library computer lab is I finally am memorizing all my passwords to the sites I use, because they aren't saved in the browser. I've gotten to the point where I don't have to spend a few moments guessing before I hit the right one.

In other news I am behind on my book posting and everytime I think about updating I realise the document isn't on my pen drive. Right now I am reading Lying about Hitler by David Irving which is very interesting and very disturbing.

I vaguely remember, in my dream last night, screaming at someone, "That's not real history! Go read Phillippa Gregory!!"

We are watching Iron Jawed Angels in class. I kind of wish I was alive 100 years ago so I could have been a suffragette.

(Maybe instead of keeping a list I'll just keep mentioning things.)

Last night we broke in Chris' new TV by watching "Lost in Translation." I really liked it and found it relatableish (which is almost positively not a real word), but I'm afraid towards the end I might have missed some of the meaningfulness because I was too busy bantering with my friends. But maybe that's the point.

I should have been reading Telling the truth about Aboriginal History (I have to write a comparative paper on that & Lyign about Hitler). Oh well. I just got an very interesting-looking book from ILL, Black Lambs and Greay Falcons: Women Travelling in the Balkans. It's due back on my birthday.

Speaking of my birthday I suceeded in mooching a copy of French for Reading, so if anyone was going to buy that for me for my birthday, don't. =)

After a week of stalking the postman and even longer haunting my gmail in box, I finally heard about my application to Edinburgh and they offered me a place! So now I am scurring to get my ORS appplication off before the deadline. Also I've been invited to present my paper on Vera Brittain as part of a panel on war writing at a conference at UCR. Hurrah. Now a flurry of papers.

This time I didn't tell the bank I was going to Europe and I couldn't get any money! Aieee

It is time I learned this lesson. When it's the middle of the night and Tonks is whining to go outside and I don't want him to because a) it's the middle of the night and b) it's raining, opening the door and showing him that it's raining will not necessarily make him want to stay inside. More likely, he will run outside despite the rain, have me worried for two hours that he's being hit by a car or mauled by a kit fox, wake me up by wailing at the door three hours later when he wants to come back in, and climb into bed next to me covered in rain and mud.

I need a memory card (compact flash) for my camera that holds more than 16 pictures... before I go to NY.

Not having a computer sucks. The computer lab sucks. Luckily, I think I figured out, a 2 year extended warranty EXTENDS the 1 year warranty that comes with the product to 3 years. which would mean Dave is still covered. Beet or no Beet I am taking him to an Apple store this weekend. I NEED a computer! I cannot write this chapter without one.

Last night I dreamt I was running away from Nazis and I couldn't get away fast enough. Some guy was trying to help me by dragging me along. What does it meeeean??

I have just finished a paper on Ann Veronica (which poor Susie had to read and which, it turns out, is not due until next week, but at least it is done and now I can improve it... still, it means I could have gone to class last night and saved my freebie for next week in case Beet is arriving... anyway).

I'm simply discovering that life is many-sided and complex and puzzling. I thought one had only to take it by the throat.
It hasn't got a throat!

I wish I were still keeping up with my list. These things are so *difficult* without a Dave. I am so disorganized... It's very annoying that someone has got the two decent women and FWW books the library has. And has renewed them. *I* ought to have those books! Well I am getting them next quarter and not letting go... At UCLA the grad students get to keep their books all quarter (I think). Here one gets no privledges, no library office, blah.