Not much left to do...

I took the GRE on Monday and while I managed to improve my score by 40 points in each category, it wasn't enough to get to the threshold that the English department set for the verbal. I'm still trying to figure out why my math score keeps improving with virtually no practice (only reviewing basic math concepts like integers, fractions, and decimals), but I can't complain about the test results. I have to wait on the verbal (which I worry won't be good enough), and I need to contact OSU to let them know that the scores are on the way...but may not make it there by the deadline.

All that's left now is to submit all of the writing statements and samples, and to make sure that all of the letters of recommendation have arrived at OSU safely.

I'm kind of tired and don't really want to do much these days, but I still have to write an autobiographical statement for English and pay another $40 for the second application.

At least the test is over. That's a good thing, so let's build on that to jazz myself up for the holidays.

It's Been Too Long

I've disappeared for almost two months, and I've been keeping busy. The Festival of Cartoon art was awesome! I got 18 autographs and I have several artists who have told me to keep in touch, including Ray Billingsley (the creator of Curtis). I'll write more when I have time...which may not be until January: I'm in the last stages of applying to grad school, so I don't really have the time to do much else but panic.

I was trying to get three people to write letters of recommendation for me, but one of the people I wanted to ask (my advisor from when I was an undergrad) had since retired and has been very ill, so I finally asked my supervisor and the VP in my department. One is writing a letter for the English department and the other is writing for the Comparative Studies department. Let's just hope all of the letters will be complimentary.

The Jewish Graphic Novels course wrapped up in November; just in time for the article about the group to be published in the New Standard. I'll provide a link later, but the quote from me actually makes me seem not as crazy as the whole interview process must have been for the author (who is the wife of one of my co-workers, if I haven't mentioned that already). I think I got a great deal out of the course, and I may have shown people a thing or two about life for non-Jewish people. When we discussed Harvey Pekar's The Quitter, I ended up opening up about my life and family back in Cleveland; revelations that I was surprised were being said to a group of strangers. That deserves a longer post, so we'll see.

In bigger news, I am scheduled to take the G.R.E. on December 17th, so I need to spend a lot of time studying for this exam that has me freaked out over the verbal (very important) and the math (important to only me), as I don't have a very large vocabulary, and it's been more than a decade since I've had to do the kind of math required for this exam. I just hope and pray that I can do well on this exam. I just want everything to come together so that I can have a shot at getting into grad school. I even worked with the Comparative Studies professor (who told at least one person that he really wants to be my advisor) to get my Statement of Purpose up to caliber. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that I did have it in me to write at the PhD level; coming up with terms like "cognitive empathy" and using phrases that sounded very scholarly but make no sense to me now seemed to do the trick.

All I have left now is to make sure my transcripts from Kent State make it to OSU safely, confirm (yet again) that my OSU transcripts will be gotten by the Grad School Application office without me having to pay for them, get all my letter writers to get their letters in ASAP, write the autobiographical statement for the English department, choose a stellar writing sample for both departments, and pass the exam. All that, and holding down my internship while changing my schedule drastically for the next three months so that I can audit a Comparative Studies class, and taking steps towards my first attempts at getting published in a scholarly journal. I'm very serious about what I want to study [Strong female characters in sequential art = super heroine comic characters from the U.S. and abroad] and I really want this. I'm not sure that I'll get it, and I'm in a panic for the first time ever about affording it, so I've got to give it my best from now to the end of the year.

I want to set up a schedule so that I can make regular posts to all of my different internet haunts, but I'm probably going to be gone again until at least after the exam. Please pray, wish me luck or whatever you're into, for me as I make one last push towards the end.

Let's see how this works out, so I can tell people what went on in the interim.

I mean, I haven't even gotten to talk about my department's move to the main building on campus, so I'd like to come back more often.

C-ya, peeps!

I feel sicky, oh so sicky...

...I feel sicky, and icky and blah, and I envy anyone who isn't sick today (la la la la la, la la, la la la).

In the grand tradition of throwing bad after good, I'm feeling like hell after finally making some progress towards my grad school applications. I get these really bad stomach pains that are intermittent and, at times, truly unbearable. It is the one thing that I can't handle; given the choice for a migraine-level headache (as I don't have migraines because I only exhibit some of the symptoms) and the stomach pains, I'd rather have the headache. Even the risk of vomiting [which is something that terrifies me to no end...choking on it a long time ago exacerbated the problem] is something that I'd prefer over these damn pains. I've been to doctors for this a number of times and nobody can figure out what is wrong with me. It's not ulcers, it's not gall stones and, after my last trip to the emergency room, it's not a "female problem" (even though, honestly, I have no idea why they thought it was), but it is usually attributed to a build up of gas that doesn't exit out of the two "normal" exit points, but rather tries to find its way out through a 'pocket' right above my stomach as if to breech the skin. It's unpleasant, misery-inducing, and is going to make this weekend completely and utterly terrible.

I'm going to the 2007 Festival of Cartoon Art this weekend, which looks to be a lot of fun (as well as educational, and building brownie points towards getting into grad school) but it requires that I miss a day of work (bummer) and that I be somewhere at 8am on Friday and Saturday (which actually sucks). I'm going to be doing this and going to a Halloween party on Friday, I still need to study for the GRE, and I need make more progress towards completing my grad school proposal write-ups. All this, and only one day off before I have my reading group on Monday. My house is a perennial mess, my husband has been minimally helpful (which is a step up from his usual, I-work-therefore-I-do-nothing-at-home position), and my clinical depression isn't getting better. Being sick just makes it so that eating is an adventure in culinary avoidance, and the distension that this causes makes it look like I've gained a considerable amount of weight.

In short, life sucks.

And, to top it all off, I feel incredibly guilty for complaining because there are so many people who have it worse that I can possibly imagine.

I don't know what my point was. I guess it was to let off some steam. I just hope I'm well enough to eat a little bit more than miso by Friday, or alcohol will be completely out of the question. Later.

I'm Much More Stressed Out Than I Thought

The following is a "note" from my Facebook page that I wrote yesterday about feeling stressed out. After re-reading this, I realized that I was much more upset than I thought.

I'm using this opportunity to vent a little, because I'm trying to do so much in preparation of applying to grad school...and things are feeling more out of control than they really are these days.

I spent this summer talking to professors at OSU about doing a PhD studying strong women in comics (primarily Wonder Woman, Sailor Moon, and how they either reflect or influence their respective societies) and I've discovered that there are other people as crazy as I am who think that this is a good idea [imagine that]. I've been trying to get myself to write the follow-up e-mails to everyone I spoke with as well as the two professors I still need to contact, but I keep freaking out about it and other things in life get in the way.

I've also signed up for a reading group where we're studying Jewish Graphic Novels in the hopes that I will be able to come up with better ideas for my own topic of choice (and get free copies of books like "Maus" in the process). I'm also hoping to sign up for a comic book conference that is meeting at the end of the month, where I can see Alison Bechdel [Dykes to Watch Out For and "Fun Home"] and other artists and get exposed to so many other works that exist in the genre. [Don't ask me why I read a lesbian comic: I read four of them and one that is of gay men, which may be my latent bisexuality coming out or that they are just very compelling stories.]

Add to this that I have been studying to take the GRE [You know; that test I didn't have to take for my MLIS degree] and I'm facing the dilemma that I can no longer do math [Which just sucks!] and that my vocabulary is too limited to do well on most of the verbal portion of the exam. I've also been trying to teach myself how to read Japanese and I've learned 36 hiragana and katakana characters...but I may have to stop until after the applications for grad school are turned in so that I can spend more of my time on what I need to get into school.

I'm still trying to hold down my current job, my husband has been sick for more than a week (which has resulted in me sleeping on the couch for the past six days), and my choir rehearsal schedule got shifted to Wednesdays (which isn't too much of an inconvenience because I usually call home [Cleveland] on those evenings, but it just added to the stress ball that has formed in my back). And to top it all off, my heart hasn't been happy with me and beats hard for no reason at random [I'm going to tell a doctor about that today] and I still have to deal with grief from my grandmother about not giving her great-grandchildren [as if I'm doing this on purpose].

So, in short, I'm really effin' stressed out right now (and, honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way).

So how are you all doing?

Later (because I feel a little better now).

Update: I forgot to mention that I have to earn a second Masters degree before I can even begin to work on my PhD...because the library masters is considered a "professional" degree and not an "academic" one. Fun, huh?

I wasn't feeling too sociable yesterday and really didn't want to go to choir rehearsal because my crappy moods are like the Lasso of Truth times ten: I have a difficult time holding my tongue on everything. If truth serum was this effective, more people would be in trouble.

To not go into it too much, I was majorly pissed that I had to purchase block cheese for the chili dinner the choir had just to find out that someone else bought bagged cheese [Which was something that I was told was "unhealthy" because of the extra additives put in the cheese to keep it from sticking.] and just said some things that showed how much I dislike most things that people like.

And, apparently, I looked very exhausted from the moment I got home from work until I went to sleep on the couch (again).

My husband wouldn't go to the doctor because he was feeling better before I went to rehearsal, but funny enough he was sick again by the time I got home.

I think I've been sleeping on the couch for over a week now, and it stinks!

It is Banned Books Week, so get out there and read something! Also, happy belated Music Lovers Day (it was yesterday).

I wish a person could call in "bitch" the way you call in sick for work.
"I'm sorry, I won't be in today. I came down with a case of total bitch, and I don't want to infect anyone else with my shitty attitude."

And if I actually got sick time, that'd be a very viable (and truthful) situation.

I'm tired, crabby, and prone to bouts of crying or fits of rage, and I'm nowhere near PMS, so I'm logging off.

Enjoy the day & get your hands on a good banned book! ;-)

Goodbye, Miss Moneypenney

I found out yesterday that the actress who played Miss Moneypenney in 14 James Bond films passed away this weekend. Lois Maxwell was 80.

I always loved her character. Playing a woman who longed to be with a playboy endeared her to me, and I always looked forward to her appearances in the films.

She will be missed.

The song Goldfinger came on my mp3 player, and it made me think of Miss Moneypenny because, well, it's Bond!

I'm sorry to see her go, but her films still remain.

First Day of Book Discussion Group

I attended my first session of a discussion group on Jewish Graphic Novels, and I have to say that I'm glad that I found out about this because it was very interesting...and I'm getting free books in the process!

The first book (of five) that we read and discussed was Will Eisner's A Contract with God. It's a collection of four short stories that are about people living in a Jewish tenement house in 1930s New York. This book is the first in a trilogy of works that I'm going to have to hunt down because the stories were all fascinating. One in particular, "The Super", struck me as so sad that I felt very bothered by the ending [I won't reveal it, so you'll have to go and get it from your local library and read it yourself!] and was glad that I got to discuss it in the group.

The group is made up of approximately 25 people from all walks of life. Some are Jewish, some like reading graphic novels, and some didn't quite read the flyer closely enough but came anyway. We talked about some of the Hebrew symbols that you can see in the title story, and how the oppressor/oppressed relationship in The Super gets flipped before the end, and about cookaliens and how they really were like what we read in the fourth story. There was a man who went to cookaliens as a child in New York [And I understand them to be places out in the country where the wife would take her children while her husband stayed in the city to work weekdays and visit on the weekends. The wife would [typically] do the cooking for her family while there, which garnered some comments on how this wasn't so much a vacation for the wife, except that it was a vacation from the husband!] and there was someone who used to work at the resorts in the area in the summer a la Dirty Dancing, which I thought was really cool to learn about in the group.

We got our next reading assignment, Maus, and I'm looking forward to reading both volumes again. While I may not have articulated everything I heard in the group, I did get a great deal out of it. It's being led by an English Professor, and I feel as if I am going to have a better idea of how to formulate ideas for the Masters/PhD program I would like to embark upon. I just need to make sure I get into contact with every professor I spoke with this summer (as well as the two I need to still talk to) by the end of this week so that I can get into the meat of my application process. That, and I need to get more focused on my GRE preparations.

I'll have to let you know about the interview I did for The New Standard, if I haven't mentioned it already...because I can't remember what I've said recently and where.

That Brain Age 2 training has been helping, but I don't think my brain's gotten much better after a week of it.

Here's hoping that I'm going to be able to get "back on the wagon" of blogging more regularly. Later ;-)

Update: I forgot to mention that I need to send a thank you card to the man who paid for all of the books for this group. He's a member of the OSU Friends of the Libraries group and, upon hearing about the group, offered to buy the materials for the entire class!

What I need is time, what I get is...

business, I guess. I've been too busy with trying to get ready to take the GRE and other things in life that I haven't been able to blog. I'm sorry.

I'm hoping to be able to put up entries about Dragon*con, as well as other things of interest, but I don't know when I'll have the time.

Maybe on Wednesday, after I get back from Brook Park and my *gulp* court date.

Instead, I'll briefly regale you with the story of the missing mp3 player.

I was asked to participate in a quartet for church last week, and I went to rehearsal on Thursday (unknowingly) with my Sansa 2gig mp3 player attached to my belt by my Hello Kitty pouch. The snap closure had been acting funny lately, so it must have come loose when I was driving to the church. I was looking for a way in when the choir director's boyfriend opened one of the side doors at the bottom of a hill to let me in. It is at that point that the pouch fell off, but I didn't notice because I didn't know I had even brought it with me and (which was probably my biggest mistake) I had taken off my headphones, which would've jerked around my neck to let me know I had dropped it.

Well, I assumed that the player was on my living room table with the headphones and I didn't look for it until I was leaving for the UNCF walk on Saturday. I was supposed to meet my team at 9:00am for the group photo. I didn't leave the house until 9:45 tearing it apart for the player. I finally asked my husband to call the church and to call the interim pastor. I figured that if I lost it there, maybe they would know something about it. I ended up doing the walk with my old, reliable, Memorex mp3 player, but I still fretted about my Sansa.

We got calls back from the interim pastor saying that a member of the church found a gray item and gave it to her. Unfortunately, she got it on Friday and proceeded to leave it on a table where it could've been during the BREAD meeting [some interfaith bible study that was meeting at our church], and I figured someone took it during that meeting and that I would never see the mp3 player again. I was upset over the loss of money for the player, but I was a little more upset about losing the Hello Kitty thing, because it was a one-of-a-kind, handmade item I bought on eBay that couldn't be replaced. We then get a call from the son of the person who found it in the first place and told us that it was in the church safe.

After trying in vain to get the item back earlier this week, I finally got it back on Thursday evening after choir rehearsal.

Funny enough, though, I haven't used it for more than 5 minutes since I got it back. My head hurts and I have a terrible cold, and I really shouldn't have come in to work today, but I'm here and I'm trying to get some work done...or at least keep my eyes open.