An Impressively Ordinary Life

Talking to Vicki on Skype,
Vicki: So Mom's ordering pizza and sent me an e-mail to ask me what drink I wanted, except I wasn't paying attention to my mail so when I didn't respond after 3 minutes, she came upstairs and rather than just asking, said, "I sent you an e-mail." I turn back towards the monitor, go to my mail, read the e-mail, turn back to her and then answered her question. I'm almost surprised that I didn't just send an e-mail back to her. :V
Jo: LOL
Jo: There really is no better example of how communication in our family works.

http://www.apaclassics.org/Adminis…

I was wandering around trying to find information about Grad schools and came across job listings for classicists. It seems to be a page full of cancellations and budget cuts. :(

Take the first sentence of the first post of each month of 2008. The result is the summary of your year.

Jan: I hate weddings and wedding planning.

Feb: n/a

March: n/a

April: And yesterday was my 21st birthday.

May: I'm in.

June: n/a

July: n/a

August: Perhaps I'll start updating more regularly, but probably not

September: After weeks and weeks of waiting and hoping, we finally got news on 2 really big important financial things.

October: Teaching Latin to Deaf kids- Crazy?

November: n/a

December: I feel very blah.

Moral of this story: I don't update LJ very much, but last year was a busy year.

that I haven't purchased a single thing.

Yikes.

1 Final down, 2 to go. Grocery shopping in t-2 hours. Baking frenzy to commence tomorrow. I'm excited.

I'm feeling better; the thought of creamy things still makes me nauseous, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

I feel very blah. All I really want to do is bake and cook, but never clean. I have a paper to write and lots of reading to do, and not a lot of desire to do any of it, even though I know the reading is good and I'll enjoy it. At this very moment I'm avoiding doing laundry, which I've sorted to avoid writing this paper. There are layers. I know the things I'm not supposed to do, and I'm pretty good at not doing them when I'm not supposed to. Like, what I really, actually want to be doing is running new dungeons in WoW, but I won't. I would like to make tiramisu cupcakes, but I won't. I want to experiment with potato candy and peanut butter fudge, but I won't. Instead I spend a lot of time clicking the "check mail" button, and wandering around the internet and sometimes I just sit, and stare for a while because I really just don't want to do anything. I'm also coming down with something, which doesn't help. 

In other, less depressing news:
I made a pumpkin pie for thanksgiving. As well as pumpkin-cranberry scones (which were vegan, shhhh don't tell anyone) and molasses cookies. Oh! and Brandied Whipped Cream to go with the pie (which also went very well with the scones and cookies, and pretty much every other food I've dipped into it). Mom bought me a stand mixer, which I very much appreciate (and used to make all of the above), and will repay her with peanut butter fudge. After I finish this paper. :(. I chickened out on the pie crust though, I bought a frozen one. There's a little left over custard though, so I think I'm going to try making mini-pies in my cupcake thing with home-made crust. I've also made so many pumpkin-based things in the past couple of months that Josh is really tired of pumpkin. So I'll have to find a new ingredient to become obsessed with...

Tuesday night Uncle David was in San Francisco on business so we went out to dinner at R&Gs, which was really good. We had fresh steamed prawns and they were AMAZING. Prawn eggs are also super delicious. Then we wandered around china town for a while and stopped at a tea place, and sampled some $100/pound Oolong tea. It was really good and interesting. It tasted almost mustard-greeny. The leaves turned back into leaves when it had hot water over it, instead of just still being dried leafy remains. We did not buy any of it, despite how hard the sales lady tried.

I got my very first paper back yesterday. I got an A, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I mean, of course, I'm happy to have gotten an A, but I don't feel like this paper was any better than any other paper I've ever written, and it wasn't really remarkable in any way (though I am pleased that I had the opportunity to use the phrase, "being covered with battle-gore"). I finished it at 2am the day it was due, and didn't really revise it. I did a lot of summarizing and a less than equal amount of analysis. On the other hand, it is a lower division class and most people taking it aren't Classics majors, so the expectations aren't tremendous, I suppose. I think part of my confusion is that I thought Berkeley would be a lot harder and that I'd really be challenged in a way I've never been challenged before. While there is a lot of reading to do, and I certainly haven't done all of it (or even most of it), I feel like I'm just catching up on old information. I think part of that is just the nature of Classics, and that I'm vaguely familiar with the material already. I also don't have the difficulty with suspension of disbelief that a lot of people seem to have. The notion that people really believed in this unbelievably complex system of deities and those deities were in no way similar to current religious beliefs (the sovereign male figure is a philanderer, and the gods are not intended for people to model their lives after- and as such it's totally different from any way that religion is practiced today) is really hard for a lot of people, especially non-classicists, to wrap their minds around. Frankly, I find today's religious systems more difficult to grasp than those of the Greeks and Romans. I have a lot of thoughts about religion that I need to organize a little better, and I might post it later, but I have a feeling it'll be very lengthy. I have noticed that I've been thinking very differently about Latin than I have before, and I'm picking up on a lot more of the subtleties (and that they exist at all). There are days when it makes all the sense in the world, and days that it makes no sense at all, but part of that is just the nature of the pace of the class. We completed two units last week (4 quizzes!), and moved on to the third. We aren't doing as much reading as I'd like to be doing (like, any, really), but there just isn't time! Also, the exercises are really good at making little enough sense in English that you really have to know what the words are doing in Latin. You can't just get by knowing what it's supposed to be about, which is how I got through 5 years of Latin in high school and don't remember any of it now.
Next semester I think will be a lot more interesting (and stressful). I'll be taking 5 classes (I'm taking 3 now), and one of them is about Greco-Roman Magic and I basically have no background knowledge in that aside from that it existed and I know of a couple witch-figures in mythology, but that's basically it, so I'm really excited about it. I'm also taking a class about Literacy, which I think will be interesting, but I'm not sure. It might also just be BS.

Teaching Latin to Deaf kids- Crazy? or Crazy enough that it just might work?

Perhaps I'll start updating more regularly, but probably not. We're all settled in at Berkeley now. Classes start on the 27th, but I've got a bunch of things to attend in the week before that- luncheons and orientations, etc.

So, what's new?
David isn't autistic, officially. Mom and Dad took him to be tested at Baltimore, and their evaluation said that he did not have aspergers or asd-nos, but he did need to meet with a behavioral psychologist. I'm not sure how I feel about the diagnosis. He seems to fit the bill pretty well, but I'm not a trained professional. I suppose that as long as he's getting the help he needs at school, it doesn't really matter either way. He's come a long, long way since he started school. In a couple weeks he'll be going into 6th grade. Seems like not that long ago he was two and throwing his head at the ground, walking around with a bump and bruise on his forehead constantly. He lost one of his security sheets (he has 2, which are actually pillowcases) on vacation, and started crying just telling me about it, but then replaced it the next day with a stuffed frog. Baffling. Anyway, they're on the waiting list to meet with the psych that they were referred to but have no idea how long the list is or even where they are on it.

We moved into the family housing about 3 miles away from Berkeley. We found a great, inexpensive Chinese restaurant. My only complaint is that they use canned mushrooms. All in all, that isn't so bad. Target is about 200 yards away from us. Unfortunately, it's also across the amtrak rails, so it's actually about a mile trip. We have a 1 bedroom apartment, it's really nice, and so much more space than we've ever had before. We don't have a lot of our stuff yet, since our wedding gifts are all at mom's house. She's sending them soon though.

Vacation was pretty good. It's really exhausting to spend 3 weeks with David, since I've been gone and I don't know what level of discipline he's getting anymore. I don't know what's normal and what's not. We experienced our first Earthquake, which was really cool. We were also at Caltech when it happened, so there were news vans and all that there all day. We saw sea lions and hugemongous redwoods, and a glass blowing museum, and a lot of other stuff. We also got to spend a lot more time with Dad's family, which was great. There are 3 Davids. One of them is Dad's uncle, and another is his cousin, or grandma's cousin. I don't know for sure. Anyway, Uncle David called, which led to the following hilarity:
    Dad: Hi David
    David (in the back seat): Hi!
    Me: No, not you. Uncle David.
    David: The gay one?
    Me: No, that's Cousin David.

I've got 23 books to read for my 3 classes this semester. Ah, humanities. 1 book for my intensive latin course (the book introduces subjunctive in chapter 2), and 11 books each for my other two classes. Having not taken Latin for 3 years, and never being good at grammar or reading, I figured I'd take the Latin 1 & 2 combined course to get back into it and learn it right this time before I jump into my Latin focus. My other two classes are an intro to Greek Civ, and a course about Ancient Religions. It's going to be hard, and I'm going to have to learn how to focus and study, since I've never really, really been forced to learn before. I've started to get ahead on the following conversation:
    Interested party: So what are you studying/what's your major?
    Me: Classical Civilizations, with a focus in Latin
    Interested party: Oh (polite pause) What do you intend to do with that?
    Me: Teach.
Now I just say that I'm majoring in Classical Civilizations with a Latin focus, planning to teach.

Josh is on a phone interview right now. He had a job with Bit Torrent, but funding for the position was revoked before he actually got to start, so we're back to square 2. The recruiter who got him connected with Bit Torrent has arranged for this phone interview as well, so we'll see how it goes. Hopefully well. We aren't starving yet, but it certainly wouldn't hurt for him to be employed. :)

I love the Olympics. Really, really love them. I don't even care what sport is on, it's always exciting. The men's 4x100 swimming relay was spectacular. That's what people are for. Being incredible. (I'm reading Atlas Shrugged, can you tell?) Right now Water Polo is on. USA vs Italy, tied 6-6. It's fabulous. I know nothing about Water Polo. I don't think I've ever even watched it before, but it's great. I really enjoy watching people giving their all, trying their hardest, and being the best.

I'm farther in Atlas Shrugged than I've ever been before, so it's really very exciting now. I've started it probably 3 or 4 times now, but I always get bogged with with school or softball or getting ready for convention, but now I've got some free time. I really like it, but I have mixed feelings about the philosophy. I highly recommend it. It's a daunting book, but absolutely worth the read. At least so far.

It's about a 6 hour drive.

And yesterday was my 21st birthday. Josh and I went to Borders and walked around and then went to Shabu-Shabu for dinner. I had some Sake, which was pretty good but a little strong. It had rose and mandarin orange flavors in it.

Quizzes blatently stolen from Victoria's lj.

Comment and I'll give you a letter; then you have to list 10 things you love that begin with that letter.

I got B, from Boredom_Doodles
1. Being.
2. Brown, Alton
3. Brooks, Max (Author of World War Z)
4. Blackbeard (I'm watching a History Channel dramatization of blackbeard right now)
5. Borders
6. Books
7. Beagles
8. Busyness (because business is something totally different)
9. Booty, of the pirate variety.
10. Boredom

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