Woot Woot.

Husband and I have managed to buy a house. We are in shock and are not entirely sure how this came about, but we are very excited. I fantasize about which room I'm going to paint green and have decided to have a deep brown/rusty orange/light blue office. Most exciting, though, is the massive amount of counter space. Now when I tell Husband to go chop up something, hopefully he won't try to do it in the exact same spot that I'm in, although I suspect I'll still have to tell him to go chop it elsewhere.

Puppy will have a yard. He can run about and dig holes and kill small animals in it. Well, I won't let him kill small animals, and Husband will most likely not let him dig the animals up, but he can daydream about it. We have a group of trees in our backyard. I am told they are elms by our realtor who was very excited that the builer left any trees at all. Husband doesn't like the trees, though. He says "they're dead." But they're not. They just aren't oaks (which also look "dead" right now). Our elms look like very very very tall sticks poking up out of the ground, and they creak a lot when the wind blows. I don't know if this is normal behaviour for an elm, but this is what we have. I have been trying to imagine a good place for an herb garden, and I've also been thinking about planting vegetables in the front yard. My reason: I don't do anything with my hands unless I can eat it when I'm done, and everyone loves a landscaped yard (especially in Suburbia). Why not combine the two?

I am a little bit afraid of having Lawn Nazis for neighbors, but Husband and I have both agreed that should this happen, we will put plastic pink flamingos in our front yard and explain that we are from Florida. Some people will hang up their national flag when living in exile, but we put up tacky lawn ornaments. This, of course, just makes us secretly wish that we will have Lawn Nazis living next door.

Most exciting, though, is that some friends may live with us for a bit if all works out. I've missed them and haven't seen them in a year now, so this should give us lots and lots of time to catch up.

Husband and I both decided that Kendo was straining our brains too much and quit going to class. All the Zen-mind-discipline-shouting was too much for us, so instead we sit at home Thursday nights and watch Lost.

This past week I had a couple of prospective graduate students stay with me. I would drop them off at the department, the department would spend the day pumping food into them, and then I'd take them home at night and tell them that it was ok to sleep. All this made me think again about academia and its absurdities. The university is not a real place, I think. It's full of strange and wonderful things. Sometimes I think to myself "Gee, what a wonderful universe I'm in," and other times, "Gee, what a wonderful universe I'm trapped in." I supposed the latest blow was when we met with some of our professors over some problems, one of which is the lack of a graduate-level intro. course to linguistics. Apparently only a couple of professors and all of the students think we need one, but not anyone who has the power to arrange such a class (one explanation was "It wasn't a problem for me."). I personally do not understand why the basics are covered in our literature classes but not in our linguistic classes, even though we are to be competent in both areas. My second problem with academia is that it seems to be totally removed from the rest of the universe AND it's very, very, very competitive. I do not mind being competitive for something that I think will make a difference for a great many people in the world, but why must I be stressed out over something that, so far, seems to be solely for my pleasure and to make my department eventually look good in the eyes of the rest of academia? Sometimes I tell myself to go push paper for a while and see how I like that, but my 2nd year in graduate school will involve teaching. After seeing professors who are not interested in teaching the basics, I'm starting to become much more interested in pedagogy.

Of course, all this removal from the world makes me less and less interested in literature studies and I've completely lost all interest in cultural studies (my respect is waning too). Cultural theories are even more bizarre than philosophy...with some exceptions. The most terrifying part of all this is that I'm beginning to be interested in economics. I find myself very very excited about the international cattle trade of the early modern period (probably because I find the present-day meat trade baffling and scary). Who knows what monstrous things this could lead to...like finance.

But now it is spring break! One week without seeing anyone in the department, neither the Sane nor the Others. This will give me time to...study. And learn the Arabic alphabet, and figure out wtf those three h's are (my teacher has a little bit of a hard time understanding why we can't hear the differences...sometimes she giggles, and so do we). And work on my Romanian (because I think it's time for me to learn a Romance language). I can also take time-out for all those internet procrastination activities, like blogs.

Also, there is a ridiculous daytime show that comes on TV that makes me giggle. It's about people who have haunted houses and what not. It's very exciting, and not at all educational. There is usually someone who has just fulfilled a life dream of buying a house or supporting themselves in some way. They move in. The walls are usually painted a dark color and the lighting is always dim. Also, they all seem to have a fireplace with a mirror over it. Strange things occur. Then the neighbor tells them that the previous owners have opened up a portal to hell inside their fireplace, or some other inconvenient place. They try to sell the house, but houses complete with portals to hell don't fetch very good prices. Oftentimes they call in some expert who walks through the house burning sage leaves and chanting, which doesn't work. I want to see someone who has a house haunted by the ghosts of Pythagoreans so that the "expert" can walk through the house scattering beans everywhere (the difference being that it would actually work). The last episode I saw was about a woman who got a new male roommate who then struck up a friendship with a demonic force that would throw plates at her. I will never again complain about roommates being messy, or smelly, or idiotic, or asking me for beer money because daddy hasn't deposited any money in their account recently.

So yes, that is my life up to-date. We move this weekend. Yay. Introvert cheer!