And My Day Begins...

Tis the Season.

I was recently telling someone in class how much I enjoy riding the bus. It's true. I love it: you can sleep, do homework, listen to music, not look for parking. I especially love that I, in my current bus rout, do not have to change buses at any time. Sweet.
Last evening's ride was particularly entertaining. Usually I catch the bus that all the noisy highschoolers get on. I also nearly get sat on. Yesterday's breed were, as I discovered, the more geeky kind. They are less likely to make lots of noise or sit on (or even near) you. They do, however, increase in volume when they are talking about topics they enjoy.
I heard a lull of adolescent male voices behind me, not taking much notice until I heard the words "stem cell research". Hm. A somewhat interesting topic. Then some uncertainty about babies. Creamation. Bio waste. Zombies! Now I'm really interested. I love it when boys talk about zombies. They begin arguing about how to go about creating zombies and how to make them mutate faster. Hm, yes. One seems to have the most plausable solution. They talk about zombies some more. I return to my ipod. Something about cloning zombies. Cloning Obama. Multiple Obamas - "Can you imagine what would happen? 10 Obamas?" "Yeah, lots of stuff!" "Lots of assasinations - they'd be killed all over the place!" "What? No they wouldn't..."
In short: Bus. Highschool boys. Stem cell research. Zombies. Obamas. This might be why I ride the bus.

Academic Bureaucratic Update

Two down, two to go...
I ran two degree audit requirements (also known as DARS) reports today and found that two of my departmental concerns were fixed! The current art history requirements are now up for the using (which produced a... fifth problem that my very adept art history adviser is now, three minutes after I emailed her, in the process of fixing), which is helpful. Also, my current sociology class, Iran Through Film, is now officially functioning as a Middle East Studies Cluster Course for me.
That leaves problems in residency (NSE office claims to have taken care of it) and a variety of English department issues, which are also supposed to have been dealt with.
It's almost mid-terms and I would really like to have turned in my graduation application before I'm half done with the quarter. But at least we're seeing progress, right?

[Fog on Seattle over the weekend]

Erg

My foot is asleep and I need to be doing homework.

Allison studies and writes many words.

Purple and Yellow Equals

In search of a proper vessel in which to put my bouquet (thanks sweet husband of two months), I went to the Wedding Reception Glass Decorations box. After plowing through three water pitchers, some sort of decanter, and a trifle bowl I made a discovery. The slightly unpleasant odor of our storage room was not from our boxes of outerwear, nor the laundry hamper. Indeed, it had a much more sinister source. As I detangled yet another water decanter from a long strip of brown paper, much like an overgrown grocery bag, I saw what appeared to be a sci-fi chemistry experiment. Brown, multi-textured, foreign.
I squealed and gave it to Josh.
(Thanks, Ben, or whichever other Capernwrayer decided to squish a lemon into a too small space.)

Coincidental Occidental Oriental

This quarter I feel like I'm in some sort of linguistic maze or dream, of sorts.

In my Ancient Art History class (mostly worthless), the categorizing words are Latin (?) based made to sound scientific and smart only because the scholars have no idea what they are looking at, and there is no good way to talk about any of it. In Linguistics 300 I learned out to make up scientific sounding words. It's easy.

In Iran Through Film (fabulously adorable prof), we are reading a book titled "Strange Times, My Dear" (which I highly recommend), an anthology of contemporary Iranian literature full of translated stories and poetry with most incredible uses and manipulations of language.

My class with the hilariously ambiguous title "The English Novel" (it makes my Scottish prof laugh) is taught with a strong accent and an attitude of awareness about the differences of dialects.
One of the most entertaining professors I have is a poet. He teaches Modern British Literature. If he, by chance, says a word combination that sounds nice, or is complex in irony or existentialism he repeats it, lovingly. He loves words.

In the Modern Middle East 2, we constantly face loaded words with meanings that must be chased after and pinned down, and words from other languages or eras or empires that will never translate all the way (and somehow, a lot of words that sort of rhyme). Yesterday, the weirdest thing happened. We were discussing the "Seventeenth century crisis and its effect on the Middle East" in small groups and I feel weird discussing things with nameless people, so I asked my seatmates their names. I was sitting with a Don, Allison and Doug. I started and said "Ha! Wow, random!" and forgot to explain why.

Welcome Welcome!

October humbly glides in - fall, with just a little fog. Perfect timing, too: last night I bought apple cider, cinnamon sticks and whole cloves (20 cents in the bulk section of WinCo!); this morning I dressed Lizzy in a brown thermal.
I should probably wear socks today. Or maybe a hat.