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The best education in the world is that by struggling to make a living. --Wendell Phillips |
Tuesday, September 7, 1999 A Miscellany I have done almost nothing that I set out to do tonight. Well, I ate supper, which tonight consisted of a few hot dogs. (With buns, of course; there is no point in hot dogs without buns.) And I spoke to Elaine for the first time, in a longish phone conversation in which I suspect I talked too much. I didn't quite get to my homework, though... Ah, well. I can try to zoom through the rest of the Joyce in the few minutes I'll have to spare between my classes and English Department work tomorrow. Come to think of it, have I even mentioned the English Department work here? [Shmuel quickly skims the last few entries] I guess I haven't. Briefly, then, I start tomorrow, doing clerical work for the English Department. It's part of my financial aid, actually; I'll be working five hours a week, at $6 an hour, before taxes. It ain't gonna come close to covering the rent, but every little bit helps. A larger chunk of my income will probably come from my work for the American Studies Department, but I don't have any details on that yet. I should be finding out tomorrow afternoon, though. Stay tuned. I'm still going to have to look elsewhere for the bulk of my income, though. I've been revising my resume, and I hope to put it to use soon. There'd been a sign on the bulletin board near the English Department from somebody who was looking for an editor for a book on grammar, which looked as if it'd be right up my alley, but when I e-mailed my resume over, I was informed that the guy had been looking for a professor, not a lowly student. Oh, well.
In other news, I finally saw The Sound of Music over the past couple of days. I've had the soundtrack for some time, and I'd read the liner notes, so I was pretty familiar with the songs and plot, but I'd never actually seen the thing until now. It's very good. As it happens, I saw the letterbox version, which is to say that it was presented the way it was actually filmed, only smaller, with the full wide screen shown, without the usual "panning and scanning" to make the film fit the TV screen. I found myself wondering how on Earth this film could have been successfully panned and scanned without ruining every shot. In most cases, I concluded that it was impossible. This is a beautiful film, which uses the full frame to maximum effect. Really, the experience was enough to make me want to swear off ever watching a non-letterboxed video again. If only that were feasible.
Can I actually afford to rent videos in the first place? Not really. I'd better see what the local library has to offer. Nowhere near as extensive a selection as Blockbuster, I'm sure, to make the understatement of the year, but it does have the advantage of being free.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention my first Linguistics 101 class, for which I registered last Thursday in a desperate stopgap attempt to leave me with a viable alternative should I fail to get that Indian History course I want to take. In a nutshell, should I end up keeping this class, I will have a perfect opportunity for a 90 minute nap, twice a week. And still be in no danger of endangering my GPA. I hope the History thing ends up happening. I really do.
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