Someone Wants to Read Me...

so, i came here for a meeting with dr. v. to talk about revisions to my prospectus (i'll bitch about that in a second), and i got a pleasant surprise. in my mailbox here at the sea lab was a postcard from a rather prominent seagrass biologist whom i shall not name despite the fact that no one who reads this blog will know who he is or appreciate the significance of his work. the postcard is a request for a reprint of my paper. yay me! a prominent seagrass biologist wants to read my work. wow. i've read a butt ton of his stuff, some of which is cited in my paper, and now he wants to read mine. i guess i shouldn't be surprised since our papers deal with the same area (seagrass-pathogen interactions), but it still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. :)

now i can bitch a little about dr. v. god love the man, but if he didn't like the order i was using to present my introductory material, why couldn't tell me that when we met months ago to talk about the outline that i was following in my prospectus? i don't think he really had a problem with anything that i actually said (although there was one part where i need to define a couple of things a bit more clearly), he just doesn't like the order i said it in. everything he told me today made sense, but i couldn't help but be a tad frustrated that he did not even read the entire document before he made comments. he just read half the intro, passed along the comments, and decided that we should meet to discuss revisions. no wonder it took that one guy 20 drafts to get it right! how can i even hope to get it done in 3 or less if he doesn't comment on the whole damn thing?! this making comments on one part at a time is going to make me nuts... more nuts than i am already.

ok, dudes. i gotta get to class now. adios.

My Dream Class

whoa. i just learned of a new course offering at the sea lab. it sounds positively dreamy, and i am dying to participate. the course title is "anthropogenic impacts on coastal ecosystems," and it is a 4 week, 3 credit hour course. two weeks of the course will be spent in santa pola, spain studying under professors from the university of alicante and doing a field project in the spanish mediterranean. the last two weeks will be held back at dauphin island sea lab (DISL), attending lectures from a local prof who hails from spain and analyzing our data. there is an exam at the end of the course, as well as a presentation of our projects. but wait. it gets better. the airfare is being covered by DISL, and lodging is being covered by the marine sciences dept at the university of alicante. so all of that means that the 5 students who get to participate in this dream trip will only have to pay for food and personal expenses (souvenirs and such).

*sigh* i want to go so bad i can taste it. the DISL prof who is offering the course in the fall is holding a meeting on friday for interested students. you can bet your sweet asses that i will be there. once again, i want to go to spain so badly that i can practically smell the sweet salty air if the mediterranean. i'm sure it's nothing like the sweet salty air of the gulf of mexico. the trip is in september, and i hope that dr. v. thinks that going to spain is a good idea. he's said that the next time they hold the field marine science class in finland or maine i should go... i really hope i can do this anthropogenic impacts on coastal ecosystems class. we shall see. i'll find out more on friday.

[insert something clever here]

blah blah blah. sadly, i don't really have much to say, but i feel guilty about not posting this week. so here i am. it's been a busy but boring week. i had an exam in my fisheries oceanography class yesterday. it was hellalong but otherwise not that bad. does anyone care to know what happens to cod in the gulf of maine or herring and pilchard in the english channel when the north atlantic oscillation switches to a cool phase (or when the icelandic low pressure system weakens)? me neither, dudes, but i do. i do. fisheries oceanography is actually kind of an interesting class, but we focus way too much on specific fish populations and not nearly enough on broad principles. this class has absolutely nothing to do with my future plans, since i have no interest in becoming a fisheries biologist, but i am in desperate need of credit hours, and my options are limited.

i still haven't heard anything from dr. v. about the fate of my prospectus, and i'm a little concerned. he emailed monday and said he would "try to turn this around pdq." i'm hoping that his silence since then means that he hasn't gotten around to reading it yet and not that it's terribly, horribly, awfully, appallingly, dreadfully, frightfully atrocious and they're kicking me out of the program. that would, like, suck. charlie tells me that dr. v.'s daughter has been in town this week, so i'll assume he hasn't read my prospectus yet. he really needs to get it back to me soon so i can revise it and we can get it to the committee for approval so that kelly and i can go to port st. joe next month.

oh yeah. i discovered that my friend katy is back in my lab. she took a break from the grad school thing since she was going insane with stress, and i haven't been the best at keeping in touch with her. i always mean to call her, but then i forget. i'm a terrible friend. but anyway, she's working as a lab tech/research assistant, and it's really good to see her again. perhaps she can help me out some this summer. we always have fun together, and i really need as much help in the field as i can get. we shall see what dr. v. thinks about that.

mmmkay. i've got nothing else. ta ta.

Finn vs. Finn

and niittymaki wins that battle. yes, i finally got to see antero niittymaki play in person last night in atlanta, whose starting goalie was another finn, kari lehtonen. there was lots of driving and lots of sitting (so much that my bum revolted and begged not be sat on anymore), but chad and i had a great time. the flyers won 4-2 (yay!), and the whole experience was very... interesting.

the drive over wasn't bad. we stopped for lunch in montgomery, and we still made it to atlanta in about 5 hrs and 40 min (the mapquest estimated time was 5 hrs 6 min). atlanta traffic sucks major ass, but we made it to the parking garage across from philips arena just fine. and then we had our (well, my anyway) first encounter with scalpers. there were two hanging out where you exit the parking garage to cross over to the arena and another one on the opposite corner. they weren't bad (not like the nut who followed a bunch of us around on the way to the world of coke and then shouted obscenities at us when we told him we wouldn't give him any money and crossed the street away from him a couple of years ago), just a bunch of guys saying, "you need tickets? do you have any extras?" to every person who walked by. so, we went over to the box office and bought our tickets (a meager $74 for both seats, which is approximately what we paid for one seat in tampa - and the seats in tampa weren't much better than the ones we had in atlanta), then we just wandered around a little bit to see what was around. we had planned on eating before the game, and there were plenty of eating establishments around, but we'd just eaten lunch about three hours before, and we weren't really hungry.

anyway, philips arena is basically attached to the CNN building. you can go inside (but not into the actual arena) basically anytime the CNN building is open to the public and visit the gift shops and the food court. yes, they have an actual food court. the whole setup is really nice, and instead of waiting outside in the cold (ok, it wasn't that cold) or rain (no, it wasn't raining) or whatever, the line to get into the arena is indoors, in the food court area. they even have a little hockey rink set up (not an ice rink, just concrete) where little kids can play. it was really cute.

while we were wandering around, me in my flyer jersey, chad in the jacquo jersey, this little guy in a(n ugly orange) jeremy roenick replica jersey came up and was like, "are you guys from florida? pensacola, huh? i'm from panama city." then he hands me this card and tells us about the floridadelphians fan club for misplaced philly sports fans. i was amused to no end about that. the pensacola jersey garnered lots of comments, and one of the cars parked near us in the garage had a gwinnett gladiators sticker on the back.

so, once we were standing in line for when they opened the doors to the arena, we discovered that it was bobble head night. what a coincidence - when we went to the flyers/lightning game in tampa two years ago we scored a couple of pavel kubina bobble heads. last night, it was kari lehtonen bobble heads. anyway, instead of waiting in the huge lines for bobble heads, we walked around and checked out the arena. the thrashers have a really nice buidling, and i like the fire-spewing bird heads over the scoreboard. we also checked out the view from our seats and ended up staying there for warm-ups. a guy in front of us had said that they wouldn't let him down near the glass, and by the time we'd figured out that he had gone to the wrong side to try to go down (he went over where all the suites were, and they weren't letting people down on that side) there was such a huge crowd down there that we couldn't get close. i still got some shots from our seats, though. i was a little confused when the game started and the starting lineups were announced because mike richards was centering the line with knuble and gagne instead of peter forsberg. forsberg had skated during warm-ups, but apparently he'd hurt himself friday night, and they decided he should sit that game out.

there was a good mixture of thrashers and flyers fans in our section, and the only bad seed was the guy in the row in front of us. he was a flyers fan, and he was truly obnoxious. guys like him make everyone else look bad. during the freaking national anthem, he kept screaming "let's go flyers." it's the national anthem, dude, show some respect. his wife nailed him for it, though. then, serge aubin went down after a clean check by (i think) denis gauthier and had to be helped off the ice, and the guy starts yelling, "yeah, let's take out some more of them!" what an ass. no wonder atlanta fans hate philly fans. but i think that's how ranger fans are toward darius kasparitis. i don't think that any player should go after another one with the intent to injure him. i'm ok with pestering, hitting, making life difficult, but it's not cool when a guy's like, "hey, that guy's good. let's put him out of commission for a while."

anyway, the game itself was fantastic, with the exception of all the stupid penalties the flyers took. true, the refs were a little hard on them (while they called exactly one penaltly on atlanta after the 1st period), and it appeared that the flyers were only allowed to play no-touch hockey, but still. it was like a little procession to the sin bin, one after the other. discipline, boys, discipline. anyway, niittymaki played very well, despite allowing a goal in the 1st period on only 4 shots... and he made his best saves during the 2nd period, when he was right in front of our seats. i was also quite proud of joni pitkanen, who racked up three assists and was named 1st star of the game. and who was it who said that he hasn't been showing the offensive power since he game back from the sports hernia surgery that he was before...

i like that hitchcock has put r.j. umberger with jeff carter and niko dimitrakos (a trade deadline addition). everyone on that line scored last night, so it's obviously working for them.

ok. that's it for comments on the game itself. but i have one more story in me. during the game, we saw fans get arrested for fighting. there were no fights during the game (though i thought for a moment that stupid hatcher was going to fight), but there was a fight in the stands. we hear some commotion, look two sections over, and see two flyer jerseys throwing punches with a guy in a red shirt. then the cops came running over to break it up, and one of the flyer jerseys was taken away in handcuffs. the other one was a woman, and she went down and got her beer and started to walk away in the other direction when the cops came and gathered her up. when she walked back by the guy in red, she fluffed her jersey up in front of the guy like "flyers rule." another example of a couple of bad apples making everyone else look bad. the guy in red was a couple of rows behind the two bad flyer fans, so they had to have gone up to jump on him. that's ridiculous. you don't go into the opposition's building and trash the home team or their fans. that's crazy rude. i was appalled at the behavior of some of those people. and to actually fight, like throw punches, at another fan? no way, dude. everyone is there to enjoy the game, and you shouldn't be obnoxious. the guy who got jumped on paid way too much money to be assaulted. i'm sure there were... unkind words exchanged that propmted the physical action, but really, people. you're grown-ups now. act like it, and stop making people think that everyone in black and orange is an ass. after seeing the way people acted there, i don't blame atlanta fans for hating flyer fans one bit. i just hope they don't think we're all like that. people didn't act that way in tampa... everyone was friendly.

oh, one more thing. after the game was over and we were getting ready to leave, this guy in a blue florida shirt walked by and was like, "whoo! ice pilots! pensacola! i love florida!" when he saw the jacquo jersey. it was funny.

that's pretty much it now. to avoid crazy post-game traffic, we took a walk through the olympic park, then headed back toward I-85 and mobile. we stopped at a random waffle house on the way home for food because all the restaurants around philips arena close at 10:00. on saturdays. it was only 9:00 for us, so it felt especially ridiculous not to be able to find an open restaurant. even the subway was closing at 10. what self-respecting establishment in atlanta closes at 10:00 on a saturday night? even the places in downtown pcola are open until at least 11. crazy people closing at 10... anyway, we made it home at about 3:00 this morning, safe and sound. tired and with unhappy booties, what with all that sitting, but it was a fun trip nonetheless.

Finito!

i finished the first draft of my prospectus yesterday as planned. yay me! i'm so proud of me. i kept it short... 23 1/2 pages. 62 references. but it's finished, and i just sent it to dr. v. i'm sure that i'll have to do some revisions, and i hope they aren't too major. if i do say so myself, i think it's pretty good. i printed a copy out last night so i could have a look at it this morning and make a couple of last-minute corrections (i tend to miss random typos when i'm looking at a computer screen) and double-check the references. i stroked it lovingly and thought about how this freshly written product of my brain represents the plan for the next couple of years of my life. but since it includes a trip or two to the florida keys and lots of beach and snorkeling time (along with a fair bit of lab time), i think i'm gonna like it. this is, like, my baby. i seriously hope dr. v. doesn't make me change too much of it. this one guy who graduated from his lab went through 20 drafts. but i think i'm a pretty good writer, which that guy wasn't. i think i'll have a final product in three drafts or less.

anyway, now i have time to do some random things that i've been meaning to do all week. like make a trip to the recycling center and drop off some old clothes at the goodwill. then i can just hang out for the rest of the day... until the pilots game tonight. i'll finally get to see jacquo in action again. :) maybe they won't lose (though i'm not counting on that). then tomorrow is the big event... we get to go see the flyers play in atlanta! i'm so excited about it i could die. plus, atlanta has a great college discount. we can get a $52 ticket for only $37, 2 tickets per i.d. they look like pretty good seats, too. so that's the plan. i'd better charge up the batteries for my camera today so i'm all prepared for tomorrow. i'm so excited.

oh , yeah. happy st. patrick's day! and now i'm going to gather my recyclables.

17 pages and counting...

so, i actually did, like, a lot of work on my prospectus yesterday. i managed to finish up the intro (all 10 subsections of it), write out the "Questions and Hypotheses" section, and get started on the methods. i'm not sure how dr. v. is going to feel about my 16 page introduction, but there is a butt ton of background information that i need to justify the 4 different questions my project will address. he advised me to keep the methods fairly non-specific so that i have wiggle room, and they shouldn't take up more than two or three pages if i don't go into the actual experimental designs (i think - they could actually take up 5 or 6 pages, even being non-specific). i'm not sure how exactly i'm going to structure the methods yet to keep them short. i basically have 4 different sets of experiments/field sampling that are being united under the theme of understanding the production of phenolics by seagrasses, and i'm going to have to struggle to keep the description of each part of the overall project down to about a page. then i have the general descriptions of the chemical analyses, which tacks on about another page. the final section of the proposal (i don't really count the literature cited section, which i've been doing as i go along so i don't forget to include any citations) is the significance section, which always seems to be the hardest for me to write because i have this fear of overstating the importance of my work. at the same time, i don't want to make it seem unimportant, either. dr. v. and i have talked about this a lot, though, and i have a general idea of what to write.

dudes, there is no way in hell that this paper is only going to be 20 pages (dr. v. was, like, let's try to keep this to about 20 pages). i can maybe keep it to 25, which isn't too bad i guess. the body will be 25 pages, i mean. i've already got a full 4 pages of references, and the methods and significance sections will add another half a page or so. that translates into about 55 references. whew. and that, my friends, is my attempt not to "drown it in references," as dr. v. put it.

oh my god, my dissertation is going to be a freaking monster. it shouldn't be that bad, though. the plan is to get 4 publications out of it and tie all of them together as chapters in my dissertation. i'm cool with that. sounds great, in fact. less work for me.

okee. i must get back to work now. i think i can even finish this thing today if i try really hard and don't distract myself too much.

Random Bits

checking my email just now put a smile on my face. jacquo is back with the ice pilots (i know, he has been for the past few games) and kicking ass (two goals in the overtime loss to greenville, a couple of assists his first game back, a shootout goal in the win in augusta), and houston traded to the rights to chris heid, meaning that once again pensacola's captain is leaving the team. as soon as he's off the injured reserve list, he's going to cleveland. now the flyers just need to manage not to lose to florida tonight to make my day, hockey wise. i'm going to assume that they'll lose to tampa bay friday night and pray that they win in atlanta saturday when i'm there live and in person.

i'm really excited about going to atlanta this weekend. i know we're missing a pilots game, but it's an NHL game, dudes. we'll be in pensacola friday night, and hopefully jacquo will continue his kicking ass trend at home. i don't really like atlanta as a city, but i'm still looking forward to seeing philips arena. the flyers really need to win that game, and i'm hoping that niittymaki starts in goal.

so, i'm technically on spring break right now, but it isn't much of a break. i've been working on my prospectus... sort of. i'm still working on the introduction, and i've got almost 10 pages so far. i've only written a couple of pages a day, and if i'm going to finish this thing by friday i need to crank out about 5 pages or so a day. that doesn't seem that hard, but this "no real deadline" thing doesn't work for me. i set friday as the deadline for myself, but i'm really good at talking myself into extensions - the master procrastinator in her prime.

mmmkay. back to work until i distract myself with something else.

Let's Make a Deal: One Player Version

i swear to all of the internet that i will start writing my prospectus today. really, i should have started a couple of weeks ago. but you know me. and the weather has been way too nice the past few days to be cooped up inside with a bunch of papers and my computer. it's a good thing that today is supposed to be stormy and gross. no temptation to go for a long walk instead of writing. i did that yesterday. it was a beautiful day; how could i resist? but now i must start writing. once i get started, i don't think i'll have a problem, but it's motivating myself to sit down and start that i'm having problems with. when i get my train of thought going, i don't like to stop until i'm finished. that basically means i'll spend a few days writing non-stop, but that's ok, right?

before i go and put post-its with notes for myself on the articles i have just recently read (the older ones have already been thoroughly post-it-ed up), i just have to comment on the flyers game last night against carolina. yet again i found myself repeating "they are so gonna lose" throughout the 3rd period. that's practically become a mantra for me, with both the flyers and the ice pilots (though, surprise surprise, the pilots have won two in a row - on the road of course). philadelphia surprised me, though. niittymaki was fantastic, and the carolina announcer guy seems to share my high opinion of him. i was really surprised that he got the start last night since esche won his last game (though he did allow two goals late in the 3rd). but i guess nitty had played every other game against carolina, so why change things now? anyway, it looked like carolina would win the game 2-1 in regulation, but freddy meyer deflected in a shot from mike rathje with 0.6 seconds left. i was crazy excited. i remember a couple of years ago when the flyers were playing anaheim, and i had that same "they're gonna lose" feeling when they also managed to tie the game with 0.6 seconds left. they lost that one, though. last night against carolina they miraculously forced a shootout, and even more miraculously, they won it. that's two shootout wins in a row! and the 2nd time that more than one flyer scored in the shootout! and the 1st time gagne scored in the shootout! i was really nervous when he came up as the 4th shooter, the won who could win the game. i have great respect for simon gagne, but he's not so good on the breakaway. but, 5th time's the charm, right? like fulton from The Mighty Ducks - he hits the net on 1 in 5. anyway, the whole game was really fantastic, and i hope philadelphia's winning ways continue.

hmm. i guess i have to write now. and not on my blog. perhaps i'll make a deal with myself. my apartment is a mess, and this is the time when i would ususally be inclined to clean it up (you know, when i've got tons of other stuff to do) just to distract myself. so, i guess i'll write for a couple of hours, then i'll let myself watch passions and then clean up. but only if i get at least a couple of pages written. that'll work. bargaining with oneself - a powerful tool, to be sure.

Words I Type A Lot

this, my friends, is a word cloud. what, you ask, is a word cloud? well, it is a grouping of words frequently used on your (or in this case, my) blog, arranged alphabetically, with the largest words being the most frequently occurring. i don't really count "latina" and "marie" since they appear at the bottom of every post. that leaves me with a lot of talk about hockey, some of it pretty. what amuses me most is the 1st 5 words - afternoon ass best better big. that just makes me giggle. oh, and i say "damn" a lot. and "ass."

now, go make your own and see which words you type incessantly.

Beer, It Does a Body Good

i might have found it, guys: the answer to the ultimate question of why the ice pilots are so unbelievably horrible this season. and it's not 42, it's beer.

chad and i went to outback last night after the pilots got spanked by south carolina, and boy were we ever surprised to see bryson busniuk and shaun landolt saunter in about half an hour after we arrived. what were they doing out? they have a game tonight, and it's about 6 hours away from pensacola. well, as luck (not necessarily the good kind) would have it, they were seated at the table right next to ours. while this meant that we could hear every word of their conversation, it also meant that i had to cease and desist with the trash talk. the pilots and their unbelievable horrible-ness had been our main topic of conversation before that. it's a good thing i was facing the door and saw them come in, or we would have had another awkward situation in which the smack talkees overheard my talking smack about them. i am the queen of being overheard by the subject of my smack talk at the most inopportune of moments, after all.

anyway, chad and i were highly amused to see that the sloth (busniuk) and landolt got pretty cozy, sitting on the same side of the table. they were at a table against the wall, so one side was a bench, and the other side had two chairs. they sat on the bench. together. isn't that sweet? anyway, rooneem showed up with his girlfriend (i assume she was his girlfriend, anyway) a few minutes later, but it was still amusing that the other two sat on the bench together and not in the chairs. busniuk was even turned toward landolt (so that his back was toward me and chad) with one leg tucked underneath him so that his knee was almost touching his buddy. i was like, "they don't even play on the same line." then chad replied, "maybe they should. then they'd look out for each other." anyway, that whole situation was pretty amusing.

the disturbing thing about the scenario was the fact that all three of them ordered beer. i guess rooneem is still injured (though he's walking fine) and not playing, so maybe it would be ok for him to have a beer, but the other two? when they have a game the next day? i think not. i guess they wanted to drown that game out, too. but the waiter did his job, and they all got carded. well, i'm not sure about rooneem. when he got there (after the other two had already ordered drinks) the waiter immediately asked if he wanted beer, pointing out that they were half price. so i'm guessing there was lots of drinking. i wonder what the coach thinks about that.

ok, i don't actually know how much they drank. maybe they all only had one beer. that wouldn't be so bad, i guess. but who wouldn't want to go get sloshed after the way they played? but with that attitude, the whole team would be alcoholics. and that would make them even worse. then they'd have to drink more. maybe that's why they've gotten progressively worse as the season wears on. you know, why they don't even seem to try anymore. yep, maybe that's it.

My Googlism Poem

vanessa did this, and i'm a little bored, so i'm going to post the non-porn-related googlisms of latina (i don't really relate myself to the porn industry, you know). in keeping with the "copying nessa" theme of this post, i'm also going to emphasize my favorites, but i'm going to do it by putting them in purple. this really is amusing.

latina is the longest established
latina is extracting children helpfully
latina is giving
latina is being managed by latin sound productions
latina is great
latina is a preparatory course for cheryl lowe's latina christiana
latina is a free program which drills users on the basics of latin grammar
latina is the
latina is a database of all sites
latina is a systematic study of the latin language
latina is published monthly except for a combined january/february double issue
latina is a rocket scientist
latina is a lifestyle magazine dedicated to showcasing the wide interests and talents of women of hispanic origin who live
latina is the newspaper for radio managers
latina is the only professional magazine for latin american video professionals that focuses on technology news
latina is a high energy show band with a tejano/latin flavor
latina is not about niche marketing but the face of the future
latina is baaaack
latina is available on an annual subscription
latina is to be strong
latina is a documentary and resource building project that focuses on traditional artists from
latina is a selling event
latina is not designed
latina is a home for all students interested in learning about the situation of latinos in the united states and in the countries of latin america
latina is frequented by many sports players and a host of stars that enjoy our cuisine
latina is typical of new york's many
latina is working in close collaboration with coimbra group universities
latina is at the end of one of lazio's most dangerous roads
latina is a latino based non
latina is committed to developing its members and peers into mature
latina is a joy to behold
latina is a county grammar school in the federal state of saxony
latina is a life long commitment
latina is also the founder and president of new england laser vision center
latina is
latina is the most successful women's magazine targeting latinas
latina is located in barva
latina is to educate students in the spanish language using innovative classroom methods and cultural interaction
latina is complex and incomplete
latina is the new monthly live salsa/latin music session launching in leeds on tuesday 24th september
latina is the bilingual lifestyle magazine for today's hispanic woman
latina is political
latina is available for use on networked pcs within ucl running windows and pc
latina is a community based organization that educates and organizes latino urban migrant workers and their families so they may become economically
latina is different from any of the other salsa establishments on island
latina is y1000
latina is dedicated to showcasing the wide interests and talents of women of hispanic origin who live
latina is a great club
latina is something to
latina is to foster a broad appreciation of the significant contribution of hispanics
latina is a group of dancers from different nationalities who fuse together to share the passion for latin rhythms
latina is an internationally renowned laser expert
latina is an agent of western illinois university which strives to provide an informed understanding of the latino people to western's community
latina is qualified as vetus in the first of these — ii
latina is a project to supply company representations in buenos aires
latina is a golden hideaway serving the simple
latina is a bimonthly tabloid publication available throughout the kansas city area with emphasis on johnson and douglas counties
latina is very similar to porta s
latina is a community
latina is contuing to look for ways to grow
latina is well poised to capture its potential
latina is an enrichment program for latino students completing grades 6 thru 8 this year who would benefit from being immersed in a university setting
latina is a celebration of latin american culture
latina is funded by the dr
latina is divided into columns
latina is a weekend
latina is a program of the religious coalition for reproductive choice
latina is the club for you
latina is a cd
latina is for today's hispanic woman and is directed toward the understanding of their lifestyle and values
latina is about to dress herself in ruffles and flourishes** this one is my favorite

now, let's put my favorites together and see what we get.

latina is a rocket scientist
latina is not about niche marketing but the face of the future
latina is baaaack
latina is to be strong
latina is not designed
latina is a joy to behold
latina is a life long commitment
latina is
latina is complex and incomplete
latina is available for use on networked pcs within ucl running windows and pc
latina is an internationally renowned laser expert
latina is a golden hideaway serving the simple
latina is contuing to look for ways to grow
latina is funded by the dr
latina is a program of the religious coalition for reproductive choice
latina is about to dress herself in ruffles and flourishes

possibly the world's weirdest poem, but it served its purpose (amusing me until i leave for the game tonight in pensacola).

Passions is Funny

the description of yesterday's episode of passions on directv's guide:

"Pigeons attack Ivy while she tries to hide from Fox."

that's all, folks.

Retail Therapy

so, i'm not sure if you've noticed, but i've been in sort of a funk lately. like, i have had nothing to say (thus the utter lack of blogging) and no drive to do anything but sit on my couch and stare at the tv. not actually watch, as in pay attention to and possibly find the humor in the random shows that are on during the day, but just stare at the tv while my mind is someplace else. i don't know where my mind is exactly, but whatever this limbo might be, it's not good for me. i am not thinking happy thoughts.

so anyway, i've found that shopping alleviates some of my blahs. plus, i really needed new jeans. with the exception of my ass jeans (you know, the ones i bought around christmas with vanessa), all my pants are kind of raggedy. so, over the past couple of days, i've bought three new pairs of jeans, a pair of cords, a bunch of tank tops from old navy, a purse, and these awesome gray and pink converse all stars. so, i've officially spent all of the money that i can afford to spend for a while (though all of that loot costed me less than $100 - ross is a great store; where else can you find a cute pair of levi's for $12.99?), and now i'm thinking about new summer clothes. all of my shorts are kind of raggedy, too. the high-70's temps today are making me think of summer already. i love this weather. i love walking out of my apartment at 9:00 in the morning to a lovely 70 degrees and lots of sunshine. but not even this absolutely gorgeous weather is helping my mood any. blah.

yesterday i had lunch with lindsey. we haven't seen much of each other this semester. she's been crazy busy, taking her comprehensive exams for her master's degree, writing her thesis (she defends next month), and planning her wedding (which is happening this summer). it was good to see her. we sat in foosackly's for like an hour and a half talking about science, old roommates, comps, and a million other things. it reminded me of how i should be writing my prospectus (but i haven't started it yet) and how i needed to read 6 journal articles for class today (which i didn't). i dropped her back at USA so she could get some work done for her seminar, and i was going to go back home and read the papers for class today, but on the way, i decided to go shopping instead. i went to old navy, but i didn't find much of anything that spoke to me. so i went to ross, where lots of things spoke to me, particularly those converse all stars i mentioned earlier. then i went home and watched the last two epidodes of passions. so i haven't read any of the papers for my class today, except the one i have to present. damn, with the way i've been feeling lately, i'm lucky i read the paper i have to talk about. i seriously hope this a menstrual thing and not some deep-seated emotional issue. and maybe i'll wake up tommorrow feeling as cheerful as ever.

so for now, i'm sitting here half-watching shall we dance?, wondering what time my fisheries oceanography class is meeting this afternoon. i honestly don't know. oh wait. nevermind. charlie just emailed me. we're meeting at 2:00. sometimes we meet at 1:00, and since i have a presentation today, showing up at 2:00 when class started at 1:00 would have been a bad thing.

one day, mr. prospectus, you will be written... one day soon, i swear. probably not today, but next thursday, i'll go spend some quality time in the library. seriously.

does anyone else find that thinking too far ahead is completely overwhelming? that the thought of everything you have to do in the next few months makes you want to curl up under the covers and hide from the world like a little kid hiding from the monster in his closet? well, i've got a lot of stuff coming up, and it's pretty overwhelming. but instead of tackling everything head-on, as usual i'm putting it off as long as possible and trying (unsuccessfully) to pretend it doesn't exist.

you might think because of what i just wrote that my current despondency can be solely attributed to graduate school blues, but it's really not. i'm just having trouble sorting everything else out. oh, and just so you don't go there, the issues aren't marital, either. chad and i are fine. this is more of a me dealing with myself when i'm alone thing. i'm sure that vegging and watching tv aren't helping me with that any, but don't you just want to wallow sometimes? even when you aren't really sure what you're wallowing in?