The good, the annoying, and the unexpected.

[lunadelcorvo]

The Good:

- Being a professor, can, if you get on the right mailing lists, mean free books, in just the subjects you love! 'Examination copies' are the best!

- I am loving my new browser. Safari has become an overweight slob, and much as I love it in some ways, I have had enough of the spinny beachball of doom to last a lifetime, kthnxbai. So I took Opera for a spin. Fast, lightweight, very secure. Yay! (It's amazng how much difference this makes in my day, really. Alarming, in fact.)

- I am becoming quite addicted to Pinterest! If anyone else is on it, let me know. If you want an invite to join the insanity fun, I'd be happy to invite ya!

- I am making home made laundry, dish and hand soap. It's easy, and cheap, and more or less chemical free. Time will tell if they work - watch this space.

The Annoying:

- I know I have been letting my son watch more TV than I/we would prefer. I have also been suffering from some ghastly, weather-driven sinus-chest-cough-sneeze plague for weeks now, thank you very much. It's damn easy to tell me I shouldn't and then neglect to offer options, Mr. Teaches 10 classes and is never home.... Argh. Can I get back to my life and breathing soon?

- Related to the above, global warming deniers are cordially invited to kiss my butt. Global warming is rapidly rendering my already allergy-laden hometown unlivable by allergy-ridden me! Can I please have a little winter, just to kill off the last year's crud before a new crop springs up?! And I am SO not looking forward to mosquito hell unless we get a really serious freeze....

- Who knew it's as hard to get into Middle School as it is some colleges? Sheesh! Transcripts, references, essays... It's 6th grade people!

The Unexpected:

- The Spanish Inquisition (sorry, had to; contractually obligated, you understand)

- I may end up a student again. *sigh* I am both tickled and... not by this. I can get a second MA, for free, at the uni where I teach. (I get full class-for-class tuition credit.) There are not a lot of grad programs, but there is Communication. OK, yes, I think an undergrad major in Comm is kind of like 'rocks for jocks,' it's true. But at the grad level with the experience I have? I can kind of make it anything I want it to be. I can certainly use it to do work with the Religious Right in the media, which (if you read here much) I already do a lot. And I think I can even do some interesting stuff with medieval studies. Did I mention free? Besides, it will make those pesky loans go away for a while, too. And, free!

- This one belongs under 'The Good' but wouldn't have made sense until you'd seen the above. My boss (at my uni) literally submitted my letter of reference LESS THAN TWO HOURS after I first e-mailed him about it, entirely out of the blue! And he seemed almost giddy about the idea of my enrolling there. This was a week ago, and I'm STILL waiting for the other one(s) to come in from my alma mater. Just goes to show....

- I keep wanting to make a timely and relevant post about the current political situation, but every time I get something started, someone does something even MORE outrageous and dunder-headed, so I keep having to start over. Working on real content, promise!

Comments

[girlspell.livejournal.com]

We don't have any winter to speak of or to look at. Nothing...blah. Temps always either in the 50's or 40's. That's it. End of winter. Meanwhile in Eastern Europe hell is freezing over. They had temps 20C below. Dumped on with snow. It's so cold, that a lot of people have died. Not much in the news about this, but it's terrible.

Communications is a great field for you. I'm picturing you now on TV as a ....news anchor. How about that? No? Reporter? Weather person?

Ah well whatever you pick. It's a good field for you.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

On TV?! Oh, heavens, no! My aim in life is to be a frowsty, curmudgeonly old professor. I'm thinking of using this degree to work with how media influences culture, or maybe how culture is promoted in non-literary societies, like the middle ages, when people learned Christianity from reading the image programs inside cathedrals.

And personally, I really miss winter. :( Not just because of the allergies either....

[toll-booth.livejournal.com]

Oh cool, you're a college teacher!

Selfishly, I like this mild winter, BUT I'm worried about what it means. Maybe this is just an anomaly...but then again, hasn't like the last decade or so been an anomaly?

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it really has. Storms bigger than ever seen, at all the wrong times of year, weird weather. I saw a great macro saying something like "Every snowflake is proof that global warming is a hoax, but the hurricanes, tornadoes, and 50-degrees in February are mysteriously ignored."

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Even the untenured amongst us manage a fair supply of book freebies. Admittedly, it helps to have a good reputation as a reviewer. :o)

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Indeed! I'm still working on the reviewer thing - any suggestions to get started? Did you just start sending them out or did someone find you?

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I'm involved with a number of online based academic history fora via the ever useful H-Net and many of them review, from there I got headhunted by the likes of the SCJ and the odd uni journal.

I LOVE your userpic :o)