nor so wide as a church door

Hey, look, it's another really long annoying post. \o/

First, ( two weird/mildly interesting dreams. ) I know I'm probably getting excessive about recording these things, but some of them are really interesting, and I'm hoping I'll get better at remembering them as time goes on.

In Human Cultures last week, we watched a video about the gold rush and consequent white settlement of Papua New Guinea, about which I have ( a few thinky thoughts. ) Mostly, I ended up wondering what would have happened if the Papua New Guineans had had the chance to control their own natural resources, instead of having them essentially stolen.

I also have new gripes about B to record. For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, she came to Chicago on the trail of her father's killers rented both Princess Mononoke and Life Is Beautiful. Life Is Beautiful, she rented without knowing it was a movie about the Holocaust; along the way, there is a point at which it becomes obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that the main character's family is Jewish. B responded to this revelation with the following utterly boggling statement: "But [the main character] doesn't look Jewish."

Fortunately for my own self-respect, my mouth did not manage to get in the way of my brain this time; I said something rather acidic about how, yes, right, of course, because you could definitely tell whether people were Jewish just by looking at them. Fortunately for our continuing friendly relations, she immediately turned sheepish, and apologized.

(... For the record, B does not spend every second of every day saying offensive things; just the other day, she paid for a complete stranger's lunch because he forgot his student ID card. I have to start noting the times she makes me glad I know her, too, just so that I don't end up with a ton of bitter entries and nothing nice to balance it out. :D)

And, finally, I spent this last weekend at home. We don't get today off, but Friday was our fall recess, and today I only have - well, would have had - one class, so I skipped and spent an extra day at home. The guineas are truly enormous now; they haven't lost all of their baby feathers yet, so if you had to, you could probably tell Clary, DG, and Evey apart, but it's tough. They have also developed the adorable habit of following anyone that comes within a fifteen-foot radius, including people, the dogs, and the car. They don't like to be without the sound of human voices, so we've put a clock-radio out in the barn, and we turn it on for them to listen to.

My sister got my mother a board game - The Settlers of Catan - for her birthday; we played it about four times this weekend, and came up with at least a page of alternate rules. The most significant alteration was probably ( our set of changes to the Robber. ) Probably worrying about the meta implications of a board game makes us both complete freaks, but. I like the Reaper a lot better than the Robber. I'd worry about having erased the natives of Catan, except I don't think the game's creators intended for anybody to think of the Robber as such, or, indeed, for anybody to worry about whether Catan had a native population in the first place. Which is kind of fail in its own way, I guess.

I am managing to mostly keep up with SPN through reaction posts; I really, really don't want to spend time and energy watching the show until I know how S5 is going to end. Which I know is wimpy, and possibly even kind of wanky/entitled, but I need to be happy, okay. Unless the ending is in the general vicinity of what I want to have happen, I don't want to get myself super invested, because then I will cry like a baby. A hungry, angry baby. And be sad.

The same kind of goes for Merlin, except without the worry - that's just because I don't have access to the show at the moment.

I spent pretty much the entire trip back on the bus making hypothetical mental vids to the songs that came up on my playlist. Peculiarly enough, the fandom that comes most readily to my mind when I hear Stroke 9's Do It Again is due South, solely because of the "you're a freak" part; every time I hear that, there's, like, a ghost "... understood" that follows it in my brain, and I spend the rest of the song picturing RayK and Fraser.

... Someday, I should actually watch that show.

Also, I did not throw up on the bus, or pass out. \o/

My thesis proposal has been successfully resubmitted! *does a little dance* I drink from the keg of glory; bring me all the muffins and bagels in all the land. [/West Wing]

Man, that is such a weight off - I mean, until they reject it again, and I sink into angst and despair, and the long dark teatime of the soul comes upon me, of course. But until then, the world is AWESOME. \o/!

Dropping the thing off, in and of itself, was actually the least terrifying part of the whole bit. See, I had to go by my advisor's office again, because I needed her signature on the resubmit, and the door was closed. At first I could not decide whether this was good or bad: if she wasn't there, I didn't have to meet with her, but I, uh, also wasn't going to be able to, y'know, resubmit my proposal. And then I heard her voice from inside, and realized two things: a) she was on the phone, and b) I was totally going to have to knock on the door.

I'm irrational about these things, I know. But I get the same kind of visceral DO NOT WANT reaction in situations like this as I do when I find a spider on the wall next to me. Actually knocking on the door was like going to get a cup, and catching the spider by getting my hands reeeeeeally close to it, having to resist the urge to yank them back and run screaming every step of the way; it took me a good twenty minutes to work up to it. Thank god there aren't a lot of people wandering through the offices of the CMSI department.

But eventually, I did convince myself to knock, and got inside, and got the signature. She also let me know that it would probably be best for me to go by the library and try to take out recording equipment for the summer, since she's been having some problems with hers, and she doesn't want to give them to me if they aren't, y'know, working. Which is gonna be a whole new level of terror, I'm betting - I'm going to have to go into the library and ask somebody who I should talk to about it in the first place, and then once I find that person, I'm gonna need to have a full-on conversation about recording equipment and the logistics of taking it out for the summer, and AUGH - but I'm going to try not to worry about that 'til tomorrow.

Aside from that, I did a little prodding to the actual main story in my HP AU 'verse, rather than the side character shipfic; it actually went rather pleasantly. I also wrote a couple of teeny snippets of Merlin fic - nothing that's ever going to see the light of day, or anything, because pretty much nothing I write ever does, but it was fun. Sooner or later, I should probably ... actually watch the show. :D It's so nice, not having to put off fic for the sake of schoolwork; I can get struck by an idea and actually stop whatever I'm doing to go write about it for an hour or two, instead of just wishing I could, or maybe scribbling down a couple sentences so I don't forget and then getting back to work. Yay summer!