Hm, it’s been a while.

Things I have done so far this spring break:

1) Not run at all or exercised in other ways.

2) Baked and eaten many cookies and bread.

3) Made the most amazing bacon cheeseburgers with Luke. (Homemade rolls! Thick-sliced bacon! Gouda cheese!)

4) Discovered hamentaschen, and eaten many of them.

5) Found out that my cholesterol is a little high (whoops).

6) Read two books (class-related) and several articles!

7) Not read the other 7 on my list. I still have, like, 4 days, right?

8 ) Made 2/3 of a hat for my dad’s birthday…which was the 9th.

9) Ripped it out because it was too small and restarted it.

10) Resolved to go to bed earlier.

11) Gone to bed, in fact, much later.

12) Found out that the dog doesn’t need another surgery! So that’s a good thing.

Well, two steps forward, one step back, I guess.

Also, yesterday I found a very small (size 0-1) double pointed knitting needle in my bag. It was also somewhat shorter than a typical knitting needle. I stared at it for about 15 seconds, trying to reconstruct the circumstances in which I’d acquired this needle and wondering where I had put the rest of the set. Then I realized that it was a toothpick.

A List

I don’t have anything specific I want to write about, so I’m just going to start typing and see where I get. I can’t promise not to edit, though.

1) I got home this evening to find that Clementine, whom I had left in the kitchen instead of in her crate because I felt sorry for her (oh, the irony), had escaped the baby gate, gotten into my bedroom, and TORN THE PLACE APART. I seriously cannot see my floor for all of the clothes, yarn, scraps of toilet paper, fabric, bobbins, socks, beads…wow, I have too many crafting materials.

2) Two things encouraged me not to kill her: she didn’t actually destroy anything–she’s not a shredder, she just likes to carry my clothes around for a while–and she didn’t pee anywhere. Hooray for that.

3) I am coming to realize that I know Hebrew significantly less well than is acceptable. I am discovering this when it comes to using the Biblical Hebrew to build other languages/dialects (Aramaic, Rabbinic Hebrew, and Modern Hebrew are what I’m working on now) and I FAIL because I don’t actually understand the rules for vowel shifts or have the paradigms for anything other than the very basic verb forms memorized. You’d think if I could recognize forms I could reproduce them, but oh you would be wrong.

4) This means that I am going to have to spend the summer going back over the introductory grammar and learn it for reals this time. I swear I am going to do this.

4a) A troubling thought: I am becoming so used to the warm fuzzy feeling of being surrounded by people who care about the same fiddly things that I do, such as the relative merits of the Lambdin and Seow grammars for embarking on said reconstructive project, that I am in danger of becoming really super boring to the 99.9% of people who are not specializing in this field because they have better things to do with their time. I shall try to avoid this. I cannot promise anything about the contents of the blog, though. Consider yourselves warned.

5) I am making a quilt! With the wonderful sewing machine I got for Christmas! It is going to be fabulous!

6) My most recent project on the sewing machine was a stuffed bird ornament from a book on quilting that I bought because I wanted to make everything in it (Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, in case you’re wondering). It looks…handmade. In the bad way.

7) Most of the time this semester I have been feeling terrific–cheerful, happy to be here, busy but not TOO busy, challenged but not stupid, feeling like I’m in exactly the right place, basically.

8 ) Today is not one of those days. I feel slow and stupid and man, is there a lot of stuff out there to learn. So much so that four years (8 semesters, 30 classes, not counting summer languages) of graduate school (assuming I get into Notre Dame for the Ph.D) feels like too short of a time to learn anywhere close to enough to actually TEACH this stuff or contribute to this field.  And the assumption is not a safe one to make by any means. My goodness are there a lot of people who want fellowships. And knowing that, and knowing that my professors will judge whether they want to let me in here for the Ph.D based on whether they like what I’ve done in the MTS, is kind of freaking me out. Not most days…just the days where I feel slow and stupid and wonder why I want to work with languages when I can’t remember vocabulary words for longer than 30 seconds at a time.

9) I will stop feeling sorry for myself now. I swear.

10) Annnnnd, to end on an entirely unimportant note, Mary Frances, I stole your nail polish color and I am NOT GIVING IT BACK.

Okay, off to read about virtue ethics. Good times!

Noob.

It’s funny–some days I feel as though I’m really getting the hang of this job, and other days I realize just how much of a noob I still am. And the days aren’t predictable. Something like, say, explaining what a “motif” is and getting the students to become aware of the recurrence of language having to do with blood, masculinity, owls, darkness, vision, Christ-figures, and what have you, in Macbeth? I turned out to be a pro at that. Something as seemingly simple as showing a movie version of Macbeth on the last two days of class before Christmas Break? Completely threw me for a loop. First I check out all of the VHS versions in the school library (4, in case you were wondering), then I realize I don’t have a VHS player and that none of those versions are very watchable anyway. I borrow an extra one from the school, take it home, and completely fail to put it up successfully. I decide to shelve that dilemma, rent a movie from the Fan Video, settle down to watch it, and realize that it completely sucks. So then I spend two to three hours driving around Chesterfield (I get lost) in complete desperation in search of a DVD version that another teacher recommended. I rent what I think is it, then realize within five minutes of playing it that it’s laughably bad. Finally I suck it up and watch the Roman Polanski one (which is actually fairly good, if dated) and just tell the students to close their eyes for the violent parts. Oh, and I’m leaving out the part where I had to beg the librarian (who is very sweet, luckily) for help finding a stand with a TV and VCR, then lug it around to all of my classrooms.

Go me.