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see also

news and periodicals:
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le monde
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fun:
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reference:
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me:

This is my blogchalk:
United States, Tennessee, Cookeville, tntech, English, French, kait, Female, 21-25.

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aim: the kaitron

Friday, February 28, 2003

17:19 - r.i.p. i haven't seen jeff in six years, but it's a hell of a lot worse now knowing that that trend will continue. i miss him.

and nuclear physics tests still aren't any fun.

16:41 - i have a 5.25" floppy disk.

remember those? back in the days when floppy disks were really floppy and the apple II was respectable firepower?

it came w/my physics lab book on data analysis. i bought it used two years ago. unfortunately, no one i know has a 5.25" floppy drive these days. or at least none of the known individuals who were online two hours ago did.

thus, it's back to ye olde numerical recipes to write my own codes in fortran instead of happily using indecipherable pascal pre-packaged routines. oh well.

Monday, February 24, 2003

17:20 - the bad news: i have a test in nuclear physics on wednesday. which means i really need to learn four chapters of it in the next day and a half.

the awesome news: this means that no homework will be due on friday. which means that i can go out on thursday night like any normal extraverted inhabitant of a suitcase-college-town instead of haunting the physics study room all night. i realize that i could do this more often if i were better at the whole "planning ahead" thing, but... well, i'm not.

pitiful, eh?

Saturday, February 22, 2003

13:38 - surreality of the week:

the beloved honors program secretary, katie, is moving away, fleeing back to the north from whence she came. since tennessee can no longer afford higher education, the university is in the midst of a hiring freeze. however, part-time temporary workers are apparently ok...

hence, my roommate john is the new honors secretary. he fits -- he knows his way around the program, he can do the computer stuff, and his normal job is a weekends-only sorta deal. but still... odd!?!

Thursday, February 20, 2003

21:41 - e-mailed link i've not yet had time to read: conversational terrorism

17:27 - {the wal-mart paint department.}
"may i help you?"
{the guy at the paint counter seems nice enough.}
"um, maybe. i need gold broccoli."
{insert bewildered look}
"hrm... i dunno... do you want more gold color or green? i'm not sure we've got anything even close."
{moment of confusion due to wavelength difference.}
"oh, no, no. i need to paint broccoli gold. like gilded broccoli. what kind of paint do you think would work best?"
{he thinks i'm a lunatic.}
"uh, not this. i bet this is too dull for you... maybe try this? can't say i've ever painted vegetables before. just try to get it really dry."
{he's cooperating, but he still thinks i'm a lunatic.}
"ok, thanks!"
{i walk off, officially amused.}

the results were fantastic. i took a picture. goodwill also had a "body by jake" t-shirt, delightfully inappropriate for a member of the sweatin' to the oldies crew, that i will in all likelihood never wear again. and i've eaten so many doughnuts today that death by sugar rush is imminent.... perhaps theatre's not so bad after all.

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

17:53 - so somehow, my theatre class group's skit for the "dionysian fest" tomorrow has evolved from odysseus vs. the sirens to richard simmons vs. the doughnuts. complete with a greek-style chorus, who as of yesterday had no lines but "boodily-doo" -- all other chorus speeches will be written on the backs of the masks. sound intriguing? it's open to the adoring public -- performance is somewhere between 3 and 4:30 p.m. tomorrow in the backdoor playhouse. i'm not sure i actually want anyone to come, but getting stage-frighted and turning red and shakey somehow seems less ridiculous when the audience is bigger...

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

11:57 - i have to go shopping before my 3 p.m. class. for what? broccoli and safety pins. and a dozen doughnuts. don't ask. i miss my lunch break.

Sunday, February 16, 2003

16:26 - the soles of your feet can also serve as approximately 3000 ohm resistors when faced with 230 volts. just thought you might like to know. now returning to the ornl online safety training...

Saturday, February 15, 2003

14:58 - not that i'm truly much of a bitter singleton, but i really did try to get into the spiteful, anti-cute-couples spirit for valentine's... however, despite all sorts of bright ideas and suggestions like tripping them, my bad attitude failed to spark. alas, it started off poorly -- on my way out the door, i spotted a brand-new set of the 3rd season buffy dvds and realized that, even as a non-couple-component, living with an engaged couple meant that i would be benefitting from the occasion. worse, having had only an hour and a half of sleep due to the weekly physics homework agony, if the cute couples were fawning on each other in my vicinity, i was oblivious -- coffee served as day's the sole obsession. even the singles' "party" -- a collective attempt at crawling into a cave to show our nausea at the holiday -- failed to take on any melodramatic flair. we just watched my big fat greek wedding, laughed, mildly criticized the inappropriateness of any movie featuring such mushy scenes, and generally had a nice time. i was too tired to stay for the "boy movie" to follow, so that was the end of my night. alack, i'm too lame to even build up a proper resentment...

Friday, February 14, 2003

14:53 - h'rah! i've finally gotten through! communication has happened! columbia teachers college no longer thinks i'm a foreign student! they were trying to make me take the tse, which is associated with the toefl, which is really not aimed at native english speakers. i mean, one of the example questions is "how long have you been studying english?" i am amused it took e-mail to get this straightened out -- when i called and talked to the admissions office IN ENGLISH, the representative stuck to the story that applied linguistics was now making all applicants take the tse. yay for not having to waste $125 to prove i speak my primary language.

13:51 - *drools* ok, so i'm not a very good patriot. i'm going along, reading an article about how all good americans are ruining the french e-cheese-selling industry for the sake of the war... and what's my reaction? "mmm, cheese! online? i could get raclette, reblochon, and comté delivered right to my doorstep?!?" alas, the plan's impractical -- i barely touched the order form at fromages.com and the sub-total wanted 59 euros. oh well, mon cher fromage, i shan't be boycotting you for the sake of my nation -- it's for my wallet.

05:48 - happy valentine's day, at least to those who can accept such greetings without cringing...

Thursday, February 13, 2003

19:50 - i, the great and mighty helpdesker, have once again managed to pester one of the users in the lab for useful information rather than dispensing it. but -- i now know how to make the printers scattered in most of the pclabs print two-sided. so, to redeem myself, i'll tell you how, should you ever end up in one of the many pclabs at tennessee technological university, to print on BOTH SIDES and thereby save a wee bit of the environment. the trick, my friends, is to go to "file", then "print", then -- here's the big secret -- according to "preferences", where you can hit either "flip on long edge" or "flip on short edge". isn't that great?

19:42 - last night i went to an "intro to coptic christianity" hosted by the brand-new campus coptic fellowship... i was lured in by the offer of free egyptian food, which was in fact yummy, but the lecture turned out to be pretty cool too. his grace bishop youssef, leader of the southern u.s. diocese, was the keynote speaker. my one-notecard worth of notes includes all kinds of great factoids, things like st. didymus the blind inventing engraved writing fifteen centuries before louis braille came up w/something similar... or that it's currently year 1719 by the coptic calendar, and new year's is sept. 11... or, the meaning of monophysitic and that despite the dictionary definition, the copts never were and aren't monphysitic -- the whole anathematizing bit in 451 was just a big misunderstanding, all patched up since 1989. and i've never, ever seen anyone answer the testy protestant challengers who invariably show up in this region of the country so smoothly... "what's the biblical authority for a pope?" and he rattles off the coptic interpretations and the verses that back 'em up. i was mightily impressed.

17:49 - i've started digging into the selected letters of madame de sévigné that we have to read for my history class... they have the taint of the obligatory -- must read, therefore must be bored by -- but i find myself being drawn in all the same. there is that certain silly little voyeuristic thrill of reading other people's private mail, even 300 years after their deaths. and having just one side of the correspondence keeps the imagination busy, reconstructing the replies and imagining the addressees from minimal clues... but best of all -- d'artagnan is real!!!! so far he hasn't exhibited much personality, but faithfully chaperones the imprisoned m. foucquet around town. i always knew louis xiv was real, but i didn't realize that dumas took quite this much historical inspiration...

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

12:55 - my cell phone gets more use as an alarm clock than as a communication device. however, it and four other alarm clocks were incapable of waking me at 6 this morning -- my brain knew it was getting up to work on nuclear physics homework, i guess, and went on strike. my poor roommates...

Monday, February 10, 2003

17:06 - this morning in history class we were joking about martin luther and katherine von bora, the monk and the nun, being one of the all-time great romances... it's cute, he gets so excited over marriage because it means washing the sheets more than once a year. i should've known, though, that someone got to the movie idea first. but the real reason i bring this up -- i must share our parting quote, perhaps slightly paraphrased: "women have been created with large hips in order that they should stay at home and sit on them." wonder if kat made him wash his own sheets after that...

Sunday, February 09, 2003

21:35 -

pretty...

17:55 - nevermind about getting groceries and a new coffeemaker this evening... the k-tron does not drive when roads are white. if you have a coffeemaker, you and it would be welcome visitors tonight/tomorrow morning. i have a whole tin full of folgers french roast, just no working mechanism to brew it. heck, who am i kidding, we like guests anyway. even if they come empty-handed. the heat's still not so good, but we have plenty of blankets.

16:24 - saw this over at anna's site, thought i'd see if i qualified for the far-left yet... good to know that even seven question quizzes can figure out that i'm a crazy liberal.


Where do you fall on the liberal - conservative political spectrum? (United States)
brought to you by Quizilla

16:05 - whoa! so the little weather pixie icon down in the bottom of this page said it was snowing, i didn't believe her... now i look out the window, and the ground's a tad white! *wishes fervently that classes would be cancelled tomorrow... * prescient nostalgia -- if i go to any of the grad schools to which i've applied, there'll be no more of this wimpy tennessee snow day policy... either no snow or people who know how to deal with snow. can't i have just one more day to cuddle up with hot tea and read a good book before the winter's over?

15:03 - in the department of following up on trivialities... i now know where the tntech library's copy of le rouge et le noir went. my french lit prof has it out -- apparently she lost hers and needed it for a conference presentation. it's currently filled with post-it notes, doesn't look as though it's in any hurry to get back to the library, so i went ahead and ordered a copy off amazon.

14:20 - oh dear. much as i hate to admit it... even thomas friedman, the foreign affairs columnist i trust and respect most, is calling france silly these days. i shall go search le monde for justification, but without much hope.

Saturday, February 08, 2003

14:56 - i'm getting old. if given any somewhat decent quantity of sleep, my body decides to wake up at 7 to 7:30 a.m., no sooner, no later. which is fairly good, given that it provides a generous amount of staring-at-the-wall/showering/primping/walking time if you want to get to class at 9 a.m. but it spoils the old "sleeping in until noon or until some kind person decides to wake you up for lunch" act on saturday mornings.

the speech team met at my house last night. these are not quiet people. however, the leftover cheetos and soft drinks in the dining room might've been a mystery had i not talked to angie and complimented the abnormal cleanness of the place shortly before crashing at 4 p.m. i remember half-waking to some loud arguing -- it took me a bit to recognize it as part of a speech that jenny and ang have been perfecting -- but other than that i was out. until 7 a.m.

to tell the truth, i rather like having a conscious saturday morning. it's like being a little kid again, getting up to watch cartoons. you can't possibly study -- it's saturday morning, after all -- and putting on real clothes to get groceries seems like far too much effort. except we don't have cable, so cartoons are out. i settled instead for a couple episodes of buffy to go with my double bowl of cereal before heading for the fitness center. which sort of ruined that whole lazy, unproductive glow about the morning... but it's nice to have muscles that hurt for a reason again.

Thursday, February 06, 2003

17:35 - *dances around, jumps up and down, refuses to think of all tonight's yet undone homework. at least for a minute. *
cut/paste:

Dear Kaitrin,
I am writing to let you know that we have accepted your application to our MA program in Linguistics for next fall. You'll be receiving official notice from the university, but I wanted to more informally welcome you and tell you that we're looking forward to seeing you here in Davis.

anyone know anything about davis, ca? is it nice there, who lives there, do i want to live there, how far away's the beach? they always seem so terribly nice in e-mail, it can't be too bad!

Wednesday, February 05, 2003

17:03 - my entire emotional fate in someone else's hands... that tiny moment when an adrenaline burst stands ready to transform into overwhelming joy or self-pity. nope, i'm not demanding for everlasting love and adoration or anything... just getting back a poor excuse for a paper -- it was slammed together in an hour and a half -- and wondering whether it'll receive the D it deserves or if there were some unconsciously bright ideas contained therein to save it. paper in hand, i dread breaking down the red ink's quantum wave function, barely dare to peek...

the experience went rather well today, opening the paper revealed no horrors. but i later noticed my hands trembling from the anxious-happy rush and decided that i was being incredibly silly. i hereby scoff at my drama queen tendencies...

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

23:52 - just in case i ever have to watch another silent soviet film, i thought i'd dig out the words to "l'internationale" so i can sing along. i never noticed it before... but it's in the score for all of them! then again, i didn't know the song until last year. monsieur thevenin, the history prof who took time off from his lycéens to teach the foreigners over at the cla what came after the french revolution, would sing us the important anthems as they came along... everyone now -- "c'est la lutte finale, groupons-nous, et demain.."

19:20 - oh, and for what it's worth... medea later becomes theseus's stepmom -- which technically makes her phaedra's step-mother-in-law, i suppose -- and tries to poison him. so perhaps it's the taste for psychotic women that runs in the family, not the psychosis itself? but no, they're both granddaughters of helios. double-fated tragedy? ah well. so much for twisted family histories. punching in "medea" and "phaedra" over at google gets you a chance to buy a term paper entitled "comparisson and contrast of medea, phaedra, and dido." heh.

17:52 - i have issues with stendhal. last year, i picked up a copy of le rouge et le noir from the public bibliothèque; the dialogue-free opening chapter was enough to stop me then. this time around, in my french lit class, we're forced to read the first nine chapters...

my relationship with stendhal did not start more auspiciously this time around -- by the end of the first chapter, he's deeply insulted my adopted home region of france, stressing all the worst points of being provinicials, then he mentions that it's nearly as stupid as the united states. while i'm frequently caught in not-so-patriotic statements, i don't appreciate hearing it from nineteenth century foreigners who've already pissed me off. and dammit, the franco-comtois don't speak slowly! no need to attack my sense of pride in understanding their speech! it's near switzerland, but it's nowhere near switzerland-slow french.

but now that i've moved on, made it through the second and third and fourth chapters and beyond... embarrassingly enough, i'm hooked. and finished with the selection that we're given. and the tntech library's copy is out with a charge pending. i was going to whine. but i just found an online version. i now have the material with which to occupy many, many helpdesk shifts to come...

11:38 - johnny feng tricked me into taking it...


Which OS are You?

Monday, February 03, 2003

18:10 - i want to print out the 100 poets against the war project available at nthposition sometime soon. i hear it's worth a read.

15:22 - copy/paste:

Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 14:57:24 -0800
From: Denise Hensley
To: ktm3828@tntech.edu
Cc: Paul Semmes , Denise F Hensley
Subject: results from exception to university policy request

Request: to substitute 3 credits of MUS 085 for MUS 1030

Action: Approved

all my class-skipping has paid off!

or perhaps a more prudent, reasonable person might say that i've not made an undue investment of time and resources. i went to one class. we talked about pitch. for an hour and a half. not that there's anything wrong with pitch, but i play bassoon, used to play piccolo. i know low pitch from high pitch.

and why was i in the class? it's a longish, not terribly interesting story. perhaps i'll tell it if my helpdesk shift is not too busy. but i had to share my joy. immediately.

Sunday, February 02, 2003

16:25 - oh, and following a reminder from binky the yellow dog... happy groundhog day! (it's sunny and warm today, thus we're prob'ly in for it. oh well.)

16:10 - working helpdesk isn't terribly interesting when the power is out. so far i've confirmed that it was out for at least 16 blocks of cookeville for about an hour today... haven't found out why, though.

however, the unexpected lack of "virtual" entertainment meant i had the chance to finish medea. i'm not sure what to think yet. i mean, what's the point here? a warning againt the evils of divorce? to demonstrate the possible depths of human misery? a good blood'n'guts show? i need to look up exactly how medea was related to phaedra... they're both direct descendants of the sun, aren't they? perhaps it's a genetic disorder.

Saturday, February 01, 2003

14:02 - it's starting to sink in now.

my mother called as i was walking to work; she nearly immediately asked if i was sad over the space shuttle thing.

"the what?!?" she told me, my jaw dropped, then i bounced back and continued prattling about my daily concerns.

somehow it didn't quite sink in until i got here, started seeing pictures, started reading my e-mail box full of horrified friends' comments.

i was five years old when the challenger crashed. first teacher in space, the kindergarten teachers were enthusiastic; they wheeled in a tv so we could all watch the launch. i remember not understanding at first -- it looked like fireworks. did they really just wheel the tv back out, wordlessly, like my memory says they did?

i heard a mention of the anticipated landing this morning on npr last night when i wandered into angie's room to talk for a moment. it flitted through my mind briefly -- they're still sending humans into space, good, i hadn't thought about it in a long time.

seven lives. at least sixteen died tragically in afghanistan yesterday, and who knows how many car crashes happened in this state alone. but those seven... they were under the shield of one of the world's most advanced technological systems, living out the dreams of who-knows-how-many people... every death should be able to shatter equally, but most don't strike at our best illusions.

those defying death by going outside the atmosphere aren't supposed to die.

so yes, mom, i'm sad.

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