Eff.

Made it this whole way, had the most hellish day yesterday and never posted. I'm blaming Aous because he came over last night and stayed until 11 (is that right? something like that). I'm really bummed.

Good things: A friend who moved away last summer is here (which is why Aous was here). It's Friday.

Bad things: I missed yesterday (and want to cry). I am completely out of time. Even my weekend is booked (and with work) and I need to figure out how to get a massive group project, a 10 page paper and another 6 page paper done in the remaining weekend time.

I'm realizing I complain a lot about how busy I am on here, but I just want to cry sometimes and need a place to vent. It will be a lot better next semester when I actually have hours in the day to get all the work I need to do done.

TGIF!!!

Almost

I almost forgot to post today. You see, I've had a rather longer day than expected. It started at 7:30, when Peter was going out the door ("late" start today, I really can't wait until I have to wake up at 5 AM too). I finished a paper due today, then was at the clinic by 9:45, observing a little guy for a project. It was pretty awesome; he's a really cool little dude and I feel like we really bonded. Finished by 12 PM, had lunch and talked about project stuff until one (when I really should have been transcribing that hour, oh well, a girl has to eat). Class from 1-4, observed a stuttering session 4-5, class from 5-8, then transcribed 8-9. Peter picked me up, we made a frozen pizza, during which, he informed me that we were volunteered to make dessert for the coach's dinner tomorrow night. Awesome. So we made a pineapple upside down cake (after he discovered we have way too many canned pineapples and happened to have pineapple cake mix).

The last straw came at 10:30, when I was ready to assemble the cake. And I could not find any brown sugar. I swear to God I used it not a few weeks ago and there was still at least some left, but it was nowhere to be found. We never need to buy powdered sugar or chocolate chips ever again, but no brown sugar. So off I went into the cold night to stupid Safeway. Which was also out of milk. The cake is now in the oven and I'm so tired I could cry. Thank goodness I wrote the paper I have to turn in tomorrow during class today. Thank goodness for laptops and pointless lectures.

The end is near!

Of NaBloPoMo, at least. I will try to keep posting more regularly when all this is said and done, but frankly, days sort of blend together and without this pressure, I'll probably still only post once a week or less and think I'm posting every day.

We just finished The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Aside from realizing I am a huge Wes Anderson fan (not that I didn't already have my suspicions), the movie made me realize that a movie can be pretty much about anything (or nothing) as long as it's beautiful, has great cinematography, pretty colors, a good soundtrack and some quirky humor thrown in there. Seriously. That's pretty much all it takes fore me. That's why I tend to love certain movies, and why Little Miss Sunshine is probably my favorite movie of all time. It has all those qualities in spades.

A good color scheme helps. I loved The Life Aquatic's aqua and red combo, and Little Miss Sunshine had the gorgeous yellow thing going on. It really doesn't take much. So for Christmas, you can buy me any of the following DVDs:

Little Miss Sunshine (we bought this for my parents last year, and as a result, Peter keeps thinking we already own it)
Anything by Wes Anderson (The Life Aquatic seriously was the cutest physical DVD I've ever seen)
Lost in Translation
Other fun movies I would love but can't think of now.

Confusion in the football stadium

You know that song that plays at every sports game ever? CU (like other schools, probably) has its own words that we put in at various points of the song. After the chorus-thingy (where we say "hey" a bunch), we have a school-specific cheer. Problem is, there are about 18 billion versions of this. The official version they put on the jumbotron thing is "Buffaloes, buffaloes, go CU!" But everyone knows that chanting "buffaloes" is lame, even when we have a real live one who is awesome. So there are variations on the theme.

My personal favorite is "Fuck 'em up, fuck 'em up, go CU!" simply because it gives you the chance to let out all that pent up anger and hostility we have in modern society without calling the other team bad names (it does wish them harm, true, but it's in a song! How mean could we be?). Other people, hearing the crowd chanting both of these simultaneously, have come away thinking people were saying "Buck 'em off, buck 'em off" (since we ARE buffaloes, it makes some kind of sense). I just saw a comment on a story in our local paper that used "Rough 'em up, rough 'em up," which seems like a quaint, innocent version of today's student favorite.

Whatever you say, say it loud, because we're going to a bowl game, baby!

Schedules

Got my schedule for next semester. Even though I'm getting 4 new clinic assignments (up to 6), without my fourth job, I have a lot more time. Plus, I'm only taking 11 credits instead of 15 (yay!).

My schedule this week:


Next semester:
Yeah, I know that those spaces will fill up and that this week has real life in there, while next semester is still just a lovely dream of unfilled time that can actually be used to do homework and work. Maybe even dishes and laundry and other fun things. Sleep, even?

PS Now that I have discovered how to take screenshots in Leopard, I fear you will be faced with ever more of these. Speaking of which:

Please note the score. We had a blue moon last night and this feat shall not be repeated.

Pass it on

I've had the link to this site starred and marked "unread" for quite some time in my Google Reader, fully intending t send it along to my linguist friends. And I keep forgetting to send it. So I'm posting it here, for them and for anyone else who likes to laugh. A lot. One of the funniest things I've read in quite some time:

So You Want to Learn Japanese

Free Rice Domination

Back to Reality

Vacation's over; no more pretending that we can while away days without having appointments or schedules or deadlines or work. It was really nice while it lasted. I cannot wait until Christmas break. I don't think I've ever looked forward to a vacation more than this. I'm burnt out with school and work and am so very excited for an actual break.

Before we left, Peter and I worked like mad to clean the apartment, wash all the dishes, do all the laundry and generally tidy up. Though some things didn't get done (our table still has mini-avalanches any time you touch anything on it), it was incredible to come home to a clean apartment. It didn't stink, the floors were sparkling (I finally figured out how to use the omop properly and it's amazing), there was only a teeny pile of laundry, and you could actually see the floor. Awesome. I should really clean more often. But how would it ever stay clean if we didn't leave for a week?

In Nevada Airports

Children under 18 are not allowed in gaming areas of casinos, for very good reasons. Those reasons are being graphically illustrated to me as I sit in the airport, where it is much harder to keep children from the slot machines and other "toys." Three children under the age of seven are watching their father play a blinking, signing slot machine from across the walkway, far enough from him to really be illegally close, but still within earshot. They are enchanted. They track his wins and losses excitedly, calling out "You almost had it!" and "Ooh!" They are thrilled. He his their hero playing the fascinating money machine. They look like a very nice family, but the gleam in the oldest's eye makes me worry. He is too excited, too invested in the game. I can easily imagine him growing up and seeking that thrill he remembers from when he was a boy, forever chasing the glamor that only appears in the eyes of children waiting in a tiny airport, watching their hero playing the magical money machine.

Posting panic

OMG, so my laptop is still on Colorado time (an hour behind), so when I checked the date, it said it was the 24th, and Blogger said my last post was the 22nd, meaning I thought I had missed a day. I was super sad thinking that I had made it this far, only to be outwitted by a turkey-OD, but when Blogger posted, I saw that I actually *didn't* miss a day! My laptop is just on warp speed. Phew!

Posting for posting's sake

Just made it back from a fun party, ready for bed. We go home tomorrow. Thanksgiving was great, I'll never be hungry again. My cousin had to put her beloved dog of 14 years down today, and since we sort of knew it was coming, I got some great ones of him and her together this morning. I'll try to post them later when I get them uploaded. I also got to see my friend Alicia (yay!), so that was wonderful. We went shopping for funfetti cake stuff. It rocked. Hope everyone had a great turkey day!

Thanks to give

Since I'm not sure if the place we are going to eat (and see family) has la Internet, I'll post now. I was going to post about the pretty new coat I found yesterday for an unbelievable price, but I realized that I should probably be a little more respectful of the day and all the good things it represents (aside from parades, football, gluttony, and triptophan-induced naps).

I'm thankful that we got to see our families and spend some wonderful time with them.

I'm thankful that my brother and I get along so much better than we did ten years ago (or even 5). He's a really awesome person now and I'm thankful I get to hang out with him and laugh my ass off. (Great thing is, I know he reads this, so I don't actually have to say this in person. Ahh, technology).

I'm thankful that my parents have dealt with their empty nest quite well and are now having a wonderful time with their world travels and I hope they can continue them in the future.

I'm very thankful for my wonderful husband and everything he does. I'm also incredibly thankful that he's found a career that he loves and has a great future ahead of him.

I'm thankful for all the great people in my life, wherever they are, and for the impact each one has had on my life.

I'm also thankful that I don't have to eat again for another 5 hours. I'm still full from yesterday.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Have a safe and restful time, and try not to put yourself into a total food coma.

Stuffed

It's the day before Thanksgiving and I'm so full I can hardly think about eating turkey dinner tomorrow. We had all-you can eat sushi for lunch at about 3 PM (a Reno-only treat), then an incredible filet mignon dinner at Charlie Morton Steakhouse, complete with chocolate-peanut butter bar dessert, only 3 hours later. My stomach hurts so bad, but what a delicious and completely Reno experience.

When Movies Go Bad

I'm pretty picky about my Netflix queue, rarely picking movies below 4 stars. As a result, I usually don't watch many movies I don't like. However, my in-laws are DVD collectors, so they have tons of movies that I wouldn't necessarily put on my queue, but might want to see anyway. Sometimes, the results just make me glad I didn't waste Netflix time on them (why it's different, I don't know. But it is). Anyway, we watched the new version of King Arthur last night and are watching Spider-Man 3 now. Here are my reviews:

King Arthur: "Gritty realism"="dirty." Lots of fighting. Kiera Knightly looks suprisingly god painted blue.

Spider-Man 3- Emo-Spidey is (unintentionally) hilarious. Too man bad guys. Lame-o. And the movie's not even done yet. EDITED TO ADD: Oh yeah, and I hate Kirsten Dunst even more. It has now passed from mild irritation to outright hostility. Blech.

What I did on my Thanksgiving Break, or, why I'l never work in Las Vegas schools

Speech language pathologists in Las Vegas schools (according to my mother-in-law, who has been teaching here for some 20-odd years):

Have caseloads of upwards of 85 children (I think 50 is the max recommended by our governing bod, ASHA).

Only see speech kids, not language kids.

Don't see kids who lisp until they are 8, when it might affect their schooling.

Have to live in Las Vegas.

Speech Acts in the News

For those non-linguists out there, speech acts (or more specifically, illocutionary acts) are when the mere act of a pronouncement causes something to happen. The classic example is when a minister says "I pronounce you husband and wife" and this causes it to be so. The deal with these things is that there are rules. The right person has to say the right thing in the right way at the right time in order for the "act" to be done. I can't say "I now pronounce you husband and wife" to two friends at the mall and have it mean anything because I'm not a qualified person, it wouldn't be an appropriate time and place and my two friends may not want to ever be such a thing as husband and wife.

The problems with understanding these niceties of illocutionary acts became glaringly obvious in an article today in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Jane Ann Morrison wrote in a commentary column that Nevada Supreme Court Justice (I think) Nancy Saitta said "because her students called her 'professor,' she believed she was an associate professor at UNLV, a job that is a tenured position and usually takes six or seven years to obtain." Sweet! If your students call you "professor," or "doctor," or "el presidente," you can just skip all that nonsense of extra schooling, the tedious application process.

I think this will be good news for many of my friends who are TAs and/or instructors themselves! Heck, even Peter's high school students have called him "Dr." on occasion. Thank goodness we now won't have to pay for 4 years of higher education for him!

When Las Vegas IS home

Sitting in the airport, waiting for our flight to Vegas, Peter leans over and says, "I forget. We're just going home, but everyone else is going to Vegas." We're anticipating family, friends and food; our co-passengers are anticipating jackpots, shows and food. Very different perceptions, different experiences and different expectations of the same city. I'm happy for these people with their excitement for the experience, but I've flown on enough flights in and out of Vegas to know that the flights going in are always better.

Home vs. "home"

Vacation. Wow, this is great. Last night, I was actually *bored*. We had watched all our Netflix movies (Freaks and Geeks), I had tootled around on the Internet to a sufficient degree, and I didn't have any really pressing homework. So I did dishes.

We are going home to both our families tomorrow, and we couldn't be more excited. It's been way too long since we've seen our family and I miss everybody.

I was thinking about one thing that is easy as pie here that if we want to do it either in Vegas or in Reno, will be much more of a hassle: shopping. There are a bunch of sales going on right now, and I'm in the market for a new coat, but I don't have time to make it to the stores before we leave. However, if I want to go shopping here, I can either literally walk two blocks to a mall, or take an easy ten minute drive up to an incredibly nice mall with every store you could ever want (with plenty of parking).

In Nevada, shopping is concentrated in certain areas, which are near to no one. Every one of the city's half-million plus residents (more in Vegas) has to go to one of these areas in order to do any decent shopping at all, and so you must battle traffic, horrid parking lots and a bajillion people just to get something. It makes me very appreciative of our shopping situation here.

Another contrast between Reno (and probably Vegas too ) and Colorado. A giant new store just opened in Reno (Cabela's) and because this store was so hotly anticipated, some VIPs got to shop early. The VIPs included not only the governor, but also city council members. If Boulder city council members ever got treated so well, I'm sure there would be an instantaneous outcry form the populace and there would probably be some recall-age. In fact, I don't think city council members would even accept such an invitation because of the implications of cronyism and all that rot that they know would immediately come up. Not that the same actions in Reno don't spur the same feelings in citizens (since we all do know that pretty much all the politicians will do *anything* for the beloved business community), but people in Reno are too busy working and raising families and paying bills to do anything about their feelings. So the cronyism continues.

Not saying one is better or worse, but living in a different place can sure give you better perspective on home.

Quote of the Night

From Freaks and Geeks:

"Everybody's a Democrat until they get a little money. Then they come to their senses."

Hi-larious. Thankfully, we have no money.

Midnight visitors

"Hey, come look!"

Peering out the window into the play ground, clotheslines and lawn below. Mostly dark, a few pools of light under the streetlights.

Our resident family of deer came for a visit. Daddy has a nice big rack, and he usually has three females, though tonight there were only two. At one point, there was a grown baby, but maybe she's off on her own now.

And then we went to sleep.

The end.