grits!

today is the sunday of my spring break. which means school starts again tomorrow. =(

i am sitting in paul's room now. not doing much. just sitting. trying to find some motivation to get out of bed and be productive. amazingly enough, the pile of grading sitting next to the bed just isn't doing it for me. but school starts tomorrow, and i have a paper due on wednesday that needs writing. so i should get up. i'll prolly just sit here and watch siflnolly or some other movie.

if you haven't noticed the new thing on the side bar... i put up all my responses/non-responses from grad schools there. so now you can keep track of them with me! and tell me where to go when the time comes! yay!

so on thursday, delaney took me out for a drink. it was great. i had two glasses of wine and was quite tipsy. but, i countered the tipsyness by trying to act really serious. in the end (so paul tells me) i just came out acting normal. but once we left delaney and i was free to be as ridiculous as possible, i may have been hopping around like an idiot. i also found i had very little control over how fast my feet would walk. paul had to grab onto my arm to slow me down. it was the only way.

i cleaned paul's room the other day. i should have done before and after shots so you could understand just how momentous a task this was... but for those of you that know paul (and knew his rooms in keough), you understand.

ok, now its time to go and wait for my grits. and yes, i love grits. they're quite yummy. and waaaaay better than oatmeal or cream of wheat. =)

static in my attic

the air is so dry in here that everytime i touch soren he shocks me. he doesn't seem to mind, though. poor kitty is a bit attention starved since i've left him alone these past couple of days. well, alone with the other cats.

the olympics effectively ended today. there's one more cross country race tomorrow, that i may or may not get to watch, but other than that, it's over. i feel weird. what will i do now? will i have to start doing actual work? how will i manage to slack off? these are important questions. questions that probably have uninteresting answers. but, i'm sure once find the answers i'll write them all down so you can read them.

this next week or so i should hear from the rest (or at least some) of my schools. it's a nervous sort of time. everyone is waiting. dude is waiting, paul is waiting, i am waiting. it sucks. and i can't decide until i know what's happening to them. not like i have anything to decide now anyways. right now, my only option is chicago. and while the adventurous side of me thinks that moving to chicago would rock (seattle would be even cooler) the realistic side of me (yes, it exists) knows that i would hate any big city if i had to be there for long. being surrounded by that many people, and using public transport all the time, and being scared all the time (yes, cities frighten me). it wouldn't be good. but, adventurous danielle really does want to pack up and move to seattle. the thought of it is so exciting!

murphy is trying to get his paws under my door. he wants to get to soren. but, i set up a murphy blockade so he can't reach. and he's too dumb to figure out that he could prolly push the blockade if he really tried. i will never live with three cats again. i don't think soren and i will even get another cat once we move. we'll prolly get a dog. that would be nice. once soren and i train it up to be cool.

addiction

well, my olympic addiction continues. i'm not really sure what i'll do once the games are over. i'm starting to get worried. i guess i'll have to go back to that life where i actually do some of my homework and prepare for my lectures. weird. luckily, i'll have 'spring' break to recuperate.

today was a rough class day, both for the class i teach and the class i take. my kids have trouble grasping (what i think are) the simplest concepts. i explain them over and over and over again, in a thousand different ways, but always to no avail. it really makes me wonder if i'm cut out for this teaching thing. i keep hoping that its just the kids, and that with better kids i'll despise it less. we can hope so. all i know is that, right now, i am so unbelievable glad that i get to go back to being a TA next year. to not have to actually teach a class will be a joy. in the class i take (mike's class) things are going sour quickly. i know there are a few out there that actually enjoy the class, but i am finding it more and more tiresome every day. today was especially hard. the uninformed (icky undergrads and belligerent nasty sortof gradstudents) were out in full force today. i'll spare you the full details, but it was enough to almost make me leave class. the last half hour was so painful and so hard to sit through. the only thing that kept me in there was my respect for mike. with (some) other profs i might not have a problem leaving, but with mike i think it would cross a line. and he's so nice as his. i wouldn't want to hurt his feelings.

other than that, i don't know that i really have any bloggable stories. lots of random little things have happened, but nothing really noteworthy. oh! paul and i did succcessfully make aloo gobi (indian food) the other night! it was super exciting, as it was the first indian food i've ever made that actually came out tasting like it ought too.

all right, i'm tired now. night night.

'lympics

today was the last day of the schopenhauer reading group (a.k.a. the i'm-only-in-this-cuz-i'm-friends-with-dave reading group). can't say i'm sorry... i haven't been doing the reading lately. schopenhauer's fun to read in tiny doses, but after a while i get tired of all the name-calling. seriously. name-calling.

the wind continues today. but now its horribly cold. so, instead of making me restless, its making me want to hibernate. just what i need in the middle of winter.... another reason to hibernate.

tomorrow, i have to wake up at 6 in the morning. i'm driving to lansing (with dave and darci) to go to some value theory conference at state. i'm beginning to wonder why i agreed to this. it sounded like a good idea when dave asked me a couple weeks ago if i wanted to go. but now... that 6 a.m. wake up is sounding pretty shady.

tonight was the start of ice-danicing. quite possibly my least favorite olympic sport. i just can't get into it. curling is better than ice-dancing. but, there will be better things to come these next few days. i think bobsled starts next week. that ought to be cool.

i really ought to sleep. i think ima go find soren and lock him in here with me. i could use the cuddles.

windy

its a windy day. and earlier it was warm, too. so, naturaally, i've been a bit restless today. i just want to run around outside and jump in circles and do all manner of silly things. too bad its gotten dreadfully cold these past few hours.

now, as most of you have noticed, my blogging pace has slackened considerably as of late. this is actually not due to blogging laziness on my part, but rather an intense (some might call it insane) devotion to the olympics. basiclaly, any time i can be watching the olympics, i am watching the olympics. like right now, even though i just spent four hours over at johnny-dee's watching the olympics, i've got my tv back on nbc and i'lll prolly fall asleep watching it all again. and in the morning, when i run, i'll be watching olympic hockey. i think i'm lucky the olympics come on so infrequently. if they came on more often, i'd be done for. i'd never get anything done, at all. oh! there's gonna be some stuff on tonight that wasn't on earlier. and some of it is speedskating. i love speedskating. i want to be a speedskater.

don't worry, my posts will become more frequent (and perhaps more sane) once the olympics are over. of course, that means we've still got another week to go!

and, i got into uic today. =)

ok, time to sleep. i actually have to wake up tomorrow =( i like that i'm working out these days, but i hate that it means that i have to wake up early. sadly, i know that if tried to switch to evenings i would just stop. oh well. i get to fall asleep to speedskating and a windy outside. sounds nice.

adjectives

in an effort to procrastinate... i came across this. pick some words for me.

we can watch how my 'score' changes here.

and now, back to my paper. sort of.

blue are my thoughts

1.5 miles yesterday and today!!! (and no, not every post is going to be about working out... but right now it's just so new and exciting!) it was hard to wake up this morning. i had to actually argue with myself (outloud) before i got up and went down to the treadmill. it went something like this:

[alarm goes off, i look out the window]
sleepy-me: you can't go outside. it's dark outside.
me: but we have to work out!
sleepy-me: no we don't. it's dark outside. and it snowed!
me: no, we have to work out. we have to!

it went on like this for a while, but eventually i won out over myself. and to workout i went. tomorrow, i'm sleeping in, so hopefully we won't have to go through this kind of situation again.

the rest of my day was painfully uneventful. i spent the majority of it on the futon. i'm waiting for the running to start giving me energy... right now it just makes me tired. so tired...

i did do laundry tonight. and even folded it. and dave called a while ago and we went to ihop. so, at least i left the apartment tonight and didn't spend the whole evening thinking about how bored i was.

now, i'm trying to lure soren over here to cuddle, and then i can sleep.

two more days...

this morning, i ran. on purpose. for a bit over a mile. i almost didn't, but then i told myself that i was going to spend $45 on new running shoes i better run in them. otherwise, i would have to return them and buy food instead. so, i ran. and i plan on doing it again tomorrow morning too.

today was a fairly uneventful day. actually, it was an odd day at school. almost everyone (myself included) seemed either angry, bitter, or severely frustrated. the semester is starting to take its toll on us, which is sad, since this is our last semester here. after a while, i got a headache and just really really didn't want to be there. luckily, my wednesday's aren't horribly long.

the olympics start on friday. i am ridiculously excited.

one interesting thing that i discovered today - my banned list (of movies, tv programs, and other things that i will not watch) apparently goes back much further than i thought it did. i was talking with darci today, and i was telling her a story about how when i was in the first grade my teacher gave us an assignment to write a story about our favourite tv show. at the time, mine was alf. but i remember a lot of kids saying that their favourite show was rosanne. now, even back then, i hated rosanne and always refused to watch it. i don't think my mom would have let me had i tried, but the relevant point here is that i had (at the age of 6) tv shows that i thought i oughtn't to watch and wouldn't let myself watch. (the simpsons, i think, was the next on the list. i have since taken it off the banned list, but its still not high on the 'want to watch' list.) and here i had been thinking that the banned list was a semi-recent phenomenon.

old (or bad) habits die hard...

sitting here being wakeful for no good reason, again. and once again i'm tired. i really ought to stop doing this. but, provided i can find enough to distract me, i'll be up for another hour or so at least. of course. will i do anything useful with my time? like read for class tomorrow? no. that would be silly.

i bought shoes today. another bad habit. paul thinks i should return one pair and buy food instead. but why eat when you can have happy feet? at least one pair is justifiable. i need new tennis shoes so i can start actually exercising. yes. exercising. dani. the two words can be in the same sentence. i just won't put them there. but, i am thinking about running. i even did run on saturday. and did yoga on sunday. yesterday i was super sore. and today was the day of shoe buying. so, things have to start back up tomorrow. if i can wake up early enough, i'll do yoga. and then later i can get the code for the workout room here... at the same time that i tell our apt. people that our dishwasher is falling out of its place.

my room's getting messy again. my closets are sitting right in front of me, but i still put all my clothes on my chair. and so, pants everywhere!

so, this morning i gave my students back their first tests. it was horrible. they did horribly (averages for the two classes were around 70) and so when i gave the test back, they almost revolted. the first class was worse the second... i've got a couple of girls in the class that are particularly fractious.... i seriously thought they were going to mutiny. i dunno... i wouldn't be surprised if on by thursday they have decided to take up arms against me. i can see it now - i come into class, and there they all are, swords and pistols drawn. 'tis a scary thought. it's going to take all my bat-girl prowess to stop them. let's pray that i can.

being wakeful

sitting here. staying awake. even though i have no reason to. i am tired. got up at 8 this morning so i could get to the coffee shop to do greek (at which i rocked, for the most part, with a little help). lost one of my earrings. found my earring. sat through the worst brown bag in the history of the world. ever. returned a sweater that i love dearly (but i love food more). moved some furniture, ate some icecream, played some cards. and now i'm back home. and i'm tired. but, i just don't want to sleep. after all, it's still before midnight. and i can't go to sleep before midnight, now can i? but i just started paying bills so i could have a reason to stay up longer, and i think when that happens it's time to admit that you're tired and go to sleep. so... i think i'll put in a movie. and get a drink of water. and see if soren wants to come in. the past couple of nights he's been knocking on my door to come in and sleep with me. i like that. he's a nice kitty. ok, water. good night.

waiting for spring

i've gotten bad about blogging. i always do.

right now, i'm watching stargate. i think this is my fourth episode of the day. but i'm sure there will be more. how could i only watch four episodes? anyway, season five is very exciting. unfortunately (i think) i've started watching a lot of tv this semester. product of having too much time on my hands, i suppose. so far, the list includes 24, scrubs, and american idol. i wouldn't be surprised if more get added. i've also (since moving my desktop back home) started playing computer games a bunch. point of this story - i am seriously wasting my life away.

in a little bit, it will be february, which means that i'll be hearing back from gradschools within the month (most likely). scary thought.

ok yeah, i really got nothing. i skipped gcf tonight. wanted to watch scrubs, but that was interrupted by the state of the union. as if anyone wants to listen to it. but really, even without scrubs, i doubt i'd go back to gcf. it's felt weird lately. everything's felt weird lately.

i should go to bed soon. arthur's class tomorrow. and i still gotta finish reading. hopefully, it'll be better than mike's class was today. i'm really disappointed in that class. although, since it is practical ethics, i don't know what i expected. i keep having to remind myself that i'm only taking it cuz i like mike.

soren is letting me hold his paw. sometimes he likes to hold hands. its cute.

trivia

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Dani!

1. The pigment Indian Yellow was manufactured from the urine of cows fed only on dani. no wonder i can't eat cows... they eat me!
2. Dani is the world's tallest woman! i have always felt freakishly tall...
3. Forty percent of the world's almonds and twenty percent of the world's peanuts are used in the manufacture of dani. that's a lot nuts!
4. The most dangerous form of dani is the bicycle! i haven't been able to take this form in ages though... not since the demise of russell
5. Dani is the only bird that can swim but not fly. sad but true. but i do so want to fly.
6. Dani was declared extinct in 1902. only to return in glory in the wondrous year of 1982. i'm like a phoenix!
7. Dani is actually a vegetable, not a fruit! yes!
8. Dani has little need for water and is capable of going for months without drinking at all. this would explain why i always want such small beverage glasses...
9. Dani can run sixty-five kilometres an hour - that's really fast. can is the operative word...
10. The number one cause of blindness in the United States is dani! kinda sad... but so many people just can't handle me.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

why not smile?

i'm sitting in my office now. i teach at 11, so i'm just waiting. outside it's all snowy and pretty. (i drove to school in the snow!!) i find i don't mind the snow nearly as much now that i don't have to fear it. and not having to scrape snow off of my car helps a bunch too.

i haven't had much to blog about lately. i'm been rather stressed actually. i'm having all sorts of problems getting my stipend check, and while i ought to have enough to live on for the rest of the semester, not having the stipend does make things tight. oh well, i've vented enough about this to various peoples already. i'm sure you don't want to read about it again.

i just gave myself a paper cut. ouch! i watched 24 last night. i promised myself for so long that i wouldn't get into it, and here i've watched two weeks in a row. i don't know whats coming over me. last night was rather suspenseful though. at one point, i screamed.

i guess i should go think about teaching now. unless i can think of a million examples, today will be a short class. i doubt the kids will mind.

template

ok, so i've changed templates. much as i loved the dots, i got tired of the color scheme on the old one. so, until i can find (or make) something new and exciting, we're just gonna have to deal with this stark, white one. any suggestions?

survey time!!!

oh, i heart surveys. =)

4 jobs i've had (time at job)
Graduate Assistant (Instructor/TA) - 1.5 years; tutor - 1.5 years, citimortgage office bitch - 2 summers, 3 months each; huddle cashier - 6 months

4 movies i'd watch over and over
pride&prejudice, batman begins, what about bob, when harry met sally

4 places i have lived (time at locale)
Kalamazoo, MI - 1.5 years; South Bend, IN - 4 years; St. Louis, MO - 13 years; Jakarta, Indonesia - 5 years

4 tv shows i love
Stargate SG-1, Dawson's Creek, Sex and the City, Seinfeld

4 places i've been on vacation
(this is kinda embarrassing... i've been to more places than this... but i haven't been on a vacation in about a half-million years. sad but true.)
Canada, Bali, DC, home

4 favorite foods
Indian, Thai, cheese, breakfast

4 places i'd rather be right now
Bali, Italy, Greece, Notre Dame

4 websites i visit daily
CNN news, weather.gov, ebay, IMDB

4 bloggers who are now tagged!
(i don't really like doing this to y'all, but a survey has its rules...)
The Captain; erin; paul-guy; johnny-dee

movie

last night, my roommate and i made the mistake of renting and then watching 'the 40 year old virgin.' i had heard it was funny (from fairly reliable sources), and while i didn't expect to be bowled over, i did at least expect to be entertained. instead, i found myself willingly turning away from the movie and to my plato book. i found reading the apology much more entertaining than the movie, and as much as i love plato, i can't honestly say that the apology beats all movies. when it was all said and done, i had to retreat to my room and watch an episode of p&p so i could recover. well anyway, seeing this movie has started me thinking. i can't remember the last time i saw (or wanted to see) a comedy in the theaters that didn't revolve around sex/toilet humor. seriously. if i want to laugh and not be mildly (or majorly) disturbed in the process, i have to get out my own copy of ghostbusters. current movies are just too crass. so, i'm left wondering if the majority of people today are even capable of laughing at anything that isn't crude. or is that just asking too much?

driving down the road alone

i have a lot of thoughts going through my head now. some of them can't be written down, for various reasons. but i think a good way to encapsulate them is with the simple phrase: i don't want to grow up. i know, it sounds trite. but i have my reasons. i miss having all of my friends live within a 10 minute walk. i miss campus itself. more than that, i miss the time when the most important and productive use of my time was spent in long conversations that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. not only were such conversations standard, they were essential. when it got windy and i started to feel restless it was perfectly acceptable for me to run around campus, or do laps around the concrete ring around the jesus statue on godquad. i didn't have to be afraid of being alone at night. the weeping tree or the other side of the lake was a standard refuge. i had a refuge. the decisions i made were not ones that were going to affect my entire life. life was still completely open. relationships were still unformed and fluid. friends could be (and for me, were) so much more important than my work. i understood my role in my friends lives, and i think they understood theirs in mine. i didn't have to worry, yet, about them being taken away from me. by distance, by others, by anything. i could still make all those stupid freshman mistakes and, more importantly, have time to fix them.

now, so i don't sound completely negative, starting to enter the grownup world isn't all bad. after all, i do have a cat now. and a fireplace in my apartment. and some very exciting intellectual work that i get to do. but i am afraid of losing (or being made to lose) the personal focus that currently motivates so many of my actions. i am afraid that my friends will be taken away from me. even worse, i am afraid that they will not miss me when they're gone.

i will miss them terribly.

food coma...

just got home from indian food. am fighting a food coma that is fast threatening to overwhelm me. must stay awake. i still need to read for the schopenhauer group tomorrow. and i prolly ought to go over my greek too. but i just want to sleep....

sigh. i should know better than to eat indian food when i've got things to do. oh well. it was yummy enough (as always) to be well worth the procrastination.

so, now i'm sitting in the chair trying to ignore the fact that e.r. is on the tv next to me. most times, ok all the times, i get too grossed out to be able to watch it. i'm a much bigger fan of scrubs. much less grossness in that one. sadly, i really don't think i have anything to say tonight. i'm trying hard to get back in the habit of blogging, but almost nothing has happened this week and i have no stories to tell. i've been going to school, but aside from school stuff and seeing people at school, i've done nothing. just been sitting around.

one semi-funny story. when i got to the indian place, amanda was already there so i just walked up to the table and sat down. i'm there for a couple seconds and a waitress comes up and says "what would you like to drink, danielle?" to which i replied "how do you know my name?!" apparently, she's one of my students in my critical reasoning class. smalll world. or town.

soren has come back to snuggle me. he is the best little man. he may not always be outwardly affectionate, but i don't think even a dog could beat him on faithfulness. any time i need him, he always comes to sit with me and give me hugs. at least now i know i won't get lonely in k-zoo anymore.

home sweet home

after a lengthy absence, i am finally back! strangely enough, it's nice to be back in k-zoo - my own place, my own futon, my own insane kitty. the past couple of day have been good. i got back on monday, spent the whole day running errands and showing off my car, and picked up soren. when i first held him he spent at least 20 seconds intensely sniffing my nose, but then he basically ignored me until last night when he finally decided to purr and lie down on my face, so, i think we're friends again. =)

classes started yesterday. my (teaching) classes were incredibly short. i gave them their syllabus, had them introduce themselves, and we were gone. twenty minutes for each class. hopefully the change of subject (i teach critical reasoning now instead of practical ethics) will help me dislike teaching less. let us all hope so. you don't want to see all my posts become angry and bitter, now do you?

anyway, now that i am home from break, i have to tell you the story i promised. so, here's my saab story. =)

the time: a couple days before new year's.
the setting: somewhere on manchester road.

my mom and i had left the house to mail off the last of joey's grad apps. on our way out she asked me if i wanted to go and look at cars. i replied 'sure,' all the while not believing that anything would come of it (cf my resignation of a few posts ago). as we drove down manchester road, i thought my resignation well founded. mom insisted on cruising through the used car lots, but refused to actually leave the confines of her car to look at a single vehicle. so i was stuck with the lovely task of occasionally jumping out of the volvo to look at window stickers. sounds thrilling, right?

well anyway, mom decides that even though she has decided we ought to be economical we're gonna go to the volvo dealership, so off we go. as we pull up, salesguy tom comes running out, says he has a car that is just perfect for me, and runs off to find it. a long wait later he pulls up in this:


after only 3 seconds in the car, i was in love. of course. and despite my frequent attempts to throw the keys on table and walk away, i ended up leaving that place so worked up and flustered that i couldn't even drive home. the rest of the night was spent asking joey if the whole thing had been real. he kept assuring me that it was, but i think he got kinda tired of it after a while...

anyway, two days later we went and picked up my newest mode of transportation (and let me tell you, this little one is a serious upgrade from bessie). just look at how happy i was (and what a silly face joey was making):



and now, nothing remains but to name it. this is where y'all come in. there are two names on the table. 1) Argos - a Greek name. also the name of Odysseus's dog in the Odyssey. he is the epitome of doggy faithfulness. and, in keeping with the car's (somewhat) swedish heritage 2) Freya (if its a girl) or Freyr (if its a boy). Freya is a norse goddess of fertility, love, war, and a few other things. Freyr is her brother, and is a god of fertility.

anyway, so far i've got a couple of votes on each side. so cast your vote soon. i can't really handle driving a car without a name.

hiatus

i do have a story that needs telling right now, but unfortunately i require pictures in order to properly tell this story. since i am living with the slowest internet connection ever, this is a bit of a problem. so, don't expect any (real) posts from me until i get back to k-zoo and my wonderful world of stolen internet (prolly sunday or monday). for now, i just want to let you know that i do have a beautiful story to tell, and that it will be brought to you by the letter "s."

until next time.