the hypothetical wren

I am back from vacation, or, rather, “vacation,” because I got so little rest while I was gone. I finished, the loosest sense of the word, my long paper, and turned it in this morning. It ended up being a far different paper than I thought it would be, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. It’s strange, when you’re writing a paper like that, you think that you have agency, that you are in control of how things turn out. But then you get into the writing, and it’s like the paper is in charge, and it’s saying to you, no, we’re going to go over here in this direction, regardless of where you want to go. That’s the kind of thing I turned in.

I got the results for my Spanish exam this morning. The comments were pretty bad, saying that although it seemed sort of clear that I understood written Spanish, I didn’t seem able to translate this into written English, so my translation made little sense. Still, the reasoning went, I finished the thing and seemed to know what was going on, so I passed, just barely. Which is all I care about. Most of the other people I know who took the same exam got the same sort of comments, so maybe that’s just standard. But that’s just one obstacle out of the way, which is great. I think they pass people just so they don’t have to read their translations ever again.

I now have to write a fifteen-page paper, which is due tomorrow at 11. I know, realistically, that I can get the thing done, but my self-confidence is a little shaken due to the other paper. The biggest part will be deciding how to start the thing, and then I have to get through class this afternoon, and then actually write it. But all I really want to do is take a nap, watch TV, or listen to my new CDs.

39 out of 30 pages written on one paper. It wasn’t supposed to be so…bloated. Still have one or two more pages to do.

0 out of 15-20, still on the other.

Heading back tomorrow. Hope nothing bad happened to the apartment. If it did, it wasn’t bad enough to make the TV news.

Only two more weeks of school to go, two fairly frightening weeks, it looks like. I know there’s going to be an end at some point, but it’s hard to see it right now.

19 out of 30 pages written for one paper; rest to be done tomorrow.

0 out of 15-20 pages written for the other paper; will be done Sunday or Monday (it’s due Tuesday)

Thanksgiving dinner took four hours to cook, ten minutes to eat. We eat really fast in my family.

I have seen every thrift store in Roswell. Some good finds, though: a pair of jeans, a long plaid wool skirt, three books (all volumes of the Library of America’s American Poets Project), and two pieces of art — one an old photo of some stern-looking man, the other a 1960s portrait of some woman wearing too much lipstick — that I would scan or photograph if I had the apparati to do either.

So much television to watch. Endless amounts of TV.

I feel wiped out, and have had a hard time not napping constantly.

The vast amount of nothing between Roswell and Clines Corners becomes even more painfully obvious once that nothingness becomes covered with snow.

Driving here this afternoon involved all of the major weather categories: snow (outside of ABQ), hail (Vaughn) rain (the rest of the time) and sun (off in the distance, unreachable). There may have even been some snain or sleet in there, too, when I wasn’t fully paying attention.

Now I have a box of chocolate-covered caramel cherries in front of me, a big box of books to sort out, and the Food Network on. If it weren’t for the unsettling knowledge that I have a lot of work to do, I would be having a pretty good time.

Posts will either be scarce or absurdly frequent here for the next week. I have 50 pages of supposedly well-written, well-researched, and well-argued work due next Monday, so it’s time to buckle down and do it. I’m heading to Roswell tomorrow for Thanksgiving week, where I will try to balance familial and academic obligations, as well as trying to sleep in. I don’t think I can overstate how eager I am for this semester to end, so I can do something other than worry for a while. Also, there will be leisure reading.

I had to print off a paper this morning, and my office printer wasn’t working, so I walked over to one of the campus computer labs to do the job there. They have nice duplex printers, which print on both sides of the paper, helpfully saving trees and cleverly disguising how long your paper actually is (important when a four- to five-page paper balloons to nine or so pages). I couldn’t get in the door because the line to use a computer was so long, yet, it was moving fast, so I figured that it wouldn’t take too long to get in and out. As I got closer to the door, I noticed that inside, there were vacant seats in front of unused computers, making me wonder what, exactly, I and the others were waiting for. The unused computers were all Macs, odd since the computer lab has really nice ones, and if you’re just printing off a paper in Word, one platform is really as good as another. I was dithering whether or not to stay in line or just sit down at one of the lonely computers, since no one at the head of the line seemed compelled to use any of them, when someone else came up, someone really loud, willing to ask the questions out loud that I am not, and, half-asking, half-yelling, said, “YOU PEOPLE ARE ALL IN LINE FOR THE WINDOWS THINGIES, RIGHT?”

They were. I sat down. I printed out my paper before most of the people even got to sit down. Really, people, little USB drives work as well in one as in the other.

I had a song in my head all day, a good yet creepy sort of song. It’s “Some Velvet Morning” by Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra. The main lyric, the one that I always remember about the song, is:

Some velvet morning when I’m straight
I’m gonna open up your gate

Now, there could be some sort of debate here as to what, precisely, “gate” means here: euphemism or actual yard implement? I think it’s pretty clear here what’s going on, though, but the way Lee sings these lines is so matter-of-fact to be notable. He sounds like he’s announcing that he’s coming over to mow the lawn or telling you that there’s something stuck to your shoe, instead of coming over to manhandle your “gate.”

Anyway, I found this song on the internet, where, I don’t remember. I also have some other Lee Hazelwood songs, which all have odd architectural metaphors in them as well: lots of houses and sidewalks, and more than one gate. I can’t find a free .mp3 of the song anywhere, but if you want to hear the song sung by robots, which just adds to the bizarre atmosphere of the song, it’s available from 365 Days (scroll down to June 18, click on the mp3 graphic in the upper right hand corner of the box).

The guy sitting next to me has described three non-food-related items so far in one single conversation as “deeeeeelish.” There’s help for that out there, you know.