Crap!

Sorry, everyone. I didn't realize a month had gone by since my last post. But since I have a crapload of homework to do, I'll give you the highlights.

- An esteemed member of my church passed away on January 21st. He was a social worker who was highly involved in a number of church councils and interfaith fellowship organizations. His obituary was almost an entire newspaper column long and there were some things left off of it. I was glad to know that he lived long enough to see Obama inaugurated as our first African American president. The man was the closest thing to a grandfather I had, so I was sad to see him go & I was glad to have the chance to sing with my choir for his service [out of respect for his family, I'm not using his name]. A.H. will be missed.

- A woman in my church gave birth to a baby girl that Saturday before A.H.'s death, and while I can't remember the child's name, I know that it means "moon" and it's an African name, but I'm unsure of the country of origin. I'm really bad at these things, but it's because I've been busy...

-...getting accepted to present at my first academic conference! I got the e-mail telling me the good news a couple of weeks ago, so now I have to write the paper that went with my (apparently) good abstract; except for the fact that I'm freaking out because I can't even remember what I wrote in that thing (see the New Year's eve post for details), I'm very happy to have my first chance at interacting with colleagues. Now how I'm going to get to Florida is another story.

- My new friend is a keeper. She's a really nice girl who is studying Japanese as a graduate student and we have a lot in common. We're interested in Japanese culture and just have so many things that we talk about after school that I'm glad that the fortuitous circumstance under which we met happened (we were sitting next to each other in class and she took notice of me when we did our introductions on our particular areas of interest). She's currently at New York Comiccon and I hope she was able to find a lot of good stuff (I'd be more jealous of her if I weren't so slogged in work).

Other than that, I've been very busy trying not to let school get the best of me. Sometimes I feel like I'm never going to get this stuff, but I just have to keep plugging away and hope for the best. This week is going to be murder because not only do I have two papers and an exam due this week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, respectively), but I also have a ton of reading, two projects that I have to get started on as well as the paper for the conference (and what I'm trying to do is find ways to incorporate the conference paper into both projects) and pick out classes for spring quarter. To top this whole fantabulous mountain off, my husband is going to be working from Sunday through Thursday because he's being trained for a position which should enable him to get the promotion he's been seeking but hasn't gotten because his attention to detail needs a lot of work. And while I'm happy for this opportunity for him, it came at a piss-poor time for me because now I have to get my work done in a time crunch since he won't be home to help with her at night and he'll be too tired during the day to take care of her in the morning. Greeeeaaaaaat.

Oh well. I've just got to do it and not lose what's left of my mind in the process.

And we just started feeding Devi rice cereal two days ago and while she spat out a great deal of it, we think she actually swallowed half of what she was given. I'll have to post those pictures once they're available. But until then, this one will have to do. My hope is that I'll get to post again next Sunday. A beintot, everyone.



P.S. I forgot to mention that my church finally has a new pastor after nearly two years of searching. He seems like a great guy who is non-judgmental, open-minded, and willing to work with the University instead of bellowing about how much we suck as a church (true story: one of the pastors that the committee looked at blamed the church's problems on the fact that our last two pastors had been women(!) and felt that we were bringing sin into the church because we wanted to work with the students instead of telling them (especially the gay ones) that they were all going to hell. I only know this because my husband was on the search committee and was the only one who disliked Mr. Usuck until he opened his mouth for the phone interview). He was voted in unanimously(!) and he's having to leave his wife behind in Indiana until their youngest child finishes college (2-3 years) to start his career with us. And he's going to be Pastor Tommy, which I think is rather cute for someone with kids in their 20s. Let's hope he'll work out ;-)