How I know you're an all-star

All-star is the derogatory name my friends and I used for the annoying kid in every class who thinks he knows everything. "Swot" is the British term, "suck-up show-off jackass" is a good alternative. These are the clues I used to identify the all-star in my Latin class this summer.

1. You have hipster glasses. Not a smoking gun, but definitely suspicious. Especially when combined with your perpetually unkempt hair and stained white T-shirt.

2. On the first day of translation, you asked whether you could rephrase something because "I'm an English major and it really bothers me." An English major? Really? Good work. You're one in a thousand, literally, at U of I. Shut up.

3. You laugh at your own (unfunny) jokes.

4. You said "shit" in class when called on to conjugate a verb. While I agree that it's a rather casual environment, that's still annoying and offensive in a semi-professional setting where you don't know your classmates. You know, swearing is a sign of a limited vocabulary. Some English major.

5. Today you asked, in all seriousness, if it was bothering anybody else that a lot of the source material was about serving the state and having leisure time, because you are a Marxist and it just doesn't sit right with you. A Marxist, really? How...sophomore year of you. Can I interest you in a beret and an all-black wardrobe? Come to me after your first year of graduate school and we'll chat about theories that people actually take seriously. Marxism. Good grief.

6. You asked the instructor if she wanted to get a drink. During class you asked this! Seriously!

Erin's Recipes for People Who Can't Cook: Aunt Jessie's Psuedo-Healthy Bran Muffins

When we were in Washington last month, my Aunt Kathie made these for us, and gave me the recipe, which came to her from her husband's aunt Jessie. It is what Kathie calls a KISS (Keep It Simple, Sweetie [Kathie is a nice person and doesn't like to call others stupid]) recipe.

1 1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1/2 c. + 1 Tbs. oil
2 1/2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 c. bran cereal (the flakey kind, and without yogurt clusters or dehydrated whatever fruit)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 c. buttermilk
2 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 c. raisins*

Pour boiling water over the raisins and let them sit while you dump the rest of the ingredients in your mixing bowl. Drain the raisins, add to the rest of the ingredients, and mix well. "Put in refrigerator," Jessie's recipe reads, without reference to how long or why. Just do it; I'd keep it in there for a couple of hours, at least, to let it work its magic. Overnight is not out of the question. Get out your dinosaur muffin cups and put them in the muffin pan. Do NOT stir the dough after you take it out of the refrigerator; just put it directly in the dinosaur muffin cups. Tip: just use an ice cream scoop with a spring handle for dumping it in; it's about the right size and it will keep you from consuming a muffin's worth of dough when you lick your fingers. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. "Keeps 7 weeks," Jessie says, but if it takes you 7 weeks to eat two dozen muffins, you're not trying hard enough.

^{*I like more raisins than that, so I use 3/4 or 1 c. You could also substitute Craisins, I've heard, but that has not been tested by this cook.}

Go outside and eat your weight in mosquitoes! Make us both happy.

Did you know that I am afraid of bats? Not in a neurotic, irrational way, but in a "if one is dive bombing me in my bedroom at 3 a.m., I am going to lose my shit" way.

That totally happened last night, and I did, in fact, lose my shit.

I don't know how the bat got into the house, but it's not a particularly freakish occurrence—we live in the country (I am kicking it at my parents' for the next week or so) and bats abound. Our house is a relocated Victorian; it's solid but not airtight, and bats are sneaky bastards.

I woke up at 3:40 last night when Lyra went racing across the bed, leaving a long scratch mark on my ass as she launched herself at the bookshelf and then wentcareeningg off the shelf and into the middle of the floor, chattering like a mad thing the whole while. I heard squeaking and figured she had chased a mouse up from the basement or something. I've dealt with that situation before, and it's a pain, but not too traumatic—you pick a towel up off the floor, find the mouse (usually near or under the cat), catch it, and throw it outside. Then you go back to sleep.

Cursing all the while, I dragged myself out of bed to find a towel, and saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Unfortunately for my composure, the movement was in the upper right-hand corner of the doorway.

My sister sleeps on the same floor as I do, and although she's not a light sleeper, she would probably wake up if I screeched "BAT!" and pelted down the stairs. I manfully restrained myself, and groped instead for some pajamas so I could slam the door on cats, bat, and bedlam and spend the rest of the night on the couch. As I was groping, the bat made two low dives over my head, inspiring some impressive, if fruitless, leaping from Lyra and some suppressed shrieks from me.

I finally got my pajamas on and the door mostly closed behind me. I parked it on the couch, enjoyed a few full-body shudders, and then the neurotic second-guessing started. Did I have a duty to get the bat out of the house as soon as possible? What if it was a vampire bat and it latched on to one of the cats? Seriously, I have seen this happen to cows before and it's disgusting. I don't think Lyra would be able to chase her beloved milk rings with her usual dexterity if she had a bat hanging off her neck. What if the bat got guano on the clothes I had strewn all over my room? Gross. Clearly something had to be done. I formulated a plan—I would protect my head with a blanket, dash into the bedroom, grab the cats, throw them in the hall, open the still mercifully-unscreened window, and run out again, slamming the door behind me. Hopefully the bat would succumb to the lure of the outdoors and never be heard from again.

After some refining of the plan—clearly the blanket had to be abandoned to avoid hampering my speed—I forced myself off the couch and began sneaking up the stairs, James Bond style: flush against the wall, head low, just in case the bat had somehow learned to turn the doorknob, open the door, and escape to launch guano bombs at my vulnerable skull. I slid around the corner to my room, eased the door open, and flicked on the light switch. Ha-HA!

The cats blinked at me and resumed reclining indolently. The bat was nowhere to be seen. I instituted a search. Bedroom corners: clean. Hallway ceiling: clear. Behind shower curtain in bathroom: under control. I didn't risk turning on the light in E4's room because her attitude immediately after being awakened is worse than being guano-bombed, so I just did a quick visual inspection using ambient light from the hallway. No bat in sight.

When I got back to my bedroom, Lyra was showing a mild interest in the tallest bookshelf, but as I couldn't see anything suspicious and Lyra is notoriously retarded, I headed downstairs to leave my early-rising parents a post-it that said, "BAAAAT! 3:45—Lyra and Regan have a bat in my room. 3:57—Bat is gone and I don't know where it went, so keep an eye out for that." Then I went back upstairs, tentatively crawled into bed, and read for an hour until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. If I heard some suspicious squeaks from the direction of the bookshelf, I chalked it up to overstimulation and put it out of my mind. The bat had magically disappeared, and that was good enough for me.

It was less good enough around 11 p.m. tonight when the bat reappeared in the living room, just as I was trying to tell SB something. It sounded like this: "I think the one old couple was—aaaaah! BAT! Freaky, freaky-ass bat!" and included a charming visual of me cowering in my chair as the bat did agitated laps around the room. It was probably even more agitated when M4 slammed the door to the library, hoping to keep it safe and ignoring the fact that the windowframe above the door does not and never has had glass in it.

Fortunately, SB has considerably more presence of mind in these situations, which is good as it is clearly the dad's job to deal with flying-rodent home invasions. He managed to corner it in the upstairs hallway, trapping it with nothing more than a bit of chicken wire, a shoebox, and a cookie sheet. Then we got in his pickup and drove like bats out of hell away from the house. Okay, not really, but I couldn't resist the expression. We drove like reasonable human beings about 3/4 of a mile away and then SB got out and released the bat into the woods, where it promptly made a 90-degree turn and flew off in the direction of the house. Son of a bitch.

Whatever, the bat was still out of the house and I could look forward to sleeping guano-free in my own bed with nothing more than cat hair to irritate me in the middle of the night. Until SB had to go and mention that where there's one bat, there's probably six of his little batty relatives. Guess I'll be sleeping in the basement with the mice.

Notes from finals week

—Is there any nutritional value in dilly beans? I hope so, because they're the only green things in my diet right now. Unless you count green Skittles, which I suspect aren't getting the RDA of anything but Yellow No. 3.

—I turned in 16 books to the library this evening. That was all the ones I had out for my Shakespeare paper. I checked out 5 more, leaving me with a grand total of 45, down from the semester high of 69. It is so awesome to be a grad student. The new books I checked out tonight? Not due until Jan. 24, 2007. Seriously.

—I've pretty much decided that the coffeeshops in IC need to be segregated. Like, the undergraduates can have all the Java Houses, the humanities and social science grad students can have the two House of Aromas, and business students and med students get Starbucks, the Terrapin, and Caribou. Science and engineering students have to stay in their labs, so they may come get take-out coffee from anywhere. I don't care who gets what, as long as the giggly, noisy frat girls and their screechy voices get the hell away from me. Annoy someone who doesn't have to write 20 pages that may determine their future in their graduate program of choice, and thus their achievement or failure of life-long goals, how about that, hm?

—The aforementioned 20-page paper is on divine wrath in the medieval illumination of Psalm 109, which is about the most kickass topic ever, except for the part where the theoretical background keeps expanding like bread dough with too much yeast in it. I have to set up the medieval interpretation of the psalm, medieval illumination techniques and practices, theories on the perception of divine wrath, and the typical iconography of medieval psalters from A.D. 700-1400.* Awesome. The worst part is, I totally did this to myself. However, it is kind of fun to look at all these illustrations to see where they're hiding God's anger. Kind of like The DaVinci Code except with less Tom-Hanks mullet.

^{*Important grammatical note: If you're indicating a year in the A.D. era, A.D. goes before, always. So A.D. 1066, as opposed to 1066 A.D. This rule gets broken fairly frequently and, of course, that annoys me. Of course, the new trend in politically correct scholarship is to use C.E. and B.C.E. (Common Era and Before Common Era), which are awkward and, if you think about it, not much more politically correct than before, since they still use the Christian division of time at (approximately) Christ's birth. However, they do both come after the year, so 1066 C.E. or 54 B.C.E.}

You totally want me to be your professor, don't you? Rowr.

I just finished writing my course description for the class that I'll be teaching next year, one of the university's required classes for non-English majors. It's basically an introduction to literature; the equivalent of Huma 101 if you went to Rice and need a reference point. I thought I would share it so you can be jealous of my students and how awesome this class is going to be.

Interpretation of Literature (section 24)
Instructor: Dr. N.N. Mind

Novelist Sinclair Lewis once said of authors, “We have the power to bore people long after we are dead,” a point that’s been well-taken by students in literature courses the world over. In this course we will break down “literature” into its constitutent parts, whatever we might determine those parts to be, taking on the question of “good” versus “interesting” and hopefully finding the convergence point between the two. Can we possibly read a “classic” without feeling the need for a nap after every chapter? We will attempt to develop the critical and analytical skills that make that more likely while looking at two novels, two plays, and a selection of poetry, short fiction, and essays. Along the way, we will consider how we are influenced as readers and how we, in turn, influence what we read, as well as taking on the question of what makes something “literature” and whether it matters. The goal will be to build critical reading and writing skills that can be applied both to future literary encounters and to encounters with the scholarly and professional world at large. Course requirements include two critical essays, a variety of informal writings, and a final exam, as well as, of course, active engagement and participation.

Required texts:

Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (Signet Classics)
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (Avon)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Penguin)
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (Doubleday)
Literature: A Portable Anthology, eds. Janet Garner, Berverly Lawn, Jack Ridl, and Peter Schakel (Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press)

Unfortunately, a house did not fall on that irritating kid in my calligraphy class

So yes, for those of you who don't watch/read the news, a tornado did hit Iowa City last night, taking out a Dairy Queen, a Happy Joe's Pizza, and the roofs of several buildings including St. Patrick's Catholic Church.

I, fortunately, was in Coralville at the time, watching Big Trouble in Little China with friends and completely ignoring the situation. We heard the hail and the tornado sirens, but as we were in a basement apartment, we just turned up the volume and figured we'd hear the freight-train sound of the tornado if it got close. It didn't, fortunately. Instead it hit downtown Iowa City, knocking out power to a good chunk of the area and providing an occasion for drunken undergraduates to wander around and get in the way of emergency workers and National Guard personnel working to contain a gas leak downtown.

My apartment survived unscathed; fortunately I had gone home before going out to close the windows. The shed behind the building is listing pretty severely to the right, and down the hill you can see people working to close the giant hole in the Menards roof. Right now the biggest problems, though, seem to be that people are rubbernecking like idiots, making traffic kind of a pain. I'm solving that by hiding out in the library, and once I'm done here I'll take the roundabout way home.

So that's the story of the tornado. Unlike many of my friends, I did not see any funnel clouds, hear a noise like a train, or feel my ears pop from pressure. But my house and myself survived without damage, and so I think I'll just be grateful and go do some homework.

Think of the noodles!

So I was hosting a prospective graduate student earlier this week, which basically entailed spending $100 of the department's money on dinner and making sure she got all her questions about grad life answered, more or less.

We went to my favorite Thai restaurant for dinner, along with a few of my colleagues/cohort/friends (we wear many hats) from the department. Discussion was going along pretty swimmingly; we had heard about the propective's boyfriend, about her apartment hunt, and answered some questions about workload and so on. Very normal.

I had turned aside to talk to Mrs. K. about...I don't even remember, probably an assignment for class or our one classmate who keeps getting arrested. Something. And then I heard, "Yeah, if they do it wrong, you can totally lose all sensation."

I thought this was rather a weird sentence to hear from a prospective out of the blue—were we talking about some sort of surgery, a bizarre homeopathic remedy, or, most likely, some sort of medieval torture procedure that she had been reading about?

No. We were talking about clitoral piercing. To be specific, her clitoral piercing.

I will allow the women to pause for a full-body shudder right about...here.

Now, why would you get a clitoral piercing, honestly? Is the risk really worth the reward? I think it's pretty clear the answer is "hell, no." More important, though, is this question: if you had such a piercing, why in the name of all that's holy would you talk about it to people you've just met? People with whom you're going to be working in a (semi-)professional capacity for the next six years? It's beyond the pale, really. Although it was enjoyable to watch the dinner table's only male try to repress his repulsion.

I think this falls in sort of the same category as the phenomenon whereby strangers feel free to talk to me at all times for reasons I don't understand. Do I emit some sort of pheremone that says "tell me anything; I've got time for your crazy"? If so, I need to find that switch and flip it to "off."

Clitoral piercing. For the love of little green apples. I may never eat pud thai again.

Also, men who don't own a fairly sizeable drill. Freudian of me, I know.

So this is sexist and sort of irritating of me, but it's also true, and so I will tell you.

I can't really respect men who can't drive stick shift.

(That is not a euphemism, by the way.)

I mean, you know, not really. Like I don't correlate it with cheating on your taxes or being stupid. I just find it weird, like if someone told you they didn't know how to count to ten in another language. Isn't that something you're supposed to learn at some point?

Not to mention the fact that I am widely acknowledged to be a...questionable driver, and even I can drive a stick without stalling out. I can even start from a stop on a hill. I'm not saying I learned this effortlessly—oh, there were tears, my friend, tears and screaming—but I did learn it at 16, the age where no one can be taught anything.

And I'm not sure why I don't hold other women to this standard, although the more that I think about it, it's probably because I assume other women have the same being-taught-to-drive experience I did: namely, my brother was taught nearly from birth by my father, and I didn't learn until I was 15, from my mother. This is the sexist system that was used in my household, and which my sisters and I still vaguely chafe at whenever it's mentioned, although it really makes no difference at this point. Although, my younger sisters haven't been fully taught how to drive stick yet, for which my brother occasionally mocks them. However, please note which child gets the most speeding tickets: it's not a daughter.

So anyway. I'm not sure what the point of this is, except that when a guy mentions he can't drive stick, I have a little moment of superiority, and when a girl mentions that she can, I automatically (ha!) think she's cooler.

I realize this is a weak post, so let me just add: stop playing your guitar at MIDNIGHT, downstairs neighbor! And also, BASEBALL!

Preferred sleeping positions: cats vs. girl

In order of preference:

1. Me in center of bed, cats out of earshot
2. Me in center of bed, cats at end of bed
3. Me on right side of bed, cats on left
4. Me in center of bed, one cat in front of stomach and one cat behind knees (rolling over no longer an option)
5. Me in center of bed, cats making noise in hallway
6. Me in center of bed, cats fighting at end of bed
7. Me in center of bed, cats fighting by face
8. Me in center of bed, one cat perched on hip, other cat self-trapped in bathroom
9. Me on couch, cats in bed
10. Me on couch, cats on stomach

Weird things from my seminar on medieval gesture and emotion:

1. Did you know people used to use Psalm 108 (109, for the non-Vulgate readers among you [i.e., Protestants]) to pray people to death? Apparently, recite it every day for a year and a day, and the person you hate will drop dead. Vicious.

2. The book I ordered for this class last week: Images of Lust: Sexual Carvings on Medieval Churches.

3. If you were a Benedictine monk in the Middle Ages, you weren't supposed to get angry. If you did, you couldn't receive any sacraments until you had begged forgiveness from whomever you were angry with. However, the monks spent a lot of time cursing people who crossed them—they just weren't angry while they did it.

4. Until, oh...1996? Or so? Scholars had this crazy idea that people in the Middle Ages were just totally lacking in emotional control. It's called the "Grand Narrative," and basically is this idea that "emotional control" and the increasingly private nature of emotional display started in the 17th or 18th century and developed until it reached its zenith in, what, 1956? Something like that. If you think about it, though, that's just completely patronzing and ridiculous.

5. If you see someone in a medieval illumniation or painting cupping their cheek, don't assume they have a toothache. It's the gesture for sorrow, and would have been automatically recognized as such by any contemporary person viewing the piece.

Stupid injuries I have sustained lately:

1. Bruise on left foot from putting chair leg down on it
2. Scald on inside of right index finger from grabbing spout of teakettle instead of handle
3. Bruise on knuckles of left hand from slamming in shower door
4. Goose egg on forehead from hitting it with car door (admittedly, this happened almost a year ago, but it was extra stupid so I'm including it)
5. Irritated right rotator cuff from flipping comforter for cats to chase

Survey for Nerds

I'm writing a paper on Much Ado About Nothing for my Shakespeare class, and I have two quick questions for the two of you who are still reading this thing.

1. Do you think Margaret understands the implications of her behavior when she appears at Hero's window with Borachio?

2. Does the fact that Kenneth Branagh has no upper lip bother anybody else?

Guess what? You're not the boss of me; I'll blog when I damn well want to. Or whatever.

Okay, I am fully not dead at all. My new year's resolution was to be less susceptible to guilt, and therefore I decided to give myself a month (or so) off from blogging. Or I couldn't think of anything to write. And apparently my Toshiba had the same resolution, because it gave itself a month off from the internet, and I replaced it with a new Compaq. I shall call it Squishy and it shall be my Squishy.

Despite what I said about not being dead, the new semester has been a little bit of a struggle for reasons that remain entirely mysterious to me. Not an academic struggle (did I tell you my grades were good last semester? They totally were, mini-wave), so much as a struggle to...care. I can't decide if it's the weather or a general malaise or the creeping melancholies that are going through the department, but mostly I just want to curl in a ball and eat chocolate, which is weird because chocolate is not even my drug of choice.

Other than that, though, things are chugging right along. I have acquired three new calligraphy hands, although two of them are pretty boring and therefore useless to me. But let me tell you, using a dip pen to write is great, in that it's like crack to English grad students, because now we (the four of us in the class) feel like we are Jane Austen and/or whatever ye olde writer we prefer. Next week we are slated to learn how to make and write with quills, which is...awesome. We can feel like Chaucer or Cicero or something. It's like a dork-factor boost.

My Shakespeare class is cool, although it does not involve a dip pen, as they are rather awkward for taking notes. But we're reading all the plays nobody ever reads (a.k.a. "the bad plays"), which is interesting. Although I spend a lot of time going, yeah, there's a reason you never see this one. This week's selection is 2 Henry VI, which is a scintillating treatise on how Henry VI was Very Weak and his dukes were Always Scheming. But it does have a random scene of devil worship, so...yay?

Okay, I am tired of writing—I don't have my blogging legs back yet—and I still have two acts of Henry to Suffer Through. I will just give you a quick run-down of other stuff that I think you need to know:

1. See Nanny McPhee because it is awesome. I know, I was skeptical too, but...Emma Thompson! And more importantly, Colin Firth! And, most importantly of all, gay mortuary assistants!

2. I bought a teamaker, which is awesome. It's like a coffeemaker, except for tea, and now I can use loose tea without having to pick it out of the cup. Did you know they sold such things? Me neither, but they do, and sometimes they are even on discout, which, extra awesome. Mmm, Earl Grey.

3. Have you seen Horatio Hornblower? If not, you are totally missing out, and not just because Ioan Gruffudd is frickety hot. There are sea battles and Captain Pellew and scurvy and things on fire. My dad got them for Christmas and we watched them all, and then Sarah and I had to get out the one where Hornblower wears the straw hat because of the infernal heat and also, the Plague. Seriously? In Iran?

4. Lemon curd. It's the new condiment of choice.

5. Happy Valentine's Day. Go away, you bother me.

Prominently featured: A Jackburger and Fried Mushroom Balls

Hello, kids. Long time no blog. I would say that I've missed it, but it would be a lie. Besides, upwards of half my readership is currently in the same house that I'm in; they're fully aware that I have spent every day for the past three weeks getting up at 11 and then either reading or advancing my love affair with Horatio Hornblower.

There have been some notable moments, most of them involving my sisters and gaseous bodily emissions, but nothing quite so...special as yesterday's mini-adventure.

M4 and I didn't have anything better to do, so we decided to drive the hour up to Vermillion, SD, to attend a bookstore that had been highly recommended. Of course, we didn't call ahead, and so when we got there we were disappointed to find that the store was closed until the 9th, presumably because the owners are lazy bastards who are out to thwart me. Or something. Anyway, it was close to lunchtime, so M4 suggested we eat, and I suggested we eat at Old Market Cafe, which we had passed on the way to the damned bookstore.

The Old Market Cafe was on Main Street; the side of the building had a mural of the sun setting over the plains. Perhaps there was a coyote and a cactus—isn't there always? This should have been my first indication of what I was getting into, but I pulled open the door, undaunted.

It was like walking into someone's grandma's basement, except that it smelled like fried stuff instead of mothballs and mildew. There were three small, often-painted wooden booths along the right side and some tables of dubious sturdiness scattered around the rest of the room. After quick consulatation, M4 and I chose the booth closest to the kitchen; when we sat down there were two worn chair cushions waiting on the bench for us, probably sewn in the 50s by the aformentioned grandmother.

I started looking around more closely as soon as we sat down, and M4 and I had to contain our laughter until after the (very nice and competent) waitress walked away to get our drinks. On the wall opposite from the benches was a large Bud Light clock and a USD football poster; all very normal. Not so normal were the eight or nine small porcelain heads mounted on a yellow board that domiated the wall; apparently there are some decapitated garden gnomes and Hummel figurines somewhere in Vermillion, probably waving their ceramic arms above their ceramic stub necks in ceramic panic. Flanking the heads were a longhorn skull sans horns and some other, slightly smaller bovine skull. A tube of red lights ran all along that wall, around to the soda machine. Or I should say, the parts of the soda machine; it was apparently in the process of being repaired and its innards were fully on display for most of the time we were there. The repair process was frequently interrupted so the repairman could help himself to another cup of coffee from the pot behind the counter.

The tables were all tidily set with silverware rolls, mismatched mugs (Christmas tree, Merriweather Lewis, State Farm Insurance, Wedgwood knockoff), and small plastic water glasses at every place. Our table was attached to the wall with only one leg supporting it, which would have been fine, except the leg was only partially attached to the floor, which was by no means level. Every time I set my elbows down on it, it moved three inches down and away from me; M4 almost ended up with a lapful of water a few times.

The menu was enjoyably limited; there were literally only about 10 options for lunch and seven of them involved the word "burger." M4 and I both had the "Phily," which turned out to be chopped up meat (chicken on mine, beef on hers), copious amounts of Swiss cheese, green peppers, and unfortunately carmelized onions, which I was forced to pick off the hoagie bun. We had onion rings and ranch dressing to complete a delicious if artery-clogging meal.

Halfway through lunch I noticed what had to be the piece-de-resistance: a taxadermied jackalope head mounted on the wall behind M4's head. If you don't know what a jackalope is, it's a rabbit with antlers; you see them on postcards and, apparently, in cafes in the West. This one had a remarkably pleasant expression, considering its final fate; its buckteeth protruded from a rather cheerful smile. Added character came from the jaunty woman's scarf tied around its abbreviated neck; apparently the grandma touch extended to all corners and details of the cafe.

After we finished eating, the waitress brought us our ticket and we left her a nice tip, mostly in change and mostly for the amusement value of the place. We paid at the counter where the soda machine repair man was putting the finishing touches on both the soda machine and his approximately tenth cup of coffee. We walked out the door, passing the proprietor, who was sticking a sugar packet under the leg of another wobbly table and greeting a mother and her son who had come in for lunch. On the way out of town, we stopped at the winery and sampled their product, finally settling on a white wine called "Cock & Hen," and then we headed home, congratulating ourselves on a successful afternoon and already planning what we'd have when we came back next week, so we could attend the bookshop and figure out what, exactly, the jackalope was so happy about.

It is, however, frickety snowing AGAIN

It's 2:45 a.m. I'm watching Bill Nye the Science Guy, eating a snickerdoodle, and working on my kick-ass Christmas card.

Being done with the first semester of graduate school is awesome.

Erin's Recipes for People Who Can't Cook: Why yes I am procrastinating version

So in a continuing wallowing theme, I had an urge to make something chocolate tonight, and I decided to pull a bedraggled scrap of paper out of my wallet. Said piece of paper bore a recipe for Easy Chocolate Truffles that Eileen, the massage therapist at my former(ish) place of work gave me. Unfortunately, she gave it to me verbally and sometimes I assume that I'm going to remember more than I do, so I don't write everything down. Needless to say, the recipe didn't turn out quite like I expected, but it is still delicious. However, I have changed the name of the recipe to reflect better what the final product looks like.

Chocolate Cow Pies

3/4 c. butter or margarine
3/4 c. cocoa powder
1 can sweetened condensed milk*
1 tsp. vanilla

Melt butter. Add cocoa and stir until it dissolves. Add sweetened condensed milk. Decide that sweetened condensed milk is the stickiest substance known to man. Stir over low to medium heat until mix gets thick. (Yes, this is where the directions get vague. How thick? How long are we stirring, here? Longer than I was willing to, I suspect, and that was about 10 minutes.) Remove from heat, stir in vanilla. Eat some off a spoon. Repeat as necessary. Spoon remaining batter onto cookie sheet in piles. Chill. Realize that cow pies will not come neatly off cookie sheet. Revel in how actual fresh cow pies would probably behave much the same. Gross.

^{*The first time I opened a can of sweetened condensed milk, I thought it had gone bad and I was horrified. Because seriously, it bears very little resemblance to milk. I mean, evaporated milk at least still looks like milk, you know? Anyway, yes, it is supposed to look like glue. Try not to think about what else it might look like.}

I promise I will wait until I am in a better mood to write them

I forgot one thing. If you want a Christmas card from me, you should send me your address, since chances are good I don't have it. This is especially true if I don't know you.

I highly recommend sending me your address, because I have a kick-ass idea for a Christmas card, and there is a long tradition of awesome Christmas cards in my family, so you should get on board. Of course, be warned that I might lose energy and just send out regular cards with Santa or the Baby Jesus (or both) on them.

Do not post your address in the comments—email it to me. You can click the link at the top that says "Contact."

Okay, I'm going to bed because if I don't, I'm going to go outside and lie in a snow drift FOREVER.

"Frozen Testicles" would also be a good name for a band. As would "Cavernous Bellybutton."

Here is what my family thinks is quality entertainment: getting up at 4 a.m. to stand in line for 20 minutes in 14-degree weather and talk about my sister's bellybutton. Seriously. I laughed really hard.

So we decided this year that we were going to do the Black Friday thing. My parents and sister came to visit me here in IC for Thanksgiving, meaning that there were actual shopping options closer than 60 miles away. Plus, my computer is dying a slow, agonzing death, and I wanted to attempt to get one of the cheap computers Best Buy was offering. I figured that maybe IC was the place to try, since the college students had all gone home and maybe everybody else was just too practical and Midwestern-complacent to be out at the ridiculous hour of 5 a.m. Alternately, I hoped they would be at Wal-Mart rioting in the electronics section.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at Best Buy a little after 4:30, we were approximately 200th in line, so there was little to no chance I was going to get one of the approximately two cheap computers Best Buy used to lure in suckers like me. I have no idea why we decided to go ahead and wait in line until 5 a.m., especially after overly energetic Best Buy employees told us they were only letting in staggered groups of people, reducing the chance that someone would be hilariously crushed against the doors.

Wait in line we did, though, with somewhat more purpose after we got ahold of a copy of the ad and SB found some memory chips on a crazy deal. In the meantime, my sister had slurped down her travel mug full of extra-strong coffee and become animated enough to talk. Her conversational topic of choice? The bellybutton. Let me try to recapture for you the gist of the exchange.

E3: Oh my gosh. I cleaned my bellybutton for the first time the other day.
Me and M4: blank looks
E3: It's huge in there!
Me: What?
E3: It's huge! My bellybutton is cavernous.
Me: laughing There are stalactites?
E3: I could keep things in there. You know how some people just have polite little bellybuttons? That's not me.
Me: I think I see a lichen.
E3: Seriously. Like half a Q-Tip fit in there.
Me: Laughing so hard I can't see. You know if you press on your bellybutton, you can really gross Grandma out?
M4: Yeah, she doesn't like that.
E3: Yeah, I'm afraid if I stick my finger in there I won't get it back out.
Look, somone put their travel mug over there. We should steal it.

Lord only knows what the people next to us in line thought, especially when we reenacted the whole conversation for SB when he got back from warming himself in the car. However, the point about the travel mug was well taken. It was silver and shiny, and when we came out of Best Buy, it was still there. So E3 stole it.

We did finally make it into Best Buy in the fifth group; of course, the computers were unavailable and the store was a crush, which made both me and my sister feel claustrophobic, so we discussed that, loudly. We sent SB off to find his chips and wandered across the store to look at DVDs. This was a fatal error. If I can offer you one piece of advice about Black Friday, it is this: stick together. You will never find each other otherwise.

So the Best Buy experience was irritating, not least because "helpful" employees asked me every five seconds if they could help me find something. It got to the point where I wanted to say, "Yeah, you can help me find something. Where's my DAD?"

Anyway, we eventually found my dad, who had found his chips, and we sent him off to check out while we assessed the situation at Target next door. There were only about 20 people milling in front of the Target door because, we discovered, Target didn't open until 6. We weren't really that thrilled to be waiting another 40 minutes, so we decided to just stand there and people-watch until SB came out of Best Buy. My mom borrowed a circular from some nice lady standing in front of us; I listened to the idiot behind me attempt to defend his choice of outerwear. "It's a sweatshirt! It's the same thing as a coat!" Bzzt. I have no sympathy for your frozen testicles, you fantastic example of Darwinism, you. Nor do I want to hear about them anymore.

By 5:40, SB still hadn't come out of Best Buy and the line at Target was up to about 100 people, of which we were the 25th, by M4's count. At that point, we could hardly give up our fantastic position in line, even though we were freezing and still didn't want to buy anything despite now being fully informed of the available deals. At 5:50, approximately 150 people in line, still no SB. Finally, at 5:55, SB (and E3, who had gone to steal Best Buy's heat on the pretense of looking for him) joined us. SB: "What are we doing here?" Good question, Dad.

We walked into Target on the nose of 6 a.m., but not before we got to watch a little drama unfold—a woman tried to cut in line! Oh, the horror. Frozen Testicles set up such a ruckus that the security guard was forced to step in and keep her out. Shut up, Frozen Testicles. She's not going to take your $98 acoustic guitar.

In the end, we decided to hit J.C Penney, as well. I ended up buying a shirt and couple of cheap DVDs; SB got a few things at Penney's (including a cute pair of brown loafers I stuck on his pile just as the saleslady was finised scanning his items; she had them scanned and in a bag before he could say "boo"). Afterwards we went to Perkins and got some eggs, where my sister continued her bizzare conversational ways by announcing that she thinks she farts more than the average person.

So that was our Black Friday experience, or at least the interesting part of it. Next year I think I'll follow E4's example: stay home and sleep, and hope that someone brings me a cinnamon roll when I finally crawl out of bed.

A zillion years later

Thanksgiving break is here, except for the part where it's not so much a break as "finals." I have nine days (well, seven, now) to write two papers and an untold number of journal entries. Let me tell you, woe is me indeed. Especially since I haven't been doing much school work these first two days, and my apartment still has to be cleaned for when my parents and sisters arrive. Sorry, guys, but clean sheets might be the best I can do. We'll see.

Anyway, some tidbits:

—You can make a root beer float with diet root beer, but I wouldn't advise it. I don't know why, but it does something wonky to the ice cream. Must be the sugar/aspartame interaction. However, since I don't really believe in normal soda, I suppose this'll have to do. Life is hard when you want to keep your teeth in your head. (By the way, I've always thought it was extremely gross to think of your teeth being in your head, even though that's clearly where they're located. It makes me think of someone biting through my skull. Yuck.)

—I went to see Walk the Line yesterday, and thoroughly enjoyed it, although I'm unclear on what distinguishes it from a well-done made-for-T.V. movie. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, I guess. In any case, the theatre was enjoyably free of the slavering prepubescents in love with Daniel Radcliffe, but it didn't save me from the annoying phenomenon of the Narrating Couple. Sitting just behind me was a couple who felt the need to explain extemely unsubtle plot points in a tone that was nowhere near under their breath. It went something like this: Reese Witherspoon writes down "burn burn burn" on a piece of paper and plays a note on her autoharp. Couple: "Oh, she's writing 'Ring of Fire.'" Johnny Cash stumbles around on stage and eventually falls down. Couple: "He's still taking those drugs, huh?" Brilliant analysis there, Nostradamus of the Cinema. Why don't you go see if you can figure out who put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire?

—I have been reading a lot of Dinosaur Comics. I don't know why, but I find the premise of a comic with the same drawings every day to be very funny. And of course, the writing is hysterical. Check it out.

—Did you know that people in the Middle Ages were super concerned about what would happen to their bodies after they died? It's because they were sure that Jesus was going to return and take them to heaven body and soul on Judgment Day. If you don't have a body, then you don't get to go to heaven. So burial. (I don't really know how they dealt with decomposition. Jesus can give you back your skin and internal organs, I suppose, if He wants to.) Cremation was right out. And there's a lot of really cool art of angels making birds and snakes and lions regurgitate body parts that they've apparently eaten. The Middle Ages: simultaneously gross and awesome. I am writing about all of this for my Chaucer paper—it's not just a random interest. As opposed to my interests in cannibalism and zombies.

—If you're wondering what I might be teaching you next semester with these little factoids, I can give you a SNEAK PREVIEW. I registered for classes last week. As of right now, I am taking: Shakespeare! It's a class on all the plays nobody reads, so get ready for some wild Timon of Athens trivia. Also, Medieval Gesture and Emotion! Hopefully with 20% more cannibalism! And, Calligraphy: Gothic Hands! I think Gothic Hands would be a pretty good name for a band. I have used more exclamation points in this tidbit than I like to use in a week. I hope you're happy.

In which the following things are mentioned: incest, cannibalism, bastards, hell, technicolor pig slippers

So November is shaping up to be de los muertos, and I'm not talking about All Souls' Day. I spent this weekend writing another theory paper and generally trying to map out a strategy for the rest of the semester, which i going to be...challenging, to put it euphemistically.

In other news...Lyra ate a Post-It tab yesterday, which was simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. I stuck it on her shoulder; she pulled it off and swallowed it. Clearly my fault entirely, but I've never known her to eat anything else plastic. Evidently the adhesive makes it go down easier.

I gave blood today, at a blood drive run by undergraduate pre-meds. You can just imagine what that was like—three 18-year-olds telling me I had to sit down for fifteen minutes and drink some red Kool-Aid. (Which, by the way? Red Kool-aid at a blood drive is perhaps not the best choice ever for avoiding overtones of vampirism.) I bled in seven minutes, sat down for ten, and then ran away from the super-intense chicks talking about their potential shadowing assignments. Seriously, kids, lighten up. You're not going to get into med school, anyway, because I know your rhetoric teacher and she doesn't like you. Bonus: two girls fainted while I was there, and another's vein collapsed. Awesome.

October's rallying cry was "No Heat 'til November!" Now that November's arrived, I'm being rewarded for my holdout: it's been 70 here during the day, and at night I can get by adding a sweatshirt and the technicolor pig slippers. I'm tempted to extend "No Heat 'til November!" 'til December, but then I wake up with a face-full of heat-sucking cat in the morning and I reconsider. I'm getting way more than my RDA of fur that way.

Random things in which my interest has been rekindled since starting school (and hanging out with weirdos like me on a full-time basis): science fiction, the Plague, zombies, boys with earrings, cannibalism, hell, and the domestic arts. Having lunch in the graduate student lounge is a grab-bag of randomness, let me tell you. Today's topics of discussion were: weddings, how to make the sign of the cross, classes for next semester, overseas phone calls, the Indian caste system, and incest. The English department needs Conversational Ritilin.

All right, I'm going to tell you now: don't expect an update until Thanksgiving week. I've got the whole week off, and I'll be sure to regale you with tales of my Chaucer paper (on demons, sin, and the body in the Friar's Tale) and my South Asian Lit paper (on grandmothers, grandsons, and the developing political atmosphere of mid-century India). Until then...don't let the bastards get you down. Or something.