If you believe...

Andy Kaufman has a blog? I dunno about this, and I feel like Andy Kaufman's blog would be way cooler than this one.

More pub trivia money:

At this point, pub trivia seems to be my most reliable stream of money. The problem is that it just isn't very much. We came in second, so I made $13 last night, which covered my entry fee, $1 to get into the pub, non-alcoholic beverage, and contribution to popcorn. After that, I had about $7 left. High quality. Still, coming out +$7 to have fun is pretty nice.

The last paper ever:

I'm about to begin writing my last paper ever, and I am really dreading it. I'm not really sure why, either. It's on a book about the development of the papacy's use of/claims of supreme power. The book was fairly interesting, though I didn't read the whole thing. And I'm writing an approximately five page long book review, which should be no big deal.

It seems like the older I get, the more I hate writing papers. I remember papers I looked forward to writing (in some sick, twisted way) my first year. Even last year, I enjoyed some of the essays I had to write. Now I think that if I could choose between getting a C in this class and not writing the paper, I might choose the C.

Some of it is that the class has been pretty uninspiring, all in all. I mean, the discussions are generally not very enlightening, which has led me to do even less of the reading, which has made me feel even more disconnected from the class... It's a vicious cycle, really. But some of this seems to be specific to paper-writing, too. The thought of having to organise my thoughts into sentences that will become paragraphs that will ultimately prove some overarching thesis? Bores the hell out of me.

I know, I just need to write this stupid paper so I never have to do it again. And I wish I weren't starting 16 hours before it's due. But I only have one other class tomorrow (one class was cancelled for Shavuot, and I went to work on Monday, so I'm covered till next week), so I have lots of time, really. Now it's just actually writing the damned thing.

No longer homeless, but still unemployed:

Well, I just got an apartment for the summer, a studio at 56th and Everett. It's very nice. Now I just need a job, or paying for the apartment will make me very sad. I've got some names of people to try for lab work in physics and hopefully something there will work out.

Sucks:

So today, I didn't get the apartment I wanted or the job I wanted. I think I have another apartment which seemed nice, though I will probably be sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor for the summer. As for jobs, well, I emailed a couple of people. Susan and Will believe that if I just try enough biologists, one of them will be willing to hire me for my computer skills. So I get to send lots of emails now.

Got to stay positive, hard as that is and annoying as I find people who are always positive.

Rain and procrastination:

I admit that I don't usually need the weather for an excuse to procrastinate, but right now it's thundering and I can occasionally feel drops of rain coming in through my open window, just little flecks that hit my bare legs and arms when the wind comes just right. And, well, everything that absolutely has to be done for tomorrow is done...

The one problem is that there is about ten feet between my window and the brick wall of the building next door, so it's hard to get the real enjoyment out of a thunderstorm. I might drag a chair out to the back porch.

The Great American Bore-off:

This has been a pet project of mine for a while. Basically, it would involve certain particularly boring administrators at the U of C competing to see who is in fact the most boring. Isn't this something you've always wondered about? There were a couple of logistical problems though, that Will and I tried to iron out last night.

• First, how does one get the boring administrators to come? The ones we consider the most boring don't appear to know that they are boring, and no one really wants to be the one to inform a dean that he is boring. We decided that we should invite all members of the administration, even the non-boring ones, and tell them it's a benefit for ADD. Since not that many would actually come, it could work.
  
• Then, how does one judge boring? It's a purely subjective judgment, and if we tried to judge it as people judge gymnastics, by watching and assigning a numerical score, all the judges would fall asleep. So we need Boring Stadium! It would be a big room with corners for each contestant. In the middle, one would be able to hear all the contestants; at each end, one would only be able to hear one. The person at the end of the night who has had the lowest average attendance in his corner would be judged the most boring.
  
• Third, how would we get people to come? Free alcohol, and lots of it.
  
• Fourth, how would we make money off of this? Gambling. As long as we set the odds right, we can't really lose. And wouldn't you bet on this?

Porn prank:

Apparently the senior prank at the high school I graduated from involved replacing the closed-circuit news tape with hardcore porn. It's good to see that the place hasn't changed much.

Searching for employment:

It seems likely to me that even if I get the job I really want, it won't start till at least September or so.

I just decided that I can't face going home this summer. So I'm in search of employment in Chicago, either in the Loop or (preferred) Hyde Park. I applied for one job in the Loop and Monday morning am going to talk to a guy about a job working for Graduate Student Housing at the U of C, which would be ideal. And I'm going to look at a studio apartment tomorrow afternoon, and if I like it, I'm going to grab it.

If anyone knows anyone in Chicago who would like to hire a relatively personable person with a math degree (ink still wet) from the U of C and experience in office work, customer service, and research, please drop me an email. I know I'm starting late, but I'm willing to do most anything so long as it pays the rent.

Ah, physicists:

From an IM conversation with a friend of mine:

Him: "And my lab's computers are going down for the weekend. They are turning off all the power tomorrow to test some circuit breakers."
Me: "well, you can go outside and enjoy the gorgeous weather? it is spring, after all."
Him: "But I'm a physicist"
Me: "physicists can go outside too, shocking as that may sound."
Him: "The sun! It burns my precious!!"

Out of touch:

One advantage of being forcibly denied access to a computer for three days (besides the endless amount of time that you actually have) is that when you do return, there's so much computer stuff to do. Right now, I really should be transcribing some translations of Ovid which need to be done by tonight, since the sooner I finish them, the sooner I can go to sleep, and I desperately need sleep. But then there's new stuff up on every website that I read and I'm still trying to get caught up with that. And there's always email. Including an email I wrote this afternoon that I think I spent more time on than any assignment so far this quarter. Except, maybe, for the five page paper I wrote. Maybe.

So far I've read today's Slate, some recaplets on TWoP, two days worth of the Vine, most of Gnostical Turpitude's new stuff, and Kristy and Leah's blogs. Still plenty more to go, but I have to work now.

Returned:

I'm back from my interview. It was exhausting, but I really liked the place. I won't find out if I get a job for quite a while, though, which is sort of difficult.

Email me if you want more details; I shan't post them here.

Incommunicado:

I will be out of town until Wednesday night, so no email for me till then. I will be reachable on my Chicago cell phone in the afternoons/evenings, or you can leave me a message if I'm not there.

Wish me luck, yo.

The NYT and Mozilla:

Has anyone else been having problems reading the NYT website with Mozilla? It tells me my browser needs to accept cookies, but I checked the security settings, and it is set up to accept first party cookies. Does the NYT use third party cookies? It works in IE, but I don't like IE, and IE generally is far worse than Mozilla at dealing with cookies.

The laughing stars:

"All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travellers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them--"

"What are you trying to say?"

"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. In so it will be as if all the stars are laughing when you look at the sky at night...You--only you--will have stars that can laugh!"

And he laughed again.

"And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure...And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up to the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I have played on you..."

And he laughed again.

"It will be as if, in place of the stars, I have given you a great number of little balls that knew how to laugh..."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "The Little Prince"

Awesomeness and The Spectrum:

I've never actually heard of this magazine, but this article came up during an unrelated google search. I particularly liked the line "Space is a very big place" and the conclusion that the Vatican is influencing US Space policy.

Wanderlust:

Via Maggie,
"Your bag slung over your shoulder
Made you an efficient wanderer,
Unbalanced, but with bright eyes"
-Y. Amichai

I'm having these worries about settling down. I mean, I hate moving as much as anyone else (despite more experience with it than many people my age), but I want to travel. I want to take my backpack and the money I've saved working for the last five years and disappear for a year or so. I want to go to all these places I haven't had a chance to see: Eastern Europe, SE Asia, Russia, South Africa and Egypt. I hear Ian's stories about Cambodia, Donal's stories about Croatia, Marie's stories about Argentina, and I want to go to all those places. I tell my own stories about Greece and Prague and Nicaragua and Belfast, but they don't quite stand up. Or there aren't enough of them, and maybe for me there could not be enough of them.

There are places I can stay in much of Europe, in Tokyo, in Hong Kong, in Argentina at least. I've got a decent amount of money, and it isn't that hard to pick up some work wherever you go. I'm young, not tied down, possibly about to be unemployed. If I don't have much stuff, moving isn't bad, and I can always store stuff with my parents.

I don't know. I know that it's almost time to be responsible, but I don't have to be responsible right now. And somehow I don't want to be in Chicago next year. If I get a good job, I'll take it, and all this is just an academic issue. Ah, but if I don't--if I don't, does anyone want to go around the world?

Paper update:

The first three and a half pages went ridiculously fast, so I decided I could sleep for a bit. The rest was slower than I would have liked, but I have a draft. It needs just footnotes and as much editing as I have time for (ie not that much).

I skipped class this morning to work on it, but I do have to go to pick up homeworks at 11:30. And there's a class at 1:30 I should really go to. So I need to be almost done in half an hour. Errk.

A good night:

Tonight is beautiful with the sort of heavy warmth that I expect out of summer. The trees smell green, it's not too hot yet, it's altogether a beautiful night.

And we finally won pub trivia, though it wasn't with my original team so it somehow felt wrong. Whatever, though, I'll take the victory.

Unfortunately, I ahve a paper due at 3 tomorrow that I haven't really started. It's pretty short, and my plan is to get a draft, sleep for a couple of hours, and edit it during the day. But I have to wonder why I do this to myself. I could have written this paper yesterday and been done with it.

Blogger problems:

So I don't know if anyone else is having this problem, but my new version of blogger is ridiculously slow to publish. Like, 15 minutes to publish only the index page is normal. That's ridiculous. I don't mind most of the new changes, but it can't be this slow.

Also, I was really excited about the new comments in blogger which would eliminate the third party server I've been having problems with. Unfortunately, it appears that these comments don't work with FTP, since it publishes in a new place that I can't seem to make public access. So I'll stick with the third party for now.

Mo chara:

This is an adaptation of a poem written by Eibhlin Dhubh Ni Chonaill, the widow of Airt Ui Laoghaire. Unfortunately, I can't easily add the accents. Sorry.

"Mo chara is mo lao thu!
Is aisling tri neallaibh
do deanaigh arier dom
i gCorcaigh go deanach
ar leaba im aonar."

The translation is something like:

"My friend and my darling [lit. calf]!
An obscured vision in a dream
was shown to me last night
at a late hour, in Cork
in my lonely bed."

ScavHunt aftermath:

I promised a follow-up to ScavHunt, and here it is.

• I am getting a tetanus shot tomorrow, though the cut is healing pretty well.
  
• I liked this list a lot more than last year's, though some of that was that our attitude was, well, we don't have any people, so we might as well not bother doing stuff we aren't interested in or we don't think we can do well. Of course, it was still stressful, but it was more fun stress than before, if that makes any sense. Of course sometimes it's hard to believe that when it's 6:30 Sunday morning and you're trying to code Sean Paul's "Get Busy" into the IPA, particularly when the website you are using uses British pronunciations (and Christian, I stand behind my phonetisation of "jiggy").
  
• I was sad that there weren't more memorisation things in this list since I have a freakishly good memory. I only really used it once, in convincing a judge that I was a real Chicagoan based on remembered answers to a quiz I'd looked at from about 4:30 to 5:30 Sunday morning. Nowhere near as cool as memorising a Shakespearan sonnet in twenty minutes.
  
• I was also sad that I ended up doing most of the html forging. I'm not very good at it, and I don't enjoy it, but modifying the definition of Schizophrenia to turn it into ScavHunt Withdrawal was fun, though the modification involved frighteningly few changes.
  
• Searching for judges websites was a bitch, too. Despite using all my knowledge of Google linking searches and the Cambrian period, I failed pretty miserably. I always thought I would be a better stalker than that.
  
• Conceptually, the items I liked the most were: Go to the Seminary Co-op wearing nothing but shoulder bags and backpacks (for those non-U of C students reading this, the Seminary Co-op has a strict policy requiring shoppers to check bags at the front desk); a Sylvia Plath Inaction figure with her head in an Easy-Bake oven; tell the Metra what you think of it, CTA style; committing random pro-UofC acts at Princeton; and anything involving Peeps.
  
• The things that I had the most fun doing were: the mini-ScavHunt in Chicago on Friday--yay for running around the Magnificent Mile for 4 hours on a Friday afternoon; the stocks, since power tools are fun; taping a girl to the wall with Duct Tape for a really long time (though not as long as we told the judges); the giant sombrero; and writing some script for a "Queer Eye for Doctor Doom" comic book.
  
• One of the advantages to not worrying about doing everything is that there aren't any items that you hated, since if you hated them, you didn't do them. So anything that I didn't like I don't really remember. The only thing that pissed me off was one of the judges playing a trick on us and telling our road trip team to tell us that they had left a team member in NJ without her purse. We believed them, and one team member even filed a police report with Trenton police before we were finally told it was a joke.
  

Random results of sleep-deprivation:

• Our captain deciding that he really hated our Peep at about 9am Sunday and taking a mallet to it. It was totally smashed, so no Peepmobile. But it was still awesome.
  
• Some sort of bizarre donut eating contest involving eating a donut in one bite that involved one member of our team gagging up a donut in the bathroom and several other members trying to figure out what item they were practicing for.
  
• I got really excited about eating a cucumber on Sunday. I'm not really sure why, except that I hadn't eaten anything naturally green in the last four days. So I ate a whole lot of cucumber and then was kind of sad.
  
• At some point Thursday morning, much of our team was convinced that the road trip had to be in DC on Sunday, and we were having some real issues with how that was going to work.

It was a good last ScavHunt for me. I had a lot of fun and got not to do any work for 4 days. Now it's time to write a paper, learn some math, and generally be a responsible student for another, what, month now? Damn ScavHunt withdrawal.

Tetanus:

I was cutting out holes in a table with a jig saw. Now, I've never used a jig saw, and I'm sure I was using bad form and probably wearing inadequate eye protection. But that went fine. But let me try to carry the damn thing upstairs and I cut my hand on a protruding nail.

The cut really isn't bad, but I think I'm going to try to get a tetanus shot anyway. Getting tetanus would really suck, and I think it's been ten years since I last had a shot.

The End of ScavHunt:

So it's over. Congrats to Snell-Hitchcock, both for winning and for not being Palevsky. I will post more coherent comments later; even though I slept for four hours already tonight, I'm not really capable of typing complete thoughts.

I will say now that I liked this list better than last year's. The road trip was great, even though that was a lot of driving. There were some really fun items, and I definitely had a good time. Though now I'm sort of screwed in terms of work.

Thanks to everyone who helped or tried to help me out with stuff, particularly everyone on the Pierce team. Y'all rock.

Anyway, it feels really good to sit down. As I was lying on the couch this evening, it just felt so good. And fun as ScavHunt is, it's always a relief in a way that it's over.

I'm off to bed now. I promise to write more about this tomorrow.

Night the Last:

Up all night tonight. Really tired. Short term memory entirely shot. Ah, Scavhunt. I wasn't planning to do this, but I understand that the judgment will be short. God, I hope so. Home for a nap and then some homework this afternoon.

ScavOlympics:

Were today, a day earlier than usual. Events included a very large game of CalvinBall, blowing a gallon of flour off of a Swedish Fish, and a Kool-Aid and watergun Battle Royale.

I took some pictures.


Burtonian Dodgeball


Gus's Games


Aaron after participating in Gus's Games


Atlaspheres!


An Eric Draven look-alike

Party on the Quads:

This was last night. I liked the theme a lot (basically each team had to dress as characters from various cheesy vampire/alien/whatever movies). My team was Plan Nine from Outer Space, which I've never seen so I have no idea how authentic our outfits were. So we dressed up for that, poured a lot of alcohol into ginger ale bottles, and went. Of course we ran out of alcohol too early, and honestly our party sort of sucked, but I had a good time. A bunch of my friends came by to mooch free, ah, watered-down orange juice), so I talked to them for a bit.

There was lots of alcohol, but I basically hadn't eaten in a day and a half and had had about 10 hours of sleep since ScavHunt started, so I had one very weak drink, that I definitely mixed myself. So yeah.

Scavhunt All-Stars:

I did this yesterday. It basically consisted of a bunch of things to do/find downtown, including roughly 8 million menus, a piece of mistletoe that was effective 4 out of 5 times with photographic evidence (and you try asking random couples to smooch on Michigan Ave-- it's tricky. One guy did tell me "anything for the U of C," and another couple was convinced that they would find it on the internet). The trick, though, was that we were working for a different team with two people from other teams.

We had a pretty good time, all in all, and I 'm glad that I decided to do more with ScavHunt than my workload right now really permits.

I don't have most of the pics from downtown, and couldn't post many of them anyway, but here's a picture of our team name written on the beach taken from the top of the John Hancock building. It's circled. Yes, I don't play for FIST. See above.

Utopians:

"'I call them utopians,' [Colin Powell] said. 'I don't care whether utopians are Vladimir Lenin on a sealed train to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. Utopians, I don't like. You're never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot of people in the process of trying to do it.'"

Hmm:

At ScavHunt last night, I learned that the old aphorism "You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose" is not in fact true.

Olive oil:

There's an interesting article in the NYT today about practices of bottling "Italian" olive oil. I've decided recently that I prefer Greek olive oil, but I wonder if that also isn't primarily made of Spanish olives.

Being investigated:

I'm currently in the process of a background investigation just a bit more stringent than my investigation for the State Department (which involved making sure that I wasn't wanted in any felonies, having a credit check, and talking to a background investigator for about 15 minutes). The current background investigators have talked my friends on campus, my RH's, my professors, my boss, my former bosses, my roommates, and my neighbors in Atlanta.

This means a couple of things. First, that I'm not doing anything remotely illegal or subversive for ScavHunt (not that I would have anyway. Hi). Second, that I get emails like this one from my mother:

"Mr A [a neighbor in Atlanta] stopped me today and said he didn't know you went to the University of Chicago. He thinks it is a great school. I said what brought that on and he said the feds had been to see him. You are getting quite a reputation around here."

and this one from my former roommate:

"Dont worry, I think everything went well with the investigator. We met for about 5 minutes and i'll give you a recap of our conversation:
mr investigator: does she drink?
me: um, rarely, socially
mr investigator: what does she drink?
me: mixed drinks. sometimes beer at pubs.
mr investigator: how many drinks does she usually have?
me: 1 or 2 max
mr investigator: have you ever seen her intoxicated?
me: NO! NO!
and so on...."

It's all a little bit weird. I mean, I'm pretty ordinary. The kind of bad stuff that I've done is the kind of bad stuff that almost everyone who went to college did. I don't drink much, I don't do drugs, I'm responsible with my credit and my roommates, overall I think that there's no reason I should be cleared. But then there's someone who wants to know all this crap about your background, and it is very uncomfortable.

I mean, it's worth it to me because I want the job, but then sometimes you start thinking there's this, there's a polygraph, there's a psych exam, and at the end of the day, I may not get the job anyway. Uggh.

Radio, well, quiet:

I'm heading off to ScavCentral now to await the list eagerly. Blogging will probably be pretty light over the next couple of days, between ScavHunt and a midterm on Friday.

Catch you on the flip side.

Housekeeping:

I got really sick of the color scheme of this site, so I decided to go for something a bit simpler. I'll hopefully finish up what needs to be done (ie, adding back in comments, putting up Chicago blogs links, a couple of minor other things) by sometime tomorrow.

However, it's time for both midterms and ScavHunt, so no promises.

The Facebook:

Ruthie has gotten me addicted to The Facebook in a few short hours. If you're not on it, well, you should be, and then you should add me as a friend. I mean if you haven't already.

Math for Non-specialists:

Perhaps this gives a partial answer to my question:

"Most of the arts, as painting, sculpture, and music, have emotional appeal to the general public. This is because these arts can be experienced by some one or more of our senses. Such is not true of the art of mathematics; this art can be appreciated only by mathematicians, and to become a mathematician requires a long period of intensive training. The community of mathematicians is similar to an imaginary community of musical composers whose only satisfaction is obtained by the interchange among themselves of the musical scores they compose."

-Cornelius Lanczos

Springtime and graduations:

May is a hard time to be here, as many of my friends at other schools finish and go on summer vacation as I'm still mired in midterms. Thank God it seems that many of my friends are at Stanford, Dartmouth, Northwestern-- other backward forward-thinking institutions of higher learning.

Also, spring graduation for the Georgia schools was last weekend, so congratulations to the handful of my friends there who are graduating in exactly four years. Also, D-- and M-- are graduating in the next two weeks, so yay for them.

Central European cities:

The NYT has articles about Prague and Budapest in the travel section today. Both of these, admittedly, are about things that I didn't do while I was there. Check out the prices in that Budapest article, less than $5 per person for a two course lunch? Glasses of wine under $2? NYT hotels under $100?

Scavhunt:

It's almost that time of year again. I haven't decided how involved I'm going to be; I have four years of math to learn in the next two weeks, a midterm on Friday, and a paper due next week. I'm sure I'll still do some stuff, but lets just say that I'm not volunteering to go on the Road Trip or even be a Page Captain this year. I think when it comes down to it, I decide to get a job rather than do Scavhunt. I'm sure that makes me a bad U of C student.

Comments:

I'm sure that Will believes that this is a sign from God or something, but the comments server is really funky right now. To see comments, you have to click on the edit link, which is supposed not to be generally available, however it apparently is. This will display the IP addresses, so please don't use them for evil.

This problem seems to be pretty widespread, and if it doesn't get fixed in the next couple of days, I'll switch over to HaloScan, but I'm going to try to wait it out. It's a pain to switch.

More pictures:

A couple of pics from Vienna:





I will take more pictures in Chicago soon.

Googling yourself:

I enjoy googling myself every six months or so, both to see if there are new websites referring to me, and to look for other people with my name. I'm not really sure why, but it's fun to see how many people you can find with your name, the lawyer in Chicago, the neighborhood activist in Atlanta, the math teacher in Indiana, the lawyer in DC, the suspect in a murder mystery, the graphic designer, the child in day care on the Dingle, etc, etc. Intellectually, I know that I don't share anything in common with these people, but somehow you feel a little bit closer to someone with your name. I like meeting other Kathleens and others with the last name Moriarty, though I've never actually met anyone who shared both my first and last name. Perhaps if my name were either more or less common this wouldn't be enjoyable. Not finding in more kathleen moriartys or meeting one every year would probably get old.

Chicago and good-byes:

It's funny to me how little of this blog is about Chicago. I apparently would rather complain than write about the city that I love. Chicago is the first city I fell in love with, the first time I realised that it is possible to love a city.

And yet, and yet-- I'll be disappointed if I'm here next year. It'll mean that something didn't work out, that I didn't get a job that I wanted. Chicago has become my default position. And I act like I'm not going to be here next year; I make sure that I do everything that I can think of that I want to do here. I think like I'm going to be elsewhere next year. It seems the safest thing to do, really. If I pretended that I would be here next year, living in HP, trying to figure out what to do with my life, and then I wasn't, and I didn't really enjoy my last few months in the city, well, I would possibly never forgive myself.

I thought that coming back from London would be hard. In some ways, the last six months have been all about endings, people deciding where they're going next year, realising that they may never live in the same city again. I was worried that I would spend my last six months here saying good-bye to people and places that I have spent four years with. Instead, of course, I've spent five months procrastinating, trying to find a job, drinking tea. Not terribly different from the first three years. Now I'm here for 6 more weeks, and T-- is coming to visit at the end. It'll be fun to show things to her, to spend my last days in Chicago with someone who knew me in Atlanta and London, but never here, never in the city that is so important to me.

And I think it's time for me to leave here. I've spent the best four years of my life here, but I'm ready to do something else. I'm ready for some change. Even though I sometimes wish that time would keep slowing down as we approach the black hole of graduation, it won't happen, and I think I'm glad it won't. Much as I'll miss the city and my friends here, it's time for me to do something else.

Of course, if I don't get a job, I can put my life on hold, get some crappy job here and figure out what I'm going to do. So either way, things don't look so bad from here.

Good-bye Amanda:

My friend, former roommate, and occasional parterner in crime is going to DC today, shortly to head off to Kazakhstan for a little over two years. Good luck, Amanda. God knows I'll miss you at tea, and pub trivia, and any of a hundred other places.