field trip

Next Friday, March 31st, in the morning, I have a qualifying examination. "Quals" it is called in English at my school, and the ASL sign is basically warding off evil. The test is to see if I qualify to stay in this linguistics program. So far, I'm pretty sure I do, and I am pretty good at taking tests, but still this all involves studying and stress and tossing and turning in my bed at night.

So, as a reward to myself for having done a good job (or, as the case may be, a consolation prize for having to come up with a new life plan) I will be flying to Minneapolis in the afternoon after I take the test, and hanging out in Minnesota for the weekend.



What everyone needs! A weekend getaway in Minnesota! In March!

Ha, ha. In reality, I am going at that specific time because some particular people that I like are having a CD release party and my best friend is having a baby shower and also I need to leave the east coast for a little while before my will to live is sucked from my body and I am left a hollow shell of the vibrant Montanan I used to be.

Melodramatic? What?!

Anyway the cd release party is the band of Chris Koza, one of my favorite people of all time. Partly because I think he is going to be famous one day and I hope to ride his coattails to unimaginable wealth and prestige. But mostly because he is so great.

The rest of the people in the band are great too. Luke Anderson, for instance, is not only the best drummer in the universe, but he also made me a super fabulous webpage that is beautiful and gets me tons of compliments all the time. Those other guys are Pete and Justin, and they are great too. Pete has excellent taste in footwear, and I'm kind of scared of Justin because he has better glasses than me.

You can especially tell how great they all are by the fact that they are standing on those chairs, which is very avant-garde and witty, and also, look how attractive these young men are! We all know that the only way to judge a book is by its cover, and the same certainly holds true for musicians.


photo: David DeYoung www.howwastheshow.com

Besides being extraordinarily handsome and interesting and funny, these guys are also the kind of musicians who everyone really likes and wants to listen to and awards them prizes and honors and writes positive comments about them in newspapers. This even happened in the newspaper in my very own hometown of Missoula, Montana.

So, if you want to be like me and have lots of famous rock star artist friends, you should meet me at the Turf Club on April 1st. This is not a funny April Fools joke! I am serious!

home improvement

You will be happy and relieved to know that my drill-buying errand last week was a success. But you will be saddened to learn that I did not buy any little plastic anchor items, so the art is still piled up in a disorganized way. Soon I will go to the hardware store for the anchors, but I will not be going back to Home Depot, because I hate it there.

I only hate the one by my house. All the other ones I've been to have been reasonably okay. I bought the stuff I needed and the staff were helpful with, if baffled by, my requests. I think last time was to buy a bunch of 4' x 18" sauna tubes, because I needed them to build some castles for an elementary school play. And one time before that was to buy a lot of dryer tubing to string up over Christmas lights and decorate for a big party.

Anyway, I digress. The Home Depot here is dark and understaffed and the staff who are there are really cranky and I was just buying a drill! Not even anything weird! So next time I will be going to a friendly neighborhood hardware store that is not owned by evil corporate overlords.

P. S. My trip to New York was fun. I didn't drink any green beer, but I did drink some regular beer-colored beer, and it was delicious.

I'm a travelling man

I'm going to New York today on the Chinatown bus. I love the Chinatown bus. The one I'm taking doesn't actually go to any Chinatowns; in Washington DC it runs from McPherson Square and it goes to Penn Station in New York. But whatever. I still love it.

In New York I will be thinking about how I should be doing my homework, and instead wandering around looking at things. Plus also tomorrow I will be wearing some green clothes and drinking some (hopefully) green beer.

My spring break has been very productive so far, so I feel confident that when I spend the weekend not doing anything, it won't cause me to flunk out of grad school. Or if not "confident" then "hopeful." Here's what I did so far:
1 midterm
1 trip to the bank
1 data collection plan
1 trip to the library
2 syntax homeworks
4 paintings
5 pots of coffee
6 beers
8 million pages of reading.

So as you can see, I TOTALLY deserve a trip to New York. We are not discussing the things I still have left to do because right now it is time to focus on my trip to New York. On the Chinatown bus.

Bye! See you next week!

Dear Big M States,

Here is a picture of my bare feet, next to some flowers:



You might be wondering when this picture was taken. For example, you might think it was taken last spring, in like April or May or something like that. But you would be WRONG, because in fact I took that picture about 20 minutes ago. Because over here in Constitution Land, it is 86 DEGREES outside.

That's right. In MARCH. Too bad for you, all you dwellers of the frozen north.

Your friend,
Cecily

vacation

I'm on spring break. And, as it turns out, the Constitution Gods are on spring break too- yesterday and today it is 70 degrees around here. I accidentally thought it was still March when I went outside so I wore my jacket, and boy was I ever sorry. Sorry and hot.

So I took my jacket off and carried it. Because I am a very resourceful girl.

Now that it is Spring Break, I have all kinds of business to attend to. Today, for example, I need to buy coffee and a drill. The coffee is because we are out of coffee, because I drank it all. The drill is because we still have thousands of boxes of art that we can't put on our walls without a drill. All the walls are very fragile and unpredictable plaster from 1920, so we have to buy those little anchors and whatnot, and then drill holes to put nails in.

I am not very excited about this, because I prefer the method of hanging things on the wall that involves me balancing precariously with one foot on the windowsill and the other foot on the bookshelf, and some nails in my mouth, trying to nail and align the art and not crash to the floor, all at the same time. This drill-and-plastic-anchor thing seems like it requires way too much forethought and planning: not my strong points.

Otherwise I will be doing a lot of homework.

Theoretically.

Plus also I am going to New York.