One of those problems that just tends to pop up in conversation is the apocalypse. How doomed will we all be? Most importantly How doomed will I be?

(One of my fellow counselors from last year at the GPGC he said he and a friend would always debate merits of any room building they were in together in regards zombie hordes.)

Well falling asleep a couple nights ago, I decide that if velociraptors come at me while I'm at home here in St. Amant, I'm pretty much doomed. Those dinos can jump. The only thing being up on stilts defends our house from is floods and until the nuclear apocalypse robs the new pumping station of its electricity, I'd say that's not a big worry.

The big worry is that there is nowhere in our house solid and inaccessible enough to stop clever hungry velociraptors from eating me. The log walls are encouraging, eight inch thick barriers but our nice sun-filled windows are definitely bigger than a velociraptor.

Going upstairs doesn't help since they can climb stairs as well as anybody and the walls are not sturdy enough to comfort me. The downstairs storage rooms are the most encouraging spaces, I might be able to hide out in there. But (oh snap) they can head-butt the doors open and then my only refuge will be an out of use deep-freezer.

Actually I quite like that idea. The deepfreeze is metal and I can comfortably fit inside. But then again it'll be air-tight and I'll get to suffocate to death. Nice. And how sturdy are deepfreezes, really?

Times like this, you can really understand the need for nuclear bomb shelters. They're quite multi- purpose actually. Anything that's radiation proof is bound to be dinosaur proof as well. I bet it'll even stand up to zombies. Possibly vampires.

Really whatever apocalypse happens, I hope it happens on the weekend so Dad is home from work. We can load up the airboats with guns, ammo, and lots of mosquito repellent. We'll airboat deep into the swamp with its non-existent population density heading for the hunting camp's old deer cabin and live off snapping turtles or something. It's a good plan I think. Just as long as the commies don't drop a H-bomb on New Orleans.

I think I've earned another geek points badge, I've read an actual physical Doctor Who novel at last. It's The Year of Intelligent Tigers by Kate Orman and it was more than usually hard to get hold of. I think it may be a touch rare because it doesn't appear in any of the torrents of Doctor Who e-books I've looked at. Eight Fitz and Anji are having a nice holiday on a colony world and there are these native animals that are amazingly like tigers. Just guess what else is interesting about them.

Plot happens.

Eight happens to be freakishly good at the violin and other stringed instruments including that cyber thing Bill Bailey plays. I thought that was a cool personal interests crossover moment.

I was pleasantly surprised tat I had no head-desky moments.

Ironic, that the novels have less bad crack in them than the actual TV series.

I read so much fic that I'm used to it there. But Doctor Who novels are weird it I think about it too long. Just being what they are is weird. I dunno, it's a strangely long a format for doctor who so it's doesn't sit right, plus there's the whole media-crossover barrier. I still find it a bit freaky for visual things to have written equivalents.

Eh.

 

Reread The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones and Black Maria also by DWJ but that I'd never read before. How did this happen? I do not know either.

Big panicked miserable 'oops.'

I lost/had stolen my cell phone sometime between 6:06 and 8:10 pm last time I was here at the library.

 

Bad news: no one has returned it or tried to contact us about it and it wasn't laying under my chair when we turned up at opening time the next day.

 

Good news: Dad has an excellent work friend who gave me his - it's got a camera and Bluetooth (useful if ever I want to drive and talk at the same time? as if. ) and everything.

 

Merely Inconvenient news: I've only got all my phone numbers up through 'M' cos that's the letter I got fed up and bored at when I was typing up phone numbers in Excell on my laptop.

 

I think this means I get to make a 'Christine has lost all her phone numbers' group on facebook. Fun.

 

 

 

 

I've just found the first image released from the American Adaptation of Life on Mars. Photo at the link...

Reaction : booo hissss

Am typing this from the car park of the library while shady characters loiter in the corners of my eyes.
Am nervous. One of them asked me for laptop advice.

The Leach of the Week on Thebox.bz is the 1996 Neverwhere TV series! Win!
Neil Gaiman is such love. I've actually just got the Audiobook of Neil reading this, so I'm going to have a very Neverwhere'd up weekend ^.^

No earthly way I'm going to see the new Doctor Who episode before Monday though. But actually I'm no too bothered about this.
The whole season four has left me pretty unmoved. I think Donna is awesome, most of the time I think the Doctor is awesome, but the stories, and the episodes are lacking. I feel especially left out when people go on about how they're so  magnificent and Old School. Because, hey! I know and love Old school - but not these.

I still love my new shoes from the Generous Ladies of Clements. We'll see this afternoon if they hold up to a spate of outlet mall shopping.

EDIT: I 've just realized that I called my dorm Collete yesterday and Clements today. At some point I've probably accidentally called it Caddo too. I've lived in far too many dorms that begin with the letter 'C.'
Clements was my S'more dorm. Collete was the dorm the Governor's Program lived in from 2003-2005 but that we will hopefully get back this year. Caddo was the girl's dorm at the Louisiana School.
See? I can keep them straight if I think about it slow enough.

Nearly everything's packed up and ready for me to go home. It's a bit silly, but I'm annoyed that I woke up this morning at 7:06 - just three minutes later than I would on any other day were I still a S'more in college. Last night I went foraging through the rubbish bins of Clements and it was delightfully profitable. I do this most years, It's a terrifically useful practice, I just hope I don't get caught because then I feel really embarrassed.

The Generous Ladies and Gentlemen of Collete have given me:
an new can of WD-40
a scooter
a wire mesh trashcan (I've always wanted one of those!
Foaming diswasing liquid
a ping pong set
Febreze
a year's worth of dryer sheets
fabric softener
new play-doh
A careless girl's entire identity (including cell number, address, home phone, UIN, and Social Security numbers)
A light saber full of bubble juice (very fun)
A jump rope
And the most comfortable high-heels I have ever worn

I think i'll go forage some more now, actually wile all the lazy bums are still asleep. ( not you ljmckay, you're no lazy bum)
It's probably quite good for the environment, what I'm doing.


Oh yes, right. I'll be home until the first week of June, being low on internet and rather clingy to any Wi-Fi I chance to encounter. Then, to the Governor's Program! It's our fiftieth anniversary year you know. I'm still quite undecided which level of student I'd like to handle. Hopefully every one else has decided and I'll just be whatever I will be by elimination.

This year's packing was the most astoundingly civil ( read: me non-screaming, mom not crying) proceeding I have ever had the obligation to be involved in. Am not sure why. Didn't do that much different from other years!

I've just finished revising my Arthurian Lit Paper; it's called:

Intentional Intertextuality:

Deep References to Arthurian Legend in Diana Wynne Jones’s Hexwood. I like my big titles.

Alas, I've printed so many revisions on the essay that I ran out of paper and could only print the first four pages of my final final draft tonight. That's something to do early tomorrow this morning!

I burned Dr. Chabot a parting gift, a DVD of Lancelot and QI eps and a .pdf of Hexwood because I sincerely hope that after he reads my essay he will feel compelled to read the book.

Have I mentioned how much I love that book?

I was trying to get to sleep but just keep thinking of Arthurian things.

I really want to ask someone (preferably William Russel himself ; ) ) what was up with the decision to not put anything of a developing Gwen/Lance relationship into The Adventures Of Sir Lancelot and If he intended for Lance to invade Gwen's personal space more and more as the series drew to a close. Because he does.

I also have childish things in head like this:

Lancelot and Guinevere sittin' in a tree / K - I - S - S - I - N - G /

First comes love, then comes adultery, then comes The Dolorous Death and Departing Out of this World of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.

 

*cough* The last line may need some work?

 

It's dead day, but for the past three Japanese classes we've lolled around. Can't say the same for Atmo. or Children's lit though.  Days one and two we watched two episodes of Gokusen. Day three we went to a shakuhatchi recital with Christopher Yohmei Blasdel. I love my class. I'm quite sad that the Japanese program has grow so big Adams Sensei won't be teaching 202 anymore. We're getting a new teacher. She's a native-speaker from Honshu. Everyone's worried that she could never be as fun or as nice as Sensei, plus the class is scheduled at a very disagreeable time ~ 3:55-5:30 on Tuesday/Thursday.

I'm teetering right on the edge of the A/B line and the final has been made optional. No one in the class has a worse grade than a low B. So I'm not sure who will turn up, if any, for the final. But I really want to try for the A. Ack. I hate being unique all by myself. It's frequently embarrassing.

Jamilia is a comrade form Japanese class and one day as I was knitting one of my socks we fell to talking. She's going to Korea for all of next year and wanted a proper hand knit woolly scarf for her stay so I'm knitting her an Exchequered. Following the checkered pattern is interesting but I'm looking forward to a bit of monotony once I get past the irregularly placed squares.

I knit and knit but go half as far as I expect since like the Binary Scarf I made for Morgan I'm knitting two sides, not one. I'm forever having to go back half a row because I've gotten into a groove and my squares are now four stitches high and in the wrong color! My friends seem to have an eye for scarves that use new techniques. First I learn fair-isle, and now double knitting. What ... helpful friends I have, that they are to propel me deeper into the joys of knitting. Any day now I'm going to agree to knit something massive and in lace.

I'm showing ljmckay the wonderful Horatio Hornblower series and am immensely gratified that she likes it so. We're watching out of order but have now seen Loyalty, Duty, Mutiny, and The The Dutches and the Devil.
We've also just finished watching series one of The Brief, a British legal drama starring Alan Davies whom we first loved in the massively addicting QI.
After QI, ljmckay got me addicted to something for a change, Jonathan Creek, a mystery show where the emphasis is the how-they'd-do-it  rather than the whodoneit. Jonathan designs magic tricks, lives in a windmill and fights crime. It is so very brilliant.

Finally, Meme!

Meme: The 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish. Add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend.

 

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell*

Anna Karenina

Crime and Punishment

When I'm writing a paper I like I don't get tired! It's great !!! *delirious*

The Arthurian Lit paper on the different levels of Arthurian legend one can spot in Hexwood is seven pages, 2000 word blather.
Need to edit without mercy - so much repetition.

Tomorrow - Transform it into my Children's Lit paper!!!
*vague English-major shame*

I'm studying for Atmospheric Science quiz tomorrow.
Chapter is 'Lightning Thunder and Tornadoes.'  I wrote down a note that reads: There is an ion cascade & electricity arcs between the two points.


Cascade is a wonderfully evocative word.
I'm going to try and remember that so I can say it's my favorite if ever I am asked.
Arc is a nice word too.