The Frank Funny Farm

yeesh, you're so demanding. and no my family did not eat us. ok, speedy holiday recap: the friday before christmas we went to the annual white elephant/dirty santa/whatever else you may call it party with our friends, which was also a wine & cheese yumfest. twas fun, we took a giant cocktail shaker that dan ended up with, and a huge stuffed pink unicorn with a sparkly silver horn and purple mane and tale. poor heath, the unfortunate victim, er recipient of our horrible gitft from last year (a spectacular piece of "art" we found at kroger featuring a lovely 3-D tree that looked like poop) got it, but eventually keith took pity on him and stole it for sophia, who apparently loves it. we got this game thingy with $15 inside and some dust mop slippers that we later stuffed in my dad's stocking. and heath brought the poop art back as his gift this year. buy now i'm sure chuck has burned it. so anyway, we left earlyish because we were leaving saturday morning to drive forever to the parentses house and we had not yet packed.

sunday night we went to the "candlelight communion" service with my parents, which was - and i can't emphasize this point enough - THE WORST Christmas service EVER. keys and pitches had no place, singing skills were clearly foreign, and oh my, i must not forget the stellar french horn. it was so very hard for us not to bust out laughing on several occasions. i know you're reading this and thinking i sound mean and horrible and am going to hell, but no - no, no, no. okay, so i might be going to hell, but seriously, words cannot express to you the horrors.

movin on. the rest of the week we cooked and cleaned and stuff because my dad's family came to my parents' house Christmas day. ben & i took out our inner 5-year-olds and convinced mama and daddy to open presents on monday night, which ended in the sterotypical boys-playing-with-their toys in the midst of boxes and wrapping paper. ma sent ben & i money to shop for each other, so he got a couple of old video cameras n stuff i found on ebay, and we got my dad an angle grinder and a cordless screwdriver. they were very cute.

so christmas day was fun and food-filled and good lord do i not need to eat sugar for the rest of my life. we'd find ourselves hungry around 10 pm, willing to give a limb for something salty and finding nothing but sugar in the kitchen. oh look, a cookie...

the day after Christmas is mom's birthday and she wanted to go to this giant seafood buffet place that has all sorts of seafoody stuff, then to see a movie. she & my dad went to see marley & me, ben and i to see the spirit, which was kind of a letdown. we also made mom a deeelightful birthday cake, something called surprise carrot cake. it's a carrot cake recipe, but half the batter goes in a bundt pan, then a tasty cream cheese, sugar, and egg mix goes in, then the rest of the batter. then you cook it and wait for it to cool and eat at least two pieces cuz it's YUM. also, a word of advice: if someone's birthday cake is dusted with powdered sugar, it's best not to hold the cake whilst the candles are blown out, especially if you are wearing a just-washed dark-colored shirt.

saturday we had my mom's family's christmas at my aunt's apartment in greenville, minus my (other) aunt and her two kids. many more cookies were acquired. then sunday (yesterday) we embarked on our return trip to nashville, since we both had to work today. we got about an hour and a half down the road then got to sit on the interstate with the car off for 45 minutes while a wreck was cleared. argh. we got moving again and had almost made it halfway when ben decided i should drive so he could sleep in the passenger seat, not the driver's. he pulled off at an exit he thought had a gas station or somewhere i could pee, but it didn't. as we got off the interstate and turned around to get back on, the car explained to us somewhat violently that it didn't like shifting gears. hmm. we go to the next exit or so which has plenty of stopping options and again, as we're slowing down the car is really not wanting to shift. it gets more and more violent and the check engine light pops on. oh goody. we pull into a gas station, and learn there's no transmission fluid in the car, which is odd, since it wasn't leaking and we had it checked out the week before we left. we have roadside assistance through our insurance, so we called them to get us a tow truck. at 4:30 on a sunday, we figured we wouldn't find anything open. but, in proof that God doesn't completely hate us, the car crapped out in hickory, where my best good friend since i was 9 or something lives. i called her to ask where to have the car taken and see if we could perhaps stay with her and also see how long it would be before she was back in town, as she was driving back from good ol' gates county, too. she informs us we're about 5 minutes from her house. so after about an hour or so, the tow truck comes and takes us to the garage, through erin i learn we can walk to a panera, so there we go and sit for another hour until erin & sister sara come to claim us, those sweet, beautiful, delightful ladies. then they took us to the local brewery where we had glorious beers and some fish n chips. this morning we learned that we need a whole new transmission and the garage is towing our car to the honda dealer. luckily the transmissions in 2001 accords have been problematic so they extended the warranty and we don't have to pay for it. there's also a broken and a cracked motor mount which we will have to pay for, but since they have to pull all that stuff out to replace the transmission, the labor won't be quite as astronomical. anyway, we've had a nice lazy day with the erin and ate some fan-freaking-tastic thai food and shall hopefully be headed back to nashville sometime tomorrow afternoon. one our brief "driving tour" of the big city of hickory today, i spotted our lunch place for tomorrow: this lil organic sammich and coffee shop erin hears is great but hasn't been too. we figured that buying her lunches is the best way we can pay our hotel bill here. so anyway, that is the reader's digest version of the last week. real life and probably blogging to resume sort of soon.

Tags: christmas, erin is neato, stupid car, the fam

dr. dept. chair: so get me up to speed here, and well, uh, what's the goal of our meeting today?

me: graduation

dr. dc: haha, yes we-

me: and i need to understand what happened with the independent study thing, because i can't. i don't feel like i'm getting any help. quite the opposite, in fact.

dr. dc: right well, how far along in the program are you?

me: i need two more classes

dr. dc: ok, so 24 hours, what have you taken?

me: the required ones: practical literary criticism, brit lit 1 & 2, the 20th century readings class now. and um, nature writing, writing & social issues, creative writing, the life writing now... is that it? yeah.

dr. dc: ok. so you are willing to take the writing class next semester?

me: i'm willing if that's not the only thing i'm taking. reading the description doesnt' enthrall me, and as it is writing and identity and there's bound to be overlap with the life writing class i'm in now. i dont really want to come take just that.

dr. dc: (frowning in that thinking sort of way) the idea of the non-thesis track was to present a broader education for someone who either has no interest in writing a thesis at all or is more interested on doing that kind of writing on the doctoral level. we've never had anyone come in and take all writing classes. I'm really interested to see how your Graduate Exam* turns out.

me: yeah, i wanted to study writing. i'm non-thesis is partly because i went here for undergrad and was in the honors program, so i have written one - it was terrible, but still - but mostly because i wasn't an english major in undergrad, so i wanted to take the two extra classes. gotta love irony.

dr. dc: right. so would it be horrible to take writing class in the spring and then take the creative writing dr. hutchins in the summer? you can take up to six hours of that.

me: (interior monologue: ug! ug ug. ug. why is this so hard? you all have doctorates for crying out loud!) ok. i'm not crazy about the idea of dragging out graduation for months to have my last two classes be one i've taken and one that is eh. especially when i was pretty excited about the prospect of that independent study class. the three of us came up with a class, and had a professor willing to teach it as long as she got paid.

dr. dc: well, there are two reasons we really don't like those and why i usually deny them. one, the teachers don't really get paid, it's not much at all, and a few years ago they had really gotten out of hand, almost every professor had two or three. plus we like to fill classes, and we like to think students learn better from a class environment. basically, there are reasons from a long time ago that have nothing to do with you.

me: exactly. and i'm a nerd, i like going to class, but with the three of us doing it together, we can still have that a little.

dr. dc: (frowning thoughtfully again) what was the class going to be?

me: i'm not 100% sure what dr.c was going to make it, other than something to do with children's lit, folktales and fairy tales, which are things i'm really interested in. when i was first thinking about coming here, i was really excited to learn that there was a graduate class in that kind of stuff, but apparently it's on quite a long cycle and i've missed it. so i was really excited and hopeful about the possibility of still getting to take it. you took my carrot.

dr. dc: well, that does make some difference. i think there are more than enough extenuating circumstances, and you've taken away every good reason i have to say no

me: do you have any mediocre ones, i'll fix those too

dr. dc: (laughing) no, those usually come later. ok, well, really thank you for um, not going away on this, because this is something we were obviously not prepared for with the non-thesis track and certainly need to do some thinking about. i'll need to work this out with dr. head-of-grad-english and decide whether it will be just the three of you or if we'll make it a class open to more students. we'll have to look at dr. c's schedule. but there's no reason something can't work out.

me: really? thank you so much. i guess someone will let me know in time to register?

dr. dc: yeah, there's always registration in january. is there any reason you need to pre-register?

me: well, you have to be pre-registered to apply for the department scholarships, but the deadline's passed, so not really.

dr. dc: well, go ahead and apply, i'll let them know. it's certainly not your fault that you weren't pre-registered.

me: thanks! and thanks again. happy holidays!

dr. dc: thank you. and you, too.

* instead of a thesis, the non-thesis track requires two extra classes and a graduate exam, composed by a commmittee based on everything i've written/the classes i've taken in grad school.

Tags: grad school, logic prevails, play-by-play, victory

hi. so i'm officially done with classes, now i just have these two finals to deal with. the 20th century lit one is going to eat me and the autobiography is still not exactly conceived. there's obviously not enough coffee in me to get me past reading the first monster question on the lit final and just staring, probably with my mouth open, as if i expect the words to change and make it a bit more - oh what's the word - possible. since i suppose putting the question on the interwebs would be somehow illegal or somehting, i'll just tell you it's two questions, due monday at noon; the first question wishes me to essentially "chart a course" through 150 years of literature citing no less than 8 authors. there's a little more to it as well. i still haven't absorbed the second question, because i just keep reading the first one and asking it to answer itself. it's something about picking two or three writers that exemplify something, blah, blah, blah. great. we've only read about 400 different people this semester, should be a snap. really, i have that sort of cognitive power, i do.

nevermind my autobiography due the next day. no idea what to do with that. seriously, my life is not that interesting. you know this, you read this blog. and most of my "me" writing comes out in poetry, which is fine, except i haven't written anything in forever due to lack of time and a general exhaustion. bah. though i haven't sat down to try to write the thing, and i usually don't know much until i actually sit down to write something, so i'm not completely horrified by that. only slightly. but really the other one, the 50% of my grade one, is much more unsettling and due the day before, so it takes up the brain space i guess. though there was some discussion of a few of us getting together tomorrow or sometime to drink, um, discuss.

still have no idea whether i'll even be in school next semester or even ever again, but after three, count 'em, three emails trying to get the chair of the english dept. to set up a meeting time, he actually responded and i'm meeting him friday. though i half expect to get there and find the door locked. but hopefully he can provide me with some sort of acceptable solution that will result in graduation no later than august, and even that thought pisses me off. and he is CERTAINLY going to explain to me how 3 of us came up with a class, had a professor to teach us and were shot down. bah. anyway. no more of that for now. i'm still feeling like and (maybe just foolishly) hoping that he'll be reasonable somehow and everything can work out for me to take two classes that might actually be helpful to me and freaking graduate on time already.

so anyway. we finally got our christmas tree on sunday and started decorating it and the house. then monday night after i got home from class we put the ornaments on it and now our house is magically christmassy. yay! i even wrapped a present yesterday, but only because it's for ben and was too big to hide, so i had no choice really.ooh! and we actually have a wreath. for real. ever year we never buy one because i always get the bottom branches from the tree and say i'm going to make one. shockingly, that never happened. not once. so this year we sucked it up and bought one of the cheap grapvine ones from michaels and took this wire-and-red-bead garland thingy i had and wired it to it and now have the perfect wreath, probably for less than $10. score.

saturday we went and did a fair amount of christmas shopping stuff, the kind we couldn't do online, including stuff for the dogs. ben put the bags on a shelf in the closet in his office. thing is, he rarely closes the door and that evening i see hayley in there, sniffing the air, standing on her hind legs trying to see. i told ben and said to keep the door closed. he said something along the lines of "yeah, yeah, i'll try." great. what if the kids realize there's no santa claus? what then, benjamin?!? yeesh.

alright. time to make another pot of coffee and see if maybe i can read that second question. going. going. yep. here i go.

Tags: christmas decorating, christmas shopping, finals! ack!

i'm way too busy. and have lately been nothing but frustrated, pissed off and an assortment of other things at stupid Belmont, and at myself for going there again. that situation has not yet been resolved and is a topic for another time perhaps.

anyway, i'm feeling kinda excited a somewhat validated cuz at my internship today i was told i will be getting paid for news pieces! not much of course but still, i actually will officially get paid to write things! yay!

and now, byebye.

Tags: busy, school is ruining my life, validation, yay!