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edenfallingHaven't posted for a while, whoops. Anyway, life is going pretty well!
I seem to be doing okay in my classes (full participation marks, yay!) even though Prof T got kind of panicked about plagiarism in his other classes and made us all resubmit our ethnological study book reports through a plagiarism-checking program. Meanwhile, Prof. L's communications class involves three times the weekly reading that the anthro class does (to be fair, it's a 10-week course rather than a 15-week course, so obviously each week has to cover proportionately more of the total class material) and also too many videos. Oh well, at least it's not podcasts?
I find the subject matter kind of annoying and/or "I already know this!" but I have found a relatively successful workaround, which is pretending I am in spy school and this class is really Social Engineering 101: How To Manipulate People. Which, honestly, is what communications is... from a certain point of view. *evil grin*
In other news, I stopped crossposting my pepper updates to Dreamwidth last year because I got sick of coding the images, but you can find all of them over on Tumblr under the adventures in botany tag -- or the peppers! tag if you want just the peppers without my houseplants and occasional photos of neighborhood trees and flowers. The latest update is that the Lazarus pepper bloomed this winter and has successfully produced and ripened one tiny pepper! I have overwintered three other peppers (which I need to give proper names), and yesterday I planted my new seeds for 2018. :D
The First Unitarian stewardship team held our annual pledge campaign kickoff event on Sunday the 11th. This year, instead of a midweek dinner we hired a small band and a caller and had square/line dancing in the parlor right after the service, with additional food to make it a sort of lunch special instead of just the regular coffee hour. We also had music and dancing during the service, courtesy of Rev. Weis -- people got to dance our offering and pledge cards forward -- which went over very well after a minute of initial awkward trepidation.
Barring catastrophe, I have my summer vacation pinned down. I will be flying to Minnesota on Thursday, June 14 and flying back to Ithaca on Thursday the 21st. I will spend the intervening time on Star Island, where I should overlap my parent for the first few days and overlap Vicky for the final two or three days. (I may have one day entirely to myself in the middle, depending on Vicky's schedule.)
I have not been getting any writing done this past week -- all my brain power is going toward other things. I think what I really need to do is establish a time of day when I sit down and get some writing done, because trying to write at work is very iffy (so many potential interruptions, and also I use work free time for classes) and I'm usually kind of fried when I get home in the evening. This suggests that I should get up a little earlier and use that extra 15 minutes (plus my previously carved out 20 minutes of breakfast) to write instead of to check email and social media.
I am deeply weirded out that I seem to slowly be turning into a morning person. This is not remotely part of my self-concept... and yet. *hands* The world is a strange place, and my mom (a morning person to the core) is right that early mornings are a great time for private contemplation without the weird melancholy you can get while being up alone late at night.
So that's pretty much where I am. :)
ETA: Oh, also! I saw Black Panther on Monday the 5th, and loved it. I hope to see A Wrinkle in Time this coming Monday. And... that's about it for my movie-watching this year, probably. We'll see if I can dredge up the time and focus for any TV shows. *wry*
I seem to be doing okay in my classes (full participation marks, yay!) even though Prof T got kind of panicked about plagiarism in his other classes and made us all resubmit our ethnological study book reports through a plagiarism-checking program. Meanwhile, Prof. L's communications class involves three times the weekly reading that the anthro class does (to be fair, it's a 10-week course rather than a 15-week course, so obviously each week has to cover proportionately more of the total class material) and also too many videos. Oh well, at least it's not podcasts?
I find the subject matter kind of annoying and/or "I already know this!" but I have found a relatively successful workaround, which is pretending I am in spy school and this class is really Social Engineering 101: How To Manipulate People. Which, honestly, is what communications is... from a certain point of view. *evil grin*
In other news, I stopped crossposting my pepper updates to Dreamwidth last year because I got sick of coding the images, but you can find all of them over on Tumblr under the adventures in botany tag -- or the peppers! tag if you want just the peppers without my houseplants and occasional photos of neighborhood trees and flowers. The latest update is that the Lazarus pepper bloomed this winter and has successfully produced and ripened one tiny pepper! I have overwintered three other peppers (which I need to give proper names), and yesterday I planted my new seeds for 2018. :D
The First Unitarian stewardship team held our annual pledge campaign kickoff event on Sunday the 11th. This year, instead of a midweek dinner we hired a small band and a caller and had square/line dancing in the parlor right after the service, with additional food to make it a sort of lunch special instead of just the regular coffee hour. We also had music and dancing during the service, courtesy of Rev. Weis -- people got to dance our offering and pledge cards forward -- which went over very well after a minute of initial awkward trepidation.
Barring catastrophe, I have my summer vacation pinned down. I will be flying to Minnesota on Thursday, June 14 and flying back to Ithaca on Thursday the 21st. I will spend the intervening time on Star Island, where I should overlap my parent for the first few days and overlap Vicky for the final two or three days. (I may have one day entirely to myself in the middle, depending on Vicky's schedule.)
I have not been getting any writing done this past week -- all my brain power is going toward other things. I think what I really need to do is establish a time of day when I sit down and get some writing done, because trying to write at work is very iffy (so many potential interruptions, and also I use work free time for classes) and I'm usually kind of fried when I get home in the evening. This suggests that I should get up a little earlier and use that extra 15 minutes (plus my previously carved out 20 minutes of breakfast) to write instead of to check email and social media.
I am deeply weirded out that I seem to slowly be turning into a morning person. This is not remotely part of my self-concept... and yet. *hands* The world is a strange place, and my mom (a morning person to the core) is right that early mornings are a great time for private contemplation without the weird melancholy you can get while being up alone late at night.
So that's pretty much where I am. :)
ETA: Oh, also! I saw Black Panther on Monday the 5th, and loved it. I hope to see A Wrinkle in Time this coming Monday. And... that's about it for my movie-watching this year, probably. We'll see if I can dredge up the time and focus for any TV shows. *wry*
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-14 12:42 am (UTC)I'm still not a morning person when it comes to body clock, but my cats have ensured that I am a morning person by practice - I don't get to sleep in past 7:15 no matter what day it is.
Mostly I spend my morning time feeding cats, cleaning the litterbox, putting together stuff like lunch for work (if applicable), and reading fanfiction. I'm really not up for contemplation that early unless I just happened to have a fabulous night's sleep. But I can get a surprising number of chores done on the mornings when I don't go in to work till 10!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-14 01:15 am (UTC)The first year I dogsat for my parents, I was still mostly on an evening-shift schedule so I'd get up to feed and piddle Dottie around 7-7:30am and then go back to bed for a couple more hours. In my more recent dogsitting stints, I just get up for good at 7-ish and occasionally take an afternoon nap if it's not a work day.
I think I wound up as a night person somewhat by default (not having a strong body clock means that it's pretty easy for me to stay up late to read/do just one more thing, and then obviously I'm not going to get up early the next day) and partly as an attempt at family differentiation -- if my mom and sister were morning people, then I would be a night person like my dad. I suspect Vicky may have done something similar in reverse, which is why she self-defined as a morning person for many years and is now drifting toward night person habits. Family is kind of ridiculous, you know?
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-15 04:31 am (UTC)I am incredibly thankful that this is not the case for me, because otherwise I would be dead by now. :D In addition to being naturally noctural, I'm one of those "just another hour" people, too; I don't want to go to bed at a reasonable hour based on when I need to get up, I want to go to bed at a reasonable hour according to my body's schedule, which says sleeping until 11 is the plan. On the days when I give in and end up sleeping not-nearly-enough hours before 7 AM, I can get up and brush my teeth and feed the cats and then go back to sleep for a couple of hours. (Work schedule permitting, of course.)