Do Not Cower from the Music Power

"Congratulations! Your proposal for Computers and Writing 2010 ("Virtual Worlds") at Purdue has been accepted for the program of the onsite conference, which runs from May 20 to 23, 2010, in West Lafayette, Indiana."

Wham Bam! Costs money, but if I can get it or get help from the English Dept. or Undergraduate Research, I'm going to Purdue in May to present our Undergraduate Research journal!!


Also: Howwwww is South Hills still open??

Currently watching a horrible adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper.

The tone of my early Christmas break has been severely dampened by the fact that I’ve spent about 40% of it blowing my nose. Like so many before me, I got sick during exams and spent my last two test periods being the sniffly gross kid trying to be discrete about things. And now it's hindering my shopping abilities.

So not much action in my first day home. It's been mostly waiting for the little red bar on YouTube videos of X Men: Evolution. I like the blue fuzzy guy/Nightcrawler, because he teleports like Ty Lawson and he’s a huge dweeb. His action figure costs like a thousand dollars.

Notre Dame/UCLA is a sweet game, first half.

So excited about the Harrison Ford movie. January.

Missing three of my grades. Rawr. They try my patience. Later days ~

Well guys... I realize it may strain credibility to say that single people are the world's heroes during the holidays, but going into my 21st year of experience in the matter, I feel authorized to make this claim.

The good news is that my thesis meeting today went _amazingly._ I had to hand over an outline/proposal for pretty much my entire paper... obviously not in full detail because it was maybe 5 pages long. The point was it had to be good because this is the only thing my guy's seen actually written down about the project, AND because he had to okay this before I can start writing. So I sat down, handed it to him, and he started reading it there in front of me. This was way more than I could handle, so I excused myself to the bathroom for a couple minutes. And I bonked my head on the stall wall when I looked down to zip up my pants- not sure how. Anyway, when I came back he said 'this is lovely- yes, this is excellent work. Especially the bit about John- very interesting.' I was so happy, I gave him a free copy of the C. Door.

The real story here is that he also said "so, I think we'll do this in chunks, but I don't want you to work on this over Christmas unless you want to. You can start writing in January." Oh MAN that makes me want to write over Christmas! Of course, he's overly optimistic and I'll need to start writing if I want any time whatsoever for revision... but the point is I have no deadline over break. My heart is so full of love right now.

AND THEN he gave me his copy of a novel to read- it's about Thoreau, and it's called "Woodsburner," which I find hilarious. Maybe only Matthew will appreciate that, but the real point is this was the best thesis meeting EVER.

Man, my lj icon is awesome. I get an unreasonable amount of happiness out of that thing.

Totally screwed for tomorrow's Environmental Ethics exam... I have no idea why this update is so optimistic. Later days ~

The rave at the graduate library is about to start. They're giving out free glowsticks this time. Maybe it's lame that I'm skipping this semester, and I wouldn't have anyone think I'm unsupportive of fledgling Carolina traditions. But I went last year, the first one ever, and this time around we must look to our own borders. Not going has given me a prime location in the undergraduate library, where I plan to camp out all night. I'll go next semester, but for now I'm content to work on my thesis and watch the parade of people flock to the other library. I really love watching people flock to campus events. Carolina, Carolina.

When I was going through the process of being confirmed, one of the less agonizingly boring things we'd do was play bible trivia. I really sucked at it, but we'd started off with a freebie question to get everyone 'on the board.' All we had to do was say our favorite Jesus scene from the bible, and I said "Gethsemane." But I pronounced it with the wrong 'g' sound, and it ended up something like "geth-eh-seh-mane." They gave me the points, but no one knew what I was talking about at first.

BUT! One of the higher-round questions was 'name the oldest son of Jacob.' And our assistant preacher had prefaced the question by saying that probably no one would know it.... but I DID. I got sooo many bible trivia points.
Thing is, in JCS, "Gethsemane" is the name of the song, but the word is only said in the full show recording, and all I had at this point was the highlights. On the other hand, there's a very distinct part of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that starts with "Reuben was the eldest of the children of Israel." Sooooo thanks Webber! 3/4ths of a win for Jill.

So, regarding moments when you remember exactly where you were. Some of these were international news that everyone cared about, some less so. They all mattered for one reason or another to me.

I was on track-out (year-round kids) on September 11th, but the entire jazz band practiced every Tuesday and Thursday before school hours, so I was up, home from practice, and watching Charles in Charge. I was flipping during commercials, and flipped right past the footage before my mother told me to go back.

I don't remember who picked me up from school the day George Harrison died, but for whatever reason they didn't tell me until after I got home. I remember I hadn't even known he was sick.

I was in the Student Union when the projected results for last November's election came up on screen, with a picture of Obama and some percentage or another. The Union erupted, and the Daily Tar Heel people were swarming around with pads.

I was walking around on the bricks between Ruffin and Manly, on the phone with Jeff, when I was officially offered my internship this past Spring.

I was holed away in my Boston student apartment when Michael Jackson's death was reported and I found out the next morning when it was on the cover of The Boston Globe, lying on the kitchen countertop at the HDT Institute.

Oddly the one that affects me the most today is this: I was alone on my last night in Morrison Dorm before going home for summer, 2008 when I decided at one point in my life I'd register to become a regular prison visitor. My things were scattered and the walls were beginning to look bare for move-out, but my laptop was open and CNN.com was up when I read about a man convicted of murdering his girlfriend. He'd been killed by lethal injection some hours before, and as his last meal he'd requested two barbecue burgers with crunchy onions and a strawberry milkshake from a local restaurant. I remember very distinctly where on my de-lofted bed I sat while I cried over that, for a very long time.

I'm at work. Just came over from Lenoir, where I enjoyed left-overs from last night's late night breakfast which Carolina Dining Services, in their infinite generosity, bestowed upon us. So I was sitting by an upstairs window and I saw my thesis advisor below, walking across the Pit towards student stores. I like seeing him around campus, because he's this tall purposeful guy, and he generally keeps his head up and is actually looking around and doesn't seem completely uninterested in the various going-ons.

Don't get me wrong- he still terrifies me. But the fact that he doesn't intentionally demonstrate as much apathy as possible towards students makes me like him... even more than I would if he were ONLY the best English instructor here and a total Thoreau badass.

P.S. The left-overs were pretty good. The sticky buns were a liiiiiittle stale, but the strawberries were actually more ripe so everything balanced out.