Hot holy hell!

Everyone, please pay careful attention to the words that I'm about to type. Are you ready? Because this! is! bignews!!

I, Lauren the art nerd, am going to graduate. In May. Of this year. With a Master's degree.

Advisor v.2.0 gave me back my thesis this afternoon, and proclaimed that she was signing off on it.


blink blink, whaaa? um, okay!! YAYY so what do I do now? The grad office sits there witha ruler and checks that your margins are correct. And they check that your footnotes are in the proper format. And other copious nitpicky bullshit details. Then, I take the finished approved certifiable copy to OfficeMax, make five copies of it, and I! AM! Lauren, MA!!! Woo ha!


And?! This is the part where I beseech all my three readers for some advice. I need your help in making this decision, because my god, the potential ramifications. Advisor v.2.0, remember, is friends with the subject of my thesis.

She
wants
to
send
it
to
the
artist
for
her
to
read.

So should I? I dunno. I'ma scurred. On the one hand, yes! On the other, what if she thinks I'm an idiot and I suck and I ruin my reputation before it's even formed?

So help me, faithful readers. You're my only hope!

Busted!

Thanks a lot, John. Telling my mom that I posted her mole story on the internet. Sit at my breakfast table, eating my food, and then tell on me!! You suck!

Just kidding. Thankfully, my mom doesn't know how to do many things on the internet, and I doubt she'd ever find this site. If it's not in the favorites folder, she won't find me! Silly momma.

Flag on the play

Inappropriate colloquialism. Five yards, first down.

Seriously, did I type y'all the other day?! What the hell, I am not southern! I'll blame it on amalah. I guess a lot of the people whose blogs I read end up being Southern.

I find myself thinking about blog entries I'll write, and they often contain the word y'all in them. I would never say it, it sounds very unnatural when I do, but typing it comes very natural to my blog-writing.

I guess yous guys just don't sound the same...

Now I REALLY have to graduate in May

I went to the dentist this week, and got information on something that I've wanted for a really! long! time!

I am getting my teeth bleached. Yipee!!

It's something that I've wanted to have done for a very long time. I think that I got served because I used to tease this AWFUL girl who lived next door to us about her very yellow teeth. Other problems with this girl, who my mom MADE me be friends with, to my own popularity's detriment in grade school, were that she would fight with me right before Christmas and my birthday (but still gave me my present, though she often threw it at me) (oh well, free stuff, I don't care how it's delivered!!) and that she was mean and a brat and just generally kind of sucked. Y'all, she was a horse girl. Enough said!!

Now I feel like my teeth are those of a smoker, or someone much older than I am, or someone who drinks a lot more tea than I do. My boss thinks I'm a little nuts. She looked at my teeth yesterday. But those babies had just been polished! And it was I call a good tooth day. It depends on the color I wear and what I've eaten in the day, but sometimes I get really self conscious about my choppers.

The date that they will take my impressions is April 10th. I had a funny moment with the nurse who schedules the appointments. She offered me the week previous, but I had a dermatologist's appointment the same exact time. Weird. And I felt like a flaky extreme makeover candidate. But really, I have what I have diagnosed as excema on my face, and I'm tired of it!

So it's a good thing I don't have a photo up on my profile. You won't recognize me in a month. Many thanks to my parents, who are paying for this. Kev, looking for ideas? I want an ipod nano- 4GB. And Sister? You can get me some clothes for teaching, at a discount from your new store. Or not. Thanks

Tagged?

I guess it counts that I've been tagged, since I did read so on teacher lady's blog. So without further ado...


Four jobs you have had in your life?
1. Deli bitch, that was my official title. Made hoagies and cheesesteaks and was, for a time, a cashier at a local Italian deli.
2. Bills window at a pharmacy- fostered my fear of old people!
3. Slide library chick
4. TA for the world's worst class

Four movies you would watch over and over?
1. Jaws
2. Ferris Beuller's Day Off
3. Anything on Lifetime
sorry, that's it, I don't have the patience to sit for 2 hours and watch a movie!

Four places you have lived?
Only one- Philadelphia PA
unless you count the suburb of Glenside, PA as another place. I don't think it counts though!

Four TV shows you love to watch?
1. Sopranos
2. Sex and the City
3. Six Feet Under
4. Rome
HBO junkie right here!

Six places you have been on vacation?
1. Madrid and surrounding cities.
2. London
3. Rome
4. East coast roadtrip for my honeymoon

Four Websites I visit Daily?
1. myspace. Shut up
2. School's portal
3. The nest
4. blogs blogs blogs!

Four of my Favorite Foods?
1. Pasta- and I have the ass to prove it!
2. Vegetable fried rice
3. Steaky steak
4. Mexican

Four Places I would rather be right now?
1. Home
2. With my neice and nephews
3. Rome
4. NYC

Four things I always Carry with me?
1. chapstick, at least 2, more like 4
2. rewetting drops for my contacts
3. cell phone
4. gum or mints, no one likes hot breath!

can't answer the bonus car one, sorry, I'm still on my first. We also had a Santa Fe for a time, but god bless the lemon law!!

That's it for now. Maybe now you know a little more about me, or a clearer understanding of how CRAZY I am! :P

big fat lazy

Writing my presentation about Lisa Yuskavage for my Realism class. I'm kind of unnervous about this one, since I'm taking big chunks of my thesis and reading it. No big thang, right? But then, on the other hand, my prof knows the artist. Yikes! And I don't say anything bad about her, but I don't know if she'll be weird or what. And this prof is very nice, very take-you-under-her-wing, but also one hell of an editor.

I'm giving my thesis to her tomorrow. I'm nervous about that. I didn't take every single one of her suggestions. I so hope we can get this done by the end of the semester. I will be so. freakin. happy. once I have my Masters in hand. :) Like that, only with my face.

And on a side note, I am feeling like an old lady of late. I have three doctors' appointments scheduled. The eye doctor, the dreaded dentist who I actually don't hate, and the dermatologist. It's funny that I've finally decided to go now, when what is likely a stress-related skin crappiness is showing itself again, yet I am finished with class work at the end of the semester. Christ, it'll probably clear up on its own soon! But really, no, because then comes the semesterly oh my god, I need a job thoughts. And the whole nebulous nature of my prelims and what the hell I'm supposed to do about those.

Argh, matey, I be afloat in the sea of grad school, far from the shore. I feel like chief Brody on the Orca in Jaws. In over my head with my wife calling out that she packed me some dramamine. Oh, except that'd be my mom. who I still live with, even though I'm married.

Here's to swimmin with bow-legged women!

procratinating with just a quick thought

I'm watching VH1 classic's series, Hangin' with... Rick Ocasek is on. Can I just say, I fucking love the Cars? I know, it's not exactly like being a huge Stones fan, or a Phishhead or Deadhead or whatever. Most people probably think they're kinda lame. Brings to mind a story Kev told me about a conversation with his friend Jim, who he has been friends with since fourth grade. goes like this...

K: (listening to the radio, Just What I Needed is on) I like this song.
J: Yeah, I like some of the Cars' songs
K: Lauren fucking loves the cars. She has their greatest hits, I didn't realize they played so many songs.
J: Yeah, My Best Friend's Girl is good.
K: So's Drive.
J: Okay, fine, I'll admit, I fucking love the Cars too.

Anyway, so yeah, I just watched Rick Ocasek sing Drive acoustic. Makes writing about the Iberians and the Romans much nicer.

Right now, Run DMC and Aerosmith's rendition of Walk This Way (the FAR superior version, in my mind) is on. Hell yes!

saga of a harried grad student in her final semester of coursework

Haven't updated in a while! Sorry about that, I am up to my a-hole in the process of Romanizing Spain. Well, I mean, I'm not doing it, I'm studying it. For my super cool (to me anyway) class on propaganda in the Age of Augustus. I'm wondering if I should post something that specific, I wonder if anyone from school will find me? Oh well! Hi everyone!

My mom just tried to lecture me on taking down my blog and my myspace accounts, so that when future employers google me, they won't find me. Never mind that my name, now at least, is about as generic as can be. Even with the addition of my maiden name (now my middle name) I found something announcing the title of my thesis from 2005, and a mention on this guy I dated in high school's website. Nothing terrible. And, Mom, I'm the world's biggest dork! I have nothing to hide! Except maybe from my boss, who probably already knows how little work I do there anyway.

By the way, let's hear a funny story about my mom, shall we? Kev and I were sitting at the dinner table, discussing what we should buy my nephew for his first birthday. We decided on a Little Tykes kind of thing for the backyard at Chez crazy. I made mention of how, with so many of our neighbor's cats being outside cats, we couldn't get him the sand box. She asked what my other nephew and neice did with theirs. Mom, I say, it's a brand new McMansion development. There aren't any cats around. She simply refused to believe that. I said, no, really, no cats, just moles. She says to me, and this is where it gets weird...

Did the moles eat the cats?

What? Mom, seriously, what the fuck? Moles are approximately the size of bunnies,at most, aren't they? And full grown cats, the size of babies? Would dirty Jerz allow flesh eating rodents to exist in a community with so many kids? What the hell?

All I could think of was the rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with the pointy teeth. Eating cats. Who shit in sandboxes. In the hinterlands of New Jersey.

So, to recap, my mom is still crazy, I am busy busy busy with a paper, and you probably won't hear from me till Monday night, after the pres is over. And Spain either bought the Roman culture with all its symbols (theaters and amphitheaters, fora and temples) wholesale, or the Romans were big bad baddies who forced it upon them. Gotta love the ancient world, there are seemingly never any answers. Lovely.

The baffling manners of artsy people

On Thursday a girl came in to the Slide Library, which is where I put in my 20 hours per week as graduate assistant. Emphasis on the ass. Anyway, the girl was dressed in a very strange manner, even for an art school. She had on GIANT earrings, totally club-style. A non-descript (cause I don't remember it!) shirt, with a rather business-like skirt. So on her torso she was all art education, her major. Then on her feet and legs, going back to the shoe thing, she had on funky textured tights and the most ridiculously fuzzy boots on. Nanook of Cheltenham, I tell ya. And to top it all off, one of those silly sequin-y bags that look like you carry your wallet and datebook inside a big brown disco ball. She was a walking trend.

She came in at around four o'clock, and was a total newbie. That sucks, since we close at 4:30, but really the last second of solitude after four that I can stand. I cut out early a lot. Oh well. She kept telling me what a great resource this is, like every art school under the sun doesn't have a slide library. Um, okay. She took a long time in there, and I didn't leave till quarter to five.

The first part that made me think she was weird and a little clueless was her talk about her lesson plan that she's going to implement at a racially diverse grammar school in the area. She plans to show the work of Kara Walker, who uses cut paper silhouettes to explore themes of 19th century emancipation and the politics of plantation life. Oh, and SEX. Lotsa sex and poop. Show this to seventh graders, honey, even I can tell you what's going to happen. They probably aren't mature enough to see the value in the images and will just giggle a bunch. There's an image I'm thinking of especially, in which a woman is being penetrated by a swan. I definitely would have lost it in seventh grade!

The second thing that she did that made me think she was weird was that she came into my office and saw our girlscout cookies. Would you come into someone's office, whom you do not know, and ask them for a cookie? I wouldn't, but if I did, I certainly wouldn't eat FIVE of them. How strange is that?! At first, when she asked, I thought my boss knew her, and my boss thouught I knew her. What with the forwardness and all.

Good luck with your lesson, ya big cookie stealing, weird dressing, clueless freak show!
edited to add..

here's a link to a photo of Kara Walker's work. Couldn't find any of the images I'm talking about, of course, but here's one of her more graphic emancipation approximation images. for some reason, I can't link on the mac, sorry!