12:05 PM:

So, yesterday I got out of the house just before noon, returned a video, went to college, answered phones at the English Department for three hours, during which I also browbeat Professor J for not getting our long-awaited poetry reading off the ground, determined that I had not, in fact, missed a test in linguistics, and that it was, in fact, still about a week off, photocopied a handout on plagiarism for departmental review, and attached a note in which I took issue with their definition, after which I stopped by Professor J's Cave to be sure he was working on said poetry reading and picked up a couple of books on poetry for supplementary villanelle information, went to my linguistics class, went to the computer lab and typed up an outline for my speech on villanelles, went to my public speaking class, and was pathetically grateful at the discovery that there wasn't enough time for everybody's speech this week, so mine would have to wait. And then I went home and went to bed, attaining blessed somnolescence somewhere around 10:30 PM.

And then, after some fitful sleeping, I woke up for good around 3:30 AM.

In the meantime, no real progress on the books to be read for the Honors Exam. The one bright side is that, hey, the very worst that can happen is that I fail abjectly, and end up condemned to never, ever for the rest of my life be able to say that I graduated with honors in English. Which is a depressing prospect, but given the rest of the fallout from these last two semesters, it's far from the end of the world.

The problem, incidentally, isn't so much in the lack of time between now and the test; it's in the lack of quality time. I haven't been up for much close reading in my waking hours over the past few days. I'm too tired.

Postscript: My dictionaries don't actually list "somnolescence," but I don't care.

4:18 AM:

You know, when Napster first announced that it was going to be blocking copyrighted music by title, my first reaction was that this could be circumvented by using Pig Latin.

My second reaction was that this would require others to be on the same wavelength without Napster itself catching on, which spiralled into an elaborate scheme of shifting codes and such, but, well, anyway, it's nice to know that somebody else had the same idea.

Although it now appears to have been taken down "at the request of Napster," which I find even funnier. Oh, dear me. Software that takes the first letter of a word and moves it to the end! (The converter in question didn't go as far as actual Pig Latin, it seems.) How dangerous! It must be stopped!

I wish Napster weren't such an important test case. Their management is doing everything all wrong...

Anyway, enough depression for now. On this site, anyway. Let's see if I can't manage an upbeat tone for a little while.

One of my professors pointed out that it's probably a blessing in disguise that the University of Michigan was the only school to accept me into its doctoral program in English, given how indecisive I can be. I'd be dithering for the entire next month which to choose otherwise. She has a point.

I'm figuring it's about 95% likely I'll be in Michigan in the fall. I'm reserving judgment until I actually visit the place, which will probably happen at the end of this month. I could still take a year off to meditate, sleep, and try again, after all.

Either way, they need to know my decision by April 15th.

In the meantime, I've started looking into housing. The Michigan people helpfully included the URL to their housing site, which has already led me to a few conclusions.

The first is that on-campus housing is entirely out of the question for me. Anything I could afford would require me to share a bathroom with others, and, well, I've gotten used to a better standard of living than that. Anything that would give me my own necessarium is way out of my price range. Plus you're not allowed to have toaster ovens or candles among many other things in on-campus rooms, and I need such things. So off-campus it is.

The second is that whoever designed the off-campus listings form needs a stern talking-to. I mean, it's helpful, but... on my first couple of searches, I had trouble finding anything suitable, despite specifying "no pets" and "no parking". Then I started messing around with the settings. It turns out that if you select "no parking" -- which I took to mean that parking isn't necessary -- it only lists apartments that don't have parking. When I switched that to "Street Parking," many more places suddenly showed up. Ditto for the "pets" option. In short, then, if you're flexible, you need to make separate searches for every possible combination of acceptable options. Bad design. Bad, bad design.

Still, once I figured that out, I found lots more potential places to live, so I can't complain too much. Now I'm wondering if I can look at some of these places when I stop by later this month. We'll see, I guess.

I'm already getting an idea about how I feel about this weblog thing, both what I like about it, and what I dislike. I like not having to deal with coding all the HTML, changing all the links, and so on. And I think I like being able to write more smaller entries, although I still haven't figured out how this fits in with my notify list, which is causing me a bit of anxiety. Sending out a notice with every little addition seems like overkill, but not doing so seems to defeat the purpose. I don't know.

On the other hand, what I really don't like is the way the archives are handled. One of the best bits about the way I designed the journal proper is that every entry has a title, and every month has an archive page with all those titles. Which makes it easier to find any given entry I want. Blogger won't do anything like that.

I guess I basically want something like Colette, just custom-designed for my own needs. I'd try The Journaling Script, but I dislike the way it works, sending all page requests to a CGI script and assembling pages on the fly. I want a script to make the pages in the first place, but I want those pages to be static thereafter.

I may have to learn CGI. Which shouldn't be a problem -- learn one programming language, you've learned them all -- but who has time just now?

"I plan to collapse in exhaustion again after I upload this and eat something." I can be so cute when I'm optimistic.

What happened next was that I couldn't sleep all night, of course, despite my best efforts. Exhausted collapsing didn't happen until around 3 PM on Tuesday, at which point I slept until about 1 AM.

I can't afford this, this general lack of sleep (I know, I got ten hours, but I'm still not caught up on what I've lost), this being close to useless even when I am awake, this being out entirely when I'm supposed to be in class. Bleah.

Here's my schedule for the rest of the week, at least in theory:

Wednesday:
1 PM: Answer phones at the English Department
4:30 PM: Linguistics 101
6:30 PM: Public Speaking

Note that I've missed the last two linguistics classes on account of being asleep during them, but that making up the material won't be a problem. Also note that I suddenly remembered earlier today that I have to deliver a speech in my public speaking class, and I'd had no idea what I'd be speaking about. Fortunately I was speaking to a friend at the time, and he made a suggestion, which led me to another idea, and I now have my topic: the villanelle form. Now I've just gotta outline the thing.

Thursday:
3 PM: Speech Therapy
4:30 PM: Fitness through Diet, Nutrition and Exercise

Usually, "writing my column in the college paper" would be in there, but -- fortunately, as it turns out -- this week's edition was cancelled due to the Storm of the Century (AKA The Storm That Wasn't Here), so they'll use the column I wrote last week. I'd have liked to have revised it entirely, but it'll do.

Friday:
8:30 AM: Honors Exam in English

Heaven help me.

On the bright side, I'm four chapters into Wuthering Heights so far, having found a copy online. I'd made a couple of attempts in years past, but had never gotten past the first few pages. Pity, that; it turns out that it gets better after the first chapter.

8:41 PM:

I should be in class right now, but I'm not. I plan to collapse in exhaustion again after I upload this and eat something. (The food's in the toaster oven as I type this. Multitasking, you see.) This is not looking like it'll be one of my better weeks. And last week wasn't either. sigh.

In the meantime. As some of you already know, Brown University and the University of Iowa both turned me down since my last entry. Today, I got the letter from the University of Chicago. This got me a bit excited at first, because it came in the form of a bulky manilla envelope, which augured well. But, no, it turned out that my application to the Ph.D. program in English was rejected. They had, however, taken the liberty of redirecting my application to the M.A. program in the Humanities, for which I was accepted, albeit without any financial aid. It looks interesting at first glance, but I can't afford it.

Blast.

Oh, fuck.

I stopped by the English Department bulletin board less than an hour ago, to check the list of books the Honors Exam will be focusing on.

I had, for some reason, thought said exam was in May. Turns out I was right only about the first two letters of the month. It's this Friday.

Oh, the books? Anthony and Cleopatra, Wuthering Heights, and Lolita. I haven't read the first two, and while I adore the last one, it's been a couple of years since I've read it.

I am so screwed.

2:08 AM:

This is an experiment.

I don't know how this will affect Shmuel's Soapbox. It might lead to my posting shorter entries more frequently; it might lapse into disuse almost immediately. It might supplement the longer entries; it might replace them entirely. It might turn out to be an improvement; it might turn out to be a really bad idea. Anything seems possible at this point.

But given that it's been a couple of weeks since my last "real" entry, this seems worth a try. We'll see what happens. If I end up hating the results, I'll shut this down, convert the archives over to a format that fits the rest of the journal, and write it off as a nice try.

But who knows? I might actually like it.

Welcome to the weblog.