Well, any illusion that I wouldn’t feel swept up in the back to school frenzy has been firmly displaced after a long weekend of schoolwork. I spent pretty much every free moment this past weekend finishing an “incomplete” – a final project that I never turned in. In May of 2000, in somewhat of a freakish way that still strikes me as surreal, both of my grandmothers passed away on the same day (a long story that I may, or may not, tell another time). In the week of wakes and funerals that followed, my final project for a Folklore class fell by the wayside. In the way of those things, other classes, comps, and life events superceded the assignment, so I shame-facedly will be turning it in (finally complete!) this week.
I also finally corresponded with the Level Up! conference organizers, discovering that all previous e-mails from them had somehow evaporated into the internether (yes, I think I just made that word up. So, definition: a combination of the words “internet” and “ether”, internether is the black hole that absorbs all lost data, never to be found again). So, the rest of the weekend was spent trying to organize possible funding for the trip, the expense of which is far too great for my meager flow.
Did have a few fun moments in my long, mostly work related four day weekend:
Brother-in-law’s birthday party, space-themed (he works at NASA). Costumed. L and I went as “Mars” and “Earth” – “we’re very close right now.” Space Trivia. Space Bingo.
A hot walk through old Greenbelt, which put on a wicked Labor Day festival. Greenbelt is (still) a co-op community planned and built during the New Deal era by Roosevelt’s Resettlement Administration. So they put on quite a dig. Ferris wheel. Carnies. Hit the balloons, 3 darts for a dolla! Rides. Spinning cars of The Tornado. Labor Bingo (listened; didn’t play).
Celebration for Dr. Claycomb. He borrowed our paper shredder and made a bouquet of his draft. Tossed it off the balcony to a frenzied batch of dissertators (myself included). Lost out to a guy with greater reach and a three hundred page manuscript.
Using a $20 gadget, listened to the baby’s heartbeat. Thump, thump.
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