I need a hobby

Today I brought my book count up to 35. This week I've checked out probably 10 new books. Why? Because I like to torture myself, that's why.

Even though yesterday I had my first real win of the week (accomplishing everything I set out to do AND emailing in a big 10-page chunk to my advisor), today I woke up feeling nothing but dread, resentment, and a debilitating amount of stress.

I am starting to really loathe this project, which is only natural, I suppose. I hate it for not being done, for not even cooperating with me while I'm trying to get it done. I hate it for eating up all my time and peace of mind. Ben and I were talking about our projects over lunch yesterday, and I think I finally realized just how much of a toll the constant stress of it is taking on me. Even before I started hard-core work on it this week, it was always looming. Even after I get this draft turned in next week, it will continue to loom until my final draft is due at the end of April, and then it will continue to loom until my defense.

Even though I have about only 10 more pages left until I hit the minimum requirement, I know that 10 more pages will not say everything I want to say. Right now I'm probably looking at 40-45 total pages instead of 35.

I have a week until this draft is due, and yet I have no idea what this draft is supposed to be like. I wish the English department had more detailed guidelines. I mean, a "draft" could mean the main ideas, with quotes missing, specific research missing, bibliography and footnotes and citations missing. Or it could mean a near-perfect draft, with only revising and editing left to do. Obviously I am more on the patchy side than the complete side right now.

I had wanted to be 85% done with this going into next week, but now that is looking unrealistic. Next week I will most likely be in the library 24/7 again... but at least the library will be open.


[UPDATE]
I acquired a new place to work and a Pepsi. Things are looking up.
Sort of.


[UPDATE 2]
Make that 39 books.

When I condense it all down like this, it sounds pretty nutso.

I've been thinking about how to sum up the "big" ideas of my project, and I think it would be a good exercise for me to try to explain them all. Here is what I think some of them are:

"Magical realism" is not a term we should be applying to One Hundred Years of Solitude, since that's not how García Márquez wrote it (among other reasons, such as, it's a colonizer's term imposed on the colonized culture, but that's a separate "big" idea). The narrator of the novel is disembodied, and his/her/its opinions are almost impossible to discern. The typical reader has a hard time distinguishing between what the narrator presents as reality, because it combines what we normally see as "real" and what we see as "magical". The narrator presents both elements in the same way, and even sometimes hints that the real elements are fantastical. Ultimately it's useless to try and distinguish between the real and the magical, because the narrator is not operating under the same constraints as the typical modern novel narrator. Instead, he/she/it is more like an oral storyteller.

For the oral storyteller, anything is possible, things are not classified as unreal and real; therefore, the expectations that the reader has one way or the other are wrong, because one should not be expecting anything — or, if we want to get a little more cosmic, one should be expecting everything. What we see as García Márquez’s incoherence, the changes from real and unreal, the blending of unreal and real, is actually one coherent thing.

The narrator takes on a role as the collective memory of Macondo's culture. Collective memory is multiplicitous, with many different (seemingly-at-odds) things combining to make one cohesive whole. Throughout the novel we get these many perspectives, but it is only at the end of the novel that we understand the idea of cohesive collective memory through the reading of Melquíades's prophetic parchments. (Interestingly, once we reach this point, the town disappears, the last Buendía dies, and the novel ends. Don't really know what that's all about yet.)

Basically, García Márquez sets up expectations for the reader; for example, for the first 50 pages we expect that the narrator will be removed from the characters, that the novel will unfold episodically, that Macondo is a paradise, that knowledge is dangerous and superstition is silly, etc. Eventually all of these expectations are shattered and the opposite expectations are set up. But at the end we find that all of these opposing expectations were not opposing each other at all, that they are two sides of the same coin, they were all part of the same expectation-less Macondo world, where nothing and everything happens.

Phew.

I also have some fragments of crazy "big" ideas that probably won't find their way into my paper because they don't really fit (such as, the many allusions to past events and future events are actually not allusions to past and future events, but rather these events are constantly taking place, are constantly "present" — I get this idea from the end of the novel, when the last Buendía is translating Melquíades's prophecies: "Melquíades had not put events in the order of man's conventional time, but had concentrated a century of daily episodes in such a way that they coexisted in one instant.").

But that's roughly it.

Now back to work for another hour before the library closes, then home to work some more, then ??? for dinner, then probably some more work.

Not much else to do...

... might as well practice my domestic skills.
I made tomato soup, but to sass it up a little I added macaronis, sauteed onions and garlic, cayenne pepper (sliiiightly too much), and of course cheese.

AND FOR DESSERT. I had no idea how to go about frying apples, but it turned out fantastic.

Plus cinnamon, raisins, and some very left-over, very freezer-burned ice cream.

Last night we went to Claudine's and spent time in the hot tub (which was more like a luke-warm tub) and the sauna. This morning we all met up at the Feve for brunch. I had SMORES PANCAKES, which were out of this world. Tomorrow it's up before noon to get to the library and get some serious work done. There is talk of going to the indoor(ish?) water park nearby later in the week, but I'm allowing myself to go only if I get at least 20 pages done beforehand.

Okay then, off for a quick drink at the Feve and then early to bed!

Green = St Patty's Day AND spring

Spring has finally sprung in Oberlin, and I can say that with total conviction because I got my first mosquito bite of the season last night. I love being outside at night, and the mosquitoes love me being outside at night too.

Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day, around 60 and sunny, very warm in the sun, fairly warm in the shade. All the remaining snow/ice deposits have melted, and it turns out that one of our extra garbage cans saved all that melt, and Kate dumped it out to make a small pond in our side yard. Maybe that's where the mosquitoes came from.

The lovely weather combined with National Drunk Day made for very small amounts of work, but large amounts of fun. After the normal day was over (classes, work, meetings, work), Kate and I spent a few minutes screaming and yelling over the giant bug that had set up shop on my window pane, and then sat on our porch for a while:
I used the last of the stripey fabric to cover the grossness of our couch, so the front of our house is quite matchy-matchy now.

After livin the good life on our porch, we went to the boys' house for a BBQ, and then I played like eight million games of Rummikub and never won once. It is an excellent game though. Then Abby found me and we watched High School Musical at my house, and then it was sleepy time. Lovely day!

Today is a warmer day than yesterday, but it is cloudy and supposedly will rain later. Tonight I have a "webinar" to attend — yes, that is what they call seminars online. I really do not like it. Other than that, I will be celebrating springtime by working on my honors project in my carrel! Yay! My advisor told me today that what I have so far is "swell", so I am counting that as an automatic win for today. I've started a new system (which I blatantly plagiarized from Matt) with which I keep track of my win/loss record. A day is a "win" if I get a lot of work done and/or feel awesome all day long (the awesome/not awesome feeling often being tied directly to how much work I do). I "lose" when I have a bad day and/or don't do what I set out to accomplish. Also there are "draws" for when I can't decide. So far my record is 4-1-2, which isn't too bad.

My carrel is also the new springtime hangout of a group of ladybugs. They mostly stay on/near the window, so it hasn't bothered me too much. Also I am interpreting them as a sign from GGM that he approves of my project, like the yellow butterflies that are always hanging around Mauricio Babilonia in the book. I am clearly only getting more insane as this project continues...

SENIOR BALL

Last night was the "Lucky Senior Ball". Lucky = green = St Patty's day AND environmental friendliness. Clever, no?

"Creative dress" somehow got interpreted this way. I don't know why Ben and Henry were matching.

A few glasses of wine and many chocolate coins into the evening...

This is maybe the only picture of Andrew and me that doesn't look goofy — only sleepy.

Yeah, this is more like the pictures I'm used to.

PARTY FOUL.

Anyway, it was a lovely evening of togetherness, greenery, and chicken, and we all donated 10 bucks to the senior gift. Doing good while having a good time.

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Today was one of those really weird Ohio spring days. In the sun, without the wind blowing, I felt sweaty in my spring coat. Without the sun, with the wind ripping unimpeded over the plains, I needed earmuffs and mittens. It. Was. Odd.

I had a weirdo epiphany today while working on my honors, and it is this: all classic and beloved children's books are magical realist texts. THINK ABOUT IT. The Hungry Caterpillar? If You Give a Mouse a Cookie? The Giving Tree? Maybe it's because they're all about talking animals/plants... Wait, no. Harold and the Purple Crayon — TOTALLY magical realism. This is blowing my mind.

I joined Twitter yesterday for no reason, and so did Kate and Abby. Just another stupid thing I have to keep updated.

Tonight is splitchers again, but I might not be able to go (for the second week in a row!) due to my workload. Stupid honors project keeping me from getting my drink on!?!

Speaking of getting one's drink on, Kate found this somehow last night:

It is, unfortunately, not a parody.

Marissa, Monica, and Chrissy were here last weekend, and on Sunday we went to Glengarry Glen Ross at Little Theater. It was AMAZING, but I have come to expect amazing from the senior/junior contingent of theater majors at Oberlin. Seriously, these guys will be famous someday.

Okay, back to work.

Arts and sciences

Today was our final day of Spanish Olympics, and it went great. I even got two new pieces of artwork that I have hung in my carrel:
One is an original color-by-numbers with not all the colors colored in yet. It has a key on the side, so I guess I'm meant to finish it myself. Also, I'm not really sure what a balloon is doing in a garden scene with flowers and butterflies, but who am I to judge. The other is a snail, which I think is quite realistic, except for the whole rainbow color scheme. The weird thing in the middle is something Abby drew me to hang in my study, but now it is here instead. It's a victory symbol that the Spaniards used to draw on the walls of the Salamanca university in bull's blood when they won... stuff. I suppose Abby meant for this to inspire me to greatness, but when I look at it, I mostly just think of the blood thing.

Speaking of blood, today was one of Ohio's cruel cruel jokes on unsuspecting freshmen: it was about 55 degrees. Bum bum BUUUUUM!!! I, of course, know that this weather will last about 19 seconds, but I heard someone else actually say the "S" word out loud! They obviously don't realize that you can't say that winter has ended until AT LEAST the third week of April.

I found this thing! You can make stuff with it! Here is what I made:

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/532697/bloggy_blog

It is a picture that represents the top 100 words that I have typed in this blog, with more frequent words in larger type, etc. Isn't that cool?! All I had to do was type in the address of my blog and it did everything for me. TECHNOLOGY.

Just like about 68% of Oberlin's student body, I am now sick with a cold of some kind. I say "of some kind" because I have never before had a cold that caused me to sneeze approximately 17 times per class. It can't be (only) allergies, because I also have the slight fever and general malaise that usually accompanies all my illnesses, and added to the apocalyptic sneezing fits (which is how I am now referring to them) is a vague feeling that my brain is pulsing against the inside of my skull. Not like a headache beating in time with my heartbeat, but the slow pulse of impending doom. But otherwise I'm great?

Today I had a meeting with my advisor, and I actually feel much better about my project. AND, bonus: I am excited to do some work on it. So I'm going to go do that now.