so much for european design

i'm so happy because i finally have a chance to put my mini-greenhouse to real and consistent use.
but today i went out to say hi to my baby peas and the greenhouse was broken!!
i'm no woodshop-whiz but i think a few well-placed nails in place of that ineffective glue would solve the problem.
anyone with woodshop experience? i have a hammer...

in other news, turns out reading the book helps.
this morning i finally got around to reading those last few pages of that one chapter i didn't finish. i'm feeling much more confident about that final at least.

ooh. look out for tomorrow. i have big plans.

illogical predicament

predicate logic : i have to do it = icky

i have a lot to do. i don't have much time to do it in. so sitting back down on the couch instead of leaving at 2 AM.. uh, i mean, 2 is not wise. staying up (with the occasional drift into a comatose state) until 4.30 is even less wise. today i left at 9. i finally made it back to my house at 11 so i could "get to work" (after a little lighter reading, a nap, leisure picnic of discussion with linds moff and interrupted by a welcome visit from valerie funk) on my finals. needless to say i wasn't much further along by the time i left for work at 15.15.

now i'm nursing a slight headache, wearing glasses (if you don't know me well this may not mean anything to you. if you didn't know i wear glasses, you may begin to understand.), and panicking (full on hysteria and nausea.) about my semantics final.
part of this panic rests in the fact that i'm pretty sure i can't do it even if i did sit down and try. the rest lies in the fact that i still have to come up with a topic and language data for my 20 page syntax paper which i find myself incapable of working on until my semantics is finished. nice. happy weekend to me.

and here in spain i am a spaniard

monday, april 25, 2005
i sat myself down on the uncomfortable chairs to wait.
my calm exterior masked the turbulence within. i was not the only one, but in the camaraderie of silence we ignored each other. i ate some fruit.
"parachutes" played as i discovered for the first time a mike's mix and i opened the card from allison.
in newark i explored. i contemplated the idea of venturing into the city and found my gate in the deserted terminal. i found the food court and my mother paid for my lunch. i listened to "teenage riot" as i watched the children in short shorts coming home from spring break somewhere and tried to work on my final exam.
with only an hour left i went back to the gate. as i approached i saw the rest of the group. they were sitting on the ground playing a noisy game of cards. i kept walking.

tuesday, april 26, 2005
i awoke from a fitful sleep somewhere over the atlantic and soon i was in madrid.

give up education as a bad mistake

today is the last day of classes. for me. i jumped on that "school on tuesdays and thursdays is for suckers" bandwagon faster than you can say... something that i suppose you could say quickly, even though i'm being sarcastic because not only have i ALWAYS taken classes on tuesdays and thursdays, this semester i have classes ONLY on tuesdays and thursdays. the real suckers are people who have class tomorrow. ha ha.

so i am officially switching to the 24-hour clock.
i was resistant for a long time. sure, in spain i used it, but here in the states we like to be different. (did you know that whole switch-hands silverware thing was just so we could be different from the british? i made that up, maybe. wikipedia says it's because people didn't use forks until the 18th century and we (behind the times) didn't use it until the 19th century. (can that be right?) and we put the knife down to show that we meant no harm AND so that we could put our left hands down by our pistol, just in case. but that seems even weirder.) and i'm ok with that. i use the fahrenheit scale; i talk about inches, feet and miles; i write month, day, year; i weigh pounds and buy gallons and most importantly i use an AM/PM clock. (think about it, on 24-hour time, you only get your birthday on the clock once. and for me, i'd only see it if i were staying up in the pit with joey. and then we wouldn't look at a clock cause we'd be too busy laughing at her songs and drinking bowls of hot chocolate. oh! jo, do i have a funny story for you.)
but i discovered yesterday why they use the 24-hour clock: you'll never set your alarm for 6:38 PM and go in to work two hours later than you wanted to. it just doesn't happen. it's easy at 1 AM to confuse 'A' and 'P' in a dark room in the fading electroluminescence of a travel alarm clock, but only an idiot confuses 6:38 and 18:38.

Belligerent ghouls
Run manchester schools
Spineless swines
Cemented minds
Sir leads the troops
Jealous of youth
Same old suit since 1962
He does the military two-step
Down the nape of my neck
I wanna go home
I don’t wanna stay
Give up education
As a bad mistake
Mid-week on the playing fields
Sir thwacks you on the knees
Knees you in the groin
Elbow in the face
Bruises bigger than dinner plates
I wanna go home
I don’t wanna stay
Da-da-da ...
Belligerent ghouls
Run manchester schools
Spineless [BADWORDS] all ...
Sir leads the troops
Jealous of youth
Same old jokes since 1902
He does the military two-step
Down the nape of my neck
I wanna go home
I don’t want to stay
Give up life
As a bad mistake
Please excuse me from gym
I’ve got this terrible cold coming on
He grabs and devours
He kicks me in the showers
Kicks me in the showers
And he grabs and devours
I want to go home
I don’t want to stay...
Da-da-da ...

alma matters

I'm graduating again.
Last time I didn't do it properly.

Commencement is May 5, 2006 at 9am at the Huntsman Center (at the U).
My convocation (Dept. of Humanitites) is at 1:45pm in the same place on the same date.

You are all invited. I don't really know how these things work, but as far as I'm concerned everyone is invited.
Besides, 4 people read this. Three can't come, and one already is.

so my guitar teacher died...again.

mmm. roommate lunch at bangkok thai.

i'm kind of mad for karen o right now. that was a rockin good time.

and joey and kev came all the way up and showed up at my house. (that's the way to my heart.) and then they sat outside and waited til the concert was over so we could hang out.

can you be in love with this many people all at once?

can you believe it was 10:30 at night and i was CARRYING my coat?

i have a new roommate. she seems way cool. she came to cocoa caffe with us. but i felt that the hazelnut frozen cocoa was slightly heavy on the hazelnut and lacking in cocoa. the ratio of hazelnut to chocolate was a little too high. the hazelnut quotient was, shall we say, above average.
and speaking of high quotients, thanks to scott i now know that i am like a freaking genius. smarter than him, in fact. SO smart that they gave me my 10-page analysis for free.
within this analysis we see that

If your score isn't as high as you thought it would be, remember that there are plenty of external factors that can affect your performance on the test. If you were tired, hungry or distracted, you might have scored lower than you expected because you were less able to concentrate.

whoa! i was tired, hungry AND distracted. (no i seriously was: i was chatting with valerie and scott and i was answering questions that my students had about their test and i was stressing about my finals. and it was wednesday so i was tired. and it was night so hungry also goes without saying.) that means i'm even smarter than we all thought! what's smarter than "visionary philosopher"? hmm. maybe they could name a new intellectual category after me! "almost as smart as joanna"

ha ha ha. i'm laughing at myself.

can you believe linds' guitar teacher died TWICE!?? (yes. the same teacher. coincidence? i think not. conspiracy? without a doubt. it's like in spy movies. or spy tv shows. i haven't seen alias in a million years but doesn't everyone on that show die and then come back? is vaughn alive? is vaughn dead? why is his name vaughn?)

the west side

i once had a psychic moment about getting this job while chiding someone for calling it "the left side."
would you like to see my classes? they are so adorable!
La clase basica:

Concepcion......................................Karina......................................

Maria Isela.......................................Yuli...........................................

Los Villasmil: Victor......................y Ledys....................................

La clase intermedia:

Rolando............................................y Mirta.....................................

Jose....................................................Daniel......................................

Margarita..........................................Marijeta...................................

Marcela....................................

not pictured are Roberto, from the basic class and Rossana, who just joined our intermediate class. man. i wish i had pictures for you of Olga, Claudia, Beatriz, Yony and Solyanetzi who already left for various reasons.
Mexico: Marcela, Margarita, Daniel, Jose, Maria Isela, Karina, Yuli, Concepcion
Venezuela: Victor and Ledys
Argentina: Mirta
Peru: Rolando
Bosnia: Marijeta

thought a thought then i forgot so i sang a happy song in my head

um. it's finals.
but tomorrow there will be two. and pictures!

yeah.
i drove with the windows down BECAUSE IT WAS TOO HOT NOT TO.
and i left my coat in my car when i went to my last class.
and stacey came over for lunch.
and teaching went well today.
so that's good.

a song for someone who needs somewhere to long for

whoever you are that planted all those tulips on 3rd and 6th, i am madly in love with you.

choose a paper topic by looking at the titles of other people's papers

it's a tongue twister, see?
i had a good idea. but i won't be able to get to it until the weekend. probably. if at all. ok. i probably will never do it. so i leave it to you.
this morning i sat myself (and my sister) down and started reading through the references section in my syntax book so i could be inspired to find a paper topic for my final 25 page paper that is due in a bit.
while reading i noticed that some of the titles were worthy of a laugh.
so your assignment, whenever you need a break from the mundane, is to come up with out of context readings for the following titles. you could write an abstract, a subtitle or just give a blurb about what it's about. if you know, pretend you don't. much more fun. oh. and sometimes it's better if you don't read very carefully or you just read out loud so you get some homonym influence.
take it away! (i've given a few notes of my own, when i felt like it.)

• The meaning of free choice. [something metaphysical and deep.]
  
• The syntax of silence: Sluicing, islands, and the theory of ellipsis.
• V-governed expletives, case theory and the projection principle. [expletives.]
  
• Floating quantifiers, PRO and predication.
• Movement to the higher V is remnant movement.
  
• The topic of small clauses.
• The case of unaccusatives.
• A-chains at the PF-interface: copies and "covert" movement.
  
• On certain violations of the superiority condition, AgrO and economy of derivation. [superiority condition. superiority complex. superiority complex breakdown.]
  
• The Design of Agreement: Evidence from Chamorro.
• Evidence for partial N-movement in the Romance DP.
• (Anti)reconstruction effects in free relatives: a new argument against the Comp account. [free relatives. relatively free? liberated kin?]
  
• Where is a sign merged?
• Fronting: the Syntax and Pragmatics of "Focus" and"Topic". [here we have an excellent description of the psuedo-intellectual. fronting.]
  
• Why language acquisition is a snap. [what? no.]
  
• Control is not movement. [movement is not control. "treat others how you would like...to treat them."]
  
• Stylistic Inversion in English: a reconsideration. [a harsh creative writing critique.]
  
• Decomposing pronouns.
• Pluringulars, pronouns and quirky agreement. ["quirky" making up words. who do you think you are?]
  
• English suffixation is constrained only by selectional restrictions. [suffixation or suffocation?]
  
• Understanding stimulus poverty arguments.
• Negation in children's questions: the case of English. [bad parenting practices.]
  
• Am I unscientific? A reply to Lappin, Levine and Johnson. [johnson. i am the science.]
  
• A reanalysis of null subjects in child language. [again with the making fun of children.]
  
• Restoring exotic co-ordinations to normalcy.
  
• Re: the abstract clitic hypothesis. [re:? re:?!! but we can work with abstraction.]
  
• Control and Extraposition: the case of Super-Equi.
  
• Topic...comment: the structure of unscientific revolutions.
• The revolution confused: a response to our critics.
• The revolution maximally confused. [linguistic surfer talk? (or bad puns.) bummer. they had to write at least two rebuttals. so sad.]
• Promise and the theory of control.
  
• On the poverty of the challenge.
• Quantifier Float and Wh-Movement in an Irish English.
• What does it take to be a dative subject? [dating advice column?]
• Limits on negative information in language input. [how much rejection can you take?]
• Sideward movement. [sidewinder?]
• Reflexives and resultatives: some differences between English and German.
• The metric of open-mindedness.
• Confusion compounded.
• Relativized minimality effects. [do they know what they mean? we could take this anywhere.]
• A preference for Move over Merge. [fight or flight?]
• Icelandic case-marked PRO and the licensing of lexical arguments.
• Indeterminacy, inference, iconicity and interpretation: aspects of the grammar-pragmatics interface. [i just liked all those words together. so did they, probably.]
• The origins and development of periphrastic auxillary do: a case of destigmatisation.
• Choice between the overt and the covert. [always covert. it's like spying.]

this one's my favorite:

• From Hell to Polarity: "Aggressively Non-D-Linked" Wh-Phrases as Polarity Items.

and a quote!

This article focuses on wh-phrases like what on earth, who the hell, what the dickens--generically, wh-the-hell phrases. In simple root wh-questions, wh-the-hell phrases seem to behave just like ordinary wh-phrases.
(1) a. Who bought that book?
b. Who the hell bought that book?
Both interrogatives in (1) are genuine information questions. The speaker who utters either (1a) or (1b) expects that somebody did indeed buy that book and seeks information about the identity of the buyer(s). Hence, answers naming the buyer (e.g., Ariadne) would be appropriate.
Yet, in addition to an informative answer, (1b) licenses a negative inference of the form Nobody was supposed to buy that book; Lee (1994) labels this inference the "surprise" reading. This proposition is a pragmatic inference conveying the speaker's negative attitude toward the content of the question with wh-the-hell, as we argue in section 2.2; it generally coexists with the possibility of a positive answer.
...
Consider the following examples. which differ minimally from (1) in that they contain a modal:
(2) a. Who would buy that book?
b. Who the hell would buy that book?
Example (2a), with the regular wh-phrase who, is still interpreted as an information question, soliciting an answer like Ariadne. (2a) can also have an--arguably less salient--negative rhetorical reading anticipating an answer like Nobody would buy that book. The interrogative with who the hell in (2b), on the other hand, cannot be used as a genuine information question in this context. Rather, such a question is compatible only with the negative rhetorical answer.
...
In licensing negative answers wh-the-hell phrases are similar to the negative polarity items known in the literature as minimizers: for example, give a damn, sleep a wink, lift a finger.

den Dikken, M. and Giannakidou, A. (2002) 'From hell to polarity: "Agressively non-D-linked" wh-phrases as polarity items', Linguistic Inquiry 33: 31-61.

but really, these boring ones will end up being the most useful:

• Contreras, H. (1986) 'Spanish bare NPs and the ECP', in I. Bordelois, H. Contreras and K. Zagona (eds.), Generative Studies in Spanish Syntax, Foris Dordrecht, pp. 25-49.
• Contreras, J. (1987) 'Small clauses in Spanish and English', Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5:225-44.
• Suner, M. (2000) 'The syntax of direct quotes with special reference to Spanish and English', Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18:525-78.

so now i'm going to go find them.
suerte with finals.

Never advise anyone to go to war or to marry.

It's a Spanish proverb. Who knew?

So, the advice I am asking of you today, is this:

Should I move to Spain to teach English for 10 months?
University of Cantabria in Santander, northern Spain. On the coast. Starting October 1.

Just so you don't say something stupid, I'll give you a basic pros and cons list:
Pros:

• I love Spain.
• I have always wanted to live in Spain.
• I teach English for a living. This would spice up the resume a bit, eh? And I might be able to keep the teaching job for when I come back.
  
• I didn't get to go to northern Spain when I was there last year.
• Hello?!! Living in Europe.

Cons:

• I lack funds. (It's not one of those internships where they give you lots of money. It would cost money. A lot of money.)
  
• I was all raring to go on my second BA.
• 10 months is a long time to be alone in Spain.
• It's cold up there. And it would be mostly winter.
• I just moved. And I like my house and my roommates.
  
• I have two good jobs that I would have to leave.
• The deadline was two days ago. (This is the only reason I know about it; no one applied so it's still open and they emailed me. Mailing list. Don't get flattered.)
  

As far as my qualifications, if you're reading this you know that I speak Spanish, studied Spanish Literature in Alcala de Henares last summer, have a BA in Linguistics (with a Spanish minor) and a TESOL certificate, teach ESL (basic and intermediate and covet the advanced class), and I have always wanted to live in Spain.

But, but, but...

Just give me your opinion. The decision will be made by me and soon. Really, it's already made, I'll apply and see what happens. But still tell me what you think. It's a harder decision than you think. I've never had a visa before. Do you have any idea how much a visa costs? I would miss Christmas. It would be really cold. (Eeew. Cold.) What about my degree? I was going to take a class with Linds. I've never had friends in my classes before (except for Al in Survey of Jazz and Stacey in Syntax. But then Al moved away and Stacey was just this current semester.) What if I can't afford it? I'll have to do some serious auditing tonight.

Please comment. Please.

yempur verden!!

happy easter.
it was pretty, but windy. pretty windy.

i had to eat cookies and a reese's peanut butter egg for breakfast because i woke up late.

my sister said i looked "just like a bag of easter m&m's." i wasn't sure if i should be complimented or not.

we went to church.

we went to brunch with the tinge. i love the tinge. (the tinge are my cousins the tingeys.) the bon is my mom's sister. she cooks like a madman. so sehr gut.
we ate:
-the best part of easter: potato salad (not just any potato salad, my mom's potato salad. no one else can make potato salad like my mom. not even her sisters or her mother, whose recipe she uses.), -some kind of good casserole, -better than...other cakes white cake (it has pudding and sour cream in it.) with cream and strawberries for a sort of shortcake feel, -banana bread, -fresh strawberries, -pineapple, -kiwi, -bread pudding (i refrained. i'm not really a fan.), -creme brulee, -ice cream, -passion fruit sauce, -carmel sauce, -cinnamon rolls, -orange rolls, -regular rolls, and -easter candy.
needless to say, i felt ill for the rest of the day. you can't not eat. it's too good to be full. so you eat yourself sick. that is the way of the kearls. (my mom and the bon are kearls. "kearl girls.")

after that i pretty well collapsed on the tingey couch until we left and then i collapsed on our couch until it was time to get up and dance. i mean, go to grandma's. we saw everyone at grandma's and we talked to the sisters on the phone. then i went home and took some pictures (you can't see them cause they're black and white and i haven't developed them yet.) and cleaned up a little bit and moved the video booth and practiced my cello. then i went to bed. um. i mean. i will go to bed. dangit. i promise, i was writing this last night. but the pictures, children, the pictures!

i don't have pictures of the food. i wanted to, but the elements combined against me.

oh. and i told i would explain about the cookies: aunt sue sugar cookies are very good. but you don't realize it at first. you only realize it after you've eaten your twelfth cookie. aunt sue sugar cookies are painted, not frosted. so check it. (but the pictures of the cookies and painting might be hard to see.)


happy easter!

easter bag?

"it's an easter miracle!!"
barnes and noble finally came through for me. it was touch and go there for a minute, but the 15 textbooks are safe and sound in james' office. children, it's been months. but at last at last at last we can have normal lessons. starting tuesday.
man. that means i have to get back to preparing lessons... darn.

so today is tax day. meh. i got my refund way back. huzzah for parents and turbo tax, eh?

guess who got married today? lindsey brooks.
guess who else got married today? bryan hicks.
the craziest thing is, they married EACH OTHER!

ah, the brooks-hicks wedding. it was a lovely dinner. i thoroughly enjoyed myself. everything was beautiful. especially linds. the food was delicious. the cake was pink inside.
i met mini-bryan, i mean... kimball.
we were all there. all the roommates. (for a minute. stupid div com.) and i about lost consciousness for joy. and then my old roommates and my new roomates gathered in the kitchen of my new house facing off like sharks and jets. you could cut the tension with a knife. oh wait. that was the leftover fudge from my party.

so tomorrow is easter. it's late this year, but it still snuck up on me.
we're about to dye eggs and my mom is baking sugar cookies shaped like eggs.
i love easter.

and now, children, i leave you with the sage words once given to me by a person i love more than life itself:

"i'll tell you one thing,
a wallet...
is a folder....
in england."

and i don't remember the rest.

when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

did you celebrate the full moon? (if you live in my little part of the world you got two nights in a row, so i hope you took advantage of it.) wednesday being the pre-full full moon, i went looking for a park. i ended up by the capitol. (not because i don't know where any parks are, but because i wanted to be high and last time i went closer to the u so this time, to be fair, i went by the capitol.) even though i dressed warmly and brought a blanket and bread, i just sat in my car with the window open, reading. it was nice. i went home around midnight and went to bed.
last night i was driving rennie home. as we got off the freeway she cried out, fearfully, "what?! what happened?" i had gasped in absolute awe and disbelief and decelerated rapidly. she thought i'd seen a cop. but i'd seen the moon.

i've lived in utah now for just about half my life (sigh.) but i never get used to the ding-dang mountains. aside from them being mean and scary, they block the sun and the moon. but there is one thing that the mountains are good for: dramatic entrances.

there was just a little quarter of the moon peeking up over the tops of the mountains. it was enormous. it was yellow. it was beautiful.

we discussed, and i took rennie home.
i had planned to go home on time and watch a movie. i had planned to practice. but...

...it's a good thing i'm so good at driving without watching the road. the moon was lovely. and seemed even more so as i drove in and through the the little city center i love so much.
____

yesterday my mom took my sister and me to trio. the three of us shared a pizza and a salad and i took a take-out menu.
reading through it, my sister informed me that they have my most craved dish in all pastadom: butternut squash ravioli. (in all honesty, i've never had it. no. wait. once on a sample tray. i almost got a recipe from helen at millcreek, but she never got it to me.)

$11.

i'll spare you my spiel on money and spending it, but suffice it to say, not in a million years.

and so, as i talked to the moon last night, i made a decision.
[disclaimer: the is the first and last time i will say anything so contrary to my nature and sense of decency, decorum and self.]
i want a boy to pay for me to go to:

• trio (butternut squash ravioli)
• panini (they might have butternut squah ravioli too, and the gnocchi...)
• baba afghan (400 so.)
• bombay house (provo)
• an expensive concert (a good one that i wouldn't have gone to otherwise.)
• a gelateria (and i could have as much as i wanted. ooh! even more so if it included the trip to italy.)
• taste of punjab (with as much naan as i want and a lassi and that rice pudding stuff which is only good because it's at an indian restaurant.)
• cafe madrid (please? absolutely over-priced, but it's been almost a year since i went to spain.)
• a full-priced movie (no. scratch that. full-priced movies are a rip-off. matinees if you must, but there's always ic and ic is free and as a u of u student i can even get there for free. so i guess just the other eight.)

now, that was a very uncharacteristic thing for me to say. and ocd says i have to qualify it:
a boy because my chauvinistic mind can rationalize it more easily. i have less sympathy for boys. if i let just anyone take me it would end up being my roommates and i wouldn't be able to let them pay for it.

but, it will never happen.
1- i don't go on dates (unfortunately the only scenario where a boy would pay for those things would be a date. fathers and other relatives don't count. they're like roommates in that i cannot forget about the bank balance.)
2-if i ever knew a boy well enough for us to be going on a date, i would know them too well to in good conscience allow them to spend so much money on food. i can't help it. i would end up ordering a side dish or appetizer. i always do.

and in closing--

i did watch my movie. take care of my cat. it's korean. (must only be the german one that's funny, but i still thoroughly enjoyed this one.) and i learned one important thing:

"men who hate cats can't meet a good woman."

i've always known this, instinctively, but it's nice to see it eternized in asian wisdom and axioms.

yup yup

my sister sends me ecards.
not just any ecards, the rockin' coolest ecards ever.
(we have a favorite, it's a graduation ecard that we send each other when we're not graduating. last year was the first time that sending the card actually coincided with either of us graduating (we both did), so just to keep up the non-graduation celebration i sent the ecard to all my friends who were not graduating. good times. wait a month and i'll send it to you. )
she sends me ecards for hindu holidays (not as random as you could wish since i did take a semester or two of hindi), for christmas, for random holidays that people invent so they can have ecards...
i keep them in my inbox for weeks, so that i can play and replay them whenever i need a laugh.

i've watched her selection technique. it is rigorous and time consuming.
first of all, the ecard must be free.
and ridiculously funny.
by that i mean it must be ridiculous. (we're fond of the proposal cards. would anyone honestly marry anyone who proposed with an ecard?)
graphics and animation are a big plus.
i know that music is very important to her. music can make or break an ecard.

when asked, she humbly replied:

"well, basically i just click on the greeting card thing on my hotmail page
and then i look for the cards that are free, followed by the cards that are
weird or scary or funny but not meant to be funny. that sort of thing.
why do you need to know?"

she never misses an opportunity to send an ecard. so, in view of my recent birthday, you can imagine my excitement, the anticipation with which i eagerly checked my email every five minutes. knowing that each click could be THE click which would bring me to my ecard.

but she didn't send me an ecard this year.


she gave me this:


now, i know i don't have to explain to all of you how cool this is, but i'm going to anyway.

note the nice use of color. very soothing.
it has a picture of a manatee on it.
my oldest sister used to have a thing for manatees.
manatees are nice.
manatees are called sea cows.

my name is joanna. i don't have a middle name. in fifth grade i asked my mom what it would be if i did. she instantly said "louise". i think it was the first name that popped in her head, but i've adopted it.
however, american express didn't think that was good enough. they felt i needed a tougher middle initial. and so, a few months ago, i became joanna T.

my sister (the younger one with the mad ecard skillz and not the oldest one with a love for manatees and all things adorable) thought this was a laugh riot. and took to calling me "joanna-t."
so that's the joke.

note that with typical ecard flair it says "i hope all your dreams come true."

truly, she is a wonder.


and that's that.

and she doesn't know why that she runs, but she runs

i'm going to try to write every day for a while. i'm sorry if you're actually reading this.

courtesy of thad via eliza i happen to know that today, april 12, 2006, is look up at the sky day. now this in and of itself is an excellent thing to celebrate, but by cosmic coincidence, today (tonight) is also the best day to watch the full moon, so that rocks. (i think it's actually full tomorrow at noon. what's that about? ok. so that's about we get two nights where you can see the full moon, but it's not THE full moon, you know?)

also, today is the day i can register for fall classes.
i think i'll go do that now.
...
i just signed up for four classes. four ENGLISH classes.
and i'm the first one in each class. i do love this post-graduate status. but there's a car outside my office with a license plate that says MOCKBA1 and i felt like they were making fun of me for getting a second bachelor's degree instead of just getting a master's like a sensible person. oh well.

i broke a nail at work today.
i know that i used to do landscaping for a living, but now that i work in a small office in a "pre-civil war era" house (well, no one is quite sure if it's THAT old, but it is old. it has servants' quarters, back stairs and a scary cellar.) it doesn't really come with the territory so much.

we have a back-door. it locks and then you're in a porch-ish thing with a second door and a storm door. this second back-door also locks, but no one has the key so when you come in in the morning you have to go in the front-door.
when i have to go to my boss' office to pick up the copies i'm supposed to type i like to go out the back-door, lock it, and leave the second back-door open so i can get back in that way.

i was going about this brilliant plan as usual. now, the storm door has always been a little tricky; it needs a good push. but then it makes a loud pop and everyone is so quiet there that i hate to do it.
i usually try to do it quietly at first, but today it was taking longer than it should so i threw caution to the wind and was pushing and rearranging my hand and pushing hard and nothing was happening!
my heart started racing and i started to think "oh no! they're on to me. someone has sabotaged the door so i can't get out! i'll have to walk all the way around the building!"
i imagined someone coming up to me and saying "why do you want to go out the back? didn't you spend the money to get a parking pass like the rest of us? is that why you leave every two hours? because you're parked in visitor parking?" and then i'd get fired.

but then i saw that there is some kind of extra latch thing that was preventing the main latch from functioning at its typical low level of functionality. i stuck my little finger in there, moved the latch-y thing and then somehow i slipped and opened the door and broke my nail. it hurt. but i wasn't going to be a baby about it like in the movies. so cliche.
so i just decided to tell you about it.

yes, you're older now and you're a clever swine

that was way too much fun. so here come two more. but then i'll stop. this could get addicting.

do you know what i love about walking to the library at night? the architecture building. second only to my crush on getting an english degree, i have a crush on architecture. during the day, you can't see inside, but at night you can and it's super fun. reminds me of when i took japanese architecture. those were the good old days...
and then i remember survey of jazz and talking really loudly cause we owned campus.
they turned on the fountain.

so one place i don't like to see my birthday: the gas station. (yes, i do know that $2.24 is not $4.10 but it might as well be. anyone want to pitch in on my hybrid fund? this city driving is getting to be a problem. i'm getting almost 70 miles less to my tank. yuck.) so i only put a little in, hoping for a better offer tomorrow from the smith's on 600 north, but i did a PERFECT $10 pump, and i thought, "i gotta tell someone!"
(another place would be my score on my midterms, but seeing as how this isn't a suicide note, i have not yet got that score back yet. cross your fingers.)

so i thought maybe i should actually tell you about my birthday.
i got:

• woken up at 7 by a text message from my little brother singing happy birthday to me. (yes, text messages can sing, you unimaginative swine. that's the last time i cast my pearls before you.)
• woken up at 7:45 by a text message from al saying "happy birthday!"
• woken up at 8:30 by my boss and something about email and following up later. whatever. (it wasn't there. i did follow up. i did! i'm responsible. geez. just cause i skipped work on my birthday. it wasn't even the boss i skipped out on! and the boss i skipped out on wouldn't have cared. trust me. i set my own hours.)
• cold and rainy wetness.
  
• to work on my syntax midterm.
• to chat with ammon.
• two text messages from joey. one with a promise of fudge...
  
• to chat with joey.
• perhaps sung to at div com practice by joey and paul.
  
• ignored. (it's ok. i'm sure with your distracting mind it's easy to forget someone with your same birthday who talks about it all the time. no biggee. jer averted his eyes too, but he came to my party and said it was well decorated. so i forgave him. am i that scary? i promise the hair is getting cut off on friday. i can't promise to get to bed earlier, but once school's done i'll take naps for my 15 free days. maybe i should look into make-up after all?)
  
• to go to lunch (free noodles!) with my mom and sister.
• a big "j" keychain. (i like it. it's kind of a new thing for me, initials and stuff, but i do like it a lot.)*
• those over-priced cookie-cutters from williams and sonoma with eleven different sizes of circles so you can make polka-dot cookies. (do i need all of those hyphens?)*
  
• the promise of a cd as soon as ever i can choose which one i want the most.*
  
• rockin' the awesomest ever magnets from al, made by kelsey.
• chocolate chocolate donuts from rennie.
• to chat with liza. (thanks for the scoop!)
  
• an offer to buy my ticket to the concert AND to the div com from al, ju and joey. (you guys are too nice, and therefore, i paid and am paying on friday.)
  
• (it-better-not-have-been) $8 worth of food at molca salsa instead from al and ju.
• a lovely concert by crystal skulls and john vanderslice.
• two pairs of flip-flops from old navy.*
• tea cups and an easter skirt from anthropologie.* (i've yet to see them, jenny's bringing them tomorrow.)
• oh! from before the actual day i got:
• fudge from the niners.
• a PURSE made out of an indiana license plate AND
  
• the best dance party mix EVER on earth from the coolest people on earth (my indiana sister and her husband.)
• my jane austen book that i loaned danny a million years ago back.
  
• an email from heidi.
• an email from erin.
  
• a phone call from the boston sister.
• two more text messages from al.
• a wallet and some lipstick (is she trying to give me a hint?) from my grandma.
• and someone to officially buy my provo contract!! whoa. what a load off.
  

*given by my mother.

so there you have it. my day in a nutshell. in a really big nutshell. so big, in fact, that i probably could've saved space by leaving it outside the nutshell...
it rained. i didn't go to cail. i tried to work on my midterm, i went to lunch and shopping, i tried to work on my midterm, i went to ppfh and... did stuff... and tried to work on my midterm, i went to a concert and molca salsa and tried to work on my midterm, i went to slee... tried to work on my midterm.

and since i've taken to also celebrating my european birthday on the clock (much easier to see twice-a-day)...

the powers that be

[yesterday i reverted to my bad habit of emailing. so i'm repenting and putting it here instead.]

dear friends,
in my projecting-instead-of-homeworking yesterday i came across some interesting cosmic connections.
discuss?

who knows the outsiders ? joey, i know you do, it was because of you that i forced my little brother and family to watch the film. (i have yet to read the book, sorry.)
who knows jonatha brooke (and the story)?
who knows robert frost?
ok.
karen ann?

• karen ann first. i just liked it. it's not really cosmic, but you can still discuss, as long as you discuss with me:
  

"i always try to not remember rather than forget."

• and the others:

robert frost -nothing gold can stay-

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

quoted in the outsiders by ponyboy himself:

"...I always remembered it 'cause I never quite knew what he meant by it."

and then explicated by johnny:

"I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it.
He meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green.
When you're a kid everything's new.
Dawn.

Like the way you dig sunsets, that's gold.
Keep it that way. It's a good way to be.
I want you to ask Dally to look at one.

I don't think he's ever seen a sunset.
There's still lots of good in the world.
Tell Dally, I don't think he knows.
Your buddy, Johnny."

nothing much there until you go home and start listening to

jonatha brooke and the story -made of gold-

I'm going down to the river, I'm gonna look for you
I know you'll be waiting there, 'cause it's a woman's trick
I'm gonna give you what you want, 'cause you've been asking

And I don't even want to know your name
But you'll remember mine
You will remember my name
You will remember my name
You will remember my name, my name

Like the nights in the movies, I'll be waiting

And the days in the heat of her vengeance
You'll know what I've wanted, what she wouldn't admit
I'll show her, I'll show the world, just what they asked for
And they'll remember my name
They will remember my name

They will remember my name
They will remember my name

And what you want most will elude you
What you want most will elude you
'Cause everything, before it changes, seems to be made of gold

Made of gold
Made of gold
Made of gold

In some strange way I'm preparing myself for you
I've been waiting all my life
But I won't give you what you want, I won't fight
I will live, and tell, and you will remember me, you'll remember my name

You will remember my name
You will remember my name
You will remember my name, my name

You'll try to hide me under the mattress, with all your other short sins
But I'll come back, the click in my spine
Will order our lives like a metronome

You can't shut it off
You can't shut it off
You can't shut it off
You can't shut it off

And what you want most will elude you
What you want most will elude you

'Cause everything, before it changes, seems to be made of gold

Made of gold
Made of gold
Made of gold
Made of gold

And like the river, you will remember my song
'Cause love is a heartbeat away from here

if you don't think it's cosmic it's just because you're not as sensitive to these things as i am.

sure, robert frost is famous. sure. but why is it that i only became aware (i had heard of the outsiders but never seen or read it, i'd read some robert frost but not that one that i can recall and i've heard the song tons of times, but never thought about the words.) of all three just yesterday within like a 3 hour span?
why did spike tv just happen to be showing that particular movie when i, for the first time in YEARS, decided to channel surf? why had my brother seen it and was able to recognize and call out the name (saying he didn't want to see it again) before i could pass it by? why do i now live with an english major who could produce the poem on demand? why did i happen to start looking in that part of the collection for songs for the brooks-hicks mix? why did i stop on that song when i knew it wasn't appropriate and i usually wouldn't listen to it?
huh?
yeah. good luck explaining that one without the cosmos.

but why?
the "quick change" lesson? getting old? because i just wrote on my records transfer paper that i'm an english major (and i definitely need to start reading more)? is that it?
what am i supposed to make of this? what are the cosmos trying to tell me? and it better not be that whole "get a business degree and open a shop on the east coast." again. the powers-that-be need to stop using taylor joann as a medium. (just kidding, jo. you know you're awesome.)

well, let me know.
have a good day.

jo

la la la la la la la la la la la la la la laaaa

so today is my birthday. well, it was yesterday, but i'm going to make the extra effort to change the time stamp so that my birthday will be immortalized on the internet.
i love my birthday. i do. i do. i do.

as you know, i celebrate whenever i see it (secret's out, it's 8:17, not 4:10. ooops.)
so here's a record of the random sightings so far:

• record store going out of business- "adds april 10" i don't know what it means, but it's the wallpaper on my phone.
• bath and body works at trolley ON MY BIRTHDAY- "travel sizes 4 for $10"
• license plate on the way to work- "410 blah-blah-not-important" (extra bonus for it being a hybrid. next car i buy... uh... FIRST car i buy...)
• posters at kilby- "john vanderslice april 10"
• not my birthday but sighted ON MY BIRTHDAY- "jo's CHOCOLATE graham crackers" (emphasis added) and "mojo's CHOCOLATE covered biscotti crunch" (emphasis added)
• like all those emails i got on my birthday (uh... 3) now i have my birthday in my inbox!
• kelly's latest blog entry
• man. i wish my sisters all had blogs and dedicated an entry to me on my birthday. happy birthday, gennie.

• http://hershenanigans.blogspot.com/
• http://www.greedykristian.blogspot.com/
• http://vievegirl.blogspot.com/

• i met a girl with my same birthday on my birthday. and tr's mom's birthday too. but i had already met her.
  
• and something really cool on the computer when i got to work today but now i can't remember. darn.

happy april day!!

these people are living right:

this is the first tree with full-on blossoms that i've seen.



i'm living right too.
this is the building where i work:


this is the building where i don't work:


how was your pain au chocolat?

happy april!
(and huzzah for spring!)
(and sorry the pictures are of a quality lower than high. all i had was my phone.)