So, back in Bellwood.  Capt. Pharmacy was going to take his OH state board exams when he was run off the road in Dayton, OH, which crashed his car into a concrete jersey barrier.  The brother is shaken, not stirred; bruised, not battered, and he's without a concussion or anything.  The car's a bit of a different story.  Accounts differ as to its fate, but there are a few known facts:  The car no longer has a front bumper, lots of stuff leaked from the front end, and the trunk won't close now.

The parents went out to Ohio last night in case they were needed and asked me to drive back for an indeterminate amount of time to look after the kid sister, to get her to work, and to make sure there's no inappropriate canoodling between her and her Boy Scout, though I really don't give a rat's posterior of what they're up to; they're old enough to make their own decisions, whatever those are.  So I'm here in Bellwood, after driving last night during Kaylee's dinner time (made for a very angry kitty, but she's happier now..

Sacrastovoyance, at its best (worst?):  Capt. Pharmacy called me yesterday, about two hours before his exam, after I just spent about $70 on food b/c the parents were originally going to be out in Yuppyshire yesterday.  He expressed surprised at the fact that the parents actually made plans to visit me (never happens, seriously), and I said, "Yeah, I still don't expect it to happen in real life."  I think sarcastoyance inadvertently cursed Capt. Prescription-filler into a barrier.  And now he's w/o a car, though the insurance will get him a rental for a little while.

And Father Fiction just emailed me and asked if I could housesit more, until the 23rd.  >_<

oy fucking vey.

Apparently I'm housesitting for Tom Bailey, so still driving back and forth between S-grove and Yuppyshire at least twice a day (it's okay, the big woofies can run outside and fight groundhogs, as they apparently now do).  But right now, I'm at work.  Doing...um...not...work?

Good idea:  Reading for fun.  Bad idea, reading a 625 page novel in the course of two days, especially when one has misgivings about it.  Not the "this is a terrible book" kind, but the "This is well written but I'm not so sure I care about the story/characters" kind.  That being said, I present a book review, since I haven't posted one in about, well, since I first started this journal:
( In a family album, snapshots of a thousand words or more )

So it's the end of the second night of the workshop.  The usual array of insanity has ensued, with photocopying, keeping kids quiet, making sure everybody gets a chance to talk, and--of 6.5 hours in the classroom--leading 4.5 hours of workshop.  It's been okay so far, a pretty good workshop environment, overall.

At lunch yesterday, the Memoirist greeted me with, "Hello, you."  We also reminisced about a Walt Whitman gathering last summer.

Mostly, I feel bad for my cat, who I've only been seeing twice a day, with these little secretive escapes (one at 5 a.m. and the other between the end of workshop and dinner), and she's obviously been antsy during the days.  Poor girl.  I get back to see her and it's like Purr-fest twenty-aught-nine because she's been there all alone.

Also, I have been devastated by the fact that Strong Bad has blown up another computer.  Actually, some punk asked him what explosion he remembers the best and, having concluded that the best explosions came from his computers, Strong Bad blew up Lappy!  >_<

Being anywhere between six to eight years older than the high school kids has been a bit weird, and I feel very...in between the groups here.  It's remarkably odd.  But then again, I've spent the past year hanging out in my apartment on my lonesome or with my cat, so I'm sort of used to the odd/frequent bit of isolation.  Seriously, though, you can't go home again, and this place just isn't the same without my girls.

Tomorrow, more of the same, then more of the same on Thursday and then on Friday.  I suppose it's worth the line on the CV and the money.

Additionally, I saw the most awesome professor to ever don black jeans today, and he called a recent project that aloveaffair and I did, and I quote, "brilliant."

So here's the background:  Student was supposed to be working with the Grand Old Man of Fiction, but he had a summer class and couldn't TA the workshop.  So I, apparently the official second string for the SU Writers Institute, was asked if I'd be willing to come back and do this thing again.  Since I graduated, I had to go through all of the paperwork to become an official hire, and so I'm now officially a member of the Susquehanna faculty.  Cool, no?

This has been the typical first day.  No weird antics to report quite yet, though I imagine there will be a few before the week is out.  Parents couldn't figure out that a room numbered 319 would be above the first floor, so that produced some problems that made me run from Deg to Apfelbaum in order to guide people.  (Love the running, love the running!)  Also, there's a kid from my old high school here, and he's in the Grand Old Man's section, to boot.  Could be awkward, could be interesting.  I'll just have to see how it goes.  It was a usual start, though, lots of mispronounced names from the usual source of mispronounced names, a few awkward interludes during the student orientation session, and then a giant tour (which turned into yours truly talking very loudly to 60 students and perhaps yelling "Allons-y!" several times to get the group moving again).  And like the Doctor, I had to explain, "What?  It's French!  It means 'let's go!'"

Also, I believe in dressing your family in corduroy jackets, wool caps, and blue jeans.  By the end of the tour and the torrential downpour, I was the only person without an umbrella to be remotely dry.

I may not update everyday, just because the schedule is always packed and I still have to make two surreptitious disappearances a day to check on Kaylee Cat.  But she's been really angsty with me the past few days, so maybe she'll appreciate my time away... :-/

So I'm a TA for the summer writers' workshop again.  Long story.  Let's just see how this thing goes (though it means that I'm now officially an employee of Susquehanna University).  Updates soon, but I have to go tell high school kids where the caf is and usher them around from one meeting to the next.

So far, my favorite is the father who asked completely unironically, and I quote, "So I leave the building by opening the doors?"

RM, over'n'out.

This is only 18 seconds, and you don't really need to know anything about Doctor Who to appreciate it.  It just looks like they're having so much fun!  This is my new favorite thing ever.  EVER.

Dance, Daleks, dance!

So...this post is delayed because of the wonderfully freakish thunderstorms that seemed to sprout up every hour only to dissipate into clear, cloudless skies.  And Elaine's battery was drained before I snapped this low quality, taken-with-my-phone picture.  I've been at my parents' house since Thursday evening b/c they were moving Glenn out and needed somebody to make sure that Catherine could get to work.  So I've been stranded in Bellwood and have had some nice conversations with my cat, who enjoys prowling through the house and sleeping.  But anywho, my parents have a crap ton of really old computers around the house; they inherit these awful, cheap PCs whenever my grandparents (and they do this yearly) decide to buy a new, slightly better, awful cheap PC (if a computer costs more than $500, my grandparents won't buy it, so it's Compaqs and low-end HPs the whole way!).  Kaylee found one of them yesterday, and after grooming herself for several minutes, she began to kick this PC.  Repeatedly.  I don't know what it did to offend her, but anyway, here's Kaylee Cat once again illustrating her technological prowess and skills.  (And again, apologies for the bad photo resolution...)



Seriously, though:  Please spay or neuter your pets.

Because of spending (quite literally) almost all of Thursday through Sunday watching Doctor Who and Torchwood, I apparently missed the Geek War of the millennium here on LJ, but I've put in my two cents at the last minute.  Also, I will fight Donna Noble.  Repeatedly.  I will sonic screwdriver her face, if I have to.

I've also developed a dislike for gatherings in which the words "I'm so drunk" are uttered in the first five minutes.  I have come to appreciate those little conversations I have with my cat, which usually leads her to gnaw on my hand.  Not sure how that works.

I also have to start indexing a book this week.  Not mine, no.  I need to start actually revising mine.  Or something along those lines.

This has been a completely pointless post.

( Name drop soup and a very long May )

And speaking of spaceships, all y'all should read chiara_suzuka's review of Star Trek because I requested it.

My brother is now a Doctor of Pharmacy.

There were many long ceremonies, meeting many people I'll never see again in my life (including one of his friends who is convinced I'm gay because all of my friends are girls), a bad student address in which a member of the university's graduating class mentioned that she learned so much about all the grey areas of life.  And that part?  Oh yeah, that went into detail about how just because you have blacks and whites, if you mix that together, you get grey.  Is that meant to imply that multiracial gatherings/institutions are ethical grey areas?  The student who was speaking looked like Little Orphan Annie.  Methinks Daddy WARbuck$ needs to teach his little adoptee not to be so damned prejudiced.

I wouldn't have Internet, were it not for the Obelisk of the Internets.  Go Verizon.  Seriously.

I am tired, and my family is loco.  It's all cool, I guess, except for the excessive noisiness and the resulting feeling of sonic claustrophobia that almost makes me completely shutdown/off.  And I miss my cat.  I had a dream last night that she called my phone and ordered a large pizza with extra yummies.  Whatever that means.

Or eight days, technically.  I sort of collapsed there last week, inexplicably.  All my efforts to convince myself to do anything resulted in nothing more than reading a bunch of old issues of Batman and Detective Comics.  And after a three hour nap yesterday afternoon (which was actually really nice--I woke up and there was a cat curled up next to me!  A cat!  A Kaylee cat!), I decided that, really, this isn't the summer where I can afford to remain in a perpetual slump.

Back to the grind, I s'pose.

I'm back, folks.  Coming soon:  a superhero (in re: otakumeep's post), the Red Mage Review of Books (just brief one-liners, probably), and perhaps a request for readers of a ms. of three novellas (I'll be working on revisions this afternoon, after varied miscellany, with a tentative finishing date of next Monday).

In other news, the Fab Four beat Godhead hands down in the song game.  Thanks for playing.

~RM

I thought I'd a-shake-a-shake-a things up with a new LJ look.  And in celebration, I'm posting a new round of an old game that I think you'll all remember.  It's inspired by the Eleanor Rigby reference in chiara_suzuka's most recent post.  (And for those of you who are yet to read her latest film review for Frost/Nixon, I suggest you do so here.)  Props also to Chuck Joe Hank for introducing me to one of the versions of the song posted behind...the LJ cut!

( Look at all the lonely people.... )

Okay, this'll be über-quick, because I'm at the "British and American Literature Lab," aka tutoring that nobody will show up for, aka sitting on a couch in the "Niche" behind the 7th Street Café.  I've been finally teaching myself keyboard shortcuts on a Mac, but working on a PC at the Press has screwed me up a little and I try to use the different commands on the wrong machine with...sometimes hilarious results.

By the time this "tutoring" has finished this afternoon, I'll be finished with all of my work for classes.  I would have been done yesterday if my poetry instructor had actually returned the rest of my poems to me Tuesday night like he was supposed to.  Growf.  But three poems to revise to finish my work, then half of a prof's book to read to finish off the assistantship, and then "tutoring" next Thursday as well.  So that nobody can show up.  What.  The.  Crap.

Also, I have a headache the size of a bear.  A real live bear.  It's clawing at the insides of my head.  (Actually, this is the first morning that I can remember in a long time in which I didn't have at least one caffeinated beverage.  I've had to cave, just now, and get something.  But I'm trying to cut back on the caffeine.)  Tuesday there was a department party where it seemed that everybody but the ol' Red Mage was blitzkrieging their livers.  Something probably happened on Monday.  Right now, there are girls working on math stuff and doing so quite loudly while talking about their past few days.  Listen, Teen Girl Squad, I don't care if your boyfriend wasn't wearing pants by the time the party ended, and I certainly don't want to hear about it.

I have other grievances, but I think this will do for now.  RM, over'n'out.

Okieday.  I'm just doing the meme that's been going around.  For band names!  For another way to come up with band names, I recommend Teen Girl Squad #8 or Teen Girl Squad #12.
( Numbuh one jam? Smash hit? Bassists wearing glasses? You decide! )

 

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while.  Stick around to the very end for some bad bat puns.  chiara_suzuka, the very very last bat pun, I am certain, is just for you.

I've been feeling strangely transcendental for the past three to four hours.  Like my body is somehow anchoring my mind to this plane of existence.  It's very floaty, yet heavy.  Like a buoy.  They're made of metal, but they float.

I do not think that poetry class is the cause.  I had a difficulties remaining tethered and attentive, and it all made me dizzy, but in a strange sort of up-down bobbing kind of way, not the usual topsy-turvy kind.  Won't go any deeper into the transcendental now because (a) I'm not a Romantic poet and because (b) transcending is all rising above or out of something, so you really can't go deeper.

Before you ask, I am completely sober, and I have actually eaten twice today.  Twice!  It's a world record.

Tea yesterday was all right, if only because it turned out to be only 30ish minutes b/c the other party involved was late getting out of a meeting and then had another one at 2.

I don't feel like I'm here.  So I'll take Kaylee Cat and head to bed.  That's all for now.

On Wednesday, I have a meeting for coffee or tea at one o'clock.  It seems oddly familiar.  I'm going to have to dredge my archives and see what happened the last time this occurred.

In the meantime, I have a few books to read and some writing to keep going.  I also need to send prospective MA students emails selling the program.  Apparently, I'm a reliable contact on these matters.

I'll need to see if I can actually wake up in the morning.  Not sure how well that will work.

Regardless, things are about to get...dangeresque.

Before all of this happens, I think I need to stop by Cool Weapons Surplus to pick up a new nunchuck gun.  But the stairs in my building are blocked by laughing people, Congo Beat and his jungle music, and maybe a dog, so it looks like I'm going to have to jump....

(And no, I'm not actually going to jump out of a window or anything.  I'm just making a Strong Bad reference.  Though seriously, it is a bit noisy in this building tonight.)

So Kaylee and I were at the vet today, and the vet said that her fur pulling problem isn't from fleas (which I could've told him) and probably isn't from allergies, because her skin isn't inflamed, red, puffy, swollen, irritated, etc.  He said her fur pulling pattern is also inconsistent with either a flea or allergy problem.  He said it's a "behavioral problem," but my kitty's so nice!  She's not the bad kid in the class of the room launching spit balls at the dork in glasses with the Chip'n'Dale Rescue Rangers pencil box!

[Note:  I may or may not have had a Chip'n'Dale Rescue Rangers pencil box in elementary school.]

Though, in the words of Homestar Runner, sewiously.  There's a guy who visits the girls across the hall, and he brings his dog up, and the vet thinks that smelling the dog has triggered Kaylee's old anxieties (she used to live in a home with dogs that chased her around, and skirting under the porch is how she lost the fur there initially, before I had her).  So the vet prescribed Kaylee some meds to "reduce her anxiety and boost up her serotonin levels so she's a good, happy kitty.  Oh, and she may become incredibly drowsy."  Uh...she's a cat.  Their state of matter is "incredibly sleepy liquid."  Like a self-damming river.  Flowing from place to place one second, completely immobile the next.  And she's already such a goooooooooooood kitty!

And Eliza from SU, whose last name I can't spell because she got married, is a receptionist at the vet's office.  How weird is that?

But I just hope Kaylee overcomes her fur yankin' sometime soon.

Might as well break my vow of silence.  Not like I'm writing anything, anyway.  Well, not anything worthwhile.  And it has nothing to do with my cat trying to sleep on the typewriter, either.  Yes, she does that.  I do not know how it could possibly be comfortable.  Typing this, I'm jabbing fingers under Kaylee paws and deleting random sequences of numbers.  Maybe Kaylee learned it in mechanic school:  Keyboards=the pinnacle of comfort.

And speaking of Kaylee, we have a vet appointment on Monday to find out why she's just been tugging fur out of her back, where she got all gouged up when she was chased by dogs before I got her.  Poor girl.  I hope it's not cat pattern baldness.

I need a plot.  Maybe a few characters, but mostly plot.  Any plot.  That's all.  Metaphors, descriptive imagery/scenery--I've got truckloads of those.  A plot.  My kingdom for a plot.  This would be so much easier if things happened in my life.  Oh well.