Monday, April 27, 2009

Goings on about town

To continue with the finding of correlations from last post, the lack of recent posts has been directly correlated to the weather. Apparently spring has been dropped from the traditional progression of seasons because the town of Geneseo went directly from winter to summer. Today hit 89 degrees and I am very confused. The weather makes for excellent porch lounging and evening strolls about town, but the timing is less than conducive for getting work done, especially since it isn't late enough in the season for the library to turn on the air conditioner. Instead, I walk around with my backpack as a literal weight upon my shoulders and perpetually feel the need to shower.

Thursday, I helped judge a peace poetry contest for children in grades K-8. My team of three was delegated to the grades 6-8 category and it was completely entertaining. Looking at the submissions brought back the old humiliation of using riduculous fonts and rainbow-blended WordArt for sixth-grade assignments in Mrs. Camillery's class. Oh, the awkwardness of middle school. Anyways, my favorite poem of the bunch was what I believed to be accidental genius--this one kid's submission was a single line, typed in Courier New at the very top of a ripped piece of paper with his name scrawled in pencil on the back:

peace to me, is like falling asleep fading into a dream, from counting all those sheep

Wonderful, right? I scrawled it down on a corner of the Lamron so I wouldn't forget. As for the rest of the submissions . . . peace was compared to a banana, soccer, and a huge ice cream sundae (among other things). Hilarious. I refuse to acknowledge that I was ever that age.

There are officially sixteen days left in the semester. There are many, many pages to be written between now and then that I am presently ignoring to the best of my ability. Leaving for the summer will be strange, but I'm already looking forward to coming back in the fall and moving into the idyllic apartment . . . after an Irish adventure, of course. I don't know if it's the rapid changing of seasons, but things are moving really fast all of a sudden. It's an exhilarating thing, assuming I survive it all. Maybe I'll start counting sheep or something.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Sleep/productivity correlation: found

I tracked the moon's progress in the sky all night instead of sleeping; I kept having really bizarre dreams and couldn't stop thinking about things. Surprisingly, it meant I got a lot of stuff done today because I was out and about before eight . . . apparently the key to productivity is a terrible night's rest. Who knew?

I am running on so much coffee right now. I can't remember the last time I felt a caffeine buzz, but I do now. That makes me sound like an addict. Hm.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Sometimes I forget deadlines and spam the department

Tonight during English Club we finalized the accepted content for the year's literary magazine. I didn't really expect that the one piece I submitted two minutes before the deadline would get in, but lo and behold! It did. During discussion for my piece (submissions are blind, so nobody knew who the writers were), a friend said it was a social commentary or something like that and it struck me as funny . . . it's really just a laundry list of things that give me the same feeling of discomforting embarrassment as a person I used to know. The discrepancy between a reader's perspective and a writer's intent (or lack thereof) continues to amuse me.

Note to self: be more organized with submission deadlines come next February.

In other English Club news, I made flyers for the tee shirt fundraiser to hang around Welles tomorrow. The design:

simile is like awesome

It says 'Geneseo English' underneath that, and the money goes towards producing the magazine. Anyways, after making the flyers I typed up an email to send to the majors and minors in the department about the sale . . . unfortunately, I forgot that I was logged into my personal email account instead of English Club's, so I ended up sending two identical emails to the listserv--one from my account, and one from the club. My bad.

Monday, April 6, 2009

What exactly do April flurries bring?

Prior worries about the state of the Jesus sandals have been rendered unnecessary for the moment because IT IS SNOWING. Yes, it is indeed the 6th of April. Yes, it was almost sixty degrees a day ago. Yes, the floor is still cluttered with flip flops I've been wearing for the past two weeks.

Anyways, I guess the daisies on my desk will have to serve as an ironic symbol in the midst of this freaky and unwelcome weather rather than reflecting the appropriate season. In the meantime, both myself and the kites I bought the other day will have to wait patiently for a warm breeze.