Book group last night! We read Camus's The Fall. It is a series of monologues by a fairly despicable character, detailing his cynical, grim outlook of life and human nature. When I was reading it (really fast! yesterday! It's only 150ish pages, so I procrastinated, but I seriously finished the last line minutes before going out the door to the meeting!), I asked my husband if Camus was always this cynical/negative/nihilistic, never having read him before. Dr. C. didn't remember, as he'd read Camus years and years ago. I shrugged and went off to the meeting, resolving to not talk too much, since I had barely had time to process the book.

Turns out it is not cynical. It is an indictment of the French during World War II, and a call to action, to NOT END UP LIKE THIS GUY. O_O Fascinating, since he barely mentions World War II. And yet I see it, now that it has been carefully pointed out to me. And I see, as was also pointed out, that part of my denseness has to do with being American and not European. Whoa. But still, Camus -- way to say something by not saying it at all. It's kind of fascinating and admirable, yet I wonder if that was the best strategy, as over time and distance from the war, the meaning of the book becomes less and less obvious. But hey, thank goodness for my very smart book group!

The seventh graders are researching genetic disorders.

7th Grade girl: I need to find out the treatment for hemophilia.
7th Grade boy: There's no treatment for colorblindness. That really bums me out because I'm colorblind.
Me: Well, at least it's not life-threatening like some of the other genetic disorders.
7th Grade boy: (hands on hips and giving me a stern look) I'll have you know I almost *failed* kindergarten!

If I came with a warning label, what would it say?


I should do an end-of-the-semester post. I should. I should talk about what my expectations were versus what's actually happening, and where I'm going next year, but, uh, so much of that is still up in the air--I still have a dangerously high chance of doing very poorly this semester. Crapmonkies.



Also I just realized I learned to harmonize singing along to Weird Al. Huh.



Also Princess and the Frog? Go see it. <3

In case any of you are running out of Things To Do Rather Than Study/Write Papers/Prepare for the Holidays, here is a quiz posted to a Dunnett blog that you might find challenging.

It's written by a Brit (fair warning to the Americans). Bonus gold stars to answers you get right without using google.

( the quiz )

I so hope I am not going to hell for nicking this quiz

stick with it. I promise it's worth it.

LJ notifications are fixed. 157 emails this morning.

my Kant class

(alternatively titled, things I never thought I'd say I'd miss)

man I'm getting all teary-eyed and stuff.

...that could be because it's 5:30 in the morning. Yeah, not going to miss this part.

also, things that potentially kick ass? this paper. everyone cross your fingers for me! (I will cross fingers back. :-D)

I can't remember if I posted this last year or not, but we were singing it for the Christmas concert I left the day of in the cathedral choir back in France, and it is pretty much one of the prettiest things I have ever had the pleasure of singing. It is not technically an Advent song, but it has an Advent-y/Christmas Eve-y feel to it.

Dr. C. got a copy of MS Word off MIT. Woohoo! I can't believe I'm celebrating Word! Ugh! It is SO WRONG. On the other hand, I'm at 98,500 words, and I really appreciate knowing that.

The thing is, it's a different version from the one I'm used to, so everything's in a weird place.

However, all the stuff seems to be there, somewhere, even if it takes me a while to find it. Gah, I wish computer things didn't become obsolete so quickly. I still haven't quite recovered from the loss of Wordstar. Now there was a good program...

Haven't done one in a while. Here are some things I've been reading for the past few months:

( books books books )

for everyone concerned about not getting their email notifications, here's why.

It says they've fixed the problem and now are just working on the queue. So, it should be up and running soonish?



...I know it's late to be posting this but people keep cropping up going WOMAN WHERE IS MY SUPERSUIT ARE MY NOTIFICATIONS so I guess not everyone has LJ Maintenance on their friends list/actually bothers to check it. Ever.

(don't worry I just read it on a fluke.)

Apparently, all LJ email notifications are not working right now. They're saying that the emails are queued up and will be sent when it's fixed.

http://community.livejournal.com/lj_maintenance

IT'S A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS

THANK YOU MULAN YOU ROCK.

♥_♥

Here I am, trying to explain why it's a problem that Open Office and Word don't count words the same way.

Philia: Open Office counts quotation marks as words! Do you know how much dialogue is in this book?
Dr. C: Well, so what? Why does anyone care how many words you have anyway?
(pulls up internet sites about old publishing standards) See, it's not really about the words, it's about the space, so Open Office is more accurate, and you have 102,000 words, so just go with that.
Philia: I DON'T WANT 102,000 WORDS!!! I had 101,000 and I had cut it down to 99,000, and now I don't know how many I have!!!
Dr. C: Well, just start over at 102,000.
Philia: But word count is vital!! And everyone's saying the upper limit is 90,000.
Dr. C: Well, that's just stupid. How can they say that if there's no standard way to determine word count? It's meaningless.
Philia: ...Except there IS a standard, and it's Microsoft Word!
Dr. C: Not according to this site.
Philia: That site is old! Now everyone uses Word. They count ACTUAL WORDS.
Dr. C: Well, that's stupid.
Philia: I don't care if it's stupid, it's WHAT I DO!!! And I'm in the middle of a line edit, and it's ALL ABOUT THE WORD COUNT.
(leaves room rather than strangling husband)

....Two hours later....

Dr. C: Hey, I've solved your problem! All you have to do is use this online word counter, paste your entire book into the text box, find and replace all dashes, select them and tell the program to ignore them, and you should get pretty close to Microsoft Word's count!
Philia:....Yeah, thanks, that sounds much more convenient than just clicking "word count" whenever I want to know what I'm doing...

Meanwhile, I couldn't use the internet for hours while he played with it, and I missed a ton of stuff at Sounis, and what's going on with LJ not telling me when people comment, and...what?

Sadly, he meant really well!

Okay, here are my pet overly-used words:

"I realized"
"I thought"
"I supposed"

Must be the curse of first-person narration. That dang internal monologue. I think I've cut a few hundred words just by deleting these puppies.

BUT I DON'T KNOW FOR SURE. Because my husband decided this weekend to transfer all my files to a new computer which doesn't actually have Microsoft Word. It has Open Office, which supposedly is the same thing only not Microsoft. Don't get me wrong here, I still hate Microsoft Word with the fire of a thousand suns, but Open Office doesn't ignore headers and footers when doing word count. Gah! So I have NO IDEA what my word count is now. Must put Dr. C. to work on this issue tonight.

eta: EVEN WORSE, IT COUNTS PUNCTUATION AS WORDS. According to Open Office, I'm at 102,000 plus. Whereas I am really at 98,000ish, I think.

heehee. Subject line just made me think of a favorite Buffy quote, from Faith: "These vamps are wicked rowdy -- what's their deal?" Teco in particular is wicked rowdy today. Or just wicked.

Concert yesterday! It went very, very well overall. We made mistakes we had never, ever made before, but in a weird way that's a good sign, because that's normal concert-crazy energy. If we'd made the same old mistakes, it would have meant we really weren't ready to perform. Also, the pieces I thought would be weakest (Rachmaninoff, because they were relatively easy and we hadn't spent as much time on them) just completely blossomed in performance. And the fact that we ended up extremely low-alto-heavy did not seem to be too big an issue. (All the people who had to drop out in the last two weeks due to sickness, last-minute travel, etc., etc. were upper and middle voices)

Signed up for the Vermont College Novel Writing Retreat again, next March. Vermont College has been very good to me!

And the most beautiful sunrise imaginable.

But no heat in the library today, alas.

dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh ...

I think the one horse open sleigh will be the most reliable form of transportation here, come Wednesday:

( let it snow let it snow let it snow )