use your words!
29 October 2007
27 October 2007
20 October 2007
19 October 2007
I'm only in it for the sample sentences
by Cecily
Dear Internet,
It's damp and gloomy around Constitution City these days. Plus I am vaguely ill, as per usual. I'm spending the afternoon at my favorite friendly neighborhood coffee shop, "doing homework" and "being productive".
One of the things that I especially like, in a linguistics article, is when there is a whole list of sentences that is supposed to illustrate some important linguistic point. And I almost always think the lists of sentences are extremely entertaining, especially taken as a group.
For instance, from the article I am ostensibly reading right this second:
3.19
a. Your attitude upsets/is upsetting me.
a'. Your boorish behavior upsets/is upsetting me.
b. Your clothes nauseate/are nauseating me.
b'. The smell of your clothes nauseates/is nauseating me.
Whoever wrote these examples needs to get some new friends I think.
Then, after I am done reading this article and doing my homework, I have many, many things to do this weekend.
First is a fancy reception for the NSF project I'm working with. For the occasion, I am wearing brand new, very attractive, red shoes. I should update my profile; now I have THREE pairs. The new ones look like this:
The problem with me buying fancy new shoes and wearing them to grownup events is that I inevitably just show everyone my new shoes and force them to have long conversations with me about how great my new shoes are. Rather than discussing collaborative research efforts and visual language processing and other important things that I am supposed to be talking about. Oh well.
Second is a birthday party for Julie. Happy birthday Julie! This party is the social event of the season, it seems- Julie is so popular that everyone and their brother in law is flying in from out of town for the occasion. So that should be very fun and socially rewarding. I'll probably talk about my shoes a lot there too, unless I change into less fancy garb for the night.
Third (I'm not counting things I always do like sleep and drink coffee) is, my favorite friend Keith is in town from New Orleans where he is a Professor Of Economics, so he and his lovely lady friend and I are going to eat breakfast together. Breakfast! at 10 in the morning! On Saturday! I am so industrious these days, getting out of bed before noon and everything!
Fourth is more homework. A lot of it. And a lot of laundry. My bedroom had been looking substantially improved since the last time we talked about it, but this past week was a killer and we're back to not being able to see any square inches of floor, these days.
Fifth! Sixth! and Seventh! I'm supposed to go to THREE parties tomorrow night. I'm going to have to do some social-life triage, I think, because I usually start falling asleep on my way from the first thing I try to do to the second. If I try to do more than one thing. On an evening.
You know.
Then more things, but I am bored of thinking about it all right now. It sounds so exhausting. I'll have to coax myself gently from one event to the next by telling myself lots of encouraging remarks about the availability of various beverages and how much I like talking about my new shoes to people.
Meanwhile, here's what's been going on in my article: Leon is a fool, the window is shattered, the children cried, John ate fish, the balloon popped, the sky reddened, and Mary learned French.
It's damp and gloomy around Constitution City these days. Plus I am vaguely ill, as per usual. I'm spending the afternoon at my favorite friendly neighborhood coffee shop, "doing homework" and "being productive".
One of the things that I especially like, in a linguistics article, is when there is a whole list of sentences that is supposed to illustrate some important linguistic point. And I almost always think the lists of sentences are extremely entertaining, especially taken as a group.
For instance, from the article I am ostensibly reading right this second:
3.19
a. Your attitude upsets/is upsetting me.
a'. Your boorish behavior upsets/is upsetting me.
b. Your clothes nauseate/are nauseating me.
b'. The smell of your clothes nauseates/is nauseating me.
Whoever wrote these examples needs to get some new friends I think.
Then, after I am done reading this article and doing my homework, I have many, many things to do this weekend.
First is a fancy reception for the NSF project I'm working with. For the occasion, I am wearing brand new, very attractive, red shoes. I should update my profile; now I have THREE pairs. The new ones look like this:
The problem with me buying fancy new shoes and wearing them to grownup events is that I inevitably just show everyone my new shoes and force them to have long conversations with me about how great my new shoes are. Rather than discussing collaborative research efforts and visual language processing and other important things that I am supposed to be talking about. Oh well.
Second is a birthday party for Julie. Happy birthday Julie! This party is the social event of the season, it seems- Julie is so popular that everyone and their brother in law is flying in from out of town for the occasion. So that should be very fun and socially rewarding. I'll probably talk about my shoes a lot there too, unless I change into less fancy garb for the night.
Third (I'm not counting things I always do like sleep and drink coffee) is, my favorite friend Keith is in town from New Orleans where he is a Professor Of Economics, so he and his lovely lady friend and I are going to eat breakfast together. Breakfast! at 10 in the morning! On Saturday! I am so industrious these days, getting out of bed before noon and everything!
Fourth is more homework. A lot of it. And a lot of laundry. My bedroom had been looking substantially improved since the last time we talked about it, but this past week was a killer and we're back to not being able to see any square inches of floor, these days.
Fifth! Sixth! and Seventh! I'm supposed to go to THREE parties tomorrow night. I'm going to have to do some social-life triage, I think, because I usually start falling asleep on my way from the first thing I try to do to the second. If I try to do more than one thing. On an evening.
You know.
Then more things, but I am bored of thinking about it all right now. It sounds so exhausting. I'll have to coax myself gently from one event to the next by telling myself lots of encouraging remarks about the availability of various beverages and how much I like talking about my new shoes to people.
Meanwhile, here's what's been going on in my article: Leon is a fool, the window is shattered, the children cried, John ate fish, the balloon popped, the sky reddened, and Mary learned French.
10 October 2007
ink; light sabers; old age
by Cecily
My printer is out of black ink (or it is just angry with me; it's hard to say) and I had to turn in some homework yesterday. I tried printing it anyway, in the hope that it would just look sort of faded and old-school, but instead only the top half of each line printed so it was no good. No good at all.
So I printed it again all in blue. That was very pretty, and I a little bit want to just never replace my black ink ever again. All my homework will be printed in a variety of colors and everyone's (or at least, the TA's) day will be a little brighter.
I did try to buy a new ink cartridge on Monday, but I failed. For some reason I had decided that this one store at Union Station would sell me one. But, I was wrong. It had been a long and hot day by the time I got there, anyway, so I didn't want to give up: I looked and looked and looked and then finally went up to the counter in case they were just hiding printer accessories from all the thieving, ink-loving tourists.
They weren't. That store only sells musicky things, not computery things. No ink cartridges were to be had.
It was okay though because my day was made so much better by the small suburban-grandmother-looking woman in front of me, who spent $750 on a lot of 6-foot electric light sabers. Three red, three green. Or maybe four. She sort of stacked all the gigantic boxes around each other and staggered out into the world, lacking visibility but heavily armed. I spent the rest of the afternoon imagining her busting out the light sabers (one in each hand) in order to settle a duel, or hail a cab, or scold teenagers for coarse language.
Because everyone knows that's what suburban grandmothers spend their days doing: settling duels, hailing cabs, and scolding teenagers.
So I printed it again all in blue. That was very pretty, and I a little bit want to just never replace my black ink ever again. All my homework will be printed in a variety of colors and everyone's (or at least, the TA's) day will be a little brighter.
I did try to buy a new ink cartridge on Monday, but I failed. For some reason I had decided that this one store at Union Station would sell me one. But, I was wrong. It had been a long and hot day by the time I got there, anyway, so I didn't want to give up: I looked and looked and looked and then finally went up to the counter in case they were just hiding printer accessories from all the thieving, ink-loving tourists.
They weren't. That store only sells musicky things, not computery things. No ink cartridges were to be had.
It was okay though because my day was made so much better by the small suburban-grandmother-looking woman in front of me, who spent $750 on a lot of 6-foot electric light sabers. Three red, three green. Or maybe four. She sort of stacked all the gigantic boxes around each other and staggered out into the world, lacking visibility but heavily armed. I spent the rest of the afternoon imagining her busting out the light sabers (one in each hand) in order to settle a duel, or hail a cab, or scold teenagers for coarse language.
Because everyone knows that's what suburban grandmothers spend their days doing: settling duels, hailing cabs, and scolding teenagers.
06 October 2007
Who's a jolly good what?
by Cecily
Hello internet! I am very sorry I never do a good job of writing things to you these days. I'm not sure exactly why. It is probably because I am so so important and have so many high priority tasks of my own to do.
That, or it is because I am irremediably lazy and irresponsible. We may never know which.
Anyway, to some extent I have been doing things that are at least important to some people. One of the things is, going to school and doing my homework.
Another thing is getting a big fancy fellowship. I am a Pre Doctoral Fellow, now. It's pretty fun. I recommend it. I have an office and a travel stipend and everything. Whoo hoo!
So, for that, I have to do other kinds of homework. I just basically spend 93 percent of my time now doing homework of one sort or another, and the remainder of my time staring out the window and drinking various beverages. So as you can see, it's hard to carve out any spot in there where I might be able to compose and upload a post to my blog. Hard, but I am doing my best.
SEE YOU SOON!
That, or it is because I am irremediably lazy and irresponsible. We may never know which.
Anyway, to some extent I have been doing things that are at least important to some people. One of the things is, going to school and doing my homework.
Another thing is getting a big fancy fellowship. I am a Pre Doctoral Fellow, now. It's pretty fun. I recommend it. I have an office and a travel stipend and everything. Whoo hoo!
So, for that, I have to do other kinds of homework. I just basically spend 93 percent of my time now doing homework of one sort or another, and the remainder of my time staring out the window and drinking various beverages. So as you can see, it's hard to carve out any spot in there where I might be able to compose and upload a post to my blog. Hard, but I am doing my best.
SEE YOU SOON!
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