It's been a while since I've really posted (and after I promised myself I'd write more regularly, too.)  So. . . hmm, this is just a general update of sorts.

Let's start with The Bad:

• I stabbed myself in the leg with an x-acto knife this afternoon when I was trying to get the &^#@#$% thing out of the  *#@#$! packaging. For some reason the cap was packaged beside the knife instead of being on it, and the knife slipped right out of the packaging and right through my jeans and right into my leg.   I already had a nice little one with a retractable blade, but I couldn't find it for a project so I bought the new one.  Of course, I found the old one in my car this evening, after I'd already chopped my leg off with the other.
  
  
• I'm taking eighteen credit hours this semester. (Plus work.)
  

And now The Good:

• I really, really like all of my classes.  I was actually sorry when my Am. Lit. class got out this morning.  I want to do my homework.  Freaky.  (Okay, honestly the psych class is a bit boring, but I don't actively dislike it.)
  
  
• Speaking of American Literature, at the start of class this morning the professor handed me a scholarship application for English majors and recommended I apply.  It made me feel all warm and fuzzy.  This is the same professor who brought in and lent to me a book of Poe illustrations on the first day of class, after a conversation we'd had the previous semester about art and literature.
  
  
• I'm one of the popular kids in my 3D design class.  It's sort of bizarre.  It's just. . . bizarre.  And a little bizarre.

• I'm happy.

I can't figure out if I'm angry with him and his whole family or if I still like him.  Either way it's bad.

Life has been eating me alive lately.  But the end is almost in sight.

Our performance of the Messiah was this evening.  Everything was lovely for the most part, except that there was an air conditioning vent or a fan somewhere, and it kept blowing my music shut.  I'd be sailing along through some difficult passage and the page would start to turn over.  I actually got pretty good at stabbing the music down with my bow and jumping right back in, before my partner managed to angle the stand so that the score would lie flat.

Of course, the performance also gave me the excuse to waltz around campus wearing my dress clothes and pretending to be someone important.  There's something about a long, black, swishy skirt and rhinestone jewelry....

                                                        ~~


Art history test finished.  Art history paper due tomorrow.  Am Lit paper due over Thanksgiving break.  Oodles of reading to do for Children's Lit class, but I'm not worrying about that yet.  I'm fairly behind on NaNo, but it's not too bad.  A couple of days of heavy catch-up and everything should be fine.

                                                       ~~



The-guy-I-really-liked-when-I-was-fourteen-and-very-silly is going to be playing with us as the soloist for our next concert.  He's away at college, but it'll be over break.  

I was rather dismayed when I found out.  My really-liking-him culminated in a highly embarrassing situation masterminded by my best friend, which may or may not have involved a prank phone call, a very angry mother, and his sudden notice that my best friend is blonde and curvy.  (I'm brunette and not-curvy.  It happens a lot.  And they actually talked, whereas I did a lot of muffled squeaking.)

I've tried my hardest to avoid him ever since.  I've failed miserably, but that's not my fault.  The shared social circles keep thwarting me.  

He's actually an extremely brilliant violinist.  I'm not.  Music is not my forte.   I'm an art-and-English sort of person who plays violin on the side.  But whenever I'm around him, I feel this need to prove that I'm not the very-silly-fourteen-year-old I used to be.  This would be best accomplished if I, too, was a brilliant violinist who was also perfectly poised, could make witty conversation and laughed merrily at everything.

That won't be happening anytime in the next century.  In the meantime, I'll probably do a lot of muffled squeaking and avoid making eye contact.  Perhaps I should work on a contingency plan.

I've been having problems with my iPod NaNo for months -- it randomly freezes and restarts while I'm using it, to the point where it's UNUSUAL for me to be able to use it without this happening -- so I sent it in to have it repaired/replaced/whatever.  

Apple charged me thirty bucks for shipping, and I had to make a special trip into town to have it sent off.

I got an e-mail today telling me that their special team of technicians couldn't find anything wrong with it, and they were going to ship it back along with a sheet of common troubleshooting tips and errors.



I am going to strangle someone.

Finished New Moon this afternoon.  Disappointed.  Kept getting impatient with the characters, plot and book in general.

I've been meaning to write this.  I'll make it brief.

My American Literature midterm was divided into two sections: question and answer, and an essay.  I got a high A on the question and answer, and a B - B+ on the essay, translating into an overall low A.

I was sitting in my seat sulking.  I could have done better.  (That's what I always tell myself, anyway.)

So there I was, sulking.

Then the professor happened to announce that I got the highest midterm grade in the class.  I was very startled, and it cheered me up for a while.  

On further contemplation though, it doesn't change the fact that I still didn't do a blindingly excellent job on the thing.  

I'm so tired right now that I'm not even tired.  Or something like that.  I've been up since seven-thirty this morning, after going to bed a little after five o'clock this morning.  Yesterday morning?  It's past midnight now.  Whatever. 

The point is, I'm really, really tired.

Despite the fact that I put off reading and analyzing the thirty picture books for my book log that were due today until yesterday afternoon, (the day before yesterday?...) and then was up all night writing them to the point that my fingers felt ready to blister and I was teetering on the verge of writing those meandering, nonsensical sentences that you can only write when you're falling asleep (kind of like this one right here), the teacher still liked them.  Heh...?

So.  I was going to write something else, and I've been thinking all day about how I was going to write it, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was right now.

I think I'll go to bed, instead.  My head sort of feels like it's floating away.


I was going to blab about my Am. Lit. midterm.  Tomorrow, maybe.

I've been eating chocolate-covered espresso beans all day.  

I'm going to be up late, first working on some of my own writing, and then on an essay I've been avoiding, and the idea behind the espresso beans was that I'd be so brimming with caffeine by this evening that I'd get everything done in no time.

I am pretty wide-awake, but I seem to be using the time to update my LJ.  Darn.

I think I'm hitting the end-of-the-semester doldrums.  There's still a little over a month to go, but I don't feel like doing anything, and at this point would hardly even blink if I suddenly failed all my classes.  (And for the freaky 4.0 girl, that's saying something.)  I'm DONE.  Finished.  Don't care.  Go away, and turn off the alarm clock on the way out.


                                                                        ~~  


The university just sent me an e-mail telling me to sign up for spring classes on October the 30th.  This shouldn't be a terrifying, soul-strickening prospect, but it is.

I'm still officially listed as a graphic design major. (You can't exactlly un-declare a major unless you're declaring a new one, and I'm not sure yet what that new one will be.)  So my advisor is still the wierd graphic design dude, and he's the one I have to see to sign up for classes next semester.  But if I make an appointment with him, it will mean a long and messy conversation about why I dropped his class at the start of the semester, and why I'm changing my major, and then he'll want to know what I'm changing my major to, and when I tell him I'm not sure exactly, he'll make one of those polite, disbelieving young-girls-these-days-are-so-flighty snorts and tell me that I should hurry up and decide, which, believe it or not, I already know, since the pressure to hurry up and decide has pretty much been eating me alive for the past year and a half.

I really don't want to have that conversation.  And to avoid it, I need to declare a new major in the next two weeks.  
It's things like these that make me want to crawl under the covers and hide.

The other day I happened to link to Stephen Fry's recent blog about fame, (via Neil Gaiman's own blog), and thought it was a rather interesting post, enough so that the subject has been rattling around inside my head for a couple of days.

I realized this evening that I have a microscopic view into what it would be like to be famous and recognized everywhere one went and accosted regularly by total strangers.


For several years now, I've been involved with the local community theater.  It's a rather small community, and it's a rather small theater, but every time we've got a production going on the local newspaper will write up a story and take pictures, and the local folk, the bored tourists, and the deaf Floridians will all come to see us.  

I've been in enough productions that a handful of people have started to recognize me outside of the theater.

The first time it happened, I was delighted.  It was a few years ago, and an elderly couple approached me while I was in the library.  They said they'd seen the play I was in, and I did such a wonderful job, and it was such a wonderful play, and I left the encounter feeling quite warm and fuzzy.  The next few times it happened, I was a bit less startled but still quite delighted. 

Then last year, I got a job working at the local Subway.  Tuition and books and stuff, y'know?  And I started coming into contact with a lot more local people on a much more regular basis.

And the face recognition thing started happening more often.  Not a LOT more often -- it's not like every time someone walked into the store they'd stop dead in their tracks and start screeching, "OH MY GOSH, YOU'RE THAT GIRL, AREN'T YOU?!"  -- but it did happen a LITTLE more often.  

And it began to feel just a little wierd.

It was still very flattering and very ego-boosting.  But, I'd be standing behind the counter making someone's sandwich, and I'd look up, intending to ask them if they wanted mayonnaise, only to find them staring unblinkingly at my face.  Just... staring.  And right about the time I'd start to wonder if I'd sprouted giant purple fangs, the person would say, "You were in that play, weren't you?"

And I'd sort of blink, and say, "Well... yes, um... I probably was.  Did you want mayonnaise?"

And then they'd say, "That play was so great.  Which character were you?  You played that woman, didn't you?  You were great.", and they'd beam, and I'd laugh nervously and agree with them and ask them if they wanted mayonnaise.

Every couple of weeks or so, this scene would repeat itself with only minor variations.  

It happened again tonight.  The stare, the sudden realization, the questions -- and then the woman had to figure out exactly which character I'd been, and which play it was, and then she had to tell me how she was related to the brother of the wife of one of the directors.

And she was a nice woman.  She was a lovely woman.  She was a charming woman.  

But I realized that I felt obligated to strike up a friendly conversation with this complete stranger as if she were somehow an old acquaintance, and that I felt obligated to act extra nice and charming, and to still serve my purpose as a fast food minion making her sandwich, and in a little bitty part of my brain, I resented it.  Because I really didn't know her at all, and we'd been busy all afternoon and I had a pile of dishes that needed to be washed, and I was fighting off an unpleasant cold, and I really didn't feel like being charming.

Her interest was flattering.  And I was flattered.  And I was happy that she'd remembered me so fondly.  But the encounter also intruded into the general business of my life.

From this realization, it was only a small jump to wondering what it must be like to deal with this kind of encounter every day -- on an even more intense scale.  What is it like for those people who are watched and scrutinized and stared at by everybody, who have millions of complete strangers convinced that they're somehow old friends? 

It would be just a little creepy.  Because you really and truly wouldn't know any of those millions of strangers, and they'd only think they knew you, based upon your latest character or movie.  And there would be days when you'd been busy all afternoon and had things to do, and were sick, and just wouldn't feel like being charming.

When you're well and truly famous, it must be difficult to get on with the business of just living.

I'm not feeling too good -- I woke up this morning with a nasty clogged throat, and it got worse all day, to the point where I skipped orchestra this evening.  I'm feeling better as I write this, but still kind of washed out.

Since I'm not feeling up to anything requiring any level of creativity, but wanted to accomplish something before I went to bed, I took the time to organize a bunch of my old document files.  

This is more of an undertaking than it sounds like.  First, I have a tendency to pick cryptic names that have nothing to do with what's actually in the file.  Back before I had my own computer, this was a preservational tactic.  I didn't want family members poking through my stuff, and "ShrtStry_Rev_3" doesn't sound nearly as intersting as "Myself_as_Old_Woman".  But now that I have my own computer, and don't need to worry about who's reading what, it's just a bad habit that makes finding things absolute torture.  I mean, is "assorted" a random collection of stories?  A poem about chocolates?  Some strange acronym? 

Also, I never delete ANYTHING, so I had to wade through old Christmas lists, directions to mysterious locations, a bunch of cryptic files labeled "temp" and "edit", three or four unfinished versions apiece of several different stories, and notes that a friend of mine wrote for one of her classes.  

I did end up deleting all of the "temp" files, all of the multiple copies of stuff, etc.  Then some stuff went into a brand-new REVISE folder -- mostly fragments that might be worth finishing, or finished stories that might be worth editing.   Some of it went into an OLD WRITING folder -- this is the stuff that's so cringe-worthy it's funny.   Most of the rest went into the JUNK folder.  You may wonder why I'm saving it if it's junk, but it's fun to pick through on boring afternoons, and if I ever become rich and famous, I can... well... I'm sure I could do something with it.  Right.  Mostly, I just don't like deleting things.  


Anyway, I was amazed by the sheer volume of stuff.  Even with all of my shiny new organizational tactics, and discounting the entiriety of the JUNK folder, getting through it is like trying to hack through a jungle with a fork.   

And if I ever get really ambitious and type up the contents of all of the dozens of notebooks stacked under the desk, there'll be even more stuff. 

I whiled away the afternoon watching Monty Python clips on youtube, as well as an assortment of old interviews with Neil Gaiman.  

He's a tremendously funny speaker, and there's also the fact that he's got that accent.  I love listening to almost anyone talk if they've got a British accent, and Neil Gaiman is even better than most. 

Sadly, British accents are in rather short supply in my corner of the world.

                                                                                                ~~


I got a 98 on my art history midterm, so I'm happy.  Despite the fact that I feel asleep halfway through studying, things turned out all right.  I expect I'll be getting my Am. Lit. midterm results back tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes.  And I have no idea when I'll get my Children's Lit. paper back.  Hopefully this week.  (I really don't want to know the grade on the group presentation.)  I'm going to see how I was graded on the paper before making any decisions about withdrawing from the class.

However, as a side effect of all that midterm cramming (and how can we be having midterms when we've only just finished September?), my brain is overflowing with a peculiar assortment of useless information.  I know how to spell and pronounce the name of Renaissance artist Antonio Pollaiuolo, I have been randomly spouting facts about northern realism for the past several days, and I can also provide detailed information about the poetry of Anne Bradstreet.

I expect in a week or two, I'll be back to holding conversations like a normal human being.  Right now, I'm probably a bit unbearable.