holy accumulation, batman!

so...i love maine because:

the weather says, "light snow tonight, but no accumulation"

the ground/cars say, "umm...we're all covered again..."

the college park parking lot says, "that's right, that ice that you could see earlier today?...haha...totally covered with snow now. good luck!"

my lungs say, "we don't like this."

the snow says, "skwunch. skwunch. skwunch. skwunch..." (that's the phonetic spelling for the sound of footfall in snow)

academic disease

diagnosis: failed annotated bibliography

prescription: 2 days in library, 2 days thinking about project, 2 days writing

follow up: copy of paper in professor's box on thursday, await further recommendations through email correspondence

long term plan: final project mailed to professor's home address by december 30th, not before

doseage instructions: days in library must be full days, beginning at 8:20am thursday. patient advised not to leave the state without one suitcase of books and one suitcase of clothes/living items

prognosis: not good, but if patient survives, the odds of re-contracting are low

i bought art today!

beth and i went to a super sweet Starving Artists' Art Sale in old town today and i kind of spent some money... see what you think:



close-ups

8x10


12x16


24x20

and my own personal piece of artwork:


oh the dangers of living in maine. i got the car out though!

when something needs to be done

i can't stop messing with this damn blog.

today = mixed results

good - i got out of scary class for next semester and into awesome class.
good - i delivered my car from it's icy grave.
good - my students wrote great in class essays and are all (mostly all) going to pass my class.

bad - my outfit today was decidedly un-ironed and ill-fitting.
bad - i'm literally failing carla's class.
bad - since i'm failing carla's class, i had to miss sex and the city night in order to stay in, stress, and read.

ugly - my roots are quite bad. i now have dirty blonde roots/old red roots/brown hair. it's not hot.
ugly - my skin is revolting against winter and is quite dry.
ugly - my winter clothes/boots/accessories are so horrifically bright and unmatching that i'm pretty sure that even people who don't know me recognize me when i walk to and from school.

exciting - i leave orono maine in 11 days.
exciting - i finish this semester in 11 days.

horrifying - i turn in carla's paper in 11 days.

snow #2

day 2 of winter blast '07. much more snow. much more unruly. much more fun.

observe:

this is what it looked like when i woke up.


only classes starting before 10am were canceled, so i bundled up

(can't i look tough when i want to?)

and started the walk to campus.

the snow was pretty deep (mid-calf where it isn't shoveled) but my shortcut was manageable. yay! and i even happened upon some children playing. so cute.

i finally made it to the giant parking lot to find it empty, but unshoveled (since yesterday) and very slippery.

alas, i finally made it in to pat's class at 11am. around 12ish, matt and i had a snowball fight outside the english building. he took this picture.

so...the snow has stopped for now and it's supposed to snow a little bit more tomorrow and then warm up. we'll see! i think i'll keep walking b/c it was actually a lot of fun. sure there is a good deal of slipping going on, but that just makes it more exciting!

snow blog #1

these are early morning snow pictures. it's certainly much deeper now, but it's been dark for a while now. no recent pictures. i'll take more tomorrow and try to make them more fun. :)

the view from my apartment window at 7am:


the walk in at 8am:


my car, after only being on campus for a few hours:


of course, i took awkward pictures of other people, but none of them are good. didn't take any of myself, but i'll work on that.

from school, i had to go down the street to talk to laurie and amy about stuculty stuff. my car got stuck in her driveway and we definitely had to shovel it out. that was kind of ridiculous. also, matt started calling me 'virginia' today because I wanted pictures of the snow. i've decided that i'm going to walk to school from now on, unless it's raining b/c there is nothing that i hate more than rain. finally, and then i must get back to carla-land, there are a few guys on in the college park parking lot playing beer pong. i think they are pretty excited to not have school tomorrow. it's not a done deal yet, but i think we can all see it coming.

i'll keep you posted on snow news.

oh, and my students said that the winter will continue through the spring semester. like, all the way through. one girl said it snowed on her birthday in may.

it's going to be one hell of a winter.

that last one isn't worth continuing

i should really be grading papers. or reading for carla's class, but instead, i blog.

so, i know that my recent excitement over racquetball is a bit new and different for me, but it gets even better. yesterday was sarah's birthday so she had a bunch of people over to her apartment to drink and play games and chill. it was really a lot of fun. evan's wife came and i hadn't ever talked to her before.

anyway...several hours into this shindig, mike, his wife karen, and heather showed up. well, mike is one of the crazy racquetball players so the conversation quickly turned to the sport. he then started talking about his newest idea to assemble a team for the floor hockey intermurals. then, get this, he starts hounding me to join the team. ME! in reality, i think he just needs a certain number of girls to be able to play in the co-ed grouping, but really. here's the funniest bit, i think i agreed to try it. do you want to know what clinched it for me? the shirts. he told me that i could design the shirts and that we could have our names (or the silly name of our choice) and a number. that's really just too fun. so far our team name is "the iceholes". that's right, we're really lame. but maybe we will look cool? i don't know, i'm pretty sure i'm just going to get hit in the face. i asked about that and mike said, "oh, it's a rubber ball, it won't hurt." riiiiiight.

what have i gotten myself into?