Good News, Bad News

Disclaimer: this is not me. This is how I feel, only the pile of books is bigger, and I'm crawling out.
Good news: A very smart, interesting professor accepted our invitation to be the keynote speaker at our conference.
Bad news: So did this other smart, interesting professor. And our faculty advisor hasn't gotten back to us about that problem....
Good news: Finals are over! Tra la, tra la! Or, as Walther von der Vogelweide (an author of Middle High German poetry, and former bane of my existence) would say, tandaradei!
Bad news: I realized I made at least one big mistake on my Middle High German final, right after I turned it in. I might fail, which is to say get a GPA below 3.5, which would cause me to lose my fellowship.
Good news: If I fail, I'll open a bakery/write a novel/get another dog, and all of these projects could benefit from my background in German and/or be named Tandaradei.
Bad news: I sort of lack the start up capital for any of those projects. And I don't know if anyone outside of German studies can pronounce Tandaradei.
Good news: I don't need a root canal!
Bad news: I finally have no excuse to avoid those bills and applications and administrative things and laundry that have not taken care of themselves or disappeared, despite the fact that I have firmly ignored them for the last three weeks.
Lessons learned: dead languages are a pain, my dentist is great, clean clothes can be more important than clean dishes, I'm more organized than many forty-something academics, and there will always be something else to worry about.

Baryshnikov

Tomorrow is my Turkish final. So I've been studying diligently, mostly in the new Turkish grammar packet that Meghan found and sent out to everyone. I don't know where she got it, but I love it because it's written in plain English. My other grammar resources have boring examples, like "Hasan does not have your book," followed by a bunch of abbreviations you have to look up in the index which stand for things like aorist and pluperfect (which do mean something to me, btw). But it's so much easier to memorize grammar structures with colorful examples! For instance, when explaining a certain negative suffix, this packet gives the example "Barisnikov dans etir. Siz, Senatoer Kugayl, siz dans etmezsiniz" which means "Baryshnikov is a dancer. But you, Senator Quayle, you are not a dancer." And now I have a picture in my head of Baryshnikov and Quayle dancing in Turkey, and I will never forget that suffix.
I love grad school.
Edit: Later on, there is a comprehensive table of tense and mood combinations using the example of seeing dervishes - I am seeing dervishes, it is said that I am seeing dervishes, I might see dervishes later, would that I had seen dervishes, etc. Each of these phrases is only two words, and one of them is dervishes.

Good News, Bad News

Bad News: My tooth is still hurting, several weeks after the cavity was filled.
Good News: I went to see my dentist about it this morning.
Bad News: I might need a root canal.
Good News: Perversely, I like my dentist a lot. He seems to know what he's doing, and he tells me everything that's going on with my teeth - including the scientific names of my problems (not that I remember them). He does not blame/shame/guilt me for the state of my teeth. He didn't try to converse with me while my mouth was full of dental tools. He understands (patiently tolerates, does not mock or patronize) my fear of root canals. Also, when the receptionist got snippy with me for wanting an appointment to check in with Dr. L. in two weeks and tried to tell me the only possibility anytime soon is Dec. 31st (not exactly the two weeks from now that he recommended), he got snippy with her and said she had to fit me in before I leave town for Christmas.
Bad News: I still might have to get a root canal.

Winter

Remember that snowstorm I was all skeptical about? Well, it wasn't huge, but it dropped four or five inches at our house. And then yesterday it snowed again! Hooray! I love having enough snow around to actually justify my winter boots/making chili/drinking too much hot chocolate. I also love that this is happening just as my finals are starting. For one thing, the snow muffles all kinds of noises. Also, it makes it easier to be cooped up inside, although I would much rather be in my cozy study den at home than my fluorescent lit office at school. Only a few more days of classes, though, and then I'm going to pretend I'm snowed in.
The finals have officially begun. They don't seem much more difficult than undergrad finals, really, except that there is less direction. For one class, I've been assigned a paper on "something interesting" to do with early film. Since it will probably take me as long to come up with a topic as it will to actually write the paper, I suppose I should get started...but you can probably look forward to more frequent posts, because I will clearly need to procrastinate a lot in the next few weeks.

The calm before the storm

I'm up early. It's Saturday. Boo.
I'm up early almost every day, even if I don't have to catch the bus. You'd think (if you know me) that I'd find a way to put the early morning to good use, what with my homework, housework, projects, and plans. But so far, I've been much to grumpy to be productive. Generally, I make coffee, read the news, check petfinder, fantasize about getting another dog, read some other news, get depressed about the state of the world, and eventually turn to my homework. You know it's bad, because 19th century German literature (which is all about misogyny, suicide, and social standing) is my refuge.
This weekend is pretty typical, but it's the calm before the storm. Literally and figuratively. Literally, we're supposed to have a big snow- (or ice, depending) storm here. They've been talking it up on the news for a few days now. I expect we'll really only get an inch or two, but I'd be thrilled if we got a foot. Figuratively, this is my last weekend before the long finals storm. I'm extremely nervous, but since most of my finals will be some combination of papers and take home tests, it's hard to really prepare; it's hard to really do anything except get tense and worry that I won't get through the next three weeks (yes, they last until Dec. 20th). Hopefully Christmas shopping distracts me. I'm also thinking of stocking the freezer with soup and things we can thaw and eat when I'm too busy to cook, but that might be more apocalyptic than strictly necessary....