Happy Thanksgiving world!

Am spending the day with Kyle's extended family...he and I contributed/are contributing to the feast with box brownies, crescent rolls, and green bean casserole. And we're decorating a tree this afternoon, which will be fun. I'm still more than a little homesick, especially because I'm missing the annual trek to Uncle Tom's house and the fun we have there, but I have awesome future in-laws and so it should be fun anyway. And if it's not, Kyle and I are taking my car anyway

I finished Christmas shopping for Texas people yesterday and now just have to finish for my family and my girls. Which...well, that's being postponed until I'm home and not spending money on groceries and stuff.

Anyway. Happy Thanksgiving! Take a moment today to look at things through a veil of grace and not through one of blame, because it makes the world much better! :)

Dotty Aro makes bad movies better.

The past couple of weeks have been stressful. Well, no, let me rephrase. The entire semester has been stressful; the past couple of weeks have made that stress feel exceptionally heavier. Right before my birthday, I had a manual due for my Advanced Tech. Comm. class, and the night before it was due, the file became corrupted on the school's computer system and nobody could open it. This was several weeks' of writing and several weeks' of formatting, gone.

Or at least so it seemed. Kyle is a miracle walking because he somehow managed to recover all of the formatting and ultimately, I got a 95 on the manual.

I've been making straight-As, which is something I haven't done since freshman year of college, and it's hard work, but it's amazing. I feel more capable right now than I have in a very long time, and having Kyle nearby is just so bracing and wonderful. I love him so very much.

We spend our weekends together, and we've yet to get sick of each other. It's kind of amazing...there's this real completeness when we're together, and it never gets old. I'm sure we'll get sick of each other soon enough, but I'm glad that getting sick of each other is taking its dear sweet time in getting here.

We've been attending a Foursquare Church in Southlake (about fifteen minutes from Kyle's house), and Kyle and I are really attached to it already. The pastor and his wife are marvellous and we've already asked them to officiate the wedding and do our premarital counselling (even though we don't have a date or budget set yet). All-in-all, life is busy, but good.

And also...New Moon...well, the best thing Kyle and I took away from it was (a) that I really like mustard and (b) how to perfect the Edward-and-Bella soulful stare. It's all for the lulz.

So I am now 26 and I have an amusing story to tell.

Most of the day yesterday, I was processing the fact that in four years, I'll be thirty. I'm not afraid of it or really flipping out because age is just a number, but I do think it's really surreal...like everything that's been happening in my life lately. It's surreal that I'm not just daydreaming about planning my wedding, and it's surreal to know that within probably the next 3-4 years, I'll be a mother (Kyle and I have, in fact, planned that far in advance). And it's surreal to know that I am closer to 30 than I am to 20, because up until this point, 30 was something for other people, ESPECIALLY mothers and teachers, to quote Juno. Me being 30 is just like...surreal.

Anyway.

So I've been dealing with this a bit better than the stereotypical way, largely (I think) because I know I'll have all of the traditional worries taken care of well before November 5, 2013 (aside: if the world really DOES end in December 2012, 30 will never be a worry for me at all!...but it's not going to, but it's hilarious to think about). Oddly, though, my body is not coping nearly as well.

Let me explain.

This morning, in between Kyle waking up at 8:00 and me getting up at 9:30, I had a dream. In this dream, Kyle found out that he was royalty, to be crowned king of some random country. Of course, we were both thrilled. His grandparents were there, crying, and I was crying and it was terribly happy. After the coronation, we explored our new royal digs and found that we got the most cable channels EVAR (including one channel that was 24/7 Marlon Wayans doing stupid things). We were settling down for an evening in, when all of a sudden, Kyle's major domo showed up and said (exact quote), "You'd best get that bitch (me) in pup soon. You need an heir, and if she can't give you one, you need to get rid of her."

Odd dream, but significantly less odd when you consider that when I woke up, my period had started. Yes, it's true. Allie McBeal had a dancing baby. And I have my ovaries featuring in my dreams as a major domo.

I've been giggling about it all morning.

If anyone has ten seconds to read, could you give me some feedback on this? It's the introduction to my Adv. Tech. Comm. Manual on writing sonnets, villanelles, and sestinas. I need to know if it communicates why the reader should care, if it would convince anyone to read further (heh, like anyone reads the introductions anyway), etc. It's a rough draft, so it's far from perfect, but I'm definitely looking for some feedback.

( Why you should write poetry with forms instead of just sticking to free verse )

I feel like crap on a stick, but I need to have a rough draft done tomorrow. Sigh.

I would like to state, categorically and for the record, that I do not enjoy editing. I've been told by those who are farther along in the program than I am that disliking editing translates to liking style and design. This, I suppose, is a good thing.

But right now...I am so stressed about editing class that it's not even funny. Sigh.

This morning's was a doozy.

I dreamed that I went straight from Kyle's house to UNT for classes. It was only once I arrived that I realized I wasn't wearing a shirt (or bra or deoderant) so I had to stop in the UNT school store to pick one up (a shirt, that is, and deoderant. They don't sell bras in the UNT store). After doing that, I realized that the brownies I'd baked for a class project last night were still sitting in the Davidenkos' kitchen. Brownie-less, I headed to class, only instead of it being my Principles class (for which I'd baked the brownies), it was my Editing class (which has been making me panic lately because I didn't do as well on the copyediting test as I'd hoped to do, thereby taking my grade for the class from a 98 to an 87). When I got there, everyone was taking out some assignment that was really important...and I didn't have it. I looked through my notebook, but it was nowhere to be found. And all the while, the theme music from Tail Spin was playing in the background.

( Handy dandy dream dictionary, go! )

Graduate school is ever so much crazier than I anticipated.

I don't know why I thought it would be calm or easy or whatever. Possibly/probably because when I started doing my M.Ed. back in 2006, I was somehow able to do those classes just fine and not worry about them, but the difference is that the M.Ed. classes met on a Friday/Saturday schedule on alternating weeks, so I had extra time to get things done. What's more, the M.Ed. stuff was a LOT less labor-intensive. It was a lot more reading and doing things that could be done in one night, not projects that spanned the entire semester (of which I have three currently...I know, crai moar, welcome to grad school).

It's weird because I haven't felt this driven with regards to homework and schoolwork since Oxford, and that was also a whole different ballgame. In Oxford, I was working this hard just to stay afloat, since I'd basically been thrust into graduate-level philosophy studies with nothing but freshman year Philosophy 101 (which I slept through because it was at 8 a.m. ...of course, I still got an A, easily, which tells you a lot about where I did my undergrad work). This is entirely different. I know full well that I could probably scrape by with B's if I relaxed a little and didn't put in as much effort as I am, but I don't want B's. I want a 4.0 average. I want the school to rain down scholarships upon me (because, let's face it, I could use some scholarships). I want my future practicum/employer to look at me and say, "she's someone I want to keep, not just for the duration of her summer practicum, but until she's ready to leave."

For the first time since I was in high school, I feel like how I do academically will have an impact on the future that I want for myself, which is odd to admit. For the first couple of years of college, I was basically there for the Mrs. degree...I was studying something I enjoyed because I figured, stupidly, that I would meet and marry Mr. Right straight out of college and start popping out babies nine months after the wedding bells rang, and everything would be all fine and dandy.

Yes. This is a monumentally stupid mindset to have, and I still wish I could go back in time and shake myself for it. And I could go on a whole tirade about Christian culture, expectations for women, and a person's worth being determined predominantly by whether or not she has a ring on her finger and a bun in the oven (even if it's not stated outright, it's an attitude that is an undercurrent in almost every Christian environment I've ever encountered, which makes it REALLY FRUSTRATING to be a young Christian woman with screaming ovaries facing the extreme lack of what the church deems to be "suitable Christian men"...but I'm getting sidetracked) BUT EXCEPT FOR THAT PARENTHESES I WILL NOT. It hit me around junior year that Mr. Right was probably not going to marry me and reproduce with me within a year of graduation, but I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, so I just finished the degree and started floundering.

Now that I've actually decided to start swimming, it is absolutely the most stressful thing I have ever done, and I adore it.

I'm not even kidding. I adore this kind of stress, though I'll grant that there are some things that make me wish I was back working at AMCG and having more free time and free brain space...like that I can't do NaNo this year, that my RP and WoW time are facing the kind of cutbacks that would make the recession cry, that the words "tuition" and "student loans" cause me to feel like my entire midsection is being consumed by ulcers. But honestly, it's kind of like packing for a great vacation or planning a wedding: I know that all of the stress I'm facing right now is going to have an awesome pay-off, and if I play my cards right, I'll be seeing that pay-off in August of 2011, almost exactly ten years after I started at ENC.

And yes. I have a degree plan. It is awesome...or at least it will be, if I can, you know, get the money to pay for it -__-"

Life is crazy.

I spontaneously (sort of) bought my wedding gown this weekend while I was up in Massachusetts because it's being discontinued soon.

Graduate school is actively trying to give me a nervous breakdown. I'm not even kidding.

But it's good. I feel like I'm actually doing something for the first time since I lost my job. I just wish that there were more hours in the day and more days in the week. Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

Kyle:
when are you comin in [to visit him for the weekend]?

Abby:
Sometime tomorrow evening
I'll have to see if I can stop by the library for a bit and do some research

Kyle:
alright, can you take me to school hunny bunches?

Abby:
Because my proposal is due Monday
On Friday? If you wanted, you could take my car
Like, just drive it
Just as long as you don't get pulled over

Kyle:
yeah but then the hunny bunches wouldn't have been half as funny

Abby:
LOL
I keep wanting to call you that
Honey bunches
And then it gets translated, in my brain, to honey bunches of oast
*oats

Kyle:
lol

Abby:
So I wonder why I don't just call you Rice Chex and get it over with ;)

Kyle:
same

Abby:
hehehe We're such dorks
I love us

Kyle:
I love us too

First things first!



This is the one ring! It was appraised this past week at $750, which means that no matter how you slice it, Kyle and I got a great deal. We're talking about 90% off, all things considered (since the $750 wouldn't have included tax, and the price of the ring without tax was $79), and Kyle and I are both entirely thrilled because even though we know the Jewelry Exchange had to know the value of the ring, we still feel like we kind of ripped them off, which in this case was good because they were nasty people there.

La vida et busy. Classes are awesome and somewhat intimidating. No job yet, no money yet, but we have set a date for our wedding, that date being January 22, 2012 (yes, that is a long time from now, but oh well). And I had a lot more rambly stuff to write, but I'm hungry. :(

Thus far, the reading for my Principles of Technical Communication class feels very much like I'm back in Oxford, reading Plato and Aristotle and saying "NNNNGH I HATE YOUUUUUU!!!" to Ancient Greece. I don't really entirely dislike the Sophists...quite the contrary, I entirely see their purpose in a discussion about the fundamentals of technical communication, particularly with regard to audience considerations in any piece of writing. I have to question, however, the point of spending ~80 pages of reading talking about the Sophists and saying the same thing over and over again.

Plato was diametrically opposed to Sophists, and I've decided that I am too, if only because I have to read so much about them (and the fact that they were relativists, believing that truth depended on circumstances and background. As I'm an absolutist, it would never work out between us, Gorgias, I'm so sorry. Plato's an absolutist like I am, you see...we're simply meant to be). I got excited for half a second when I figured out why we're learning about them; now that I know we have to read anothr sprillion pages about them, I am no longer excited. I am tired. Why can't we just move onto Plato's Ion already? Sigh.

Updating lately has been a weird feast-or-famine type of thing. It's not like it was a couple of months ago, when I was not updating because I had nothing to say. It's more like there's so much going on that I haven't really had the time (and/or willpower) to sit down and get it all down on paper/screen so that it makes sense and is focused in one place. Really, I've been having trouble with updating anything lately: forums, Facebook, anything that involves me sitting down and writing out my thoughts in any way. With all of that said, I hope that you'll forgive me for these thoughts being brief and focused on a few things:

1. Classes: Love them so far. I'm taking Advanced Technical Writing, Technical Editing and Principles of Technical Communication, so it's all very technical, really. I can't decide which one I like best, but I'm really happy to be back in school, regardless. It's just good to be doing something where success or failure isn't entirely dependent on how another human being feels about me, regardless of how well I do my job. It's also not entirely dependent on the economy, which is nice. I can attend school for the next two years (or more) regardless of what the economy does, and that makes me happy.

2. Finances: Are failtastic. I have to go to the financial aide office on Tuesday because a job that I was working on getting fell through, so I need more money in loans to pay for my rent and car payments. It's frustrating, but there's no way I can survive on what they've given me so far, and I'm not sure where else to go for money. The jobs just aren't there, and it's really frustrating that even when I'm going to school, even when I've moved nearly 2000 miles from home, there's still no work available.

3. I'm engaged! - We got my engagement ring today. Kyle paid $85 for it. It's already been appraised (preliminarily) at more than $800. Needless to say, we're both feeling pretty awesome about that, and it's a gorgeous ring. A half carat deep blue tanzanite in the center of a swooping band with two diamonds on either side. I'll have proper pictures on Facebook tomorrow.

I...can't really think of a lot more to write about at the moment. So...I told you that would be short :P

I was already going to call facilities tomorrow to get the cable company to come out here and replace our box, but I have to call them for another issue as well.

Randomly, our A/C has putz'd out.

Fantastic.

Things Abby Needs to Do Today

- get short term loan to pay for tuition until actual loans kick in. Why actual loans have not yet kicked in, since they are obviously sitting there waiting to kick in, I don't really know. Yay?

- call unemployment and switch address from old home address in Massachusetts to new home address in Massachusetts. Ignore that am not actually going to see said home until October 1.

- get parking permit for UNT.

- get student ID for UNT.

- graduate student orientation at UNT from 4-6 p.m. Must get all of the above done by then.

- pick up laptop from Best Buy. Possibly light Best Buy on fire if laptop doesn't function as it should (ie. get past "Configuring Updates 3 of 3: 0% complete" before shutting down automatically like a little bitch).

- shower (this is first priority).

Life will be so much easier once these freaking loans kick in, I'm telling you. Sigh.

I'm all registered for classes, hallelujah. This whole getting started thing is probably going to be the most difficult part of the entire process, since it involves getting the student loans and such established and establishing myself as a student, but once that's all taken care of, I should be good to go for the next two years. It's just the getting there that's the problem, but I think it will all work out just fine.

My schedule is completely on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is awesome, and all after 2 p.m. since I requested it for work purposes, so my schedule will look something like this:

9 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. Work
2 p.m. - 3:20 p.m. Technical Editing
3:30 p.m. - 4:50 p.m. Advanced Technical Writing
6 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Principles of Technical Communication (Tuesdays only)

Really...it's kind of a kickass schedule, since my evenings are still entirely free (except for Tuesdays) and I'm left with plenty of time to do homework/reading/that sort of thing. Tuesdays are going to be really stinkin' long, but the way I see it, when we were in high school, we were easily there sometimes from 7:10 a.m. until 9 p.m. and survived just fine (after walking uphill both ways with our little brothers on our backs), so this is surviveable, especially since it's only one day a week. And it's class, which...okay, work is more output, which is more exhausting to me than class, which is more input.

I'm just praying that this all ends up working out really well and that I end up, if not enjoying it, at least being able to tolerate it.

Meanwhile, I have a second interview for that job a week from today, in person (yikes!) and...really, life is going pretty well at the moment. I'm mildly panicked about where the money to pay for tuition is coming from, but please God I'll be able to get that squared away without a problem tomorrow when I'm actually, you know, on campus.

More things!

1. Interview went really well! I have a second interview scheduled for the thirty-first at 3:30 p.m. With any luck, I'll be working there starting in September and making more than enough money to pay my bills, thereby reducing the need for student loans. The only downside is that I won't be able to do the teaching fellowship and get in-state tuition, but Kyle and I did the math and figured out that if I get this job, even without loans, I'd have an excess of $4800 at the end of the year, compared to a deficit of $2100 with the teaching fellowship. So there's that.

2. I survived my first night of Texas storms as a Texas person last night. It was not fun. I finally went to bed around 1:30 a.m. (because I'm like that) and heard the first rumbles of thunder around 4:30. And then they continued to be loud and obnoxious until around 6:30 a.m. I eventually fell back asleep until 11:30, but I am feeling exhausted just the same. Sigh.

3. I also have a third roommate now, yay. She's absolutely adorable and likes cats. w00t.

So living in Texas has been interesting thus far, even though I've only technically been living here for the past week. A lot of things are taking a lot of getting used to, and I am going to talk about them in helpful list format, under a cut so that your FList won't cry!

( Yeehaw! )

That's all for now because I am about to fall over.

Hi Journal People, long time no see.

I'm officially moved into my apartment in Denton...it's a pretty huge place, with three full bedrooms and three full bathrooms for three full roommates. There's a 52" HDTV in the living room that is available for watching movies (like Shrek 3, which Kyle and I watched this afternoon) and a washer and dryer in the unit for the purpose of washing clothes without having to go all over East Timbuktu to do so. There is also the option to get a free HDTV cable box in each of our rooms, should we wish to take it.

In short: I think I'm gonna like it here.

My room is furnished with a desk that's the perfect size for my computer stuff (and some other things that don't have places yet), a dresser that is far too small for all of my clothing, a nightstand that is playing host to a single alarm clock and that's about it, and a full-sized bed that is covered in chic magenta and black bedding, purchased by my amazing future mother-in-law, Karen. I also have a walk-in closet that will soon be filled with clothing, I am sure, but I'm procrastinating on unpacking my second suitcase, since I know I don't have enough hangers for that.

All in all, I'm mostly satisfied with this place. It did what it promised on the box, and I'm sure I'll grow to enjoy being an adult more and more as the days continue onward. Right now, I'm just getting used to the fact that this is my space, that I can do whatever I want in this room, period, end of story. It's awesome.

Still don't know if kitteh can move in with me, though, but I'll worry about that later.

Okay, so updates!

At magwana's advice, I looked into private loans last night, but the problem I discovered was that the vast majority of private loans still need to be certified by the school in order to go through (because of people borrowing money to buy stuff they didn't need, the same people that caused the recession, whaddya know?), and UNT will not certify anything until they've processed my FAFSA, which will happen sometime around the middle of September. So that's one avenue that I can't pursue.

HOWEVER! Solutions did come up today, two of them. The first, my most likely course of action, involves me using my credit card to do some of the downpayment on my car, paying that off once the loans come through, and then using the cash that I have left over to get me through until the loans come into being. It's obviously not the ideal solution, but it will work for the time being. The whole thing, though, has made me pretty concerned about what's going to happen with my financial aid when I actually get to that point in September...if they decide I don't need the money that has to go toward housing and my car, I'm totally screwed.

The other option that I have is to live with Kyle's family until my financial aid package goes through. This is even less ideal, largely because I don't want to be a burden on them or an imposition or any of those things. I'm getting a laptop anyway to be able to exist as a graduate student, but if I was living with them, I'd need a laptop to do anything, since their house isn't big enough for my desktop.

So...I have options and am not throwing in the towel on this whole operation yet. I'm just really frustrated with UNT's financial aid department and their slowness.

Sigh.

So I hadn't written in here about graduate school in a while, but the short version is this:

I got into UNT and had pretty much made the decision to go there after flying to Texas last week and visiting the campus. Everything was coming together really easily, except when it came to finances.

Because I waited so long to make the decision to go to graduate school and fill out the FAFSA, it's going to take the financial aid department six to eight weeks to process it (why they can't expedite it, I don't really know). This puts them being able to offer me financial aid in around the middle of September, which is three weeks too late.

Tuition-wise, I'll be alright, as I'll be able to get an emergency short-term loan when I register, but unfortunately, because I'm from out of state, tuition isn't the only thing that I have to worry about. As it stands, I need about $3000 to cover my bills for the next two months so that I can have an apartment and actually be able to go to school, and nobody is able to offer that to me.

I tried asking the school's student money management center, but they only offer emergency loans in up to $500.

My parents haven't got a red cent to spare, and if they did, I doubt they'd give me any (considering their feelings about me lately...which is a fun story in and of itself).

I just...I don't know what to do and am feeling completely and utterly screwed. I can't believe that everything happened so quickly and smoothly just to come crashing down in a spectacular mess when I actually tried to move forward, but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me.

So! I promised I'd write the story here, and I am, and I'm going to write it like it's part of a novel or something because I'm having fun with it. And then I have other stuff to write, too, because holy crap, my life is changing fast and it's making me dizzy.

( Will you get down on one knee? )

On second thought, I think I'll save other stories for later.

SO! I was going to write out the whole story in great depth and romantic squishiness, but then I changed my mind, so I'll just say it quick and then write the whole story when I'm home on Thursday and addicted to The Knot:

As of Friday night, Kyle and I are officially engaged :)

1. I'm going to Texas in less than one week. I leave on the 8th, Kyle and I are driving to El Paso on the 9th and staying until the 11th, I have a meeting at UNT on the 13th and...

2. We're going to see HBP before I leave on the 15th. Yay!

3. Had a preliminary interview today for a job in Bedford that pays ~$45k/year, which would be nice. If I get that job, I may have to forego UNT and UTEP and go to UMD for my grad work, since, you know...money.

4. Got conditionally accepted to UNT, contingent on the receipt and approval of my GRE scores. Yay!

Warning: 4Chan AdultFriendFinder.com YouPorn Internet is involved.

My GRE scores came in the mail:

Verbal: 640, 91st Percentile
Quantitative (Math): 580, 44th percentile
Analytical Writing: 5.5, 90th percentile

The 5.5 on the writing means that, "Sustains insightful, in-depth analysis of complex ideas; develops and supports main points with logically compelling reasons and/or highly persuasive examples; is well focused and well organized; skillfully uses sentence variety and precise vocabulary to convey meaning effectively; demonstrates superior facility with sentence structure and language usage but may have minor errors that do not interfere with meaning."

In other words: I kicked the GRE's butt :)

Also, in other news, I'm flying down to Texas next week to visit UNT and UTEP...Kyle and I are actually driving from Grapevine to El Paso on the 9th, which should be interesting. I'm looking forward to it.

And then Billy Mays died.

I spent a good ~$20 the other night on Michael Jackson music. I feel like I should go buy some OrangeGlo and OxyClean today. Oh, and Mighty Putty, too.

I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't make some sort of comment on Michael Jackson, largely because...well. I don't know why. Maybe because empathy for the celebrity gossip magazines is taking over my brain and some little editor who lives up there noted that Farrah Fawcett died and I barely gave it more than a half a thought and then Michael Jackson died and he said (in his wee little voice), "STOP THE PRESSES!"

Most of the responses I've seen have been either (a) lauding him as some creative demigod without paying more than a second's attention to his faults and problems or (b) ignoring the excellent creative work he did in favor of focusing strictly on those faults and problems, as if his creative work didn't matter as much as his face falling off did. I'm pretty much in the middle on the whole thing, and find him to be, rather than a creative demigod who should cause the world to rend their garments and weep or a horrible freak of nature who should've been put out of his own misery years ago, a simple tragic figure who hated himself more than anyone else could ever have hated him, and who is hopefully now at peace.

Frankly, his creative genius was undeniable. I had the misfortune of only experiencing him after he went through his transition from black man into white woman and started getting weird, though I would've recognized his songs anywhere because the man was everywhere. I could make a list of all of his incredible creative work and say, "there will never be another [Song X]" and so on, but I think that would be kind of pointless. Suffice it to say that I doubt there will be another person in the near or far future who is as tremendously gifted...and as tremendously troubled.

I would say that anyone who tries to still defend the idea that he was innocent/not entirely insane/somewhat normal really needs a reality check. It's pretty clear that this was one effed-up man, on many levels, and most of the weirdness likely stemmed from what was probably a pretty strong self-hatred. You don't hack off large chunks of your face and change your appearance so completely from the beautiful looks you were born with when you love yourself. For someone whose creative genius was loved by so many people, none of that love affected him, and we can point fingers and say, "It's his father's fault" or "It's the fans' fault" or "It's his own fault," but ultimately, I think it's a combination of the three.

He was a sad example of what can happen to child stars not allowed to leave the spotlight for even a moment. He was an incredibly sick man, not even strictly in the perverted sense. He was an incredible talent. There will likely never be anyone like him again.

Cleolinda sums it up nicely.

(as two asides: first, it's really weird that MTV is playing music videos, which is funny to say; second, I completely forgot that he did the song for Free Willy. I'd also forgotten about Free Willy existing. I think I lumped him in with my Shamu hatred)

So first things first, before I go into my detailed and complex analysis of Jon & Kate (because I need to get it all off my chest before I forget what I want to say), I figured some updates would be good:

- I finished and submitted the last of my applications today (for UTEP and UMass Dartmouth), though I probably won't hear back about anything until next month at the earliest (which is about when everyone will receive my GRE scores and I can say for certain if people who grade the essays on standardized tests are on crack or not). Kyle's pretty sure that I'll get into UNT, which is what I'm hoping for (as it'd be nice for us to be on opposite sides of the metroplex as opposed to opposite sides of the country), but I think I'll be content with whichever school decides that they want me. If none of them do, I'll look into a certificate program at UMD (where, if I don't get into UNT or UTEP, I'll be taking classes in the fall anyway) so that I can at least valiantly attempt to get something done. I don't think that will be an issue, though...UTEP is more than courting me and Kyle says that UNT's pretty much a sure bet, so I'm excited.

- Meanwhile, this weekend has been insane. Saturday, we had a family reunion for my dad's side of the family (some of whom, despite being Facebook friends with, I haven't seen in probably five years), which was a lot of crazy fun. It was good to see them all again and it was interesting seeing how the dynamic of things has changed now that we're all pretty much adults. I'm still the coolest cousin, though ;)

Sunday, for Father's Day, we went with my parents to visit one of their church families. It was a very nice house with a gorgeous yard and amazing food, but it felt weird to be visiting people to whom we weren't related for Father's Day. Maybe it's just me. I don't know. I had a decent time, but it didn't change the weird factor, nor did it make it a whole lot less awkward for those of us who weren't my parents. Really nice house, though.

Last night, Annie graduated from her job preparation program at Quinsig (Project Triumph is the name of it) and we went to Friendly's to celebrate. The graduation itself? Mercifully short. I'm used to ~4 hour long college graduations that take so long because you have a sprillion speeches and then a class of 10,000 people graduating. Annie's class had 13 people, and it was wonderful.

And then today...oh my GOD today. Everyone had planned to sleep in and relax today because this weekend had been so hectic, but this morning, my mother got a call from the realtor saying that people wanted to see the house at two. SO we were all up and out of bed and cleaning by 9:30. Well. Most of us were cleaning. I spent the bulk of the time doing grad school stuff because I wanted to get it done and because I didn't want to keep being stressed about the things I hadn't finished yet. Everything got cleaned and we all left around 1:45 to go frolic or whatever until the people finished seeing the house. At 2:45, we were all allowed back in because the people couldn't get into the house until we got back (idk, something about the lockbox not working) and I went to call Unemployment to get my claim started up again. At 3:00 (while I was still on hold) the electricians came to fix an outlet in my brother's room, and at ~3:20, literally less than three minutes after I finally got through to a real person, the phone was disconnected.

Needless to say, I was PISSED.

Fortunately, though, it all worked out and I've taken care of all that needs to be taken care of where unemployment and grad school are concerned.

( And now, Jon & Kate )

Quantitative (Math): 560/800

Verbal (English): 660/800

Total (not counting essays): 1220

w00t!

It occurred to me this morning while at church that graduate school this time around, no matter where I go, is going to be a "Defying Gravity" type of situation.

That thought out of the way, I'm feeling very accomplished. I actually got a lot done last week, to the point where most of what I have left to do is either (a) recommendation letters, (b) applications or (c) the GREs (which...yes, that's pretty much everything, but I did finish and submit my first application on Friday [to UNT], have the one for UTEP 95% filled out and the one for UMass Dartmouth waiting for GRE scores to be done). I'm feeling particularly accomplished tonight, as I finished my Statement of Purpose for UNT, which was a lot more difficult than I expected it to be. I've never written a real Statement of Purpose before (my essay for ENC admission was on "who is someone you consider to be a leader?" and ENC was the only school to which I applied), so it was kind of nerve-wracking because first, I had no idea what to say and second, I had no idea how to say it. With a little advice, though, I think it's an awesome Statement of Purpose...even if it is 35 words over the limit :x

I'm feeling better about the GREs as well...my most recent practice test gave me a math score of 520, which (as you can easily see) is up 60 points from my original attempt and that makes me feel very good, particularly after all of the encouragement I've received (I love you guys so very much, seriously) and also statements from people who've gotten into English programs that the math GRE for English is...less than important, we'll put it that way. My contact at UMD even went so far as to tell me that the GRE scores are pretty much the last thing people from UMD admissions look at when they consider an applicant, which made me concurrently both very nervous and very relieved. Weird.

So I'm praying very much that I will be accepted to UNT...well, to all three, really :)

I used to have Woody and Jessie icons, I really did D:



This makes me happy ^_^

(also making me happy is that I retook the GRE practice test and got a 520 on the math section...yay!)

I just took a practice GRE on SparkNotes.com.

And I got 6/28 questions right, for a score of 360.

Verbal was only a little bit better, but a lot better when you consider that I was retarded and got antonym and synonym confused, so all the antonym questions for the first half of the test were wrong (original score: 540...score taking into account my retardedness and making up for it: 720). So verbal, I'm not too worried about. Essays, I'm vacillating between worried and not worried, but I think I'll be okay there.

But math. Oh my God, math. I shoved all of that information out of my head after the teaching certification test four years ago, to make room for things like work and RP. Because I hate math. With a blinding passion. I will not need to know the square root of x if x = 2y/z^5 for the rest of my life, for anything. So why am I being tested on it? Sigh.

Words of comfort and encouragement would be much appreciated.

More stuff about grad school, yay.

As of now, the two main contenders are UMass Dartmouth (which is, obviously, in Massachusetts, specifically in North Dartmouth) and the University of Texas at El Paso (which is, obviously, in Texas, specifically in El Paso). Part of me thinks I should look into a third option, maybe the University of Northern Texas in Denton, TX (which is really close to where Kyle is), but right now, I'm going crazy just trying to get scores and stuff done to meet fall deadlines for UTEP and UMD that the thought of adding a third application to the pool is kind of making me a bit dizzy.

In any case. The reasoning for choosing UMD and UTEP is as follows: For UMD, it's a state school, which means that I get a nice break on tuition, and also because it's a state school, it doesn't mean picking up my life and moving across the country for a year (which, admittedly, scares the everliving crap out of me). It's the only one of the UMass schools that offers a Professional Writing graduate program (UMass Amherst's Creative Writing graduate program is ranked #1 in the nation by the people who rank graduate programs, don't ask me who they are, I just know it was posted on the bulletin boards of the English Department office at ENC all the time as #1 from Big Magazines and such). The difficulties with the UMD writing program are specifically that the deadline for admission is earlier than the deadline for UTEP, which could be kind of crazy-making, especially as it involves me taking an entirely different exam than the GREs (the Miller Analogies Test, which is basically a sprillion pages of A : B :: C : D ...which I can already tell I'm absolutely going to love, no sarcasm, I love analogies).

The other school that's in the MAIN SCHOOLS I'M LOOKING AT category is UTEP, largely because my Aunt Kathy (my father's older sister) is on the faculty there (she's the dean of health sciences...yeah, she's got it goin' on!) and she was the one who pointed out that there are plenty of positions around for writers nowadays...just, you need a Master's Degree. So I have an "in" there, so to speak, and Aunt Kathy's already been really helpful with making sure I get in touch with the right people and get signed up for the right assistantships and all. It's also someplace new and different, which tends to be good for me when I'm verging on depression, as I have been for the past three months. It doesn't have as many obvious perks as UMD does, but it'd at least be good to try and get in there, to give myself some options (though, as we all know, Me + Decisions = NO).

So it's all very up in the air. I'm not going to lie and say that I'm feeling 100% confident about the process...truth be told, I'm pretty nervous about a lot of things. The first, most obvious worry, is the question of whether I'll be able to get all of my materials together in time to apply for and start at either school this fall. The deadline for applications for UTEP is August 8 and I think the deadline for UMD is a rolling deadline (HALLELUJAH!), though the person I spoke to in that office said that it would be a challenge to get everything squared away before the start of the semester, but that if I didn't, I could start taking courses anyway (which I am calling an advisor about tomorrow, to see which courses would be best). Still, I'd rather start the actual program in the fall...the sooner I start, the sooner I'm done and having a real job and life moves on. So...we'll see what happens there.

Thing #2 that I'm worried about is my transcript from my undergrad work, largely because the one and only class I ever failed in college was Professional Writing. Ironic, isn't it? I don't know if I should call them reasons or excuses, but there were very good reasons I failed it, namely the fact that I was sick for most of the semester (you know how I always have bronchial things? Yeah, that) and kept missing the professor for her office hours. I don't think I did well in any classes that semester, now that I think of it. Well. Choir I did well in, but that's because I dragged myself there whether or not I felt up to it and there was no homework. In any case, Professional Writing was literally a perfect storm of "ways to fail a class" and I did so and ended up having to take Advertising to make up for it. And while the reasoning is really good and while I graduated anyway, my mindset when I failed the class was not "Oh, this could really hurt my chances of getting into grad school." It was, rather, "Well, that sucks. Now I have to rearrange my schedule in the spring and work my ass off instead of relaxing like I wanted to."

All that to say that I'm honestly concerned that what I saw as a blip on the radar is going to end up screwing me over, and that would really suck.

And then Thing #3, which is actually two things: the MAT and the GRE. The MAT, I'm not as worried about, as I love analogies. They are fun and make me smile when I figure out the correlation and such. Admittedly, my worry would be when it comes to general knowledge or math (eg. I would not know that 1.77245 : 3.14159 :: 2 : 4, largely because up until 2 seconds ago when I looked it up on Google, I did not know that 1.77245 was the square root of pi) (also, pi kind of makes me irrationally angry, I don't know why), but ultimately, discovering correlations makes me happy, so the MAT doesn't worry me too much. Even if I fail, at least I'll have enjoyed it.

No, what worries me really is the essay section of the GRE. I know I can pass the general multiple choice section of any given standardized test, easily. I'm good at testing in that sense. My worry in that regard is that I've never scored well on essays for standardized tests. Again with the irony, right? But it's true. I did alright on the MCAS tests, largely because they're kind of brainless (well, more than alright...I could've had a free ride to any state school I chose because of how well I scored), but the AP exams? I got a 2 on the US History and a 3 on the English, and I'd been practicing writing those kinds of essays for about two years at that point! I worry that whomever grades the essays on the GRE will look at mine and poo-poo it and that will be that.

So. Those are my worries. Finances aren't a worry, as I know I'll be able to take out student loans for whatever I need, and what isn't covered by student loans will likely be taken care of by stipends for research and/or teaching assistantships that I'm sure I can get. Distance isn't a worry because I like new places. If I'm doing the right thing is the farthest thing from a worry.

But I do have worries.

I've been doing some thinking this weekend, and I think the conclusion that I've reached (I think) is that I'm going back to school...specifically, I'm going back to get my MA in Professional Writing. This is a bit different from me getting my M.Ed., in that even if I don't go on to have a career in professional writing (which...why wouldn't I, first of all, but second of all, is entirely possible, depending on circumstances), it's writing and it's something to do. These are my two biggest motivators right now, though the something to do is bigger, because I feel like an absolute lump at the moment, no matter how much job hunting I do.

Right now, I'm looking at the programs at UMass Dartmouth and UMass Amherst to see what they offer, both (a) because, being a Massachusetts resident, my tuition is cheaper at UMass schoolas and (b) because, while I don't know 100% about Dartmouth, UMass Amherst's post-graduate writing program is ranked among the top ten in the nation (not too bad for a program that would cost me ~$6000/year). Costs for both are pretty low, at the end of the day...$6k/year for Amherst, as I said, and $10k/year for Dartmouth, so again, not too shabby in either place. I won't be dying from the weight of those student loans.

I'm...not really so much scared by this possible decision as I am uncomfortable with not having all my ducks in a row. I like having ducks and I like having them in a row. If I have specifics and certainty, I'm much more comfortable, but right now, a lot is up in the air (eg. cars and transportation, if I'll even be accepted to either program, if I'll work/live on either campus for the duration, etc.). I'm not a fan of things being up in the air, really. I just like to have stuff settled and set and sure and...yeah. I have a lot of phone calls to make in the next couple of days, just to get some idea of how things can play out, BUT I think this is definitely a direction in which I want to go. It's just a question of getting things...sorted out, I guess.

Over the past several days, my life's been kind of taken over by the next generation in Sims games, The Sims 3. The newest in the line of Sims games doesn't completely change the face of the game, the way TS2 did to the original game, but it does make things neater, more streamlined, and, at the end of the day, much better.

Now, The Sims 2 wasn't a bad game, at its core. It was a massive improvement over the first Sims game: your Sims could actually age from infants all the way through to elders and could die of old age, where as in the first Sims game, infants grew into children where they stayed until you decided that you were sick of them all and trapped them in a pool with no ladders. Though your Sims could reproduce in the first game, the result usually looked more like Harry Potter than either of the parents in question; in The Sims 2, your offspring actually looked like your Sims (which could result in some rather strange combinations, let me tell you). The graphics were all upgraded, and there was actually now a point to your Sims' lives, beyond being computer versions of dolls in a dollhouse.

The Sims 3 is not such a drastic upgrade. Much of the gameplay remains unchanged, but I'd say that this third draft has perfected that gameplay, or at least drastically improved it.

( More Review: Create-A-Sim, Create-A-Style, the few changes to gameplay... )

omg.

DO WANT. <3

Bizarre dream last night (also yay, Tiana icons!).

I dreamed about being in Texas. It was raining and I was driving places with Kyle. First, we went to the hospital where I gave birth to a daughter. Immediately after that, we went to an office supply place where I put a staple on a term paper and had an argument with the snooty guy sitting at the front desk about how much a staple should cost. Then I told Kyle that he was a father, and woke up before I could see his reaction.

( Handy Dandy analysis! )

Hmm.

How excited for this movie am I? There really aren't even words. It looks gorgeous, and please God the story is good. I've been really worried since the QQing about Tiana being a chambermaid caused the story to be changed (I mean, seriously. If you're going to complain that she's being discriminated against because she's a servant, go take a look at, oh I don't know, CINDERELLA, maybe or perhaps SNOW WHITE? Because, tbh, it's not just the black princesses that would get to be chambermaids, ladies and gentlemen, so unknot your panties and chill), but if the animation in the trailer is any indication, it'll be a visual treat, if nothing else.

And yeah. Excited. EEE!!! :D