This is just funny

Today’s quickie horoscope:

No one can leave their options open forever. Pick an avenue. Explore it.

What's next?

CNN’s top headline right now is that Terry Schiavo has died.

I’ve tried really hard not to comment on the case or situation, firstly because I really don’t know very much about the legal history, and secondly because I don’t know that adding my two cents about the rightness or wrongness of things will really help the discussion.

I am curious, though, to see what happens next. The time constraints that have propelled the Schindlers to continue filing appeals and motions are gone. Will they now withdraw into private life or will they continue to fight the courts and their son-in-law? I think the latter is highly likely—too many groups have embraced the Schindlers as poster children for their own movements, and I suspect they still have a great deal of animosity against Michael Schiavo. So I wonder what legal step they’ll take next. I suspect we’ll continue to hear about this case over the coming weeks, at least until the next big thing happens. Now that Ms. Schiavo has died, though, I wonder how long the public will continue to show interest in the case.

and OH YEAH

CM GOT INTO HARVARD!!!!!

HOOORAYYYYYY!!!

The Dreams I Dream Each Night

Last night I dreamed my grandmother was giving me a bunch of her old clothes—cute vintage stuff from when she was younger—and while we dug through the stuff, we listened to music from my iPod.

Except that everytime I hit play, it tried to play a podcast from ai, and for some reason I didn’t want my grandmother listening to the podcasts. Oh, and every time this would happen, it would be a completely new podcast that I’d never heard.

I had to check this morning to make sure there wasn’t a new podcast up. That would have been freaky.

i am pleased to note

We all know the new Harry Potter book is due out this summer.

Two summers ago, I was in Oxford for a couple of weeks and took the opportunity to pick up the entire set of books—then, the first four in paperback and the fifth in hardback—in the British editions. After all, Harry & Co. are British, so reading “sweater” for “jumper” in the American editions always made my palms twitch.

In preparation for obtaining the new book in the British edition as well, I visited Amazon.co.uk and ran the numbers. It will cost me approximately $32 (or about £17) to bring the new book across the pond.

I’m not pre-ordering today, but I’m glad to know that the shipping, at least, doesn’t exceed the cost of the book. I’d have paid it anyway, but it would have irked me a bit.

can't…take…negativity…

ARGH!

I will say only this: negative people SUCK.

If you find yourself muttering and sighing and bitching to yourself under your breath but loudly enough for your colleagues to hear you, you might be a NEGATIVE PERSON.

STOP IT. Please.

This PSA paid for by me.

he was right, this isn't fun

Our realtor is optimistic following an open house in our home last night. Mr. Angst, though, is taking everything he says with a whole shaker of salt. I’m sort of in the middle—after all, what benefit does our realtor gain by putting a shine on things? If he says things are going well and they’re not, we’ll know rather quickly, yes? About the time we notice that our house isn’t selling, yes?

So anyhoo, I’m trying to stay sort of upbeat about it all. People are apparently interested, people will be trekking through our home this week and weekend, people will hopfully be making offers soon.

But I just want it over with. I feel sort of overwhelmed with all the details of my life right now—not just making our school decisions, but also keeping our finances straight, maintaining a seriously clean home (which does not come naturally to me), and, of course, the actual process of selling a house. So I’d like to all end.

I’d also like to have more interesting things to post about, but, well, supra. Hopefully I’ll be able to post soon about our adventures in apartment hunting, both here for the short-term and somewhere else for the long-term.

some things aren't right

My brother-in-law just sent an email with the words “big pimp’n” in it.

I’m a little disturbed.

a drop in the serious bucket

Mr. Angst and I attended an admitted students’ dinner last night for one of my schools. It was at what might be the nicest restaurant in town, so it was worth it if for no other reason than that we got to have a full meal at a place we’d probably never spring for ourselves. (NB: the food was OK. I managed to eat two things that had heavy-ish sauces and Mr. Angst’s Kobe beef was apparently chewy. But the wine was fantastic and the raspberry sorbet on our chocolate tort/cake thing was to die for.)

The dinner was small—small enough that everyone could sit at the same long table. We were about evenly mixed between admitted students, and alumni, and there was one current student present. I think I lucked out—the alumnus I sat next to happens to be in academia—he’s a visiting scholar at a university nearby, and he’s published, &c.—so I got to talk to someone who is on a track I’m interested in. That was the best part of the evening. Also, no one gave us the hard sell, which was nice. This decision-making process is miserable enough without that.

Here are some things I noticed:

The other admitted students were very nice. I didn’t get much chance to talk to them—they mostly congregated at the other end of the table, while Mr. Angst and I were between three alumni. I felt a little old, but that’s probably to be slightly expected. Mr. Angst says I didn’t LOOK older than the other admitted students, so thank you, Mom, for the good genes. I found the alumni and the law school official who were there to be MUCH more helpful than the current student. I asked her at one point how big LWR classes were (meaning, how many students?) and she seemed to think I was wondering how IMPORTANT LWR was, and tried to downplay it by mentioning that LWR grades aren’t curved. Oy.

I had hoped the evening would give me some big insight or underscore either a very big positive or a very big negative for both of us, and that didn’t happen (of course). I keep wandering around, hoping that something or someone else will make this decision for us, and that’s a foolish wish, I know. In the car on the way home, Mr. Angst said he’d enjoyed himself but that a fancy dinner wasn’t going to make him decide one way or another. He’s being smarter about this than I am.

So. The evening was nice; it was helpful to hear a little something about the academic track from someone who’s been through it (although in a slightly nontraditional way). It was nice to feel out my prospective classmates and the alumni network and to get some solid information on the school that’s not from the website. But nothing, really, has changed. I still feel the same way I did about both of my choices, and I suspect Mr. Angst does too. We’re still sitting on a fence, counting cows in both fields and trying to figure which grass is sweeter.

friend girls

My bestest friend in the whole world came to visit me yesterday, and I took the afternoon off so we could have lunch, get manicures, and act like fools at an early happy hour. She showed me her new shoes (hot pink satin with ribbons that tie around the ankle) and I moaned about not knowing where to go to school next year. Another friend of ours showed up for drinks and we oohed and aahed over her new engagement ring and laughed about boys and jobs and driving yourself to the emergency room and the silly names our acquaintances are giving their children.

Sometimes a good afternoon of girliness is all that you need to set you right again.