Blah. I do have several things to post about, but I am sick and thus not really in the mood to think.

So I’ll just talk about the things which don’t require thinking. I’ve seen two movies in the theatre recently, _Kissing Jessica Stein_ and _The Rookie_. I thought they were both okay. I am, however, an admittedly easy audience. Now, some people disliked KJS because it was obvious how it was going to end — she didn’t get the girl — but given the way her character developed, I think to have done anything else would have been completely OOC. And even though there were hints of something else happening at the end, it didn’t actually /happen/. So, it wasn’t bad.

The Rookie was also good. I was a little surprised, because the story had a lot of potential to be incredibly hokey and overbearing in its ‘wow, isn’t this a miracle’-ness. But they actually took the screen time to develop some of the minor characters, to show why this was not an easy thing to do. I was pleased with the way it turned out. Plus, I got to see it for free because E got promo tickets. You can’t beat the price.

Tomorrow we’re supposed to go visit mom for pretendEaster dinner (she works Sunday, and my brothers are going to a basketball game), but I feel lousy at the moment, so will maybe stay home. Bleah.

Okay, I had saved this in here last weekend, because it was just so bizarre. I’ll post it, because such things are public. I will not comment on it (beyond the bizarre.) You can draw your own conclusions:

You see a tall boy with slick fair hair and nice blue eyes. He seems to be
very handsome and he looks the age of 11 or so but he seems a bit tall for
his age. He has a small scar on his cheek it seems very awful and looks as
it hurt bad. He is wearing a long plain robe and grey pants with a tie with
a Hogwarts badge on it. He looks really innocent like and he has a strange
mark with three triangles on his forehead one triangle at the top and the
other two below it making another triangle but leaving a triangle shaped bit
of his forehead normal.

Random Word HELL sneaks out a scaly hand and grabs homosexual repression!
A sudden roar sounds from the depths of Random Word HELL as it expels the entire Jedi Council!

Hurrah. _The Ordinary Princess_ (by M.M. Kaye) was finally reissued, after many delays (it was supposed to come out in January). It arrived today and I read it. I don’t think I’d read it since I was 10 years old and I found it at the library, but it was a book and a plot which had stuck with me over the years. I never forgot it. So I figured I better purchase it when I found out it wasn’t OOP anymore.

I’ve been seeing ads on and off for this new reality show called “The Bachelor” which is going to be on ABC of all places. Here is the premise: There is a guy who isn’t married, but is such a lazyass loser that he apparently can’t get any dates of his own and must depend on his pimp-daddy ABC to parade women in front of him. Some desperately-seeking-publicity women with no self-respect sign up and compete among themselves to see who can demean themselves the most and ultimately be granted the honor of getting a proposal from this jerk.

Family Values indeed. Disney should be ashamed of itself.

I think this will be a long, rambling post, but I may be wrong.

I’ve been faced with a potentially life-altering decision since last Wednesday. Though I’m pretty well decided at this point, there’s still a little nagging voice that makes me wonder if it’s really the best move.

First, some history:

When I was younger, I wanted to be an astrophysicist. To be an astrophysicist, one needs to go to a good college and a decent graduate school. I started to actively prepare for this in about.. oh, 8th grade. That year, I applied to Philips Exeter for High School. For those who don’t know, Philips is a swanky, expensive prep school. It was also one town over from me, and I figured that going there would pretty well guarantee me my pick of college. There was no way my parents could afford tuition — which, thirteen years ago, was hovering just under 12k — but the school did sometimes give out full scholarships to locals who couldn’t otherwise afford to go.

They, of course, didn’t offer that to me. In retrospect, I cannot say their decision was correct (I would have been a credit to that school.), but it was understandable. We (the three students who applied that year) knew it was much easier to get in with a full ride if you tried it going in as a sophomore instead of a freshman; there was enough of a drop in class size after the first year that they needed to fill in some spots. But who wants to switch High Schools after freshman year?

So I went to the public school which was practically in my parents’ back yard. Took honors everything. Joined the math team. Did summer programs every year. Joined (and then ran) a bunch of other clubs and extracurriculars. All of this, of course, to make me look good to colleges. Oh, most of it was because I enjoyed it too — math team was a lot of fun — but quite a few things I did just to be ‘well rounded’. Some people try to pile on the activities their senior year to make themselves look attractive, but the schools can see past that. You have to be more cynical and cunning than they are. The summer programs were a chance to not only look well rounded, but to look like an aspiring scientist. The summer between sophomore and junior year I did Project SMART (Science and Mathematics Advancement through Research Training), and then the next summer I took Advanced Physics through the St. Paul’s Advanced Studies program. I took two years of physics in high school in addition to all of that.

It didn’t bother me — much — that I didn’t find it very exciting. I just figured that you’d get to the exciting part after you learned the basics. (Which is true.) It was interesting at least. And it sounded so cool. It still does. Astrophysics has to be one of the coolest words in the English language.

I based my college choices on whether or not the school had an Astronomy program. And because I couldn’t make up my mind, and was still a little traumatized by the Exeter rejection four years before, I applied to 8 schools.

That I got in to all 8 was not entirely unexpected, but let me tell you, accpetance letters do wonders for your self-esteem. The first was from Williams College at the end of February, and caught me completely off guard: most schools don’t send out letters until the end of March or early April, and I hadn’t applied early decision anywhere. The skinny little envelope I got from them I took to be an ad, and thus did not open it until getting back into the car after a dentist appointment. It was a moment. (For the record, I also got in to Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Mt Holyoke, UPenn, UNH and MIT.)

Went to Wellesley. Took full advantage of the broad curriculum of a liberal arts college by taking a grand total of 1 English class, 1 Anthropology class and 1 Education class. I finished the physics major my junior year, and was about 2 classes away from finishing the Astronomy major as well when I brought myself up short. I had done Astro research for 2 summers running, had worked for the Astro department doing observing off and on for a year, had even gone to Arizona with a prof to use one of the big telescopes out there. And the only conclusion I could reach was: it was boring. So I wasn’t going to be an astrophysicist; I couldn’t face the thought of taking it in graduate school, much less doing it for the rest of my life.

I had taken 2 Computer Science courses my junior year, and I discovered that I could manage to squish the entire rest of the major into my senior year. And what’s more, based on those two courses (and my phsyics background) I decided that Computer Engineering sounded almost as cool as astrophysics. So I applied to graduate school (UMN, UWisc, Purdue — got in to them all).

In doing this, I closed my eyes to several things:
* Engineering, at least the Engineering bit of Computer Engineering, is Electrical Engineering, which is, essentially, the applied portion of a topic in physics which I hated.
* I was incredibly, insanely burnt out on school.
* I am a New Englander, not a Midwesterner.

Instead, I focussed on these things:
* Computer Engineering sounds really cool.
* I could take Japanese.
* My loans would still be deferred.
* I could move in with Okina.

I at least had the sanity to apply as a masters’ student; I knew I didn’t have the stamina at this point to go for a PhD. In doing so, however, I may have crippled myself: graduate schools like to give money to PhD students, not to Masters’ students. This was underscored by the fact that neither UWisc nor Purdue offered me any assistantship at all. UMN on the other hand, emailed me and asked if I could revise my application to omit any mention of the Masters program (they even made me have my profs rewrite my recommendation) so that they could slyly submit me to a Fellowship program at the school, which was supposed to go to a PhD candidate. I did so, and the school gave it to me. The more fools they.

Unsurprisingly, the things which I’d been trying to ignore meant that that year was not incredibly productive academically. I managed to discover by the end that I should not be taking EE courses, but by then the burnout was so great that the very thought of doing homework was enough to reduce me to a puddle of goo. Somehow I managed to emerge with a GPA still solidly over 3.0, but I was extremely unhappy. The last paper which I turned in had me literally shaking, so loathe was I to work on it.

So that’s where I was three years ago.

I turned down the assistantship they offered and quit school. I eventually got a hellish customer service job, quit that before I went quite insane, moved back east, and got a decent, if underpaid, job where I still am.

Last year I started taking Japanese, and this past fall I decided to reapply to school as a part time CompSci Masters student. I putted around with the applications, but actually did finish in time and sent the first one off. About three weeks after they acknowledge receipt of it, I get this email:

In your current graduate application, you have checked off
an interest in part-time study and an immediate goal of an M.S.
If you were interested in full time study and had an ultimate goal
of a Ph.D., you would be eligible to apply for the Cl are Booth Luce
Fellowship.
http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/admissions/luce-2002.php
Please let me know if you have any interest in being considered for
this program.

My first reaction is, of course: Oh no, not again.

I had actually seen the fellowship, but dismissed it from my thoughts since I wasn’t planning on going full time. But after they specifically mentioned it to me, I felt like I had to seriously consider it. And, well, there was no harm in applying for it, since all it seemed to require was an essay from me — they were even willing to accept the thing a week and a half after the published deadline.

But I procrastinated anyway — they’d given me until noon on the 11th to send in the additional statement. So at 10am on the morning of the 11th I sat down and threw some blither into Word, read it through twice, and sent it in around 11:30. The next day I got a phone call from a professor there, but he just had a question about my application; he was then very vague and suggested that decisions wouldn’t be made for at least a couple of weeks.

So you could have knocked me over with a feather when the chick who originally emailed me called me at work the next day to tell me a) I had been accepted and b) I had gotten the Fellowship.

That left me in the quandry I’m still in:

Option 1:
Keep working, go part time, get a Masters. My loans wouldn’t go into deferral again, and I’d have to get new loans to pay the tuition.

Option 2:
Accept the Fellowship, go full time, get a PhD. Some of the loans would go into deferral, and I wouldn’t have to get any new ones. Get a stipend of 18k and the tuition of 28k is just nullified. Added together, that’s more than what I’m making now. I just don’t see the 28k (and neither does the government.)

Looking at it from a purely monetary standpoint, if I get a part time job (or am even able to go part time at my current job) Option 2 is way better. From a learning standpoint, Option 2 is probably way better too. Going full time I can pay more attention to my classes. I can even keep taking Japanese.

So I’m really pretty much decided on Option 2. But damnit, it’s scary. It’s not just the part-time committment I’d geared myself up for. It’s a serious 4 year /program/.

And like my mom asked me (it took her 2 days to realize this) “Would you be like.. a doctor?”

I’m still waiting for the paperwork. But I got another email from them so I know I didn’t hallucinate last Wednesday. I need to email them back and arrange to go over and visit.

I just read an interesting article about Enterprise. The points are pretty valid; they’re things I’ve noticed myself on this show. But I think it can be traced back further than just Enterprise, honestly. TNG started to move forward when Troi finally got a uniform. Voyager took a huge step back when it put Seven in a slinky jumpsuit, and it’s all been sliding down the slope since then.

So I have quite a few things to write about, all of which would lead to rather long entries, but I don’t feel like I have the energy to do it.

One of them I’m waiting on some mail to post about, too.

Anyhow, my mom was supposed to call me back about what time she was coming tomorrow and she didn’t, probably because my brother didn’t bother to call her back…

I guess so this entry isn’t a complete waste, I will share the very strange dream I had last night. This will probably only amuse people who play on HP, but:
For some reason there was this weird Dungeon set up at Hogwarts. It was a typical D&D/RPG dungeon, full of puzzles of varying sorts and monsters which were mostly orange T-Rexes. All of the students (of which I believe I was one) were wandering around in it, trying to kill monsters and solve the puzzles. I believe it was some sort of exam, but there were also levels and experience points… it was all very weird. In any case, you gained points for killing monsters, but if someone helped you, you had to split the points with them. So I was getting very irritated at these guys who kept running up and dealing the final blow to the monster I’d nearly finished off. I set off instead to solve a puzzle. I was in a room, and there was a puddle with a frog in it. I knew that somehow I had to get the frog to float across the room, so I’d just dumped some more water into the puddle to make it flow all over the floor when Nico and Nadine went by. Nico had a beaker full of blood (his mother’s ^^;;) which Snape had given to him, and he was dragging his sister along. As they left, the puzzle completed itself and released a monster. I was just starting to fight with it when Snape and Sinistra appeared, and he dragged her off too. Suddenly I was out of the scene and now was reading it in a book instead. I turned the page to find that Snape had dragged Sinistra off to his office for a bit of a shag. I stared, horrified, at the absolutely terrible, awful, gaggable smut which Rowling had managed to produce. And that bothered me so much that I woke up.

So you see, even my subconscious has a problem with the pairing.

Had ice cream on Saturday with various people including Jemai, who I’ve known online for 7 years but only just met in person last year. Somehow we spent 4 hours at Friendlys and it wasn’t even the fault of the service.

I find that Megan has a blog now. Not that anyone links back to me, but probably that is because I don’t email them. I am such a horrid correspondent.

I spent a large portion of last night helping the otouto with his geometry homework, which apparently was given out with examples but no actual instruction. And the examples were in a format which was not the format he was supposed to use while writing up the questions. And this all traces back to the fact that one of the math teachers (one which I had as a junior) was forced to resign in the middle of last term because a student accused him of sexual harrassment (which accusation I can see happening, but I don’t think it was intentional) and thus otouto’s real math teacher has had to take over this other class, leaving him with a clueless newbie student teacher. Follow that?

In any case, this meant I got very little of what I wanted to get done last night actually done, though I did pick up Okage again after what… 3 months? I managed to resist the urge to start over again, because when I do that I rarely finish. I’m up to Chapter 6, which I believe is fairly short, but I’m taking a time out right now to try and find all the stupid Tiny Gears scattered all around so I can get whatever item it is you get from collecting them. I really hate the way the way you can’t avoid the ghosts when you go around on the world map. It makes it really hard to explore, and as yet I haven’t found a way to avoid encounters.

That’s the thing, though, E.

The people who want to ban Harry Potter do so because they see it as a genuine threat. They think it’s real. Not that Hogwarts is, but that people can really be wizards and witches and do spells and that all such power comes from SATAN. They think the Evil One influences people to do things on a regular basis, and that simply thinking about it too hard can attract its attention and cause it to come down on you like a ton of bricks. They also believe, and are genuinely concerned by the fact, that the rest of us are all going to hell. So they can’t just save themselves. They view it as their duty to save the rest of us as well.

It’s the last part which causes all the trouble. Which has caused drugs to be outlawed, the drinking limit raised, sex to be demonized, and yes, books to be banned. I do not agree with their views; in fact, I think they’re quite mad. But they are perfectly within their rights to hold such opinions — as long as those opinions do not get pushed on to me and my life. If you’ve taught your children well enough, they shouldn’t be influenced by every little puff of air from someone else. And I neither need nor want to be saved by you.

Anyone who wants to find out which letter they are can take the test.
Oh. My. God.

[EDIT:] I really don’t think this test was any good; the personality descriptions are all pretty lame and stupid, including the one above. It was funny.