I just started a 6 week intensive humanities class–5th century Greek texts to be exact. Once upon a time I THOUGHT I’d learned my lesson by not partaking in these insane classes which love to cover 7 rather large novels in 6 weeks. Apparently I’ve not learned my lesson.
After a quite rushed first class where all the menial paperwork was completed by the prof: attendance, syllabus review, introduction of 35 students, we jumped feet first into “The Odyssey.” And not just anywhere in the book… some 150 pages into this classic work of literature. We finished discussion of the book and were told ‘have this read by Thursday’s class.’ Now I don’t know about any of you but I do have other classes that I’m taking and power reading “The Odyssey” is not high on my list of things to get done. Furthermore, covering the book in its entirety in a mere 2 hours is not doing it justice. There are other classes that cover this book in 4 weeks rather than 2 hours. One of my favorite profs is offering the identical class in September except in its 12 week version. He’s taking 3 weeks to cover this book. Unfortunately come September I’ll be on to bigger and better things. Bigger and better schools as well.
For the next six weeks–no make that five weeks now–expect copious complaints about the problems of covering Greek classics in this context. We’re reading 20 pages in total from Herodotus, 40 pages from Aristotle’s “Poetics,” and a brief snippet of Aeschylus’ “The Persians” next week. And THAT’S IT. The next stop on our tour will be 10 pages from Thucydides’ “The Melian Dialogue” and getting our toes wet in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex.” Fortunately, the latter is familiar territory for me.
Welcome to the 5th Century Greek Texts rollercoaster ride from Hades. Hold on, it’s about to get rough.
If we focused as much of our attention on what’s happening in IRAN as we are on the events surrounding the death of Michael Jackson, imagine what we would be able to accomplish.
I fricking LOVE you. Thanks for a great evening.
Yellow - 100 yellow balloons filled with confetti boucning around GM Place
Happy birthday to my babies who will always be my babies and not my 4-year-olds.
Next year, kindergarten. Aiiiiya, how did this happen?
June 8, 2005
June 8, 2006
June 8, 2007
June 8, 2008
May 2009 (only because they’re at school and I haven’t done their birthday picture yet)
Everyone’s entitled to one, right?
The first 3 History Major grads at the university (alphabetically, I was first… mwahaha)
Happy history faculty with the 3 major grads.
I am pleased to inform you that your application for admission has been accepted. You have been admitted to the Bachelor of Education – Secondary (Vancouver 12 Month) option – Major Social Studies – History for the University of British Columbia’s 2009-2010 Winter Session. Please notify the Teacher Education Office of your intent to accept or decline this offer by returning the enclosed form no later than two weeks from the date of this letter.
HOLY CRAP I DID IT! Suck it, Stink Fist U. Suck it long, and suck it hard.
Look out, UBC. It’s gonna be a LONG drive from Langley, but I’m making the trek come September!
WOO FRICKIN HOO!
I finished spring cleaning — officially — two weeks ago. We’re now a full week into the summer semester and I got the entire house gutted prior to this semester’s commencement. Huzzah.
Amongst the rubble of one of the storage closets (the one with all the once a year shit: Christmas decorations, old Hallowe’en costumes, etc) I found milk cartons. Milk cartons upon milk cartons of records. Vinyl. Albums. Old school shit. Shoved to the far back wall, out of human contact for close to 5 years. At least 5 years, I would think… we’ve been living here for five years and I remember getting comments about inheriting 8 milk cartons full of records RIGHT before we moved in here. I inherited them from my grandma and she inherited them from my uncle who died, tragically, in a helicopter accident more than 20 years ago. The milk cartons had been stored in her basement for 15 years when I finally got my hands on them (much to the chagrin of Dear Hubby who would only saw that we would have to move them in the very near future and find somewhere to store them.) Because I’m the only cool grandkid (take that, pesky sister and cousins who may or may not be reading this) and because my late uncle was my Godfather, I received the bulk of the albums when my grandma moved into her senior’s home.
I totally forgot I inherited these. You see, I don’t own a record player. I don’t even own a CD player (except for in the cars) and I think collectively we own less than 50 CDs. We made an executive decision to rid ourselves of the over 800 CDs we once owned. Both of us slaved for years at an unnamed LARGE mall music store, and thus our CD collection became quite extensive. A few years ago I donated our incredibly eclectic collection of CDs to Ray, who had a lovely shelving unit from Ikea in desperate need of some music. We kept only the CDs that meant something to us: the signed U2 CDs, the original (and misprint) Tool CDs, the KMFDM CDs that brought us together. The NIN CDs that we collected throughout the years to get the whole Halo collection (from Halo One to Halo Twenty-Seven). All music we have now is digital, thus these records pose a problem.
Due to the personal attachment I have to them I don’t want to rid myself of them. But I also don’t want to go out and buy a record player just to play some albums that I could easily get on iTunes and that I’ve probably already got on my iPod. I know many friends would love to take them off my hands. Shane, my dear vinyl friend, jumped at the chance to grab them and if I ever decided to rid myself of them, he has been given first dibs to pilfer the collection before shipping them off to Krazy Bobs (his suggestion). We figure there’s over 500 records which have now been gently pushed to the back of the storage closet, to sit for another 5 years. Maybe in 5 years I’ll have the desire to sell them. Maybe sooner if we decide to sell this place and I’m forced to purge (though I’m sure my dear Hubby and Mom would duke it out on the front lawn over me tossing records that belonged to my Mom’s little brother).
In the mean time, here’s a sampling. I once had a very eclectic CD collection. I now have a very eclectic vinyl collection which includes, amongst others, many Billy Idol albums (damn, wish I had these when I saw him 6 years ago at the Commodore!), some Bruce Springsteen albums, some Bryan Adams albums (I effin HATE Bryan Adams), a LOT of Led Zeppelin albums, a LOT of Doors albums, a few U2 albums (yippie!), some CCR, some Beatles, some Elvis, a lot of Rolling Stones, some Janis Joplin, some Bob Marley, a few Jimi Henderix, and some weird shit like Boney-M (hmm…) and A-Ha. Seriously… A-Ha. Take On Me is now on repeat in my head. Thanks, Uncle!
The perks of being classified as a grad student (cause PBD students aren’t considered undergrads and are classified as ‘grad students’):
Preferred parking and discounted parking passes.
Being offered TA and TM-ships in the departments you have degrees in.
Free photocopying and printing.
Full semester borrowing priviledges through the library.
Woo.
Random comment from a Psych major in my Translations/Linguistics Humanities class:
On talking about Don Quixote, which we’re covering:
Her: “Don Quixote? You mean like the movie?”
Me: “Which movie”
Her: “The one with the guy who’s name was Don.”
Me: “Don…?”
Her: “Yeah it was a mobster movie.”
Me: “The Godfather? His name was Vito Corleone but they called him ‘The Don’.”
Her: “No… it wasn’t The Godfather. Name me another mobster movie with a character named ‘The Don’ that’s like this book.”
Me: “Drawing a blank.”
Her: “It had the guy from American Beauty in it… Kevin Spacey?”
Me: “….mobster movie? You mean The Usual Suspects?”
Her: “YES! That’s it! That movie is exactly like Don Quixote! And wasn’t his name Don?”
Me: “No…”
Don’t ask how she got Don Quixote from the Usual Suspects. I’m not entirely sure and didn’t want to question it further. My head already hurt enough.
I have been a spring cleaning machine. Because I have two weeks off between the end of the spring semester at KPoo and the beginning of the summer semester at StinkFist, I needed to find something to keep myself busy. Thus, I am purging our house. I am the queen of lists and so far I have done quite well sticking to it. To date I have recycled two massive piles of cardboard (ok, only one, the other one is in the trunk of my car, waiting to get tossed in the recycling bins down the street), hauled 6 bags of clothes and miscellaneous non-required items to Value Village. I have emptied boxes that have been packed in closets since we moved in here 5 years ago this September. If we haven’t used it in five years it’s not important to keep it anymore.
Of course, ask me next year when I’m kicking myself for throwing out *insert trivial object here* and I may answer differently.
I have deep cleaned the bathrooms (yuck), reorganized the kitchen cabinets, emptied out all the expired medications safely, sorted the books on the shelves (have I ever mentioned we have twelve bookshelves FULL of books in this house–mostly of my books) alphabetically. Still on the list of things to do is to clean off our patio (and I’m sure I can get that done this weekend), replace the doorknobs on the rest of the cabinets in the house to match the brushed stainless ones in the kitchen, clean off my dresser which has become the catch-all for papers and ’stuff’, purge the kids toys (hello Toy Fairy), and clean out the fridge.
I even rearranged the living room to be more ‘entertainment friendly,’ and cleaned out under the bed… and found a lovely surprise of very aged cat boak. AWESOME! What a treat! I’m even considering rearranging the bedroom furniture, but that may take some convincing of Dear Hubby, since he’s the one to do all the heavy lifting. Eventually I’d like to paint the bedroom, as it’s the only room in the house that didn’t get painted and have crown molding installed when we moved in.
If only I could be this motivated to do school work during the semester… Some time during the other week off, I have to get reading The Odyssey. Again. Go Greek Lit class. Woo!
