quixotic wordsmith

Success and failure

2008-11-01T13:10:00.002-04:00

The title of this post reflects the subject on which I have spent much thought and consternation over the past seven plus months. A classic dilemma: what are the qualifications for the two categories? How, in the world of complexities, can we fit any situation in either camp?

These designations are the hardest when we are evaluating ourselves. Without the advantage of objective perspective, we can linger on our shortcomings, or be blinded by the rush of accomplishment, even after time has passed. I have, after the first semester of my graduate school career, felt like a failure, and have slowly been attempting to climb out of that dark pit. I have to admit that it is partly self-serving to discuss this in the public domain—cathartic. But it is also out of empathy; the world presents us all with unique, often discouraging challenges. What I hope I can provide for others is just that, hope.

My greatest weaknesses, at least professionally, are my inept memory and complete paralysis when faced with lack of complete control. I have spent many years looking back on past accomplishments and wondering what it was that enabled me to succeed, to gain the respect and approval of those I sought to emulate. Nostalgia can be such a dangerous weapon. How often do we remember so clearly the merits and awards of our actions only, forgetting the hardship, frustration, and confusion of the means to the laudatory end?

At the heart of the problem, I have concluded, is the way we view our weaknesses. Overcoming adversity of any kind requires adaptation. You could say that 90% of life is trial and error. Some inabilities, be they physical or psychological, can be resolved. Adapted behavior, medical treatment, some path of change. And some you have to learn to live with. In some situations, you can emphasize the strengths you do have, but at some point, you will be faced with a challenge that hits at the heart of your insecurities. The easiest solution prescribe is the hardest to enact: not to get discouraged. To realize that every success is prefaced by failure, and sometimes it takes a very long time to get to your success. And sometimes the success looks nothing like the original goal you had in mind. But the only way to make success totally and absolutely impossible is to let yourself stop trying. It is always easier to accept the finality of failure, of an end to the misery of disappointment. To continue takes tremendous faith. When you find that have lost the faith entirely, take a closer look at your path. While failing to achieve the higher, ultimate goal, you will generally find that smaller successes have put themselves along your way.

I am, yet again, at a personal an professional crossroads. I cannot tell you where it will lead my, what new goals I may pursue, what paths I may choose. But I have found so much more has happened in bringing me to this place, despite my nagging self-hatred's attempts. Call it chaos theory, theology, American values, or whatever you may. But life is too beautiful and too short not to be realized.

the 25th hour: shocking beauty

2008-07-23T12:25:00.002-04:00

Courtesy of the indie cable channel and my DVR, I've just watched the film The 25th Hour, directed by Spike Lee. It's a New York love story. A story of loves and loving in New York, a story of love for New York. But mostly, it's about coming to terms with the loss of life, and our struggles with saying goodbye to "what might have been."

I don't know if the story was written and later incorporated the post-9/11 city of New York as a setting and a character, or if the entire project was formed with the aftermath of the fallen towers as its starting point. But without it, this would be an interesting film, a well-crafted film, and a forgettable film. The dual leads of New York and Monty Brogan are nothing without each other. Together, their interwoven stories lift this film into the tragic sublime: a beauty so painful it kills you, and a wound so honest you turn the knife yourself. But this is a post-modern tragedy. The city and the man share every flaw and component to classic tragic drama, but what we are left with at the end of the story is not simply catharsis through the ultimate demise of each, but hope. We must rely in part on our faith in the main characters, aided by both Norton's superb acting and the documented shows of love and support throughout New York in the aftermath of the attacks. It is the willing sacrifice of others, Brogan's loved ones and the city's many victims, who redeem Brogan, NYC, and we the viewers.

You simply cannot fully appreciate either this film or the tragedy of the World Trade Center without living in or around New York City. This is a bold statement which is sure to provoke many of you who have empathized fully with those whose families were involved with the attacks. It's not just a matter of understanding terror or loss; this event involves the living, breathing organism that is New York City, a place so unique, so multi-faceted, and so large that it is most easily understood as an abstract concept than a living being. This film excels at capturing intimate fragments of the life underneath the shell of the "Big Apple." The park where Edward Norton's character walks his dog is the same park where I've joined friends in an outing with their pooch. The interior of the club where I would argue the climax occurs may look like any generic Hollywood set on the inside, but the outside is nestled into the Dumbo area underneath the dark protection of the Brooklyn Bridge. Just as the writing reveals Brogan's deepest flaws and greatest character strengths through dialogue, it critiques the practices of Wall Street and the self-sabotaging practices of gangs and the illicit drug industry. But it also reveals the hard work and determination of the many immigrants who call the city home, and of the relationships that cross social boundaries of race, economy and language.

At the end of the day, the entire city is looking to be saved like Brogan's wounded mutt, when it is their unity with each other that brings them through.

I've been a bad, bad blogger

2008-05-27T11:47:00.002-04:00

Alrighty then!

I have been liberated from the temporal confines of school and wedding planning, and have re-emerged into "life." Reading novels, watching films, spending time with friends and family, what a wonderful life it is!

So, I'm not going to attempt to catch you all up on the past five months of my life, but I will hit the highlights. I took a course at Princeton with hal foster (aka The Man). My petition to continue as a doctoral candidate was denied by the faculty, forcing me to take the master's exam in august. I am still weighing the possibility of re-petitioning in the spring, with a different stance each time the wind blows. I had a great interview for a paid, part-time internship with the Jersey City Museum for next August-May, and have sent an application in to MoMA as well. My plan is to continue gaining experience in the nation's cultural capital, where it is somewhat easier to do so in a museum setting (at least with any prospect at monetary compensation), in the hopes of moving closer to home.

I got married! It was very stressful, but it turned into a very beautiful, casual, loving day.

Ok, so hopefully I will be blogging more again. I realize the only people reading this are those with RSS feeds, so hopefully i can gain my sparse readership back.

Here's to a new start!

Mentally challenged

2008-04-16T21:36:00.000-04:00

In discussing gun control, particularly in light of the one-year anniversary of the tragedy at VTech, Hillary singled out threatening typologies that should be prevented from bearing military arms. Along with gang members and criminals, she added "the mentally challenged."

Mentally challenged refers to those whose IQ is below 70-75.

Mentally disased refers to those of us who live with mental illness, whether treated or not. This often stems from chemical imbalances in the brain which effect behavior.

Clearly, the student at Virginia Tech had an adequate IQ for acceptance to a fine public institution of higher learning. And as we now know, he was suffering from mental illness. Illnesses are treatable. Mental retardation is not. Thanks for your thoughtful understanding, HC.

New plan

2008-03-07T15:48:00.003-05:00

I had been planning to continue my studies at Rutgers through to the PhD, and submitted my petition to do so. I heard this morning that my petition was denied, so I will be taking the rest of the calendar year to work, network and serve internships to prepare for re-entering the working world. i will also be using this time to search for how I can best serve my family and community through my work with art and hopefully museum institutions.

Request for Help

2008-02-25T23:59:00.002-05:00

Hi, dear friends. I have been following the presidential campaign, and I have chosen to support Barack Obama because of his focus on making health care affordable for everyone, goal to revise education, and my faith in his ability as a diplomat who can rebuild our alliances in the world. I have other reasons based on interviews, debates and critical discussion, which I encourage you all to engage in in making your own choice. If you share my enthusiasm for Obama, please visit my fundraising site for the campaign.

Thank you!

THIS is what's wrong with America

2008-02-20T21:43:00.002-05:00

It is truly impossible for me to adequately express how much the idea of this show absolutely enrages me. It seems like every commercial I see is focused on people balking at how much they are in love with their partner. First of all, if you have those kinds of doubts, why go on this show? Secondly, why, oh why, would anyone be so tantalized by this commercial that they actually wanted to watch and experience joy at someone else making a fool of themself and possibly sabatoging their lives. And all for money. Why is something like this even allowed to become a reality? Who that creates a show like this can sleep at night? I am even more livid about this show than I am about the morbid, fetishistic fascination American pop culture has with Britney's total inability to function. Maybe the show is not as morbid in actuality as it seems, but that in no way lessens the intense rage I feel when I see its commercials.

Who programs at FOX? How can a network that fostered the Simpsons produce so much total and utter crap?

Isn't this a basic lesson we all learn in school? That gossiping and masochistically enjoying the fall of the popular or successful is immature? Don't give me that "she's a product and she made the choice to be" crap, either.

I Need YOU

2007-10-29T15:18:00.000-04:00

As part of the Paterson, NJ branch of Dunder Mifflin, Inc. I am asking the help of all of you, dear friends, in clicking on THIS LINK to help our team gain points. Yes, it's dorky. Yes, it's the man trying to get you to the nbc website for Dunder Mifflin Infinity, but by God, together we can make this world a better place for paper supply companies everywhere.

United Oligarchy of America

2007-10-14T13:02:00.000-04:00

I can hear the not-yet uttered boos and moans coming through my computer speakers as I'm writing this one. I concede that the term oligarchy is too broad and non-descript (I'm not saying we're just like apartheid South Africa, if you're wikipediaing the term right now). The core of the matter I'm trying to open up for discussion here is the monopoly held by Big Corporate America over the economy and the government in this, our globalized State.

Recently on an NPR segment, I heard our current era referred to as a revided gilded age. My high school AP US textbook took a sociological approach to our nation's history. This method in any humanist discipline is derived from original attempts to apply Marxist principles to historical analysis, focusing first and foremost on economy as a driving factor. You can very rightly say that my AP US class was my first (albeit blind and naive) brush with theoretical criticism. Throughout the text, the socio-economic health of the country was gauged by examining the stratification of wealth. I believe the most equal distribution came with the climax of the middle class in the 1950s. Since then, our country has been slip-sliding back towards a slanted economic equation. To a quasi-socialist, allegorizing our own times to that of the early industrial era wrenches the stomach; it's also not entirely surprising. Under the Bush administration, welathy corporate America has been nurtured and nourished into the Seymor of our Little Shop of Horrors. The campaign in Iraq is perhaps the most strident example of this.

On Real Time with Bill Maher this week, author Naomi Klein discussed some of the issues in her new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She is concerned foremost with the exploitation of global instability to build first world wealth, but a crux of her criticism is the inevitability of capitalism gone wrong. I remember a conversation held (online) with a good friend of mine who lives and grew up in th UK and came to the US for college (or university, if you please). I was bemoaning capitalism's moral decrepitude, while she argued that nationalization in the UK had produced its own complications—forgive me, Katie, dear, if I summarize your thoughts incorrectly. In her mind, post-modern nationalization in Britain has created a sense of mallais among its middle-class hopefuls that can only lead to stagnation. She praises the American system for its encouragement of enrepreneurship and enterprise, which leads to a more dynamic and adaptable ecnomic system. The truth of the matter is, every economic principle is good in theory but each can be taken to its own pernicious extremes. The equation of socialism with communist dictatorship is not so dissonant to that of capitalism with oligarchy—each leads to extreme stratification and control by the privileged few.

The eternal optimist, I would say that this is not a fatalist situation, and like any civil structure, requires a balancing of factors to keep the ebbs and flows in check. One obvious remedy for our nouveau gilded age is the eradication of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and the enacting of the many campaign contribution reforms currently swirling around in the public arena. We need new leadership to step in and act decisively toward reforming our political-economic system to support both increased nationalization of important issues such as healthcare, and yet still retain the capitalist rewards for new growth. I would like to emphasis the NEW in that last statement. I do not think we should continually fed the successful leadership who have proven that they contribute wealth and growth to the economy, It seems logical that these women and men are capable of creating positive situations for themselves. I would propose the increased educational and investment opportunities for new leaders.

In my college years, free trade was a crucial issue and perhaps the most decisive for the 2000 and 2002 senatorial campaigns in my home state of North Carolina. The tarheel state is was built on agriculture and the factories that turned produce into manufactured goods (mainly of the tobacco variety). Duke University was built on this and this alone (as well as Bull Durham, the home of that established institution). As I watched the campaign commercials for Elizabeth Dole, running against Erskine Bowles for the seat vacated by John Edwards in the US Senate, I laughed at her repeated claims to keep textile jobs in North Carolina and the stop the economic outsourcing of this trade. As if that were possible. I also remember an episode of the West Wing in which free trade was attacked as a lose-lose situation for the American people. At the time, I asked my political-pundit-in-residence, Matt Compton, what exactly this might mean. From my point of view, opening up trade would give us the economic upper hand. Matt explained that while the elimination of low-skilled blue-collar jobs paved the way for greater administrative, white collar positions in America, the educational system in place would not support teaching the skills that these new positions would require in the demographic who would benefit from them the most.

Dire circumstances can lead either to total ruination, or extreme reform and regrowth, and education is the foundation on which economy is built. John Edwards, the formerly mentioned former Senator from NC, grew up and worked in the same mill as his father in Robbins, North Carolina. My father was appointed to a church in this town for a portion of my college career. Robbins is typical of many small NC towns. Large, empty mill buildings sit empty while artisinal and tourist trades are attempting to prop up a changing economy, while the youth are forced to leave in search of better jobs near the centers of education, research and development. The exponentially thriving trade in the area is that of pottery, a traditionally strong craft of the region going back over a century. In one year while my parents were there, more than one hundred ceramics shops were opened in the county. A similar booming industry in the state is the establishment of local wineries. Tobacco fields are being resown with grape seeds and hundreds of wineries are opening state-wide each year. One of North Carolina's economic strategies has been to capitalize on its craft and industrial traditions, while its staples are increasingly being shipped and imported. While this is a very creative solution, the school systems in many of these towns and counties still smells of rot and infestation. Some youth return to their hometowns after college to teach, but the systems have not managed to keep up with the demands of the times. School systems closest to the wealth and universities have become privileged institutions built on their tax base, while the regional and local structures are left spinning their wheels.

This does not have to the case. My parents are currently living in Snow Hill, NC, located in Greene County. You may never have heard of this area in your life, even if you're Carolina born and raised. The area reached its economic apex in the railroad age, and the landscape is dominated by dry fields with dilapidated wooden farmhouses. But something really amazing is going on in the Greene County public schools. The people of Greene County have been learning how to adapt to a changing economic situation, and they want their children to be better prepared. Their goal, lead not only by business leaders and educators but by parents, is to train the new generation for jobs which don't yet exist, in expectation of an increasingly specialized and technologically advanced society. They have language emersion programs that integrate Spanish and English (in which a friend of mine is participating as an elementary school teacher). They are passionately engaged in creating opportunities for the future of their region. They have sought and received grants from large corporations like Microsoft and Apple. The county has wireless network stations set up in community centers, such as my father's church, and laptops there to integrate the use of technology into children's daily lives. And they are reaping success.

My generation is jaded, over-educated and under-employed. Partly because we are not educated in what we need and not properly prepared for a life outside academia. Those who currently control the wealth should be helping to participate in the revolution of our educational systems. There are models in existence for this corporate charity. Taxation should be treated more proportionately to require greater contributions by the wealthy, but there should also be more incentive for corporations to actively participate in the health of the country of their own volition. We should be seeing more of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and less of Leona Helmsley's millionare canine.

It goes without saying that in addition to job preparation, ethics and responsibilty need to be continued areas of focus in our public schools. But we also need to be extremely critical of our religious institutions failing in this role as well. No matter what faith or denomination, religious communities have traditionally been the mainstay of moral education in this country. The post-modern religious instituations with the greatest historical pull have become so fractured and corrupt that they have left the nation hurt, dubious and mistrustful of religion. Along with the stratification of wealth, we have a stratification of religion. Among the Christian faith, there has occured a polarization to either extreme conservatism and unflinching uniformity or hyper-personalized agnosticism. The middle ground—the progressive—has been lost in a tide of disillusionment due to improper care. While America allows itself to be pitted against itself on a handful of keystone issues, the circular argumentation has left no voice for the most important section of the population. Those who care for others and uphold civic responsibility had stopped voting, stopped believing in the power of hope and positive action.

We are currently living in what could be a watershed moment in American history. Our nation is torn against itself and vulnerable at a time when global factors are ramming at the gates, ready to take us down. It is time for our nation to take responsibility and for its leaders to act with maturity and foresight, whether political, economic or religious.

DWTS!!!!

2007-09-24T20:12:00.000-04:00

Tonight is the season premiere of the inter-generational, choreographed glamfest known as Dancing with the Stars. Apparently they are stretching out the premiere as long as possible (3 days to be exact), with only the ladies dancing tonight. Since Phillip, my usual DWTS buddy, is in class tonight, this is as much for him as it is for you, my reading public.

Probably mine and Phillip's all-time personal favorite, Drew Lachey, is filling in for Samantha Harris, who just had her baby (she was super preggers at the end of last season). Drew is the cutest little thing. It does make the commentary kind of mantastic, though. Jennie Garth just performed, and it was ok. Her lines and movements need work, but she is so precious. The "green room," generally red-infused, is in somber midnight tones this year. I feel like the judges will be pretty complacent at this stage, but what I wouldn't give to have Bruno spraying Len with his vituperative spittle.

There is nothing about that skin and bones model chick that I like.

So, Sabrina is a Cheetah girl (of Disney fame—what, Disney owns ABC and last season there was a High School Musical cast member and now this? is there a coincidence?), and she looks like a Bratz doll. Her partner, however, Mark, is fantastic, "I got the stealth of a dancing ninja!" Yeah, he's awesome. Sabrina is, however, rockin' it for the bigger girls.

I'm having to fight my instincts in cringing at Marie Osmond. She reminds me a little bit of Kathy Lee Gifford, and we all know how much I love HER. But she is trying to show older moms that they can be sexy and fun, too, and I have to support that. But maybe she could work on that hair a little bit...

Can I just appeal to everyone right now, that barring someone I am less acquainted with pulls a Master P, no one vote for Mark Cuban? I just saw about 3 seconds of him in a montage and I think I might throw up.

I love Mel B already because she has awesome leg warmers. And she's a cheeky Brit. And, oh, here we go, she dances ok, too! Maksim's outfit looks like a beat performer went crazy with electrical tape.

SABIAN GLOVER IS PERFORMING ON WEDNESDAY!! For those of you who don't know who he (one of, if not the, best tap dancers of his generation) is, he choreographed the dancing for Mumbles in Happy Feet. If you haven't seen Happy Feet, I don't even know who you are anymore.

Jane Seymour is such a ringer. And they've paired her with Tony, who is by far the most talented teacher of the men. Jane was certainly excited that it was him. She's just so amazing. How does she stay like that? I love her. So graceful, so gracious.

So, the men are going to have a lot to live up to this year. By the way, the Bachelor commercials have been plentiful and let me say, it looks pretty great. They are banking on how grotesque the girls are: twist them in pretzels, let them fight over whose "face" has been broken the most. Wow. You know, it seems so awesome, really. Awesome. Yep.

I think Wayne Newton's "hair" should win its own award. Go, Wayne, go!

the Urgency of Hope

2007-09-14T09:56:00.000-04:00

This post shares a title with the talk that Elie Wiesel (el-ee weez-el) gave at Meredith's campus in the fall of 2003. Yesterday, I was thinking, Hope can be an awfully heavy burden. Hope is never the easy option; when one is faced with a trial or derision, our initial responses tend to be anger, at something, someone or the world in general. When we experience this impulse, we are presented a choice. We can act on the impulse and re-act pain on someone or something else, we can retreat from the pain, or we can choose to not act, or portray an attitude against the re-action. This last choice is the decision of hope. Hope that our situation will become better and needs no retributive act, hope that our positive actions can diminish future occurrences of the pain.

I recently had someone comment on what they perceived to be my constantly hopeful attitude, by saying that I seemed able to easily handle whatever stresses were thrown my way. My first reaction was "well you don't see the panic attacks!" followed by "that's what I take anxiety medication for." I thought of my medical treatments as giving me a leg up, maybe even a crutch.
It is easy to dismiss the title of this post coming from me. A white, protestant, educated person that is in school for a living, supported by her fiance and family. That is all true; my life is good and I have had many opportunities bless my life. But as any other diagnosed depressive knows, physical comforts and objective bliss doesn't matter when your subjective and personal mental chemistry wants to deny you that pleasure.

I feel like I have been able, with the help of others and my personal desire to control the disease, to find a way to live relatively peacefully with this condition. But one of the Freudian symptoms of depression is a more active death urge. For those of you less versed in pyschological history, the death urge is that impulse you feel perhaps at the top of a tall building that causes you to image, just briefly, jumping off. For me, it's more frequent when I'm tired or don't feel well. Say, when I'm driving and imagine just letting go and letting the car careen around. Let me stress the difference between the death urge, which is a momentary impulse of mental images and desires, with suicidal behavior. An impulse is something that seeps or bursts up from the unconscious, which a healthy consciousness learns to control and subdue. I have never considered myself suicidal. Whatever impulses I may have, at no point have I ever felt that my brain would succeed in telling my muscles and nerves to act against themselves and harm myself in any way. My point is not to scare you, dear readers, but to make the point that the choice to give in to impulses, whether they be active or passive, is a tantalizing, seductive even, option of letting go.

The tool (I chose weapon and then knew that the connotation of anger or violence really wan't correct) that my conscious and conscience chose to keep the death impulses at bay are the images of my loved ones. Phillip, my family, my friends. The love they have for me and the pain my pain would cause them. This is the essence of hope. Hope stems from love, forming a symbiotic relationship; one starves without the other.

Even with all of this information, one could still base my perception as that only the naivite of youth could nurture. Again, I return to the title of this post. Many of you know how impacted my life has been by the work of Elie Wiesel, and how ardently I worked to get to meet him in person when he came to visit my campus during my senior year. You can guess from his title the tenor of his talk. And this is the true affirmative of my argument. Elie Wiesel embodies the opposite of all my vulnerable traits. He is no spring chicken. And he is a holocaust survivor. You need only to read his novel Night to be aware of the intense pain for which he asks no sympathy. he only asks that this pain be used to fuel the profusion of love. His message is that if he has learned to embrace peace and love and become their voice, then surely you and I can at least attempt to follow his lead on the path of decision-making.

This morning, I was listening to NPR, per usual, on my way to school for work. There was a piece on an Iraqi doctor (a dentist) who had been publishing an auditory diary on the web. The narrative set up that a year ago, he announced that news from a friend was bad and that he had to leave. A week later, he explained that one of his best friends had been abducted at the market in Baghdad and was being held for ransom by insurgents. He continued over the next few weeks to assuage his fears with optimism, at the father of his friend having come to terms with the captors, and raising the ransom with the help of family and friends. The last message from the Iraqi blogger was played on air. After the delivery of the money, the body of his friend had been dumped in the market with his head decapitated. I heard on my radio the raw emotion of this Iraqi's words prior to his attempted escape from the country and subsequent entry into hiding.

This was followed immediately by a recording from the story corps project. Every Friday morning, I look forward to a touching and personal story from an American that entered one of the several traveling booths that NPR and the Library of Congress support. A father and Vietnam veteran was speaking to his teenaged daughter, who asked him about his experience in the war. He told her of his high school friend who was drafted simultaneously and who experienced training and deployment with him. Whenever the drill sergeant seemed to be getting to the spirit of our veteran, "when I seemed to be taking it too seriously," his friend was begin to nudge him and repeat the command not to "mess with" the sergeant in a mocking tone. It was through their mutual laughter that they survived their experiences. After the war, our veteran went to college and his friend was depressed, and ended up working as a forklift operator after a failed attempt at school. A year later, the friend died in an accident at his workplace. Our veteran had a dream that his friend was floating with him, and when asked if he was alright, replied that yeah, he was fine, and the smile of their shared assurance enveloped his face. During the first piece, my eyes were burdened and bloated, and during the second my tears flowed in sweet release.

As is often the case with crying, the stories were only the trigger that caused the response of my crying. The thoughts that condensed into my teardrops were multivalent. Sadness and anxiety over the suffering of those involved with the war, those starving and suffering from AIDS in Africa, my brother's imminent dissolve from ALS and the moments I miss with him while I am hundreds of miles away in school, these had been churning long before the 50 minute ride in which I listened to NPR this morning. As I was walking toward my building on campus, I immediately felt that fear of the criers, that I would not be able to control my feelings and might be caught by someone and faced with the need to explain myself. What would I say? I immediately thought I'd say, "No, I'm ok. I'm not crying because I'm not ok. I'm crying exactly because I am."

the similarities of the american south and middle east

2007-07-09T11:55:00.000-04:00

So, that's right, I'm working on more research, so time for another philosophical post. Read all the way to the end and get an update on my goings-on!

Over the summer, I am working on a continuation of my research and writing on French postcard photography of native Algerians during its rule of the former colony of Algiers. Since it deals directly with West-East conflict, it's very timely, even though Algeria claimed independence in the late '30's. I have just now started a collection of essays discussing the ongoing Western/Muslim interchange and social ramifications of colonialism's past. It's beginning to occur to me that Southerners can identify and empathize with the residents of the Maghreb (Muslim North Africa).

Some of you may remember my paper this past semester on the Virginian photographer Sally Mann. To recap for the majority of you out there, the paper explored how Mann's psychological biography supports interpretation of both peaceful rest/healing and death in her work. An aspect of this argument relies on her self-admitted closeness, both individually and as a Southerner, with the echoes of the Civil War and reactions to attack, occupation and demoralizing defeat of a geographically bound cultural group. I've always been strongly attracted to the idea of Southern cultural identity. When I was studying in Florence, Italy for a semester as an undergraduate, my friends, mostly Midwesterners, were amazed at how virulent we can be about our uniqueness and the continued breakdown in our minds along the Mason-Dixon line, the historical boundary demarking states who supported slavery and Southern independence over a century ago.

When I was a teenager, my county had one large and overcrowded high school. The range of diversity was to me at the time spectacular: farmers from the north, blue and white collar workers from the towns, and children of the surrounding university-driven cities. A county with a colonial history on the edge of an education and medicine triumvirate and a large and active alumni chapter of the Future Farmers of America, our high school had it's fair share of rebel flag clothing, paraphernalia, and even a few incendiary inscriptions dedicated to the KKK. The issue of race relations is a whole 'nother musing, and I want to bring particular attention to the use of the rebel flag as a symbol of cultural unity and individuality from the rest of the United States. Just as we see globalization erasing traditional cultural boundaries, individual countries are also becoming more unified and losing their sense of regional diversity. The South is proud of its roots in farming, it closeness to the land and ability to subsist by one's own hand. There is a great sense of family, of hospitality, of respect and politeness. Our forebears were Irish, English, Scottish, and African, creating a cuisine of soul food and sweet tea that no Southerner in their right mind would turn their mouths against. It's also a land marred by great poverty. Even during the time of slavery, the grand plantations you've seen in Gone with the Wind represented a tiny percent of the population. Economic disparity was always an issue, and the Civil War destroyed much of what was the economy. A culture so full of pride has been ordered to try to repress all of their culturally unique attributes, both the good and the bad, in an attempt to morally rectify and cleanse the region for the horrible atrocities of slavery and segregation. Rather than nurturing relations, this has created a reactionary swing of those who are tired of being made to feel shame for who they are, who have begun to cling not only to the positive aspects of their society but also continuing ideas of racial superiority.

When I speak of this cultural oppression, I mean in the thoughts and actions of the Northern United States as a whole. It is amazing to me how views on the Civil War differ between the two sides to this day. Bill Simmons, a sportswriter for ESPN hailing from Boston, recently made mention in a recent article to the "Great Civil War." I can't tell you how many times I have heard the same tragic conflict referred to as the "War of Northern Aggression" and Reconstruction as "The Rape of the South." While the South was never a colony of the North and always shared a more less comparable status, the events of the mid-nineteenth century set up a new hierarchy. The South bore the brunt of the devastation of the fighting, and the legislation of "Reconstruction" acted in a similar manner to the Treaty of Versailles for Germany, to economically hinder the region from building itself, thereby hoping to eliminate the possibility of armed defense and making the South economically dependent upon its neighbors to the North. The situation enabled profit-seeking entrepreneurs to take advantage of those licking their wounds and funnel the money made northwards. One group of people occupying another on grounds of moral superiority, beating said occupants into submission, then appropriating the resources for their own betterment, leaving behind a legacy of bitterness and financial hardships.

Can you think of any other replications of this exact situation? Iraq may have come immediately to mind, but the history of Western Imperialism gives us more plentiful examples. Let me make crystal clear that I am in no way condoning slavery or the more hierarchical relationship of the white to black existent for centuries in the South. The conquest of native peoples during the golden age of imperialism allows for much greater sympathy on the part of the native peoples, as they were merely used as inconsequential pawns on the behalf of Europe, and hardly in a state to defend themselves properly, greatly different from the situation of the Southern United States. The similarities I am more interested in are in the state of relations upon the occupation's termination. And while Southerners enjoyed much more freedom and a higher standard of living than those under the imperial boot, Southerners are perhaps the only Caucasian group in American that has a historical precedent in any way similar to those of the Arab, Berber and Jewish Algerians. I am not attempting to raise sympathy for white supremacists, or to say that the analogy is stronger between Algerians and Southern whites than to the former slaves and Native Americans of the South. I am calling out to my Southern community to take their feelings of anger, shame and pride and apply them to the Muslims who have for so long suffered at the hands of their captors. Set aside the false notions of Islam spread in the Bible Belt and furthered by the aggrandizing of fundamentalist Muslim political parties and terrorist groups. Rather than a call to arms, this a call to understanding. A call to try to see the deeper problems which have caused the current distrust and resentment of the West and stop trying to pretend like it doesn't exist.

So, you think YOU can dance?

2007-06-15T15:58:00.001-04:00

So, any thoughts on the results show last night? Phillip thinks that the guys this year are heads above the ladies, but it was the female lot that they had such a hard time paring down for the final 10. I was initially a little surprised at the cutting of Ricky, since he was the only guy in the bottom three with formal training, but after reading his bio it sounds like dancing isn't what he really wants to do anyway. And his hair is...well since Strunk, White and Phillip want me to start using smaller and more compact words, greasy.

woa, julie

2007-06-10T22:00:00.000-04:00

i have never seen someone actually look angry when they won a tony award. julie white won for A Little Dog Laughed, and she was so excited, she stood up and screamed with passion, grabbing her dress and yanking it in what could either be rage or intense excitement

p.s. ethan hawke looks like crap

2007-06-10T21:41:00.001-04:00

his career may be going well, but at least his looks horrible, post-uma

chimchimeny chimchimeny chimchim charoo

2007-06-10T21:13:00.001-04:00

I realize that the Best Musical scenes tend to be a well-organized variety of the key songs, and that the brief choreography we saw from the chimney sweeps must pale in comparison to their dance in the show itself, but I find it VERY hard to imagine it being as magical, engaging and creative as in the original movie, with Dick Van Dyck at the fore.

Oh, and you can find more about Spring Awakening at their website. Apparently the cast and crew are live blogging from their cell phones to the website.

Also, John Mahoney just said goddamn on live tv and they obviously weren't expecting it. Pretty hilarious. I loe you, TA.

Showpeople

2007-06-10T20:31:00.001-04:00

I realize I've been relatively mute for awhile. I have decided, rather than give another exhausting update on my life, to morph my blog into a TONY blog.

So, it is time for the American Theatre Wing's 2007 Tony Award Ceremonies, right from Radio City Music Hall (which I, rather unfortunately, had to trudge through dirty, nasty, snowy sludge and pass every day as I went to the College Art Conference in February.

While Phillip and I can't say that we've seen any of the Tony nominees this year (it's much more cost-effective to see all of the best picture noms), but I can say that this is the first TA that I can enjoy after seeing an actual show on Broadway (that being Spamelot, the Monty Python musical which is so very delightful). Between my readership of the New Yorker and Jean and Brooks (since Jean works for Disney Broadway, shows are an integral part of their life which we are priveleged enough to hear all about), I feel like I know at least a little bit about the shows.

Here's what I love most about the TA—the people are so altruistic. They love what they do, they love the theater community of which they are a part, and they truly appreciate the work done by their peers. It's more of a lovefest than a race to the egotistical finish line.

So far, the big winner (and it shows, as every in the crowds faces and whistles can attest) has been Spring Awakening, the adaptation of a nineteenth century play about Austrian teenage angst and sexuality. I personally am very interested in Curtains. More to come.

did you forget me? i have not forsaken you.

2007-05-23T08:47:00.000-04:00

Dear readers, it's been a long time since rock'n'roll here on quixotic wordsmith. I did not die. School did not eat me (just my brain), Phillip did not murder me in my sleep on a psychotic rampage, I was not runover by a road-raged NJ driver. Basically, the last month of any semester you can count on not seeing or hearing from me unless you either a) live with me or b) frequent the Rutgers Art History buildings. While I was finished by the 8th, I have been happily busy hosting guests, travelling myself, and generally trying my best to do nothing. So, my beloved audience, let's refresh you on what I've been up to.

School went really well. I was really pleased with my grades after busting my tail feathers. I was really pleased with one of my papers, and feel that while I still have a long ways to go in my career as a scholar, I have been progressing at an ambitious pace. Hopefully I can take what I have learned this past year and use this summer to give my writing and research skills a glamorous makeover. I am ecstatic to have moved beyond being a first year! Freshmeat no more. Jenevieve, Kat and I have formed the graduate party that is in charge of welcoming and orienting the newbies in the fall. I am also on a planning committee for a feminism in the visual arts symposium that will be occuring in October; another student and I are in charge of finding speakers for one of the panels. It's a very exciting opportunity, and possibly a really fabulous chance to increase my scholarly network. I, along with Brükirante and Hilary, have also agreed to be a co-editor for the Rutgers Art Review, a journal of graduate writing in art history that casts its net both nationally and internationally (although mostly continental US). We are still not entirely sure what exactly that entails, but we have sent out our call for papers. My potential advisor is returning from sabatical in the fall (yay! anchorless no more!) And I may be interning at the New York Public Library this summer, working with their photography collection.

In work-related news, my last official day at the White House | Black Market of Menlo Park Mall will be next Sunday. It has been fun, and I love my girls there, but I am utterly exhausted from this past year, and now that I have moved to only being a slide curator at the VRC, I don't need the hours like I did before. I told the Store Manager to keep me on standby. So, I am working 2-3 days most weeks in the old VRC this summer. I have graduated from being the web assistant completely and will only be doing slide curator duties (which is a little of everything). Poor Kat will be taking the mantle from me on that. I hope to do some work for Barbara, the lady I freelance for, this summer also.

In July, we will be moving somewhere in between Phillip's work and future school up North (oh, PKS got into business school!) and Rutgers. We are still looking into possible locations. More later. This will also require a second car. This past year, we have saved tremendously on gas, insurance, etc. by driving only my car. During the week, Phillip drives the car to work and I walk or take the bus partway to school. We are going to buy a Yaris from my brother's Toyota dealership.

Phillip's work review is today, and it should go really well. He does not have an onsite manager, and he is the senior member of the marketing team at Humana, reporting directly to the regional manger. Turnover and redistribution has worked in his favor, giving him a lot of responsibility, and this should bode very well for us. We're hoping for a fatty raise. Humana will pay a certain amount of his schooling, so he will be working full time and going to school on nights and weekends. So, we won't see each other for awhile, but at least it won't be just me constantly leaving him anymore!

I'm kind of tired now, and so I'll end it at that. More on travels, family, good times after the jump.

on another socially conscious note...

2007-04-28T08:25:00.000-04:00

My drugs give me whacky dreams. But, like all dreams, I have day residue and subconscious anxieties coming into play. My dream last night was very Gone with the Wind. I was the younger sister to a dead ringer for Miss O'Hara. We were in a room full with people to the brim. It seemed like everyone had a weapon—soldiers with guns, people with knives. There was trouble brewing and I was trying to play the peacekeeper between my irrational sister and the crowd, but I was afraid of the confrontation and hung back. Eventually, things came to a head and chaotic gunfire broke out. It was impossible to tell who was shooting whom.

I have lately been wondering what is the best way to prevent more violence like the tragedy at VT. Being me, I naturally look to the psychological situation. What made the killer feel so isolated, so angry? There's the obvious target of the parents. But this young man did not grow up in a familial bubble. He rose through the American educational system. It has become apparent that at least a few of the professors at VT had recognized a problem, and I am by no means trying to blame the string of educators he had in his life. But how many people interacted with him? Kids, students, maybe coaches, other parents? Issues like this don't bloom out of nowhere.

Maybe he was on an anti-depressant. Some of these drugs have been proven to arose suicidal and homicidal behavior in teens, due to the constantly fluctuating body chemistry of adolesence.

We tend to distance ourselves from what we don't understand. We are afraid of it, so we laugh at it, demean it, prove our authority over it. This is true of anything we distinguish as "other," be it someone with a different cultural/religious background, or someone with a mental illness. This is particularly true in adolscence. We learn how to be members of society by comparing our behavior to that of others. As soon as the hormones hit, everyone understands the idea of desire and longing. This produces both a desire for intimacy and a desire to be wanted generally by ones peers. Differences in socio-economic status that didn't seem as important with playmats of old becomes glaringly apparent as one begins to be transformed into a consumer. This stage, continuing on into the college years, accounts for the phenomena of cliques and subcultures.

Mental illness is difficult for teens, especially since many of them are latent until this period of development. Education on mental illness is lax tot he point of non-existence in schools and still battles for cultural recognition throughout the modern U.S. When a teenager has a peer that begins to show symptoms and signs of advanced diseases, such as depression, bipolarism or schizophrenia, it is very threatening. A former friend has suddenly become "crazy," and without understanding the causes for this change, the teen is threatened by the possibility of developing the condition as well. So, the teen distances; spends less time with the peer, begins to mark him/her as "other" by name calling and denegration. This only increases the anxiety and isolation of the ill teen.

In my high scool class, there was a previously popular girl with schizophrenia. Her symptoms progressed to the point where she was almost completely alone. She lived with her grandparents. I can remember a particularly vicious and menacing boy who was the loudest voice in her humiliation. During a lunch period, he had her on her knees by the hair. I stopped in my tracks. No one around them was looking. No one expressed the appalling nature of this incident. No one stopped him, not even me. I commented on the situation, but was afraid of the bully myself. That is one of the biggest regrets I have for my high school years. My last vivid memory of the girl was my greatest interaction with her. After an AP test, she needed to get back to school. Not having anything to do, I volunteered to drive her. We awkwardly made conversation about the test, graduation, etc. She thanked me as if I had done something miraculous for her in merely driving her the 5 miles to school. Afterwards marked the flurry of graduation, moving, and beginning my college career. Not long into my first semester, I received news that she had taken her oen life with a shotgun to the head. Untreated or ill-monitored, her illness had prevented graduation, made it difficult to keep a job, and created tension at home. Ending her highly potential life was the best option that she felt she had.

The killer is not a monster. He is a victim, too. If all we do is call him "crazy," and chalk it up to some fluke of nature, like a comic book mutation, then what are we doing to prevent more disturbing events such as this?

take the medici quiz

2007-04-22T22:07:00.001-04:00

historical fun times!

I am a Rock but no Island

2007-04-17T23:31:00.000-04:00

Every so often, do you wonder if you are doing your part for the whole, the "greater good?" I know some of you are mentally tuning me out right now and writing that question off to my hyper-liberal, tree-hugging, romantic, idealist perspective. But listen.

Throughout time, people felt the pressure of fear bearing down on them. Apocalyptic terrors have stemmed from humankind's lack of control over the elements, disease, decay, etc. But there are very real fears about the current state of the world. I m not advocating that a divine force is going to inflict some sort of retribution over us; the fears I feel now are not the irrationality of nature or of being, but of the folly of humankind.

Technological progress shot the western world forward like a rocket. The ability to harness energy from the earth to power machines for the betterment of society created two main problems: a precedence for environmental carnage and the socio-economic creation of drastic cultural stratification.

Thanks to Papa Darwin, we know that natural progression and evolution allow for adjustments in organic life to occur based on the environmental surroundings. The process of subtle changes that allow for this system to work take time, and are generally in synch with the gradual changes of the surrounding environment. Only cataclismic alterations (such as those the dinosaurs suffered) cause rapid and widespread changes across species. The factors currently putting so many plants and animals at continued risk on this earth are not due to uncontrollable forces (i.e. a meteor), but from the rapid depletion of resources and overproduction of toxins that are a direct result of rapid industrialization. It is absolutely unthinkable that members of the government and big business are not only attempting, but in many cases suceeding in convincing consumers that the status quo is acceptable. On a mundane level, how many consumer items that are easily recyclable are tossed in the trash, even by relatively envrionmentally conscious people? I myself have been guilty of this.

So what is the answer? Education. Convincing the average consumer that he or she should be practicing more judicious behaviors, and in turn teaching these citizens to demand better practices from their corporate counterparts. Starting with the young, instilling this need into them in the schools, legislation requiring better use of energy and materials, taking it down beyond the middle classes, into the developing world. Believing that a profit is not always worth it's price.

3-0-0

2007-03-25T00:22:00.000-04:00

So, tonight I went to see 300 with kat and Fatima. Here are my thoughts:

The visuals were absolutely amazing. The hybridization of cgi background and live action actors, stylized in terms of color saturation, lighting, and time sequencing.

It was like ripping images out of Frank Miller's graphic novel, shoving them into a Delacroix painting, and animating it. Only with more blood.

I loved the device of narration used throughout the movie. It provided the non-conversational emotional information tied in at the end by the narrative chain of events. I also loved the story of the wolf. I allowed myself to ignore the fact that it does not snow in Sparta, and loved this mixture of Beowulf meets Hatchet. The grotesque was so stylized as to be relatively passive; the violence in this movie seemed acceptable, whereas I couldn't even finish Sin City.

Here is my main problem with the movie. The Spartans, representing Greece and democracy and the West and honor are battling ALL of Arabia, Asia and even parts of Africa, Orientalized as licenscious, exotic, weak, and either beautiful or disformed. They used every hegemonic trope of the nineteenth century; effeminate fetishism, harems, hypertexturalization, and grouping every shade of darker skin and foreign nationality as the enemy. What with the occupation of Iraq and current diplomacy with the Middle East and Asia, it just struck a little too close to hom.

sexiest coach in college basketball?

2007-03-15T21:44:00.000-04:00

so, phillip and i are enjoying some college hoops during this, one of the most wonderful times of the year. i would like to report that my brackets are doing well (one of them is 100% so far, tied for first).

so phillip and i are surfing the net and casually watching the duke-vcu game (i'm looking at wedding dresses, he's reading amusing sports news), and all of a sudden the rams of richmond start to make a comeback. what a game it ended up being, close to the wire, and phillip literally jumped up and down for joy when duke lost.

as i was watching, i happened to notice the new head coach of the vcu men's ball club. and he is NICE. view here. seriously? who agrees with me? (p.s. phillip is laughing at me and rolling his eyes).

taking a break, making an update

2007-03-05T12:55:00.000-05:00

sooo, my first 20 minute presentation of the semester is this wednesday. i am taking a break from working on this now to eat lunch and watch the simpsons form last night. and what a night last night was.

a brief update: a week ago, jenny helped m break into the apartment through the bathroom window. it was quite the ordeal. it's a good thing i was in gymnastics so long. of course, phillip came home 10 minutes after we were both inside.

the game. no one up here understands the fervor and intensity of college basketball in the state of north carolina, and certainly have no background to begin to fathom the unc-duke rivalry. i had to work last night, so phillip being the great fiancee he is recorded the game and we watched it together when i got home (no commercials, no half time crap, awesome!). the game was good. unc looked spry and tight against a mediocre and tired (i mean, could billy packer have said that macroberts looked tired ONE MORE TIME?!) duke team.

and then there was the controversy. within the last minute of the game, duke's freshman to watch, henderson, went up for a rebound and swung his arm in a violent arc that smacked tyler hansborough in the face, leaving him a bloody mess. lots of talking, and henderson is ejected after tyler is escourted into the locker room so that his blood will stop being flailed around and maybe assuage the berserker look in his eyes.

it's quite the talk of the sports world today. was it fair? was it a powerful foul to look tough and be assertive? was it just passion and frustration combined with a delayed reaction due to tiredness? why were the unc starters in with a 10+ lead at the end of the game anyway?

well, 1) it certainly was fair to eject henderson. if you look at stills taken of the melee, you will see that while the other dukies and hansborough are looking towards the ball, henderson is direted directly toward tyler. if he was trying to get the rebound, his arms would have been raised to catch the ball. if he was trying to deflect the ball away from tyler, his body would have been arcing in the opposite direction, or at least upwards. 2) henderson seems relatively self-composed, and there has been questioning of whether or not coach k may have called for an aggressive foul, certainly not expecting an outpouring of blood. 3) i do believe it was frustration, passion and tiredness. i do not think that henderson consciously wished to do tyler harm (that's not the duke m.o.), but i think this was a crime of passion which he regretted afterwards. it was still intentional. if he had really been going for the ball, this never would have happened. 4) coach k and his duke players are known for creating interesting situations at the end of games. while it does seem unlikely that they would have made a comeback, i would like to remind everyone that this was the las game of the season. the last game for tourny time, the last chance for the players to feel the heat of an intense game and closing the deal before all bets are off. this unc team is young and if they had performed all season like they did last night, i am sure that roy would have put the blue team in much earlier in the second half. but they needed the boys needed the confidence of finishing a big win, and they needed the stamina to go the whole way. this team is amazingly talented, but immature. we don't need the emotional highs and lows of a young team with bloated egos, we need a team with experience.

now, did anyone else watch the simpsons last night? i thought it was amazing. there have been some who have questioned season 18 so far, but i would like to bring up a comment on one of the simpsons dvd's. since simpsons have been on the air for such a long time, they go through waves, or generations, of viewers. those who are hooked at a certain time tend to react negatively towards the inevitable progression in the show towards different modes of storytelling, etc. that being said, i feel like this season has been particularly innovative. and was anyone else fascinated by the dark stanley sequence? apparently is was inspired by the artist edward gorey. i can't wait to find out more about him.

i'm ok with the oscar spectacle

2007-02-26T11:39:00.000-05:00

i have safely returned from the whirlwind journey known as fannfest 2007. Friday afternoon I drove to DC, where I spent a delightful evening having dinner with Matt and hanging out with he and Abby and having a Mac lovefest. Saturday I continued my journey on to North Carolina. Blue skies, warm sun and easy roads made the trips a delight, accompanied by the sound of Oscar Wilde's A Portrait of Dorian Gray, which I bought for iTunes in audiobook form.

Phillip and I had a great time at Leslie and Gareth's wedding. Here is the play by play:

"On the red carpet tonight, we will have quite the international set. Ah, here we see Katie Melville in a smashing red and white polka dot silk dress, black lace gloves and fabulous Sunday hat, complete with jaunty black feather. Oh! there goes the bride! Gareth is being carefully guarded so as not to ruin anything as Leslie shuffles to the bathroom. The spectators are gathering and it looks like someone is now diverting them into the sanctuary. Still no minister. I can count, let's see...at least 6 people in this building who have lived at some point at 6413 Forest Ridge Drive. Oh, looks like the action is starting. We're taking our seats, and here comes the wedding party. Gareth's brother looks amazingly like him. South Africans are quite in style today, it seems. Here come the sisters of the bride...lovely. And oh! There is the father of the bride escorting the lady of the hour. Bridal march follows. Everyone momentarily confused. Ceremony is starting. Pastor makes a joke about how cliche 1 Corinthians is. And then proceeds to discuss it at length. First prayer ensues. Now he is making an accrostic out of love. More praying..."Father, God..." Pastor informs us that his daughter is in the emergency room. Time for the vows, and it looks like Leslie is a goner. Gareth nimbly produces his gentleman's hankerchief and wipes the bride's eyes. More prayers. And tah-dah! More after the jump..."

The reception was lovely and tons of fun. Phillip, despite the fact the he was still breaking in his new leather shoes (which looked fantastic), joined in several different kinds of dances with me. We talked for awhile with Steve and Diana, which was nice. They seemed to have a good time.

It was 60+ degrees, sunny and beautiful in North Carolina on Saturday. And then, on Sunday, it was back to nasty McWinterland. As we drove through Virginia, there was beautiful snow on the ground. As we progressed onwards, there was rain, sleet, and finally snow as we continued on I-95. The drive which took me less than 7 and a half hours, complete with detour to DC and breaks, took us (drum roll please):

OVER TEN HOURS.

It was horrible.

But we made it in time for the Oscars, which I thought was fantastic this year.

The Oscars have morphed away from awards ceremony and into spectacle, and frankly, I don't mind. The minute the first red carpet photographer took a snapshot, or when the awards first came across on a television screen, they became a spectacle. You can either try to negate that by making the awards formal and cut and dry, or you can embrace it and make it fun for everyone. With pilobolus (clearly modern dance's biggest sellouts this year), well edited montages of film clips and excellent performaces distributed throughout the show, with Ellen's guidance, the Oscars this year were perhaps the most entertaining to date. And honestly, how many awards or graduation ceremonies have you sat through when you wouldn't have loved a dance break or film montage in leu of droning, mind-numbing speakers?

I wish every ceremony was like the Oscars.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE A GREAT WEDDING PLAN?!?!?!??!?!

OH MY GOD

2007-02-18T22:54:00.000-05:00

so naturally, i was very excited to become engaged to my darling boyfriend, phillip knight scott, this past week. we are already making plans for what will surely be a fine and very fun wedding (apparently he doesn't think i should make everything a joke. honestly.)

BUT

I JUST FOUND OUT THAT THERE IS BOJANGLES IN THE NORTH!!! WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME THIS?!?!?!?! and i was in the city every day for the past three days. i would gladly have made a side trip to brooklyn from midtown to get those sweet, buttery delicious biscuits. i think i will go buy a dozen and freeze them. i could NOT be more excited about this. not that i am not excited about getting married, because as you all have been hearing me bitch and moan, i have been and couldn't be happier. but what would have sealed the deal of a promise to unite more than a cajun fried biscuit combo?

just another fatty update

2007-02-06T14:11:00.000-05:00

what goes on with me? well, fervent readers:

school is kicking my ass.
so, we have gotten through maybe a month already? and all of us are already so stressed we're plotting how to sneak liquor into work and hugging it out about once a day. since my first 20 minute presentation is at the end of february, i'm busily trying to do research and form the basis for my approach (the presentation is for my methods class and i am looking at photos by sally mann using a psychoanalytical approach). i have a day-long internship at the campus museum, and am working on the paper that will become my master's thesis. and none of my readings are online to download (get with it, people!) so i like in the art library. there are about twice the books i checked out to my carrell already as the total for last semester. at first, i was very down about school. i got some strident criticism, and wanted something more constructive, and to be taken seriously. i was worried that professors did not think i cared enough or was showing the amount of progress i should, but with the support of phillip and my beautiful wonderful friends i am becoming more organized, setting goals, and working on certain aspects of my game. so i will show all those doubters.

african dance is—literally—kicking my ass
i started my fitness class for the beginning of the semester. at rutgers, you can spend less than $20 and get a half a semester's worth of once a week fitness class. there were many options, but we started african dance last night. and wow. i hurt. it hurts so good, though. i fricking love it. it is so wonderful to be dancing again: the challenge of learning new steps and combinations, doing a very expressive dance form, learning new methods of movement. kat is taking it with me, and i think we can both gladly say that it rocks.

i love my job
no, not the one at the vrc. although it at least has just now started to slow down to a normal pace instead of being a constant source of stress that i really did not need. i'm talking about working at the mall. there was a time in my life when i was adamant that i would never work in a mall: having to look trendy all the time, dealing with crowds, etc. i also would never have thought i'd really like retail, since i am not what we call "a seller." but i really do love my job. i love the people i work with, i love getting to try clothes on and get paid for it. i love interacting with people and helping them out. i love making new displays. i have completely morphed into sydney.

i think i'm actually excited about caa
the college art association annual conference and meeting is being held in new york this year, and it happens to be next week. there is a general feeling of dread amongst many of the students, because it is so close, it seems less like a vacation and more like a distraction to our daily lives. we still have to deal with work schedules, class work loads, etc. but some of the sessions will be great, and one of them is being chaired by the professor who is on sabbatical that i came here to work with. so that will be good.

school days

2007-01-21T10:03:00.000-05:00

the spring semester for 2007 has officially started. in a way, i couldn't be happier. waiting for the semester to start was driving me crazy (waiting to see what the classes would really be like, waiting to have a regular schedule again, waiting to be busy, waiting to interact with people, waiting to take my fitness classes. pretty much waiting for everything to happen). i was getting more than a bit restless, which affected my general outlook. so, you may ask, how is school shaping up?

well, i am going to be tremendously busy. sundays i will still be working about 6.5 hours at wh|bm. monday is my free day, to catch up on homework, hopefully have my african dance workout class at night. tuesday i'll be at the zimmerli museum on campus doing an internship all day. wednesday , i have methods in the morning (approaches to art history; different methods of looking at and analyzing art objects), then work at the vrc until 4:30 (i do get an hour lunch break!) then thursday i work a few hours in the vrc before my afternoon modern sculpture class (which as it turns out is going to be mostly contemporary scultpure, which i love!) and friday i am the slide curator (mo' money!) on friday, until i leave around 12:15 and rush to the train to meet my lady friends and head into the city for our curatorial seminar at the morgan library.

as i said, this will be a busy semester. my first presentation is in 2 weeks, but it's just a ten minute talk about a calder mobile in the met. my first 20 minute paper-talk is february 28. in addition to my readings. the good thing is that my work will be more evenly dispersed throughout the semester, enabling me to focus on one or two projects at a time without trying to juggle three courses' research for the final term papers. i'm sure it will be over before i know it.

luckily, i have class with a lot of my peeps. we are going to rock this semester out, hardcore, art history style.

time and tide...

2007-01-16T00:24:00.000-05:00

as most of you know, when i feel strongly about something i don't do a very good job of keeping it a secret. i wear my heart on the proverbial sleeve, if you will. this is always true of my romantic feelings. when it comes to revealing interest, i wait for no man. of the past nine romantic encounters that i have had (as far back as i can remember their genesis), i have initiated 7 of them. even within the ones i did not pursue first, i went out on a limb in pivotal moments later in one of them. i've just never seen the point of waiting around for someone else to decide whether or not he feels the same way that you do. the anxiety of trying to hide my feelings outweighs the anxiety of being rejected. and it hasn't always worked out. i've been tossed around a little, but at least i knew where i stood and got it out in the open. i like to plan, i like to feel like i am working towards my goals in life. i don't like waiting, not when a lot is on the line. i want to know where you stand and move forward or move on.

what's happenin'

2007-01-07T10:27:00.000-05:00

so, eager readers, you are looking for an update? when last we spoke, i was just at the tail end of the first of the eating holidays. i will try to do my best to give ya'll a complete update of what katherine has been doing.

december was a very busy month. i turned in my first term paper dec. 1, for my african art class. i wrote about a culture in nigeria called the yoruba, specifically a masquerade run by the gelede cult, a society of powerful women. i researched gender dynamics, in both traditional and modern culture, looking at the masks of the spectacle as indicators of social thought. after that, i had no more classes, just finishing up papers, etc. i wrote my critique of the ICP triennial ecotopia (yes, I managed to pull out ten pages), then finished up my paper for the gender and orientalism class looking at colonial Algiers postcard photographs taken by occupying French, which i think will evolve into my master's topic.

phillip and i embarked the first weekend in december to find a christmas tree. we went to home depot and got a very fresh, very reasonably priced and pretty douglas fir, stopping off at target to pick up lights, a stand, and some filler ornaments. we also bought a fresh wreath, which i put little ornaments and bows on, to put on our apt door. i used the cuttings from the bottom branches to make little swags over the bathroom window and tied around our mail box. i put up my first garden, complete with italian and nc pinecones and items both given and picked up in my travels. it's very small, but sincere.

phillip started to have somewhat intense pain in his lower abdomen around thanksgiving, and it turns out he's had a growing hernia for a long time. the pain got worse and worse until he had surgery the monday before christmas. hopped up on percaset and unable to move much the first few days, he was one pitiful little puppy. he can't lift more than 15 pounds until early february, so it was the katherine weaver luggage show flying home. the hernia is completely repaired though, and he went to his first full week of work.

we flew down for christmas, which was not fun in any way, but could have been worse. i'm not even going to relive more of it than that. but we had a great time in nc, with our first joint holiday. we travelled as far east as snow hill and as far west as greensboro, with stops in durham. we had a really great time, and everything went well. it was my first time ever not being at my grandmother's for christmas night, which was a little tough, but we'll be there next year, and we had fun at papaw and dee dee's.

we were home for 3 days, then drove down to virginia for the wesley new year's reunion weekend. driving down also not fun. holiday travel=gross. but there were 12 of us in a house on lake gaston with a pool table, and we played tons of board games and had a great time. we hadn't seen any of those folks in a good while, so it was nice to visit and be together.

i worked at whbm a good bit during the break, which was fine. we actually weren't very busy over the holiday, so i'm sure we didn't make our budget, and at times we were bored to death, but we managed. i'm working there four days next week, then back to the sunday schedule. my parents are up this weekend, which has been alot of fun. they flew in thursday and took the train during rush hour to new brunswick, which was delightful, as to be expected. but they got here and we had a great meal at old man rafferty's. friday, we battled the drizzle to wander around highland park and new brunswick. i showed them around school, and we hit up some gift shops. mom and dad got some rutgers apparel, and i bought the coolest polka dotted accordian folder thingy, so i can be cute and organzized like olivia this semester. yesterday we went to menlo and hit up some sales, went in whbm, etc. i bought a red dress for leslie's wedding in the juniors section of macy's for $30—holla! i also have become OBSESSED with facebook. if you are on, friend me, it's awesome.

we also went into the city last night to meet my cousin tiffini and later her fiance michael. we decided to venture into little italy for dinner, which was a great experience. i was so excited to see italian christmas decorations, and real italian markets. i will have to go back with a little cooler sometime and stock up on delicious bread and cheese. we ate at a pretty decent restaurant, and had a great time, and good food. a great night, with a long, late train ride home. we also saw the rockefeller christmas tree on its last night.

i've received my grades for the falls semester. two b's a a b+. i was kind of deflated initially, then after speaking with some of the other students. realized that no one received an a, and i was on track with my peers. i'm anxious to look at my papers with comments from my professors.

we finally put some pictures up on the wall, and it really does feel more like home. we got our film posters framed, so the living room is looking good.

all in all, things are pretty well up here. looking for snow still, but enjoying the unseasonably warm weather for a few more days.

turkey day weekend

2006-11-28T14:12:00.000-05:00

oh, my family.

i had a great thanksgiving. listed below, you will find the highlights of Thanksgiving 2006:

• spending 20-30 minutes looking at chef's and cooking knives online with dad and Brian
• fighting with Brian about depression being a chemical, medical problem
• getting to do Sara's hair
• being requested by Sara to ride in their car to GMa Weaver's
• turkey day lunch: fried turkey, mashed sweet potatoes with sour cream, homemade mac'n'cheese, green beans with sauteed garlic and onions, cranberry sauce with white raisins, by my father, the gourmand
• turkey dinner with Gma's stuffing, roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and homemade chocolate meringue pie with a homemade crust
• being Lori's Rook advisor
• going through old family photos
• playing with my nephew and getting kisses
• NC hotdog with chili and slaw at Jane's
• seeing Phillis shag with both her sons present at the party, and Dorothy with Papaw
• doing tequila shots with members of the Scott/Lambeth family
• bacon, egg and biscuit breakfast by Phillis
• naps
• singing carols in the car with Mom and Dad
• being an impromptu communion assistant
• watching the office on Phillip's video iPod on the plan ride back

get the earth’s riches quick!

2006-11-16T15:25:00.001-05:00

Industrialization in the West vastly changed society in many ways, some good some bad. It created an economy based on the consumption of natural resources for the purposes of energy to be harnessed for human technology. Along with this economic boom came the American barons, and a “get rich quick” mentality. The American economy is built upon the ideals of growth as quickly as possible and with the greatest profits and minimal losses. In terms of natural resources, this mindset has created the rape and accelerated deterioration of our sources of energy. Not only does this mindset have environmental repercussions, such as global warming, loss of species and habitat imbalance, but it has a human impact as well. The third world cultures have not only realized increase stratification from the first world powers, but have become subject to exploitation through harmful or unjust working conditions and by the complete upheaval of many of their social structures. These forced changes in politico-social structures have made it nearly impossible for some of these cultures to progress in terms of education and economy. The problem is, the people with the power are the people with the money, and they are acting to protect their interests rather than fellow human beings. I make no idyllic claims that this power system can be overthrown, but I pose that we start at the bottom up. Go to the schools of America, and establish programs of recycling that are positively enforced and instill in young America a sense of community and corporate responsibility. Make America’s children aware of our status as a super power and of the many needs both in our own nation in across the globe. Teach them compassion and how to be proactive in helping to preserve the environment and best help other nations to progress. Another step forward would be to encourage corporate recycling. There are many small businesses that can’t afford the transportation fees for their recycling, and many large companies that simply want to save a buck. There should be tax incentives for corporate recycling and increased availability to businesses. Or incentives for percentages: how much garbage do you send to the dump, where it will sit and pay rent, and how much to the recycler, which will be reused? What if businesses partnered, and if one contributes to the recycling program, one receives a discount on goods from other recyclers in the consortium. We need to take a new look at a corporate culture that devalues workers as human beings and revamp our position as a world power.

epic journey for the last pumpkin in middlesex county

2006-10-31T11:59:00.000-05:00

so, you may be wondering, what is new with katherine? where did she go? i miss her. well here you go.

i am taking lexapro again. it makes me happy and motivated, but i can't sleep more than 6.5 hours. i'm not super thrilled with my psychiatrist. i told him i didn't like the two things i'd tried and he suggested trying them together. wtf?

i work only one day a week at white house black market, on sundays, and that is nice. i am able to attend lectures and get work done and see phillip during the week now. i am catching up on things, good stuff.

i have thesis topics for both of my term papers. i had a meeting with my professor about my orientalism topic and she called it "awesome." there is focus and things are going places, and i feel better. still a lot of work to do.my first presentation is in two and a half weeks.

so, per my usual halloween tradition, i went in search of a pumpkin for my jack-o-lantern last night. because otherwise, it's not really halloween. so i knew they were sold out at the grocery store closest to me (pretty small) and i went to two super stores off of hwy 1. neither of them had ANY pumpkins. hadn't for a week or so. so, resigned, i was driving home and decided to stop in the stop 'n' shop to see if maybe, just maybe, they had gottena nother shipment in or something. so i go in, and there aren't any in the display case, but low and behold! there is apumpkin witha funny bottom sitting on a pile of candy off to the side. i grab it and head for the register. the pumpkin is mine. it's small, but big enough to light up. i was thrilled. halloween was saved.

phillip and i went to a costume party for the grad students in my dept this weekend, and a good time was had. he was a futbol player and i was a spider. pictures to come.

anxiety, sleep, etc

2006-10-10T02:09:00.000-04:00

so, i have been not taking any medication for depression or anxiety for the past maybe two weeks. the one i was taking helped to knock me out at night, which was inconvenient if i ever wanted to go out or something, but now i can't get to sleep any earlier than 2pm. it's like undergrad all over again. i have been taking the old narcotics i had to help me sleep when i was on the lexapro, but it doesn't seem to be helping that much. also, my feeling of never being full when i was on the remeron has been replaced by my anxious almost complete lack of appetite and general nausea. i suppose i should make an appointment with a psychiatrist. i'm so tired of drugs.

this weekend i took off of work (well i worked friday from 10 to 6), because elisha came into town from chicago. for those of you who don't know or remember, elisha is my good friend from studying in florence. she flewin friday and saturday we went into the city and went to moma and hungout with her friend matt and his friend melissa. it was a great time. elisha and i shared a twin air mattress in matt's tiny manhattan apartment–oh, snuggles. sunday i came back and napped all afternoon. phillip and i had a lazy sunday night, it was nice.

term papers

2006-10-06T01:19:00.000-04:00

so in big girls and boys school classes require 20 page term papers. that's officially double the undergrad usual. i havne't really started any of mine, which on the one hand makes me anxious and the other intimidated to even start. i give my first presentation in like a month and some change. i'm getting a visitor this weekend—yay yay! elisha, me wee friend from florence, is coming into town. we're going into the city and hope to see some of the old flatmates from piazza san felice (i think that's where we lived?) it should be good times.

did anybody see lost? i have so many thoughts. the main ones are a) i have been tired for half a season already of "angry jack." he has become so one-dimensional, it's like he's just mad all the time. grrrr. b) i'm ready for more character development and less crazy and confusing stories. can we get some closure into anything, jj abrams? c) WHAT THE CRAP DID THEY DO TO KATE? she's been through a lot and that's the worse i've ever seen her look.

lost, why do you tease me so? in the immortal words of the donnas:

'Cause you're just a tease
Baby, please don't tease
I'm getting down on my knees
Baby, please don't tease
C'mon and give it to me

Hey now, I'm gonna get with you somehow
I'm on a mission, I gotta get your permission
You shouldn't try to look so good
If you don't wanna be misunderstood

and let her be called...evangeline

2006-10-03T23:11:00.000-04:00

my new computer is up and running, files have been transferred, and i have named her. for those of you as ridiculously addicted to lost as i am, you recognize that the actress who plays kate, the spunky runaway with a heart of gold, is evangeline lilly. well, naming it kate would have been not only confusing but slightly narcissistic, so here we have it. your first epistle from evangeline. (irony in the etymology of the two computer's names duly noted).

macbook • studio 60 • all work and no play

2006-10-02T22:10:00.000-04:00

this past week, i worked over 40 hours and attended graduate classes in a full time capacity. enough said. this was the last week of 30+ hours at whbm, plus my ten at school. i'm hoping to gather the courage to go to one day a week at whbm soon, but it's very intimidating to talk to my manager. we shall see.

carmen is back, and she is fixed. and it's been a great run, she and i, but our needs have changed and we've grown further and further apart. so, when phillip and i went to pick her up last saturday, we bought a nice, shiny, bottom-model macbook. it's purported to be indestructible. the power cord is magnetic and cannot be bent or broken inside my new computer. and it came with a printer that had a 100% rebate (a printer/copier/fax). i rest my case, people. carmen will be going on the market, for anyone interested...

studio 60 on the sunset strip. i had the highest of hopes for this. aaron sorkin, matthew perry, bradley whitford. i mean, seriously. a great ensemble cast, also. but i find myself a little let down. west wing at its best was beauty in action: fantastic photography, clever and stimulating writing, a cast that could kill. at the end of the episodes, i felt like an adict starting to go through withdrawal. but with studio 60, i feel like there is a tension created from the lengthy comic sketches and sorkin's dramatic style. the comedy sketches aren't that funny, and seem somehow out of place. we've seen dramas that can capture extreme comedic elements, but something about this attempt seems at odds. also, i find the idealism of amanda peat's character like a watered down version of martin sheen's president bartlett. and what is the point of the role of religion here? i think that this idea has potential, but i'm not sure what the agenda is for that. i'm assuming it's to challenge the liberals in the audience, but it seems to weak and lacking in subtlety. comeon guys, give me a little more. there are, however, classic sorkin elements that i am relishing (like that clock that counts down) and matt and brad's interactions and relationship. i have faith that it can progress into something bigger once more things have been established in the story and we can progress out of introductory material.

i was abducted by several girls from work saturday night after closing for a girl's night slumber party. we had fun getting lost, making cookies, drinking margaritas, gabbing—girl stuff. it was nice to do something fun and sociable. i also got to see a very rural side of new jersey that wasn't too far away (fields, produce stands, a halloween fun time of some sort, perhaps involving a hay ride, i don't really know). school is good, i love my classes, but it's a lot of reading, and i started to get paranoid that i wasn't doing enough towards my term papers.

when i came home sunday (having left phillip after the apple store trip before i went in to work saturday and not returned until he picked me up from work sunday), the apartment was clean and tidy and the pantry was full. it was so fantastic. he's a great helper, that one. it's been difficult with my working so much and his commute; our schedules are totally opposite, and we're both gone a lot of the time. i'm trying to be mindful of getting things done when i can so he doesn't feel like he's pulling more of the load.

so, you're wondering what i've been doing?

2006-09-26T14:16:00.000-04:00

the tardiness in my posting is in part due to the fact that my computer has been held hostage at the apple store for repairs for over a week now. i've also been busy, school, work study, job at the mall. i have a lot of reading for my classes, but i'm loving them. i took the bus to work twice last week, since phillip has started his job and has the car during the day now. it was free last week fr students, but it's normally 1.39 per ride. besides the fact that it' always at least a little late, the bus is fine. phillis sold phillip's car, so now that is taken care of and we have a little extra money. i'm going to get a bike and i'm going to buy a macbook to replace my powerbook. i'm just tired of it. right now i'm watching the last episode with commentary for lost: season two. season three is coming!!

my computer just crackled

2006-09-12T21:24:00.000-04:00

ok, so here are the updates. i started classes last week. i'm taking a class called "problems in 19th century art: gender and orientalism," a class on african art, and the curatorial training class, which will involve meeting people that work in new york museums, etc etc. i'm excited about the classes i'm taking, they're all interesting. they require a lot of reading. that's almost all i did today.

phillip and i watched the entire season two of lost in three days. he ordered it online, and we went through the whole thing in no time. we'd have done better if i hadn't been working. i work nights and weekends at the white house/black market still. that's going fine. labor day sucked big time ass, it was super crowded and there were people everywhere. hopefully once my credit card is paid off, i can work there less.

phillip got a job! as of yesterday he'l be working at humana press; they produce scientific journals and books. he'll be doing marketing writing and creating marketing mail campaigns there. he'll also be planning trips to sales conferences and going to them. he starts next monday, and i will start having to hoof it and use the bus system.

the weather here has been beautiful, crisp, cool. it feels like fall. i've made friends with some of the other grad students, which is fun. oh, so i just went to plug in my power cord and it was making these crackling noises. i smelled something burning. not good. i want a new computer.

scarlet knights that say nee

2006-08-30T19:51:00.000-04:00

I am officially a Rutgers student as of today. I had my advising appointment, which was practically useless, and then went home directly to register online (which was so simple, I hope Meredith has gotten a good system worked out for that now). Three courses is considered full time, and I am taking an African Art and Architecture class (which isn’t offered every year, and I heard from a current student that the class will challenge you in unsuspecting ways, ie writing a paper from an ants point of view?), Problems in 19th century Art, which is going to focus on gender issues, and I am VERY excited about, and the curatorial studies initial class for the certificate program. The last class will meet at times at the Brooklyn Museum, where the professor works. It will involve traveling to museums to speak to various people that work behind the scenes, and my advisor told me today that students had done their internships at ICP before, which was one of the museums I am very interested in. After lunch, I went and squared away with the cashier (I didn’t have to pay anything, thanks to my loans) and got my ID card made. The picture is beautiful, let me tell you. So, I am a student again.

no CA$H CAB this time

2006-08-28T17:08:00.000-04:00

saturday we went into the city to meet michael, sally, jean and brooks. we had lunch at a restaurant that only serves mac and cheese, 'smac. (if you go, get the nosh size, it looks so small but it eats so big). then we managed to get ourselves a cab (even though the limit by law is supposed to be five to a cab, we finagled one--not the cash cab, i'm afraid. we took the cab into brooklyn, where we took a tour of brooklyn brewery. it was a busy day! sunday we met some of the art history students at a get together, and today i had orientation for the graduate school. the weather here has been grey and drizzly for the past two days. in good news, elisha is coming to visit in october (yay!) and phillip has another interview this friday. so many choices! that's about it.

it's SHORE to please!

2006-08-20T12:34:00.000-04:00

that is the slogan at the bottom of the vanity license plates in new jersey dedicated tot he jersey shore. phillip and i enjoyed our first visit there yesterday. phillip's brother adam has a friend in nj whose parents have a shore house 45 minutes from us. he invited us down for the day. overall, it was very nice. there weren't any beach-front houses at the beach we were at, just a boardwalk running along the edge and then the road, but there were food places right there across the road from the beach. there were a good many people, but since the day was partly cloudy, it wasn't too bad. the water was colder, which i liked, and of course phillip did not. you have to have a resident tag or pay to get on the beach. there were lots of really dark italian americans there with gold chain bracelets and necklaces. jersey mike called it "a guido fest." i can see why. but we had a good time, and the day was pretty nice. the clouds kept it from being too hot, but we got some sun.

tuesday is a big day for us. i start my training at white house black market at the mall in nearby edison (named for the inventor). phillip has an interview about an hour north of us tuesday as well, his first in-person interview in nj. so keep your fingers crossed. i have bought all of the books for the only class i know the books for. i supposed there is a chance that i could get to my advising session on the 30th and it would be full, but i've been assured that the department is small, and i mean if the're not even bothering to have advising sessions until the week before classes begin, how hard can it be? i wish i could go ahead and get it done.

i've decided that macy's is the best department store ever. h&m is fun, but you get what you pay for there. macy's typically is large (at least 3 floors) and carries a lot of the wonderful brands i love. hooray macy's. too bad i have no income. and when i do have income that's going straight to pay the bills. oh well.

katherine & phillip go to white castle

2006-08-20T12:24:00.000-04:00

so, on the fabulous adventure down to alabama that lacy, shannon and jeremy and i took for kim's wedding, i can proudly say that i have had krystal burger (and i have pictures to prove it). but i had not ever experienced white castle, the other bastion of mini-burgerdom. so, friday night, phillip and i got sliders (so named because they slide right into little burger boxes), onion rings and fries. we were both starving to begin with, and at rush hour it took us awhile to get there and back. but it was pretty delicious. then we rented the movie harold and kumar go to white castle, which is hilarious. oh wait, no we bought it used at the movie store down the street. anyway, it's set in new jersey, and so we feel a strong bond with the movie now.

it's official

2006-08-16T21:45:00.000-04:00

i am a resident of the garden state. i have a nj license and tags for my car. my trip to the mvc (not dmv) was really not so bad. for those of you used to north carolina dmv's, where you take a number and wait in line with everyone who has anything to do there, this is nothing like that. it's got separate stations for licenses (3 total), registration, titles, and other stuff. you go up to the reception desk and tell them what you need. they give you the paperwork and send you to the appropriate window, and when everything is ready for you to take your picture and have your license printed, you do have a number, but you're one of like 5 people. it was amazingly efficient. you do need several forms of id, however. i knew this going in and was well prepared. the only thing i didn't have was enough checks. i had no idea i was so close to the end of the book, until i was standing in line to pick up my license. i had to go home and get some more, but still, with all that included, it took me about 2 hours for everything, driving there, back, there, back again, filling out the paperwork, waiting, picture-taking, etc etc. and they were all pleasant and nice. the only snide or mean person i encountered there was a man from new york trying to do something (i guess get a nj license) and asked to see a manager, and so on. seriously, get a grip new york.

yesterday phillip and i ran some errands, including buying some drapes. we went to target and didn't find any drapes that we liked, so we tried bed, bath and beyond, where we had not yet ventured. there is a marshall's right next to it. now, we've been to more than one tj maxx here in new jersey, and it's been nice enough. but this marshall's was amazing. it had a giant shoe section with a bunch of pumas (none that i liked in my size, damn).

we also rented curse of the wererabbit, the wallace and grommit movie, and it is hilarious. if you have not seen it. i highly recommend it. so clever.

life in the h.p.

2006-08-11T12:55:00.000-04:00

most of the cardboard is out of the apartment now, which is great. the weather here is beautiful, we've got a cool front in and it's dry and delightful.

we're both job-hunting. i made my appointment with my advisor. august 30th, i will get all the signature i need. then i can take my little form and get registered and get my id card and all that good stuff.

i am excited about the new movie with andre 3k. it looks like a lot of fun-speak easies, jazz, crazy dancin. that's what i'm talkin about.

wahoo, internet!

2006-08-08T16:13:00.000-04:00

we've been here a week and we now have wireless. the cable guys came today to hook everything up. the recycle will pickup tomorrow, and we can put all our broken down boxes out on the curb and out of the apartment!!!. we've started decorating a bit. it would be great if we had money, so we could buy some little things (a paper lantern, some pillows for the couch), but oh well. all in due time.

within one block of our apartment there is:
dunkin doughnuts
bus stop
candy store with gelato
ymca
video store

within walking distance:
grocery store
post office
cafes
restaurants
hardware store

really, anything you need. it would be even better with a bike. phillip says i can get a bike we his car is sold. i'm going to get a basket for the front. and maybe a bell. ring ring! coming through!

welcome to the garden state

2006-08-07T14:43:00.000-04:00

phillip and i have moved. pretty much all the boxes have been emptied, and we've started adding little decorative touches. it is slowly coming along. we are living in highland park, which is a mostly jewish community across the river from new brunswick. we will have been here a week tomorrow. the cable has been left on fromt he last person (woohoo!) but they're coming to officially hook it up and the internet tomorrow, so hopefully i can start updating regularly then.

classes start september 5. i'm excited about getting back into the swing of things, and professor zervigon will be back in the spring, which i'm really excited about, because i'll get to take more photography classes, which is the area of art history that i want to specialize in. orientation is the last week of august.

i put in an application at the white house/black market at the mall in nearby edison. it's a lot like southpoint, newer, upscales stores, movie theater. the wh/bm is the biggest i've ever seen. so we'll see. it would be a nice way to make some money. phillip is still job searching. we're both stressed out about money, which is fun. we've discovered that living together is different than living apart and spending most of your time together. especially when money is scarce and you're both tense. we've also discovered that playing lego star wars together can turn ugly. that's right, lego star wars. it sounds awesome, doesn't it? well, it is. the animated parts are hilarious, because they make these ridiculous lego faces.

highland park is nice because you can walk to most things you need; coffee, groceries, hardware store, sandwhiches, restaurants, etc. although walking in the heat is not so nice. even though the heat wave has broken (thank the sweet lord), it's still warm and sometimes muggy. i am so ready for fall.

oh, and here's my main problem with the garden state so far. it's not the driving or the roads or the people. it's the almost universal lack of central air. most people have window units, and most houses and shops are older and would require serious re-wiring to accomodate it. during the heat wave it was pretty crappy. and on the last night of the heat wave, we blew the fuse that our ac unit was plugged into, so we plugged it into another. only it and our fans were on, and every outlet was blown within 5 minutes. we have no fuse box. it is 3:30 in the morning. we wait a bit and call our super, is always up early, and says she doesn't know, that jim came and fixed hers. we figure out the fuse box is in the basement, but the basement is locked. so we try to sleep and wait for a decent hour to call jim, who comes, but it blows again. we investigate in the labyrinthine basement and find the fusebox, flip it back on, but the outlet for the a/c unit still doesn't work. we call jim and an electrician named bruce comes and fixes it.

let's talk about bruce. bruce is about phillip's height, skinny as a rail, with a salt and pepper ponytail that goes almost to his waist. he has a weathered, tan face and bright blue eyes. he's wearing a t-shirt, jeans and this giant utility belt. bruce is hilarious. he's part hippy, part jokester. bruce will tell you what's on his mind. he laughed at the picture on the fridge of phillip and his friends posing in "deaf, dumb and blind monkey"poses. he also pours lighter fluid on a dead and decaying bird we'd been skirting under a tree near the sidewalk in the back and lights it and the maggots within on fire. there's just a feather, mealy black spot there now. bruce is awesome.

a new life begins

2006-07-31T18:28:00.000-04:00

as of august 1, 2006, i will begin my new life. in this life, i will move in with my boyfriend, move to a new state, start planning for my return back to school, a new school, and officially begin being a grown up. phillip and i loaded all of our things into a uhaul truck (rented and being driven as i type by my wonderful parents) on saturday. phillis helped us get the furniture out of phillip's apartment, and we stayed with her this weekend as we wrapped things up. now, here phillip and i sit in the days inn in edison, nj. we left durham at about 10am, stopped for lunch and an incredibly long bathroom break (in maryland, we had to drive 12 miles off of I-95 to get to a gas station) later, we arrived here at the hotel a little after 6pm. not bad, all in all.

so, tomorrow we move into our new (tiny) apartment in highland park with our indredibly chatty super (the lady rasps slowly and interminably on anything under the sun). we'll take pics to show on the blog later. i updated my info for the meresith alumnae magazine. i actually have something to be proud about now, so i felt like it was time.

i've been reading the novel "the kiterunner," and i'm about halfway through. it is excellent. stephanie and justin highly recommended it when i went to visit them the other weekend while i was at my parents' house.

wow, all the stuff...

2006-07-21T11:41:00.000-04:00

so i'm here at my parents' house and i'm going through everything that's been in storage here. packing up my books, going through old boxes of memorabilia from high school, etc. i had forgotten how much crap i have. it's been nice to see some old friends, though.

being unemplyed, i have rediscovered daytime television. and thank god for cable. you've got gilmore girls anchoring the day at 11. classic. i've been watching the bbc versions of whose line and what not to wear (those women are way more vicious!), and i've just found a new show called cash cab. it comes on the discovery channel, and it's a game show where people hail a cab and unsuspectingly step into a mobile game show. they have as long as it takes to get to their destination to answer trivia for cash (it seems to always be a pair), and then they get a bonus question once they arrive. what an awesome premise for a show. what's even funnier is that the host/driver looks a little bit like robert deniro (but not witha mohwak). i need to find out where they're based...

i've also grown an addiction to my super sweet 16 on mtv. yes, i know, it's a teeny bopper show about spoiled rich kids and i shouldn't care, but it's like watchign a train wreck; you know it's horrible but you can't take your eyes away because it's so outrageous.

this has brought to mind a critique of how many young people have a sense of entitlement. as teenagers and then college students all of us, to varying degrees, felt like we had the right to a certain standard of living. as a working adult, you begin to understand how hard it is to make and keep money and start to appreciate how much your parents have done for you. i'm about to embark again on the journey of a, shallwe say, ascetic lifestyle as a student again, and the realities of what life costs are weighing heavy.

our own star's hollow

2006-07-17T11:47:00.000-04:00

well, phillip and i had a successful trip up to new jersey. we rented a car and managed to get the hang of driving in new jersey (ok, phillip got the hang of driving, and i got the hang of navigating). we found three tj maxx's, a mall with barnes and noble, and a place to live! we're moving into this cute, quaint suburb across the river from new brunswick called highland park. we're hoping it will be our version of star's hollow, only jewish. (the majority of the people in the boro are jewish...on main street you'll find a kosher bakery, a kosher chinese restaurant, and a judaica gift store). the apartment is tiny, but it's in a great neighborhood, with a great landlord. we have a giant window also. i'm pretty excited.

driving myself crazy

2006-07-13T09:27:00.000-04:00

i am officially at the point of unemployment where i am going bananas. i'm worried about money since i have no income, and i can only pack so much. hopefully this weekend will help get things focused, and some things will be finalized. and then i might go down to my parents' house next week.

so, matt introduced me to this very cool music site pandora, where you type in songs or musicians and it creates a streaming playlist for you based on the musical characteristics of what you've chosen. it's a fun way to hear new stuff.

Fast Times at.... Durham

2006-07-07T09:42:00.000-04:00

so, i am now unemployed, and have been using my time to a) find a place to live in new jersey, b) make moving preparations, and c) help phillip find a job. i have gotten two landlord references, and each have a possibility for us up there. i've also looked at several apartments online. we'll be going up the weekend of the 14–16 to hopefully find a place. housing is so expensive up there! it's actually probably about like chapel hill.

i'm considering doing some temp work in the meantime, since i don't have an incoming paycheck, and there are still bills to pay. plus, it would be nice to have a little cushion when we get up there.

keith coleman, the current gm at the noc and our friend jonathan's dad, is throwing us a cookout this saturday, and phillip's dad is coming into town also; it's probably the last time we'll see him before we move.

so, we're still looking to move with a lease starting august 1. call the cell if you want to have lunch/dinner/something!

A rose by any other name

2006-06-08T09:44:00.000-04:00

Recently at work, I was given the task of copying and pasting around 400 names into business card templates for this summer intern program at a nearby ad agency. As a way to help ease the monotony, I tried to think of clever awards to give to certain recipients I was pasting over based solely on their names. The names you will see here are real and have not been changed to protect the innocent. And here they areÖ

The academy is proud to announce these recipients for:

Best Use of an Old Western

Bonanza Miranovic

Most Likely to Enter Appliance Sales

Madeline Kitchens

Best Pirate Name

Canon Pence

Most Likely to Befriend Above

Brock Beard

Runner Up for Above

Rachel Goodrum

Best American Idol Name

Peter Song

(Just imagine, Ryan Seacrest saying ìand now we end it with a song from SongÖî

Hardest Name to Say Three Times Fast

Colleen Conlon

Most Geographically Confused

Brittany French

Most Irish

Erin OíLeary

Name Sounds Better With Last and First Switched

Nicholas Bruce

Best Mix of Exotic and Plain Names

Kassaie Payman

Best Lord of the Rings Character Last Name

Benjamin Giffhorn

Most Like a Dog Breed

Dane Leffler

Most Interesting

Feagin LaVesta

Name Most Likely Bullied/least Datable

Olga Usyk

hooked on drama

2006-06-02T16:35:00.000-04:00

I have a confession to make: I'm hooked on Drama. Johnny Drama that is, and the rest of the cast of the series Entourage. Phillip has HBO onDemand, which has enabled us on the weekends to gorge ourselves on a feast of episodes. Who doesn't love Jeremy Piven, and is glad to see him as such a loveable asshole agent, Ari Gold. But let's take a moment to give some love to the underappreciated brother, Johnny Drama. He's gotten all the bad luck, but he's just a loveable, affable guy looking to get love fromt he ladies. I mean maybe he was the best "retarded brother" and "bulimic pedifile ever"...

after all the work of getting a doctorate, tenure, etc...

2006-05-19T08:42:00.000-04:00

At work, we're printing a booklet for a commission with the UNC system about how overworked their professors are. They took statistics, compiled research, and got 24 or so professors to write a short example of a day in their life. All of them work 40+ hours a week. Some have it easier than others, but regardless, between teaching, personal enrichment or education, administrative work (ie COMMITTEES) and spending time with their family, for many including young children, these people are stretched very thin. The commission was created to help understand the workers' needs better (some are just asking for affordable on-campus healthcare, while others wish for less committee work, greater stipends for research, etc.) Excerpts from the finding include:

"A major U.S. Department of Education study, released in December, showed that the reported typical work week for a four-year college faculty member is 53 hours a week."

"...a National Science Foundation report, also published in December, indicates that scientists and engineers in education work harder than those in industry and much harder than their counterparts in the government."

I know from my time at Meredith, this problem seemed to be increasing. My college went through a major overhaul when Maureen Hartford became its presidency my senior year. She began to strive to get Meredith caught up to other public and private institutions in terms of technology, resources, etc. But she also initiated the era of the committee, in which the bureaucracy was increased, and faculty began mandatory commitments on boards for various aspects of the college. Don't get me wrong, I think committees serve an important role on a college campus. But the most dedicated professors, the ones with the biggest ideas, are being stymied in conference rooms and at their desks and have increasingly limited interaction with their students, and their own families.

Being a college professor is not what many think. As the professors in the UNC survey can attest, they are not that highly paid, and they must evolve their lifestyle to this profession in a way few people appreciate. But they all do it with complete dedication, because they love teaching and helping shape people's lives.

What is the answer to this problem? How can institutions of higher learning keep fresh and competitive without undermining their most valuable resources—their educators?

A Global Warming Primer

2006-05-01T19:29:00.000-04:00

I don't blame you for questioning the assertions of others before all the evidence is before you, but for all of you still holding out about global warming, here are sound clips, articles, and photographs from reknowned news sources as well as the U.S. governement, to give you a basic understanding of this epic problem.

NPR : Ad Campaigns Highlight Effects of Global Warming
News & Notes with Ed Gordon, April 17, 2006 · Bill Chameides, chief scientist with Environmental Defense, and Norris McDonald, president of the African American Environmentalist Association, discuss the current state of global warming.

Last summer’s heat wave in Europe (20,000 deaths), rising sea levels, wildfires, and more intense storms have all been attributed to climate changes due to global warming. Scientists are alarmed at the rapid rate of the climate’s increase in temperature. Global warming also intensifies asthma due to greater smog.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The strongest hurricanes in the present climate may be upstaged by even more intense hurricanesover the next century as the earth's climate is warmed by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. …The hurricanes that do occur near the end of the 21st century are expected to be stronger and have significantly more intense rainfall than under present day climate conditions. This expectation is based on an anticipated enhancement of energy available to the storms due to higher tropical sea surface temperatures. Recently, two studies have been published which argue that hurricane intensities may have already increased markedly in recent decades as the tropical oceans have warmed. One, in Science, Sept. 16, 2005, reported that the number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled globally over the past three decades.

TIME Magazine: Is Global Warming Fueling Katrina?
Just why some areas of the world get hit harder than others at different times is impossible to say. Everything from random atmospheric fluctuations to the periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean known as El Nino can be responsible. But even if all these variables have combined to keep the number of hurricanes worldwide about the same, the storms do appear to be more intense. One especially sobering study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that hurricane wind speeds have increased about 50% in the past 50 years.

Boston Globe: THE HURRICANE that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming.
Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue.

National Geographic: Is Global Warming Making Hurricanes Worse?
According to hurricane historian Jay Barnes of Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina, ocean heat is the key ingredient for hurricane formation. More heat could "generate more storms and more intense hurricanes," he said.

Pew Center on Global Climate Change
“U.S. ecosystems and wildlife are already responding to the warming climate,” said Eileen Claussen, President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. “And this is only the beginning. With warming for the next century projected to be two to ten times greater than the last, we’re heading toward a fundamental and potentially irreversible disruption of the U.S. landscape and wildlife.”

Global warming photography - photographs of global climate change in the Arctic.
Look at the sad little polar bear...

the two biggest pieces of news

2006-04-27T13:12:00.000-04:00

today, on this dreary, rainy, boring day, two items of note have come across my desk.

a) aaron sorkin's new show in the works for the fall is co-starring matthew and perry and bradley whitford. WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THIS SOONER? you take my favorite friend and my favorite west winger and put them together in a sportsnight-esque comedic drama. it sounds like heaven. and i realize these two don't have the brad pitt with george clooney kind of romantic pull, but for me, these two have been major tv crushes for me.

b) phil ford is even maybe under consideration for the head coaching job at state. i love phil ford. he is a truly great guy who has an acute knowledge of the game, relates very well with people, and is very smart. but i think his being at state would be the worst scenario possible. i want to see phil get a high-profile head coaching job, but not where the likelihood if his becoming a scapegoat/martyr is so high.

duke lacrosse

2006-04-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

this whole investigation with the duke lacrosse team has hit me hard for several reasons. it's not just the single incident but that knowledge that for all the work some of us do to create a better world, there are people out there who haven't gotten it yet.

You’d have to be incredibly isolated not to have heard about the Duke lacrosse team scandal by now. It’s been a top story in sports and national news, in addition to the local coverage. It’s not just that the allegation points towards a racially motivated, violent hate crime in Durham, a city rife with a persistently thwarted racial dialogue. It’s not just that a sexual assault, including rape and sodomy, occurred on the eve of April, Sexual Assualt Awareness Month. It’s not just that the incident occurred at Duke, a prestigious national university known for it’s sense of “we’re better than you.” It’s a tragedy that affects all of us, and shows that there are still issues at play that we tend to think have long been dormant.

My first reaction to the initial accusation and to each later piece of startling evidence has been anger. As a woman, there are few greater fears than to be sexually assaulted, to feel so violated and to take an act that should be of love and intimacy and contort and pervert it into something so evil. Both men and women of all ages can become victims of sexual assault and sexual violence. To see an entire group of almost 40 people likely to have participated in or passively sat by during such a stealing of someone’s dignity is hard to imagine. But as my feelings have ripened, my anger has subsided to a vacuous feeling of sadness. My sympathies are not only for the victim, but for the perpetrators of the alleged molestation, and for those who definitely incited racism and bigotry that night. How did that lone black player feel during this? How frightened must some of the younger team members have been during all of this, feeling pressure from the threatening, older, dominant players on the team. And I feel sympathy for the community, whose continued battle for greater racial understanding has been going on for centuries.

Mostly, I feel helpless. What can be done to heal the pain of the victims, campus, and community? How could we have prevented something so heinous from occurring under the umbrella of a world-renowned institution of higher learning? It’s not just Duke problem; this could have been any college or university. This incident cannot be isolated, but merely one that happened to face the stark light of day. We all need to come together to fight the mindsets that breed this kind of behavior.

the party faithful

2006-04-08T07:58:00.000-04:00

this one is a very rough draft, but i don't know when i'm going to work on it anymore. so at least this gets it out there:

Yesterday, I called my best friend, a true politik and supporter of the Democrats, and asked him what he thought could bring hope to the party. Why is it that there are so many people against Bush, the war, invasion of privacy, and no power infrastructure to channel and build upon these voices? After a total loss of momentum in the last presidential election, Americans have been under the governing hand of not only a continued Republican controlled Senate and White House, but also an unfortuitous number of Supreme Court positions coming available. Conservatives have increasingly organized, marketed, and been elected to power positions at ever level of government. As America swings more vivaciously to the right, there are many of us left wondering: where is our hope for the future?

We look to the progressive and liberal Democrats first. After all, the system is built around two contrasting bodies, so seeking succor from the oppositional compliment to the GOP seems a logical choice. But the Democrats seem to be perpetually showing themselves as weak and disarrayed. Where are we turn? Being a member of a political party is to a degree like being an alumnus or alumna. When you see people cheering for your team, or wearing your school’s seal, you automatically know that there is a tie that binds you together. So it goes with voting. It’s nearly impossible to meet and know every candidate on a personal level. You base your judgements at the polls on how the candidates have come across, what they say they believe in, and guilt by association. You know that to be a member of your club they have to have certain goals and ideals alike to you, so you are naturally drawn to them before the opposing party’s candidate.

The Beach Boys once advised us to “Be true to your school,” and I say, let’s be true to the Dems. Sure, the biparty system is faulty, but rather than increase the factions that are tearing the progressives apart, let’s stick together and try to fix what we have. Now, we just have to figure out how to do it. First of all, where is our President Bartletts? Of course no candidate can live up to the fictional ideal of the West Wing, but maybe we could get a little closer? We need to be able to trust our representatives, and have an understanding that they are fighting and will continue to fight for the causes we think are important. They need to take stands on big issues, no matter what the majority opposition looks like.

ok, i know, a backlog

2006-04-08T07:49:00.000-04:00

so. here is my life, in a nutshell, to be followed by the posts i've been working on and haven't taken live.

I GOT INTO RUTGERS! i got a large envelope friday after work. i've already sent my reply card in to reserve my spot. i will be starting the ma program for art history at rutgers university, in new brunswick, new jersey, in the fall. i haven't really celebrated it yet, i've been too busy at work. speaking of which, the continuing cycle of "it gets busy, i make mistakes" and "katherine is not a technician" has reared it's ugly head again. built up frustrations on both my and my employer's parts, through lack of communication, has lead to some tension and what i feel is a lack of understanding from the other end. hopefully that will all be resolved. needless to say, they're happy to have a resolution to their dilemma of what to do with me.

i started yoga back this week after a two week break in between sessions. it was nice; i've missed it. so why didn't anyone tell me before how great grosse point blank is? i mean, you all know how much i love high fidelity. phillip and i watched it last night; instant classic. who doesn't love a movie whose happy ending involves a marriage proposal stuck in between almost being mistakenly shot by your beloved and killing bad guys in her house?

ok, so the following posts will be thoguhts i've been working on. enjoy!

flickr photos

2006-04-01T22:45:00.000-05:00

check the sidebar or above for my new flickr site! not much there now, but mondo quality.

i forgot how much i love jon stewart

2006-03-30T20:45:00.000-05:00

phillip and i have been blessed with a delightful week with completely free evenings. never has this happened. ok, it's been a long time. he has not had school board meetings, high school basketball or baseball games, and i have not had yoga or swimming. this evening, we enjoyed a little spiraling of the football, followed by dinner and vegging in front of the tv. i cannot remember the last time i saw the daily show. and man, is it funny. have you guys been watching it all this time during my lapse? they had a segment on called "WHAT ARE WE DOING TO PIGS? it was frickin hilarious. and all about pigs. ah man. so as you probably cannot see from the image above, there has been development on the school front. hopefully i'll be receiving a big envelope from the graduate school!!

quite the traveler

2006-03-12T04:17:00.000-05:00

all i can say is whew. thursday afternoon i flew up to newark, then took the traina nd metro into queens. i stayed with my cousin tiffini and her beau, michael. not for the first time. they live in michael's grandmother's old house in queens, it's a nice little neighborhood, and the live on the ground floor of a two-story. it was a long day; pre-travel always makes me anxious.

friday i got up, had breakfast made for me, and headed out to new jersey. everything for my trip to rutgers fell together perfectly. i managed to get to penn station in perfect time for my transit train. i made it to new brunswick by 11:30, as i didn't have a scheduled time for my tour with the departmental assistant, geralyn. we were unable to set up any faculty appointments what with friday being the last day of classes before spring break. but, when i get there, low and behold! the head of the program had change in plans and was able to meet with me. it was wonderful, i had a very friendly tour, in which i got to speak with several current students, and had a great interview with prof. yanni. she said i had strong writing skills and that i was a very strong ma candidate. i came out all aglow, and very excited. then i took the train back in and enjoyed a wonderful nap. we made dinner in, then tiffini and i sipped some wine and chatted it up. aftwerwards, she, michael and i went to a nearby greek cafe to have dessert and coffee/nightcaps/steamed milk (for me). today was a beautful day. it was warm and sunny in the city, and you could tell everyone was in a great mood. tiffini and i metro'd into manhattan and saw the whitney's biennial exhibition. it was, as always, overhyped. there were, as always, pieces pushing the limits of "what is art?" (i saw some plan trash.) but there were a couple of just stunning displays that reminded you of how exhillirating the creative process is. tiffini also thinks we walked by stephen spielberg in the stairwell.

it was along trip back (although out of lga, thank god!) and my mom and lori got lost coming to get me. my plane touched down early, also, so there was some waiting involved before the drive to snow hill. and tomorrow, my cute bundle of pudge nephew will be welcomed into the fold as his grandpa baptizes him.

and then it's monday again...

Oscar Picks

2006-03-04T07:35:00.000-05:00

My picks are in bold my predictions are in italics

BEST PICTURE

"Brokeback Mountain"
"Capote"
"Crash"
"Good Night, and Good Luck"
"Munich"

DIRECTOR

Ang Lee, "Brokeback Mountain"
Bennett Miller, "Capote"
Paul Haggis, "Crash"
George Clooney, "Good Night, and Good Luck"
Steven Spielberg, "Munich"

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Capote"
Terrence Howard, "Hustle & Flow"
Heath Ledger, "Brokeback Mountain"
Joaquin Phoenix, "Walk the Line"
David Strathairn, "Good Night, and Good Luck"

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Judi Dench, "Mrs. Henderson Presents"
Felicity Huffman, "Transamerica"
Keira Knightley, "Pride & Prejudice"
Charlize Theron, "North Country"
Reese Witherspoon, "Walk the Line"

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

George Clooney, "Syriana"
Matt Dillon, "Crash"
Paul Giamatti, "Cinderella Man"
Jake Gyllenhaal, "Brokeback Mountain"
William Hurt, "A History of Violence"

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Amy Adams, "Junebug"
Catherine Keener, "Capote"
Frances McDormand, "North Country"
Rachel Weisz, "The Constant Gardener"
Michelle Williams, "Brokeback Mountain"

NB I am sad not to have seen the Rachel Weisz movie yet, because I love her very much

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco, "Crash"
George Clooney and Grant Heslov, "Good Night, and Good Luck"
Woody Allen, "Match Point"
Noah Baumbach, "The Squid and the Whale"
Stephen Gaghan, "Syriana"

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, "Brokeback Mountain"
Dan Futterman, "Capote"
Jeffrey Caine, "The Constant Gardener"
Josh Olsen, "A History of Violence"
Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, "Munich"

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

"Darwin's Nightmare"
"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"
"March of the Penguins"
"Murderball"
"Street Fight"

I haven't seen any of these.

ANIMATED FEATURE

"Howl's Moving Castle"
"Tim Burton's Corpse Bride"
"Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit"

psycho 4 synchro and trips north

2006-02-25T08:04:00.000-05:00

first and foremost, all of my letters of recommendation are in their proper places. everything now is up to the schools to see how wonderful i am. i have scheduled my visit to rutgers, also. i called a week ago yesterday to rutgers to make the appointment. monday i called my dad to catch up, tell him about my trip and to bum some airline miles from him, then i turned my phone off because i was in practice at the pool and my phone was dead anyway. he leaves two voicemails, one about checking flight schedules, and the last was "oh, by the way, we're baptizing thomas (my nephew) that sunday here in snow hill." gee, thanks, dad for the afterthought. so i've curtailed my trip to accomodate being at the baptism—it only happens once, afterall, and hopefully i'll be in the jersey/nyc area a lot soon.

i couldn't find a copy of the medici chapel research paper that i started while i was studying in florence and then presented at secac. this is, behind my thesis, the second most important paper of my school career. i was really bummed about the idea of trying to sort through my notes from two to three years ago to reconstruct it, so i emailed dr. mulvaney on the off chance that she might have it still in her email or something. and she did! i've been editing it this week, and i've gotten a renewed enthusiasm from it. i think i will minor in italian renaissance.

work's been pretty slow. we still have two people less than we used to, but steve and diana are finishing up talks with some people for mark's old job soon.

i did a freelance job for the museum of life and science—where leslie now works!! i like working with cynthia. i think i'm going to set up a web site and start a small business called "flying pig designs." then maybe i can freelance my way through grad school.

phillip and i have found a church. we'd been looking since january, visiting different places. last sunday we went to an episcopal church in chapel hill, where an old family friend of mine has been doing her student pastoring as she completes her div school work at duke. it was a good compromise of things that we had both liked about different places, me methodist and phillip catholic. it will be nice to have a home church, especially through the season of lent.

i'm really excited about the routine that holly and i are doing in the spring aqua angels show. it has been really fun to get back in the pool, and holly and i never did a duet together before. i went shipping for sequiny decorations for our bathing suits last weekend and we've been looking at these esther williams-esque swim caps. we're both feeling pretty good about it, we've got the whole routine choreographed, and now we're just polishing things and practicing, practicing, practicing. the show is thursday, march 23 and friday, march 24 at 8 pm at the meredith pool.

things with phillip are awesome. we can actually get ready together in the mornings now, and that is a great way to start the day. i heart him.

it's february already?!?!

2006-02-03T09:40:00.000-05:00

lots going on in the life of katherine. a) i am currently trying out a drug called lexapro for my anxiety and depression. so far, it has kept me awake a lot. he said that might happen for the first few weeks and then fade away as my body adjusts (and gave me a prescription for ambien) but i'm still not sleeping well, even with the sleepy meds. but if this one doesn't work, we'll keep trying. somewhere out there, beneath the pale moon sky, some drugs thinking of me... (do you remember an american tail?) b) i am still one letter of recommendation short for my grad school applications. pops has had some health problems, and yadda yadda, long story short, i'm still waiting, and getting more anxious by the day. i NEED to be in school. this is my greatest desire right now, to get in to school again. c) i have been helping out the aqua angels on monday and wednesday nights. holly and i are lending a hand and working on a short routine of our own. my biggest problem at this point is that my body just can't keep up with my mind. holly and i are chorepgraphing a challenging routine and i'm excited that i can swim a 500 on a regular basis. i have a lot of work to do.

my first wesley alumni new year's weekend

2006-01-01T22:38:00.000-05:00

this weekend i was officially inaugurated as one of the wesley alumni clan, as i was phillip's first guest to a new year's weekend. i had met a good deal of these folk already. of course i'd met the ones nearby, and some of the other crew members have come into town for various activities, and of course britney and tango are the bomb dot com. friday proved to be an interesting day. it started well enough, with the gang leaving from 409 snowcrest trail packed up and ready to go at 9:30 am. we picked tina (in her delightful rain boots) up at the airport, and all was going well until around 10:30 or so. bailey called us to say she and matt couldn't make it because her grandfather has an anuerism and is in the hospital. then asskicker goes down on the side of 40 with an overheated engine. after some friendly advice from my brother and some strawberry flavored water from sally, we were on the road again. we eventually made it down to myrtle beach and unloaded into the condos. phillip and i got an actual suite, and yes, it was sa-weet. we watched the first half of gone with the wind and then people started arriving. as folk trickled in, we had various types of delicious lasagne and beer. we kicked everyone out of the party shack, and rested up for a big day.

saturday, we played tackle football in the sand, where i sustained a mild injury but caught two touchdown passes. (no, the fact that my boyfriend was the qb had NOTHING to do with it). i then took a two hour nap, and after showers all around and a rousing game of catchphrase, we headed out to dinner. i almost lost my life on the way there, and we just about didn't find it, but dinner was eaten, and we returned for a bit of taboo, the ball drop, critique of mariah carey's wardrobe, and some champagne. we had to be out at 10am this morning, followed by a blessedly uneventful car ride home. it was a good time. the people were fun, the beach was sunny and warm, and i got to spend the first new year's eve with my hottie mchotness boyfriend. and now back to work tomorrow...

look how pretty we are

2005-12-29T14:50:00.000-05:00

this is from stephanie and justin's non-driveby-wedding the other weekend in cary. the fabulous holly schmidt, photographer extraordinaire, took the photo. i look like a giant because of my shoes, and phillip looks slightly afraid that i'm going to eat him. (whimper) i'm not a giantess.

oh me. life!

2005-12-23T16:16:00.000-05:00

alrighty. for the few of you who might still remember this blog exists (in large part my fault for the sporadic postings) here is the news.

i have submitted everything for my grad school applications to unc and rutgers. i am applying for art history, to study 20th century photography. it is a relief to know that everything i can do has been done. now i just have to wait. and wait.

i am excited about christmas. i did really well with my cards and shopping and spread everything out over the past month so that i never felt stressed out about it. my presents are/were beautifully wrapped with pretty paper and ribbons (some of blue) and everyone will/has liked their gifts. last night, phillip and i did our wee christmas for each other. i cooked a dinner of caprese salad/pecorino tuscano fresco antipasti, followed by basil pesto spirals and broiled tilapia in cream, butter and garlic. we then exchanged gifts (i now have a bobble-head monkey lotion dispenser!!) and then had a yummy souther season baked dessert. the night was ended by falling asleep to the christmas classic "holiday inn" with bing crosby and fred astaire.

i am finally wrapping up my projects for dr. huber. yes, the ones i started forever ago. the poster for the autism program is being printed as we speak. the main fabric panel is done, and i just need some wee flanking panels and the rod to hang it on. i'm going to install them one day next week while i'm off from work. it will be nice to have that done.

stephanie and justin's non-driveby-wedding was last weekend. IT WAS SUCH A BLAST. i was the only one who raised a toast that cried. shocking. i had a beautiful new dress and a beatifully dressed date. phillip and i chatted with holly and eily for a long time. i also got to see bunmi for the first time in over a year, and shook my groove thing. we had a lot of fun. great people.

something happened this week that has really affected me in a lot of ways. the two people i work for, steve and diana, had three children, the oldest a junior at meredith, then kelsey, a freshman at greensboro college, and john paul. their son died of cancer a year and a half ago, and it's been really hard on the family. joanna and kelsey started a fund called jp's caps that raises money to buy children undergoing chemo baseball caps to wear, because john paul always wore one. well, joanna, the oldest, died instantly in a car crash this week. she wasn't wearing a seatbelt and rolled her cherokee. we can only assume she was swerving to miss a deer. this family has burried two children under the age of 21 in a year and a half. kelsey has lost both of her siblings, and they will never be at her graduation, her wedding. steve and diana won't have a house filled with children and grandchildren in their old age. a tragedy like this is just unfathomable. it has caused me to really evaluate my view of my relationship with god and made me really appreciate my family and our good fortunes. both my mom and i have flipped vehicles and come out with barely a wound. we may be crazy and not always get along, but there is a lot of love, and we have each other.

now, i'm going to get ready and packf or christmas with my family, something i will appreciate more this year than in the past. and i suggest everyone take a minute to be grateful for their blessings as another year rolls by.

so much to catch up on!

2005-11-26T22:19:00.000-05:00

alright, so last weekend i saw harry potter and the goblet of fire with phillip and his friends dana and melissa. these are my thoughts:

i thought they did a great job. i'm not sure it lived up to the hype, but i'm not sure it could have. kudos to their marketing minds. i thought they did a good job incorporating the important elements of the story and using the visual medium to help tell the narrative. the characterization has really risen to new levels with the last two films, which gives a lot of much needed depth. i mean it's too easy to get lost in a story line. (ie remember the old star wars movies? ok, now think about the last three. ok, you get it.) my only major problem was the amount of time they spent on the dragon scene. i mean, with as much as they had to fit in, i felt that the amount of time proportionally on that scene, with the flying around and whatnot, was a bit askew. i got tired of seeing it grappling around the roof of the school. also, a minor point, the amount of drama at the dance. i mean, it was all fine up until the end where hermione is screaming "you ruined everything." and then of course they had to jump ahead in time and we never really see a resolution to that issue. those things being said, voldemort was awesome. there were some really hilarious lines, and moody was an absolute hoot. overall, i'd give it an a.

so things at work have been going better the past few days. well, the past few days i was there. i left for the day when i went to lunch on tuesday because of this cold that i'd gotten, and i called in on wednesday. i felt pretty crappy. i was just so tired, from fighting the get well fight and all. i then had dinner on wednesday night at phillip's mom's house, joined by (of course) the boy, and also his sister dorothy and brother rick. it was a good time and a good meal, capped by my heading out to the lake for thanksgiving with the fam. we fried a turkey for lunch, and brian ashley and sara joined mom, dad and i for food and some napping. then we trekked over to grandma's for dinner, complete with homemade pie and a "quick" game of rook. let it be known that my team ("them" to my brothers' "us") won, and i took every hand all by myself in the last round. i am such the card shark. watch out.

friday i was feeling much better, but still took it easy. we watched a lot of basketball, and a little football (texas a&m almost won) as i finished my panel for the project for dr. huber. today i headed back home and spent the entire afternoon dress hopping at the mall. i finally found a great dress at white house | black market (for a total of $130—but i mean, other people can easily spend that much on ipods or stuff for the car) to wear to stephanie and justin's wedding reception in a few weeks. ALSO, we finally sold the bug, so i got some kickback from that (not as much as i put into it, but i owe my dad nothing for the honda now and can put that down on some loans.

and now, i am sadly watching as the hokies rip a new one into the heels. i would just like to say that baker has done a really standup job this year, the defense has done some pretty amazing things, and ronnie mcgill is just the man. that being said, i am so dissapointed in our receivers. i mean honestly, it's like the slick their hands with butter or something. do they need new receiving gloves? or just some lessons in how to successfully catch and keep a football. but oh well. another day, another season, another team.

i'm feeling ok about our basketball team, too. that hansborough kid has a tremendous amount of talent and potential. there were times when they looked like a real ball team last night, with excellent ball movement and smarts with the screens. there is definitely potential and hope there, so that will be interesting to watch play out through the season. i think they will be better than a lot of people are giving them credit for.

christmas gets closer every year

2005-11-14T21:45:00.000-05:00

so, i have actually already started on my christmas shopping for this year. i am bound to get presents for all of my immediate family members this year, and to help reduce the stress and financial strain (not to mention i HATE crowds) i am starting early this year.

so, my job is not going so fantastically. things keep going wrong, and i am at the center of a lot of it. i have never felt less confident of my abilities before. i actually had to fill out this self-evaluation tonight that one of my bosses, diana, and i are going to go over tomorrow. it totally sucks. i wake up in the morning totally unenthused about work. i mean, not just the "i don't feel like going to work" feeling, but the anxious, "oh lord what will i mess up today" feeling. i am keeping my eye out for what else is out there. i just hope i don't actually get fired.

in happier news, i am moving further along with the grad school applications. i finished the rough draft of my letter of intent last night. i am going to let it sit for a bit longer then start with the self-editing. then i'll send it out so that my lovely little editors can give me feedback and make it a truly wonderful essay! the wheels are rolling; i'm that much closer!

so this weekend phillip and i rented the newest version of the merchant of venice and sin city. we started the evening off with the merchant of venice, starring al pacino as the jewish usurer. it was wonderful, the cast was great (also with jeremy irons), the dialogue was well done, the themes were well represented visually. it was moving and artistically and technically magnificent. then we watched sin city. now, i thought the art direction for sin city was awesome. the graphic novel elements to the film were really well done, and the use of color and lighting was great. but the graphic content, however, i was a bit unprepared for. it was just a little out of control for me. we had to watch an episode of the simpsons just so i could get to sleep in peace, to cleanse my pallette if you will. ahhh, simpsons.

New hair, new shoes

2005-11-09T18:52:00.000-05:00

Let's start with the good: today I got my haircut, for the first time in like 5 or 6 months. It's much fluffier now. And I wore my new corduroy jacket and cream faux gator heels today. And I was worried that maybe Pops (aka Dr. Huber) had not gotten word about my letters of recommendation, but have received an email confirming that he has. Thank the lord. I was trying to think of who I would get to be my backup letter writer.

SO, today kind of sucked. Things keep going wrong at work that are my fault and it sucks. It makes me feel stupid and incompetent. I don't want to be their Jen! It's just really frustrating. I work really hard all day long every day. Everybody wants something and they all want it now. Or yesterday. And I am simply not a meticulous person. I'm a big picture kind of girl, and idea generator. And I'm dyslexic. Seriously, if you could see the number of things that were wrong simply because things were backwards. I mean, I'm catching a lot more things now than I used to, but problems are still coming up. Oh well.

I've been working on my sewing project for the psych building at Meredith. Work had been stalled for awhile due to new job, settling in, etc.

Dinner is ready. peace out.

this fish's fins are tired

2005-11-03T03:28:00.000-05:00

so, things are going better at work. i feel more confident with what i'm doing, and people are telling me helpful things. i feel like i am settling into the position more. plus, i'm getting more creative work to do, which is fun for me. right now i'm reading the secret life of pi, which phillip definitely gave me for my birthday and i have just gotten around to, but i like it very much. i have also been in high gear with the grad school application process. i got out the information to my recommendation writers this evening. i am applying to rutgers and unc. i'm so excited about grad school, getting back into a stiumlated environment, giving my brain cells a workout.

speaking of workout, i went swimming tonight. phillip had to cover a middle school football game (the two county schools were playing one another) and so i had the evening all to myself. i called holly and asked if she'd like to meet me at meredith and swim a bit. she's been going somewhat regularly, so was much more paced. i hadn't been in a pool to swim laps in over a year, and boy, did my body feel it. it's not just the muscles being weaker, it's the cardio-vascular health also. my breath control is not NEARLY anyhting like what it was. all in all, i have some work to do. i'd like to swim more regularly, not as hardcore as when i was in college, i mean i don't need to be in that good of shape, but i'd like to be able to swim an easy 500 a couple of days a week.

yes yes, i'm still alive!

2005-10-26T22:07:00.000-04:00

so, let's do a little updating. last weekend was phillip's birthday and we had lots of fun. friday night we had dinner with his peeps at chili's and then some drinks at goodfellas. saturday we enjoyed the football victory at carolina, shanghai express chinese (which has totally usurped charlie's for dinner. but i mean, dinner was never charlie's strong point anyway, you know?) and another round at goldie's. not late nights, either of those. i gave him the gift of fine literature (not to mention scoring the tickets and my presence.)

so the job is ok. nothing stellar. sometimes i want to ring someone's neck or quit or runaway. other times, it's fine. it's been really busy lately, so i've been working like crazy. i keep making mistakes though, and that is really annoying. i really don't think i am the ideal person for this job. it is super technical. i feel sort of like i did when i was waitressing; i forget things and then they're wrong and i feel really badly and stupid for my mistakes. but hopefully it will get better with time.

i am at ann's again, but just for an extended weekend. she has gone to the secac conference in little rock and so i am holding down the fort (and keeping the kitties happy) until sunday. saturday phillip's roommate michael is having a halloween party, with a costume contest! i think it is safe to divulge that i am going to be an incredibly cute but tough mobster, like the untouchables era. i have a plastic tommy gun and everything. phillip's costume is going to be awesome!!!! i am so excited. it is hilarity to the max.

i am currently reading the life of pi (yes it was given to me for my birthday and i am just now getting to it, but there were other things in line first). so far i really enjoy it. i like his writing style: almost over-the-top, but beautiful and well strung. one of those lyrical prose types. still living with leslie in lovely durham. we all had dinner, the four of us, at the house, and gareth cooked this succulent and wonderful chicken with prosciutto and lemon and thyme with potatoes and onions. it was delicious.

why has the weather forsaken me?

2005-10-19T21:01:00.000-04:00

i was talking to matty the other night (one of the wonderful things about his growing up and moving away is his excellent ability to be proactive with his contact) and he was saying how beauitful the weather was in d.c., 65-70 during the day and 45-50 at night. i was saying how it was delightful here the other day too. but here we are again, it was 80 degrees today. i sweated. and now my house is not that wonderful chilly temperature it had taken on of recent times. for crying out loud, it's mid-october and we don't even have fall weather yet. i should be wearing jackets and sweaters, at least int he morning and at night. hooded sweatshirts and maybe the occassional glove or scarf. WTF MATES?! i need coolness. my body just can't take it.

so, i don't have a lot of shows that i really watch on a regular basis. of course there's the gilmore girls, which i hate to miss. and there's desperate housewives and grey's anatomy, which i enjoy, but i could miss. but i've recently really gotten into lost. i have had friends taht really like lost, and i had seen an episode or two last year and liked it, but i was never regularly in one place every week to watch it. it's become a weekly tradition here at 6413 forest ridge dr. to watch lost on wednesdays, and i have to say, it is really enjoyable. it's not a west wing or star trek:tng, but it's good and it's fun and they're on an island! you can always watch the dvd's of the great shows, but it's ok to leave time in your week for a little guilty pleasure.

dove miniature ice cream bars

2005-10-13T20:43:00.000-04:00

...are fantastic! i had seen them in the grocery store and been beguiled by them. dove chocolate and ice cream in convenient little snack sizes. it's wonderful. so this weekend, i will be joining the boy and his family for a little beach jaunt. he's going to pick dorothy and some school friends up and then we're meeting at his apartment after work and heading down. it should be a good time. i have been doing pretty well at getting things done this week; i've been doing reading to get ready for grad school and getting work done on my other projects. woot for me!

i'm so tired. even though i slept pretty well last night, i didn't get to sleep as early as i'd like. and yoga kicked my ass today. i worked hard and now i am tiiiired. so peace out kids.

i know i know, it's been a long time

2005-10-12T22:08:00.000-04:00

ok, here is everything. the job is going pretty well. i've been there almost two weeks now and i feel like i have a pretty good handle on things. it was super busy when i first got there, but i've been slowly catching up and now things haven't been coming in as much, so it's not crazy anymore. there is some job angst there on the press operation end that doesn't make my job any easier. plus i keep forgetings things or making careless mistakes. but that should hopefully get better with time. i mean i wasn't the news of orange superstar from day one, you know.

so holly and i had talked about moving in together when she got her job. i was excited at the idea of having a new place and putting all of my stuff in it that's in storage, but she has wisely decided to get a place closer to work in raleigh. leslie, however, has offered for me to bring whatever of my stuff that i want here to store or keep out or whatever. i also this week cleaned my room and arranged things: put some things on the walls, set up the books that i had brought from my parents' house this weekend.

i am still getting things ready for grad school. i am reading my art and anthropology book to better familiarize myself with the method so taht i can talk about it in my letter of intent. i also am trying to read a book edited by the professor at ucsd i am interested in studying with. and i'm trying to finish those projects for dr. huber. and the boy's birthday is soon, and halloween. so much going on.

but things are going pretty well. lots of good things on the horizon. just so busy...

new job, great weekend

2005-10-03T18:48:00.000-04:00

so today was my third day at work and i feel like i've progressed a lot in that small amount of time. i mean, it's a job, but it seems to be going ok. tomorrow will be my first say totally on my own. gareth has been there most of the time so far, and tomorrow will be my first day completely by myself. i think it will be fine.

so i had a great weekend. phillip is officially the best boyfriend ever. we watched at least 5 if not 6 episodes of gilmore girls: season one this weekend. and it wasn't like i had it on and refused to turn it off. he even suggested it sometimes. he loves it. and i love him! so friday we had dinner with michael and sally at o'charley's (there was a birthday and an anniversary sung over in the short span of time in which we were there) then i took a little nap (i was unconscious) then managed to drag myself out of bed to go out with the kids in honor of their friend brian's coming into town. we met at he's not and it was fun, but man was i tired. we left around 11 and i was out. saturday was spent watching entourage, gilmore girls, and running errands. we listened to the carolina game here at my house while i cut fabric and worked on some shizzle. after the wonderful victory. we cooked a delightful dinner and watched, yet more, gilmore girls. sunday was a lazy day. not a lot was done, but it was great. i rested up and filled my belly. and spent lots of time with the boy. it's still weird not seeing him throughout the day. right now i am a bit tired, and about to hunker down for some of leslie's chili and pre-game.

wow, nothing really interesting, sorry to dissapoint guys.

what makes us well?

2005-09-25T22:01:00.000-04:00

do you remember the last time you felt really well and nothing hurt? can you vivdly remember that feeling? probably not, because most of us don't appreciate the comfort of NOT feeling until we are in pain or out of synch with ourselves.

as we get older, we continually get more pins knocking around in our inner workings. but sometimes the illnesses we deal with are not just due to our bodies' degeneration. lately, between my depression and phillip's stomach/allergies (although allergies no more! who loves medicine?) i have felt more acutely this appreciation for health. being with someone is sometimes like having everything two fold. twice the chance for pain or sickness. the thing is, i would much rather that i was hurting than him, so i almost feel worse when he feels sick. neither of our malladies are predictable or fun. his is physical and mine is mental. but i wish both of us could just feel better at the same time for a long time. i also wish i had a way of knowing what was wrong and how to fix it. from all of the little things, like why does MY stomach hurt sometimes, or why did i get that weird awful headache last week, or what's the deal with the joints in my hands, ot bigger things like can i fix the chemical imbalance in my brain or make phillip's stomach stop hurting.

mostly, i long for stability. the feeling most people take for granted that i appreciate is unhindered happiness. i realize that life is complex, and i respect deeply the need for balance, of pain and joy, etc. but i wish the unhappiness that i sometimes had was all atributable to something. i'm tired of not being happy for no reason (other than the chemicals in my brain.) it seems so unfair to those that love me and to myself.

it's not that i want people's pity, or their attention. i just like being able to get these thoughts out of my head. it can get frustrating.

in other, lighter news, i had a good weekend. saturday marked the WINNING GAME that i watched with the boy, bailey and matt. it was a year since the first time i met them, when they joined us for the game when i went with jamie. phillip still does not believe that i have liked him for that long. we went to see the corpse bride saturday night, which i enjoyed. i still like nightmare before christmas better. this one was almost too sappy, not dark enough—too disney. but it was cute. i enjoyed the animation. today was spent with lunch at ricks ( a sunday favorite) and lots of football and napping. a little errand-running and cleaning and projecting (but not much i was laaaazy). tomorrow is my last monday at the paper! my last xtra. my last week of ads. a brave new world awaits.

check out holly's website!

2005-09-22T11:27:00.000-04:00

it is frickin awesome. i'm so proud of holly! even though i took a web design class and used to do updates all the time at the ballet, i have never had a strong desire to get back into coding/designing, so i applaud those that do. let's get my girl a job, so she can move closer (and away from the rents, as much as we heart them!).

t-minus 7 and counting...

2005-09-20T14:22:00.000-04:00

4-3-2-1 earth beloooow us, sinking falling!

i have 6 more working days. that's a week after tomorrow. earlier this week, i was getting nostalgic. where will phillip's awesome "the view from phillip's cubicle" drawrings go? will i hang them up in my new office? will i make a scrapbook of them? will i mail the one of jonathan bowing down to tom to the spargunator? doubtful, the last.

i will miss lunchtime with phillip. double lunch brown bags, kisses at work.

but i WILL NOT miss working with jen, oh my lord. i will not miss the woodcroft gazette. i will not miss our paper being used to keep others afloat and not getting what any of us deserve.

i am excited about my new job. yay! who isn't?

so i am working on these two projects for dr. huber/the psych department that he comissioned as part of his last huzzah! as dept. head. i had wanted to do fabric wall hangings for the bean bag room. i went to three fabric stores last night looking for primo awesome fabrics. the first two were closed, but on the third i hit jackpot. i got some really lovely fabrics and may have changed my ideas for what i want to do that will end up being even cooler. i felt so much better making that step forward. also, the fabric was on sale and ended up costing less than i thought, so i made some side trips to some outlet stores...
i got a) a new pair of jeans—i mean have you seen the aero's lately? b) a banana republic sweater duster c) a black 3/4 sleeve polo shirt (for $15 on clearance!) d) a new pair of brownish work trousers and e) a gorgeous lightweight coat that is a burnt gold color with light blue woven pattern and copper colored beads. oh it is so katherine. or katherinesque if you will.

NEW JOB

2005-09-15T12:58:00.000-04:00

this morning, i was called by a better image printing to be their new pre-press/graphic design guru. more pay, half benefits, closer to home, very nice people that seem to smartly run their business. hoorah! i have sent in my official letters of notice here at the news of orange and am well on my way to having a real job! woot!

the funniest thing all day

2005-09-14T16:53:00.000-04:00

second interview—looking better

2005-09-14T16:10:00.000-04:00

so i had a second interview today at a better image. i was really not that excited, because i was imagining a world where i would be nit-picking people's files to get them to work right and constantly talking to people who don't know what's going on. but i voiced this concern, and things seemed to be better than i thought. the people that run the company are very nice and seem to really have a handle on things. i'd be making over 3,000 more a year, including not hving to pay all my health insurance like i am now, before taxes. so they're going to talk to jonathan, my remaining reference, and give me a call back later this week. if nothing else, a good job to hold down for a year or two...but i still have grad school on the horizon

i was thinking today about not having to do another woodcroft gazette, or deal with our fucked up employment hierarchy. getting more than one day for holidays. these things pleased me greatly.

i finished my design for the autism poster that is one of my special projects for dr. huber. i emailed it along for people to look at so hopefully i can go ahead and get it printed and mounted, framed, etc. and have that project done with. yay! that feel good. i think it looks really nice, too. now only one more project to start!

geez, it will be nice to have a clear plate again. well, at least in terms of work.

scorso fine settimana

2005-09-12T21:54:00.000-04:00

ok. an update from the weekend. and oh, what a weekend it was! friday i had an interview at a better image in chapel hill. it's a print shop and they're looking for a pre-press/pre-flight person. that means people send their files to the press and the person they are looking for will make sure those files are ready for the printing press, and make any corrections that need to be made. i'm not sure how i feel about it. the pay would be better, but i don't know that i'd enjoy it anymore. more on that later.

so, friday night phillip and i went to meet his brother adam et alia at brixx for dinner. adam lives in the body of christ, texas and he was the only sibling that i had not yet met. but noy was i looking forward to it, i mean, those blog entries from his adventures out west and in mexico are HI-larious. i knew this kid was fun. he was in town to see his alma mater, v-tech, "battle" the blue devils on the football field, and a few of his buds had met up for the fun, at the expense of the lovely and fun kristen, whose house they were crashing in, and who drove their drunk asses around. what a gal. it was fun, though. everybody was in high spirits, and we ducked out at the end to go home to bed while the crew went on to paint the town crimson and orange.

saturday i got up at quarter to 7 so that i could drive to roxboro and perform manual labor all day. see, months ago my dad asked me if i wanted to help him tile my grandfather's shower. he had asked my dad for help, and i had helped my dad tile the new (or "the pretty") bathroom at the lake. so i said yes, cause i'm a good daughter. well, he'd been dragging his heels and then he was getting pressure from his dad, therefore i was getting pressure from mine. so i sacrificed football opening day and a chance to party with the v-techers to help the family. but it was a good time, my grandparents really appreciated what we were doing (my grandfather was amazed at how quickly i could get the tiles up there. really, it's mudding the thinset that takes the longest, because it takes careful pressure not to be messy and keep a consistent layer, esp hard when you're applying vertical tile. my dad did all that though.) so i had to leave at 5, but most of the work was done, so i drove on to durham, where i got lost trying to navigate the confusing 85 (it's like those moving staircases in harry potter) and had a panic attack, then made it to phillip's, where i got most of the thinset off and cleaned up for the concert. we then drove to raleigh and met jeremy and shannon for dinner at our el rodeo then off to coldplay.

coldplay rocked! chris martin is like a little monkey. and they sang johnny cash's ring of fire and i about died. well, phillip about died because i about squoze him to death out of excitement. it was a great show. they played a great set, a good mix of old and new, and he did some funny stuff. it was great.

sunday we slept in (oh, glorious, elusive sleep!) then tried to get phillip's nostrils, eyes and throat clear of whatever allergens were driving him crazy. we succeded, and enjoyed a wonderful day of football, monkey time, then embarking for a trip with THE FAMILY.

we met up at his mom's and then rode to pick dorothy up at school. all of the scott siblings, adam's friend wes, and i went to visit with deedee and pawpaw (spelling approximate) for dinner. it was good times, different generations trading college living stories, cornbread cooked the right way. we have met a lot of each others' family members now, and i hve to say, all has gone well.

in great news: phillip heard back from his interview with all kinds of minds that he was so excited about and he's going in tomorrow for a second interview! yay! let's hear it for the boy!

i told you there'd be more about my job front. so here it is. i've been thinking about this a lot. i've been looking for jobs for awhile now. i've had a really exciting interview and a bunch of duds. they always ask me where i want to be in three or five years and i always have to lie. that is because i cannot say "well, i'd like to be in or having ocmpleted graduate school and be teaching art history, a completely different field than what i'm interviewing for right now." and you know what? here's the thing. getting jobs for most people is like a pyramid. the ones you really want are higher up, but the ones that are easier to get you have to pay your dues with and work your way up to something good. well, i'm tired of not finding anything good enough. i'm tired of being underemployed. i'm tired of feeling like i'm trying to move forward in a career i don't even want. i have felt for years now that design is not what i want to do with my life. i don't feel good enough at it. and whatever your opinion on that statement may be, the fact is i don't feel comfortable in that role. i know that i'm smart and i want to show it, i want to be it. i have always loved academic environments. i thrive on them. and i want to teach. i love taking something i love and trying to figure out how to share that with others, giving them those AHA! moments when everything finally clicks together. i mean, if i don't start applying now, that's two more years of work i'm destined to. doesn't that seem like a waste of time? i feel like i'm so out of touch with everything. things i used to know. out of the loop. argh.

for those of you who haven't met him

2005-09-07T16:38:00.000-04:00

this is the boy. (yes we are at work, yes that is his office chair. yes, our editor took this picture.)

labor-free weekend

2005-09-06T11:09:00.000-04:00

friday after work, phillip and i ventured up to the lake house for the weekend. this was his first real experience with the fam, and it was fantastic. the weather all weekend was wonderful—not humid, not too hot, mostly sunny. friday night we all had dinner and mostly crashed pretty early. saturday, we spent some time floating around in the cove and took the boat out. we built a fire in the fire pit and cooked hobo stew and peach dump cobbler. it was fantastic. phillip and i checked out the stars down at the dock and used our incredible new knowledge from the planetarium to find three constellations. sunday, we took a picnic on the boat to an island out on the lake. we skipped stones, did some hardcore exploring (i enslaved the natives and made them succumb to my foreign diseases so as to make me rich with their silver and gold), and played in the water. brian and ashley's beagle puppy, max, proved himself to be superdog, as he fearlessly swam with his wee legs to get the ball time after time, while buster, the lab mix, waited on the shoreline. that night we roasted hot dogs on the fire and the boy and i watched as brian, ashley, and mom did some night fishing. ashley caught a pretty big catfish. monday we set off for home and ran some errands, took a nap, went in to work (however briefly), got some ice cream (hurricane relief!) and watched some football before it was bedtime. a great weekend all around.

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

2005-09-01T16:08:00.000-04:00

you will notice to the left that i hve added links to the sites that i most frequently visit. these are all wonderful and should be visited. cheers!

soon i'll be selling myself for gas

2005-09-01T09:06:00.000-04:00

good lord. i hope they get the electricity back to the pipelines soon, so that the gas can start being delivered per the usual. of course my tank was almost full yesterday. i will probably top it off today, before the prices get even more ridiculous.

so, i slept for about 9 hours last night. i took a tylenol pm to help me get there (just one, it's a half dose, to help the mind and body unwind) and the rest was all me. i woke up when the pill went off and was awake for maybe 15 minutes, but it didn't take long before i was back in la la land. i woke up again around 6:20 but i was able to go back to sleep then as well. clearly, my body was tired. but before that, i vacuumed my room, cleaned my bathroom, bought a new outfit at marshall's, watched part of varsity blues with leslie and later gareth (as we ate leslie's yummy baked apples!) and made my bed. (and by making my bed i mean putting new sheets and pillows on and straightening it all.) delightful.

now it's thursday, and we're past this midpoint of the week. only one more day, then friday, kyle's party, then off to the lake with the boy! he's meeting the fam. but not everyone, just brian's crew and mom and dad. it will be lovely, with the exception of being segregated in different rooms. but so it goes. at least everyone will have a bed!

i have sent my resume off for a couple of jobs. just keeping on keeping on.

slack with the blog

2005-08-29T23:24:00.000-04:00

i have noticed i haven't been writing many entries lately. what with the wedding, the move, the boy, the job hunt, the tiredness. well, you get it. but none of those are good excuses. so, here's a few fun facts about me lately:

phillip is wonderful, better than bacon (yeah, i said it, JEEZ), and i've been spending a good bit of my free time with him. wonder what i'm doing at any random moment? probably something with him.

i saw superman, the first movie, for the first time this weekend. how come no one ever told me how cool that movie is? we weren't a super family, we were into batman. i feel like i'm bringing my comic world more full circle now.

i went to the planetarium on saturday and saw the show "carolina skies." it was awesome. my uberdorky host showed me NOT ONLY the stars i could see from a typical chapel hill skyscape, BUT what lies out in the country. really stellar stuff. (get it, get it?

i actually played tennis. i'm not that great at it, but given time, i'm taking the pro circuit by storm. if nothing else, they can hire me instead of one of those ball-spitting machines. because my aim is way out of control, and would be a much better workout than any random number generator machine could.

i saw napoleon dynamite tonight for the first time.

grandma called and asked you to leave because you're ruining all of our lives. you IDIOT.

new home!

2005-08-21T23:44:00.000-04:00

what news! here i am, posting from my new room at leslie's house. what an eventful week it has been. not so much in terms of work, although there was some kissing and maybe some light making out in someone's cubicle in the office alone on friday. so, friday my dad got the bug to crank and drove it from the lake to bob's in durham. i went to pick him up there and then he took my car while i was at work. then he picked me up and we drove to the lake. we had a long conversation about homosexuals in christianity and mostly about his view of heaven and how that works. not long after we'd arrived at the lake. we get a call from my brother and find out my mom is fine but has totalled the forerunner. she only got a bloody nose and won't get a ticket or anything. it could have been worse. but we were both a little shaken up. ok, more than a little. he went to mow the lawn and i packed up my stuff. we ate dinner, and then i finished packing up the car around 10 o'clock. i got to leslie's around 11 and zonked out. saturday, we cooked bacon and eggs and dad came by with the alrger of my stuff that wouldn't fit in the car. then phillip and i went to target (ok, we went to target maybe four times this weekend) and to best buy to buy a new cd player for his car, since his old one died. he got one that is ipod and satellite radio ready, and let me tell you, it is beauty. it has a remote control, too! greatness. we went out to play pool on saturday night and met up with clint, who is in town, and matt and bailey came out to join us. it was high times. today was mostly spent at the pool and napping, with brunch at rick's thrown in and some peanut butter cup cookies to end the day. now, it is definitely bedtime and i feel good. a good weekend all in all.

taking one for the team

2005-08-15T11:50:00.000-04:00

i have taken down the poem from saturday night. it is in good faith to support our girl.

if you'd like to read it, let me know!

life is good people.

2005-08-11T16:00:00.000-04:00

i have managed to somehow make myself through this work week. i am taking a sick day tomorrow in order to ride all the way down to alabama with the girls (if that ride isn't sick, i don't know what is). but it will be fun times with the gals (+jeremy). and kimmie wedding day. so the boy has come all the way out to the lake the past two nights after work. it has been wonderful for many reasons, including the fact that it not only prevents me from a lonely drive but ANY drive at all. a driver and a cutie. honestly. still no word fromt he yarn people, but the ncma needs a designer, and i found a couple of other listings this week that i am sending things off for early next week. the whole shabang, colored envelopes and labels, cd's, the works. but i don't have time to get that stuff ready right now. project get kat a new job is still in the works.

but project move kat closer is underway! i will be moving in with leslie very soon. so you can all come visit me and invite me out and all that good stuff. well, those of you in the triangle. i will probably start bringing stuf over mid next week, with the heft of the work being over the weekend. yay!

i am a slave to the establishment

2005-08-10T11:53:00.000-04:00

sometimes you really need to get out of the office. you know that an average respectable job will give you two weeks of vacation to start? not to mention the month off europeans get. want to know how many vacation days i have earned in a year? 5. sick days? three. and one annual leave day. i have been in this office more than i care for. i am tired, i am cranky, i am burnt out. i need a break.

part of my being tired and cranky is my fault. afterall, i could be spending more of my non-office time asleep, be it medication-induced or not, but a certain something in my life has created a great bit of excitement and helped to keep me from the much needed deluge of slumber i need to swim through the day. but i need so much sleep anyway, it's almost impossible for me to keep up.

i am also disapointed and anxious about the outcome of last week's interview. it has been more than a week since i went in to total american yarn, and i thought my interview went really well. they assured me i'd hear something within a few days. i emailed on wednesday and left a voicemail on friday. no news. i called smither & associates today and talked to anita. she was thinking leslie has spoken with them, as she's been gone, and is going to call me back to let me know if there's any new info. i'm just waiting around. i really felt good about that job. it makes being here at this job that much harder.

in other news, this weekend is kimmie-ties-the-knot-in-bama weekend, so the girls + jerm and i are driving down to enjoy the summerville scene. woot! i am wrapping presents tonight.

"it could have been worse"

2005-08-05T16:17:00.000-04:00

you remember my saying i'd been on a lucky bad luck streak? it never ends. so on monday, the fans in my car stopped working (the ones that cool the engine). luckily it started steaming in the driveway of the pearce's, and i was able to drive safely to work and then to talbert's without overheating the car, since i was so close. so i took it to talbert's and they replaced the engines for both of the fans. that set me back a little over $400. so today i'm driving into work, on a day when there are only going to be three of us in the office. about 5 miles down the road my car starts to vibrate and i hear this horrible noise. i pull over and see that i have a flat tire. i proceed to change my tire, and call my brother for a little backup (i would NEVER have found my jack by myself). so i change my tire and drive home to freshen up (since it was already like 90 degrees). i then continue on to work and start to hear the noise again about 5 miles from hillsborough. the spare is gone. what can i do? i try to drive to the nearest gas station in attempts to put air in the spare. the poor wee doughnut spare does not make it. it is all torn up. so i call keri from work and she comes to pick me up and we take my old tire to talbert's to see if it can be plugged. they seem hopeful. we talk about getting a news of orange discount (since this was the...6th time in 9 days someone from the news had come to them?). they fix it, and tango takes me to my car so i can change it AGAIN. so now i have a tire, for now at least.

now i'm off to take care of my boy after his surgery. we can comfort each other after our fantastic days.

simple things

2005-08-04T09:16:00.000-04:00

last night, i cooked a tasty and nice meal, drank some decent wine, watched some international history, all with the boy, who drove all the way out to the lake, then topped it off with reading in bed before a tylenol pm-induced sleep. oh it was wonderful. it really is the little things that make life and love the best.

still no word on the job front. hopefully today? good news for my co-worker keri, her girl tracy got a job with the little school in hillsborough (or as i call it the wee school). so hopefully new job kharma is in the air. i have inspired phillip and jonathan to renew their job searches with vigor (and maybe on tango's part a hint of desparation, he has been here the longest, afterall.)

it is official, i will be moving in with leslie later this month. i bribed her with my cooking and cleaning and snuggling skills. is it wrong? maybe. but is it ever really wrong to use what god gave you? i think not.

work has been slow. i have been tired. i set up my ira with tom yesterday. i am officially on my way to pulling down 120,000 dollars a year wheni retire. that's right. start early kids.

long busy day, but with a successful interview...

2005-08-01T23:33:00.000-04:00

ladies and gentlemen, i may have found myself a real life job! i interviewed today at total american yarn in chapel hill. i would be a marketing assistant, doing some design work, writing press releases, and doing market research. i feel like pinocchio when he says "i'm a real boy!" but i might have "a real job!" i should know in a few days.

also, am going to talk to leslie about possibility of living in her extra room, paying rent, etc. living in civilization again. (and near the boy) i was looking back through my blog and i have been amazed at what is there. things i sort of marginally remember brought back in living color. dreams i never would have remembered recorded in haunting detail (and i've had some doozies). sort of surreal.

tomorrow is my mother's birthday and the day after that is matty's. everyone send birthday wishes!

petite, how i love thee

2005-08-01T01:24:00.000-04:00

i hadn't read petite anglaise in forever, not since the intial breakup of she and mr. frog. i am delighted by the above post and couldn't agree with her more.

and now i can't sleep...

2005-07-31T23:54:00.000-04:00

i have spent most of the weekend trying to sleep as much as possbile. due to stress, anxiety, and lots of fun endorphins, too, i had not been sleeping well or nearly enough for close on two weeks. so it was definitely time. i woke up from a three hour nap friday night and thought it was saturday morning, even after talking to my mom for 20 minutes. it was that bad. so some more unfortunate things have happened: this includes getting power steering fluid all over my white sweater, getting something black and unidentifyable on my favorite grey slacks, my car fans stopping working, thereby causing overheating in my car (but int he driveway in the middle of the day, and not, say, late at night at the intersection of 70 and lawrence). my giza birkenstocks got eaten by pockets (just the buckles, for some reason they proved irresistable to him). but those are all material things. things with solutions or that i can replace or get over having lost. i did, however, buy some new tops and a new purse at old navy this weekend. maybe that kind of makes up for it. some pretty momentous life episodes happened this weekend as well.

one: tom and i had a fight on the phone while i was driving. both of us miscommunicating, hurt, confused, whatever. not a good time. he had some valid points though.

two: kim has officially moved away. we've all moved and done various things since we graduated, and we will continue to do so. but i am worried for her. she's moving back to her hometown, back to her family, back to smalltown gossip, back to lack of theater. we have grown apart since we have not been living with each other. i mentioned to shannon one time last fall how it seemed like something had just snapped between us, like there was a wall there that i wasn't sure how it got there, like i had done something and not exactly known what. but i still care very much about her, and it makes this new transition that much harder. i imagined us moving away form each other to all get better jobs, to go do great things. i don't want her to get stuck in alabama, after she worked so hard to get out the first time.

while we're on the subject, a big topic between tom and i has been my future. he always imagined our relationship ending when i rocketed off to superstardom, to a job in new york or even charlotte, to grad school even. he is worried that i am not going to live up to my potential; that i am going to keep accepting the status quo and wonder in 8 years how i ended up where i did. i am not worried of this. and my choiced lately certainly are not indicative of somehow giving up.

three: tom and i had coffee today, both wanting solace from the fight. we talked about things, a few tears were shed. an understanding was met. a blessing was given. i felt like a weight had been lifted off of my chest.

four: not really one event, but lately i've had this mad crazy feeling like i've only felt one time before. when matt and i first started dating/talking about dating, it was like the flood gates had let loose. all the pent up emotions, the care, the feeling i'd always had that we were somwhow connected mroe strongly than anyone else, all of it came out. it was absolute bliss, i mean, what's better than getting together with your best friend, the person who knows you best, with whom you are the most comfortable? but there was also the super frightening feeling in the pit of my stomach: what if we messed it up? would i lose him as a love and a friend? what if i lost control? the tide of emotions was so strong i could easily have seen it sweeping me away, leaving me vulnerable.

i find myself wading in those waters again. i am thrilled and excited beyond comprehension at this new love, but frightened. afterall, my fears were justified the last time i was in this situation. i guess i'm just afraid that it's too good to be true. it's all so hard when you're in those initial stages. when you're together, it's like your feet never even touch the ground (that is especially true as it is often hard to maintain verticality). when you're apart, you miss them terribly. then you feel absolutely ridiculous for not being able to function normally just because you are not around them (afterall, you're strong! tough!) and you start to try to distance yourself (i bet he doesn't really like me that much, etc. etc.) what drama! completely sane and normal people gain such drama! the first stages of real love are similar to being bipolar. you get such a high off being together, off of each other. then there's the downfall of withdrawal. all things considered though, that high makes it all worth it. and as the relationship progresses, hopefully as the love matures and becomes more stabile, that deep down gut feeling will still be there, still giving you butterflies.

is it ridiculous to feel that strongly about someone when you've just started dating?

probably the best day for no ac

2005-07-29T16:32:00.000-04:00

our office did not have air conditioning for basically the whole day today. but all things considered, it could have been worse. it's the coolest day we've had in weeks, tempered with a nice rain. it was quite moist in here, but not so bad. i brought my fan in, of course. what a boring and slow day. i have done perhaps an hours' worth of work today. i chatted with keri about hers and tracy's meeting with their head pastor last night, about relationships, etc. i chatted with kyle as well, talked abot breakups, transitions, new loves. tango and i looked at pictures from getty online for a good hour at least.

all things considered, some somewhat disastrous things have happened this week that really could have been worse. phillip's ac went out and his car overheated, but both were fixed in a timely fashion. and he lucked out on fixing another problem with the car before any real damage was done. the ac broke at the office, but it chose today. all things considered, i'm in the middle of a rather lucky bad streak.

other news: life is good. i'm quite happy AND i have an interview on monday for a marketing assistant's job. i'm delighted. good things come in storms.