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Minor Characters
Saturday, March 19th, 2011 08:29 pmOwen is supposed to call me later so that I can figure out when I'm visiting him and buy my plane ticket. It's either going to be April or June because we have a wedding to go to in May, so he'll be coming back to the 'burgh. I'm pulling for April, just because I'm impatient.
Today, I frolicked at The Waterfront with Chrissy and my brother. We had lunch at PF Changs, which was awesome...but pricier than I thought it would be. I also didn't realize that PF Changs is a moderately classy establishment. I was totally rocking yoga pants and a Homecoming 2007 t-shirt with a half-naked chick bent over a beer keg on it. No wonder the hostess sat us in the back. Heh.
I was going to get a GRE test prep book at Barnes & Noble because I need to start getting on my PhD application, and before I do that, I have to take the GREs, and my math skills are so not okay. I skimmed a few books and the math was just...humbling, humbling in a bad way. I haven't taken a math class in seven years. Yeah. I can barely get through my multiplication tables.
I ended up not getting a book at B&N because the cheapest one was $20 and I didn't really like it. I feel bad running to Amazon for everything, but it's cheaper and I'm poor. I considered just getting a math workbook because when I skimmed the language and writing sections, I did alright, but I told myself not to get cocky, and went for the full overview. I only spent $8 on the GRE book, but I love free shipping, so ultimately ended up spending $26, totally defeating the purpose of rejecting Barnes & Noble's offerings, right?
Yeah, kinda, except that I got three books for that price, two of which are awesome. Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson and I Am No One You Know by Joyce Carol Oates. Minor Characters is a memoir about being a woman among the great figures of Beat literature in the 50s. I love the Beats and I'm fascinated by the lives of the women who walked among them, who largely ended up on the fringes of the movement. I mean, the bulk of womens Beat writing, and certainly the most well-known stuff, is memoir about the men. I'm both intrigued and saddened by this fact. I even wrote a poem about it (a huge feat since I pretty much refuse to write poetry ever) that actually won the 2009 departmental writing contest. The professor who announced the selection and introduced me at the awards dinner actually cried when she read it and I was like *BLUSH BLUSH CRAWL UNDER THE TABLE BLUSH*. I'd really like to study the lady Beats more, possibly do something about them for my dissertation (assuming I get into a PhD program ever) because I really feel like they get overlooked by...everyone. The other Beats, the feminists, anyone who you'd think would give a crap. I was completely shocked when I discovered that female Beat writers even existed.
/tangent
So uh, yeah, that was my Saturday. Now I'm going to try and finish an installment for the For Keeps 'verse. I started it last month, got stuck, came back to it on Friday and it completely ran away in an awesome way...and then company came over, and we went to the Googlie, then we frolicked today, and it was a blast and it was nice to get away for a little bit and see Chrissy and eat coconut curry tofu, but I've been sitting here for two hours trying to get back that same momentum that I had yesterday and I got nada. I don't want to sit on this story for another month, dammit!
Today, I frolicked at The Waterfront with Chrissy and my brother. We had lunch at PF Changs, which was awesome...but pricier than I thought it would be. I also didn't realize that PF Changs is a moderately classy establishment. I was totally rocking yoga pants and a Homecoming 2007 t-shirt with a half-naked chick bent over a beer keg on it. No wonder the hostess sat us in the back. Heh.
I was going to get a GRE test prep book at Barnes & Noble because I need to start getting on my PhD application, and before I do that, I have to take the GREs, and my math skills are so not okay. I skimmed a few books and the math was just...humbling, humbling in a bad way. I haven't taken a math class in seven years. Yeah. I can barely get through my multiplication tables.
I ended up not getting a book at B&N because the cheapest one was $20 and I didn't really like it. I feel bad running to Amazon for everything, but it's cheaper and I'm poor. I considered just getting a math workbook because when I skimmed the language and writing sections, I did alright, but I told myself not to get cocky, and went for the full overview. I only spent $8 on the GRE book, but I love free shipping, so ultimately ended up spending $26, totally defeating the purpose of rejecting Barnes & Noble's offerings, right?
Yeah, kinda, except that I got three books for that price, two of which are awesome. Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson and I Am No One You Know by Joyce Carol Oates. Minor Characters is a memoir about being a woman among the great figures of Beat literature in the 50s. I love the Beats and I'm fascinated by the lives of the women who walked among them, who largely ended up on the fringes of the movement. I mean, the bulk of womens Beat writing, and certainly the most well-known stuff, is memoir about the men. I'm both intrigued and saddened by this fact. I even wrote a poem about it (a huge feat since I pretty much refuse to write poetry ever) that actually won the 2009 departmental writing contest. The professor who announced the selection and introduced me at the awards dinner actually cried when she read it and I was like *BLUSH BLUSH CRAWL UNDER THE TABLE BLUSH*. I'd really like to study the lady Beats more, possibly do something about them for my dissertation (assuming I get into a PhD program ever) because I really feel like they get overlooked by...everyone. The other Beats, the feminists, anyone who you'd think would give a crap. I was completely shocked when I discovered that female Beat writers even existed.
/tangent
So uh, yeah, that was my Saturday. Now I'm going to try and finish an installment for the For Keeps 'verse. I started it last month, got stuck, came back to it on Friday and it completely ran away in an awesome way...and then company came over, and we went to the Googlie, then we frolicked today, and it was a blast and it was nice to get away for a little bit and see Chrissy and eat coconut curry tofu, but I've been sitting here for two hours trying to get back that same momentum that I had yesterday and I got nada. I don't want to sit on this story for another month, dammit!
