I will not ever be a journalist, even if it is your birthday wish.

Happy Birthday to Sr. Birdman, who turns...older...today.

I know what M4 got you. I'm not telling, but it's cooooool. And when I say "I'm not telling," I probably still mean "I'll tell if you really want," like I did when I was four.

You know, according to my English prof, you shouldn't write more than a page an hour.

I just wrote 14 in 3 hours. That's some crap on a page, right there.

Halfway between Never-Never Land and Utopia

I finally received my placement information for the Austrian Adventure. I'll be living in the village of Stegersbach, in the Burgenland. Don't tell me you've heard of it, because you haven't, unless I've already told you about it. Only 2,395 people live there.

Does it have a castle? It certainly does.

Anyway, important things to know about Stegersbach. It is about 120 km south of Vienna, on the far eastern side of the country. Only 70 km from the border with Hungary. It is home to Austria's first (and hopefully only) economic school with an emphasis on golf sports. Not coincidentally, it's the home of the largest golf resort in Europe—45 holes on 190 ha. Also has some fine thermal baths and is in the heart of Austrian wine country. Evidently 300 days of sunshine per year equals good grapes. Stegersbach is home to Austria's first helical church, for you architecture buffs.

So that's where I'll be, kiddos. If I survive finals.

Finals update

I hate everybody and everything in the world. Special "oustanding achievement in the field of uselessness" award to my thesis advisor.

Things my cat eats that she probably shouldn't:

egg salad
paper
mozzarella cheese
mint chocolate chip ice cream
roaches
spaghetti sauce
caulk
butter

She also chews on electrical cords and drinks out of the toilet. Needless to say, I don't like it when she tries to lick my face in the morning.

M4 and I spent an entire vacation crushing my brother's head between our index fingers and thumbs because he was so irritating, but we had to be in a car with him 16 hours a day.

I've read a fair number of romance books (I know, it's embarrassing, we're moving on), and they always freak out about finally saying "I love you." What's the deal with that? "I love you" is relatively easy to say. What's hard is "I love you but you are making me homicidal."

M3 and I have been discussing this for the past hour, and neither of us has a clue about how to tell someone you love that they just make you want to squish her head, and not in that Kids-in-the-Hall-joke way. It's hard to do without feeling self-centered, because essentially you're saying, "Pay attention to my needs, you selfish brat! Gah!" but you don't want to hurt his feelings, even though he probably deserves it. On the other hand, if you don't speak up, things are never going to get any better.

So if you've got any advice...spill.

Sumer is icumen in—loudly sing cuckoo!

Louder, dammit. Sing, ya bastards!

I have big plans for this summer. You've seen my reading list, and I promise you that's just the merest hint of the fun looming on the horizon.

This summer is my last Houston hurrah, at least the way things look now. I want to make the most of it. I plan to work and read and apply to grad school, of course, but I also want to:

go tubing (Houston kids, stay posted for further info).

improve my German.

cheer on the Astros at Minute Maid. Perhaps I will even condescend to eat a hot dog.

take a road trip.

have a cookout. The essence of summer is dining al fresco.

attend a concert.

spend multiple days doing nothing of import.

buy a new computer. Not exactly a summer activity, but fun!

go berry picking.

make pie from said berries.

I'm sure other such wholesome activities will pop into my brain, and I will want to do them as well. Attendence is required to get your participation grade, so be sure to know when you're available for summer fun. It's going to be an idyll. A halcyon idyll.

Red-letter day

It's been a good day thus far, and it's only two p.m. I had my last classes as a Rice student (bonus for mild intoxication), my new watch came in the mail, and my computer at work was finally upgraded. Later I'm going shoe shopping before finals set in tomorrow. The weather is sunny and cheerful. Life is good. I'm a sap.

Warning: Rated PG-13 for Language and Innuendo and EG for English Geekiness

I have to say, this is about the funniest thing I've seen in forever. The Milne and Hemingway send-ups are particularly priceless. "Woke up. Shot breakfast. Damn neighbors mouthing off about the noise again. Shot neighbors." Yeah you did, Earnest.

"We're going to have to remove that frontal lobe before your thesis defense, ma'am."

I had to help my professors show a film clip today in class. I don't know what it is, but it seems like getting a humanities Ph.D. blocks all practical knowledge of how technology works. Neither of the professors could get the DVD into the DVD drive, click on the DVD player in the cleverly labeled menu, and hit play. I saw them having trouble and asked, "There isn't a DVD player under the menu?" Dr. M. looked at me in all seriousness and said, "Menu?"

Now, I know this man has a computer in his office. I know his cohort—who, after watching me put the DVD in the drive, couldn't get it back out—has one as well. I have seen both of them type on said computers. These are smart, smart guys, and they've been trained to use the classroom equipment. However, they were outclassed by an English major who uses her virus-infected HP P.O.S. for papers and chatting and nothing else. Standing up there, clicking like a trained monkey, I thought to myself: "When I'm a Ph.D., I'm going to make one student be my technology bitch all semester, and it'll just seem like I can't be bothered. I'll still be hip." And then I realized: yeah, not so much of the hip to start with.

And my first name is evidently "Insanity"

In between checking and entering and a multitude of other tasks today at work, I've been surfing English grad school websites. I'm trying to compile a (revised) list of places to which I'm going to apply this summer, so I can have somewhere to go when I get back to Austria. Evidently, "long-range planning" is my middle name.

Anyway, the thing that's frustrating me. I'm investigating rather competetive schools, and they won't give me a profile of a successful applicant, damn them. They're all coy, like, "here's what you need to do to apply, but secretly we're never going to let you in—we just want the application fee." I need to know if my GRE score and grades are high enough, or if I need to be Wile E. Coyote, SUPER Genius.

Schools currently under consideration, if you're interested (and want to put your 2¢ in): Berkeley, University of Illinios Urbana-Champaign, Notre Dame, University of Chicago, University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins, Nebraska, Iowa.

I'm just bitter because my chocolate rabbit melted in transit.

What's with Easter and the weird candy? Peeps and Cadbury Creme Eggs (mmm, mucus) and black jelly beans: all gross. Eggums? Not normal. And what about those chocolate rabbits that are hollow? How upsetting is that? "I'll buy five inches of chocolate—except half of it isn't there. Hey, that's a stellar deal!"

I'm ready for Halloween. Normal candy and heathen practices, the way God intended.

Things that I almost certainly will not read, but firmly intend to as of this moment:

May I present my summer reading list.

Children of the Storm by Elizabeth Peters

Summerland by Michael Chabon

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind by Chuck Berris

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon

Der Bleichtrommel by Günter Grass

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd

If you have suggestions for additions, I'm definitely amenable.

Special headwear optional for fertility rites and resurrections

Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how this came to be, Easter is the holiday of ridiculous headgear. Men are mostly free of this vile trend, but women and children get stuck wearing cutesy little straw hats with ridiculous bows that they wouldn't wear for a MILLION dollars any other day of the year. I especially despise little boys being stuck in those stupid pseudo-sailor hats. You know the kid hates it, why bother? Even dogs aren't immune.

Here is the thing. Santa hats at Christmas I can kind of understand; it's cold out (you know, if you live somewhere with seasons), the hat is stocking-caplike, it's all good. But Easter? You wear the hat to church and to brunch, neither of which takes place outside in the direct sunlight. You're just blocking people's view in church, and nobody likes a view-blocker. Hats off.

Dear M!: Thanks for not using the spray bottle; hope those bruises on your arm heal quickly.

I don't do well with horror movies. At all. I don't like being scared, and I'm extremely susceptible to the tension of screechy string music and stupid weaponless girls sneaking around abandoned houses by themselves at night with a serial killer on the loose. Frankly, I don't feel one whit sorry about their gruesome, horrible deaths.

Anyway, knowing all this, knowing an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation once had me curled up and whimpering on the living room floor while my parents laughed, I lost my mind last night and convinced the Ms to rent The Ring with me.

This is perhaps the scariest movie ever. And I didn't even see the really scary parts, because I was hiding behind a throw pillow, with M3 clutching one hand and M! trying to disengage the other from around his bicep. (If you haven't seen it and want to, stop reading here.) Dude, that creepy, evil girl climbs out of a T.V. She could climb out of your T.V.! Samara knows your telephone number, and in seven days, she'll just scare you right to death! She just wants to keep killing, for no reason at all. I could be next! Thank God we watched the DVD version and not a tape, or I would have been incoherent.

I realize, in the bright light of day, that this isn't very probable. However, at 11:30 p.m. with the wind blowing the trees about threateningly, it seems like it just might happen. Especially when M!, the kid who isn't scared of anything, is babbling a little, and M3 keeps asking if I want to sleep on the couch, like she's going to show me the movie again so she can be free of its curse and I can start scratching my face out of photos.

Next time I go to Blockbuster, I promise I won't laugh when M3 suggests The Carebears Movie II.

She was afraid of thunder and she wouldn't eat raw vegetables

I miss my dog. She's been dead for seven years and I still miss her.

We got her when I was three, and that's the first clear memory that I have. Of anything. I got to pick her out, and I don't remember why I chose her, but I remember that I loved her floppy, silky puppy ears and her eyes that were brown just like mine.

She was almost perfect. Sure, she ate my dad's ducks (they clogged up the spring in the backyard, so good riddance, I say) and hated all UPS men, but she was loyal and protective and good with kids. My brother and I used to go on long walks—"journeys" to the mailbox a mile away at the end of the lane—and B.R. would always have to be half a length in front. If you tried to walk in front of her, she would trot ahead, back legs not quite in line with the front, tail wagging. She liked to swim.

She died when I was fifteen, I think, of old age. I was in high school, busy and inattentive, and, I know now, scared of it. I remember my parents taking care of her when she was too sick to go outside, too sick to stand up. I didn't ever see her when she was like that, but every time I think of her, it kills me that I didn't—that I didn't do anything, and I didn't see her, and now she's gone. She's buried in the backyard at my parents' house, guarded by St. Francis and scattered pansies. I avoid that corner of the lawn when I'm home.

Someone told me last year, after I told her about my wonderful golden lab, that someday I would want another dog. No, I thought, I won't.

I already have one.

Tonight I had mint chocolate chip ice cream and strawberries for dinner

and really, I feel fine about that.

Thesis update

Rough draft finished. Not kidding about the rough, but if you would like to whore your editing skills, I could probably make you a decent deal involving cookies, alcohol, or whatever your little heart desires (you know, within reason).

The thesis is 46-48 pages long right now, no intro, no conclusion, and missing a few pieces of research information here and there. Never let it be said that I am not verbose. Academia, here I come.

Things that will never, ever happen, list two (fictional characters edition)

Now with explanations!

Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. He refuses to waste his time with stupid people, and you gotta admire that. Also, he turns out to have a heart of gold and a HUGE mansion, which is always a plus.

Crash Davis from Bull Durham. The "I believe" speech alone is enough to get me all hot and bothered. And baseball is always sexy.

Calvin O'Keefe from Madeleine L'Engel's A Wrinkle in Time and subsequent books. He is so sweet to Meg that I can't help but love him. Highly intelligent, as well.

Radcliffe Emerson, blustering hero of The Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (check her out, if you haven't; great, funny mysteries). He's a nineteenth-century archaeologist whose nickname is "The Father of Curses." Hot.

Dr. Cox from Scrubs. I am hopelessly in love with this guy. Just the right amount of evil, and cute, too (I realize it's really John C. McGinley, but go with me on this). Curly hair is adorable, as is smirking.

Also-rans: Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H, Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing, Batman, Spock (inner geek then ruthlessly mocked until it cried), J.D. from Scrubs, and Fred & George Weasley from Harry Potter.

All right. Bring it, people.

On letting things go:

Man, I hate people who play favorites when they're supposed to be impartial. Especially when they act like they like you and then secretly tank you in deliberations.