Just a quick post to say that Jess and I have moved to a very nice apartment in St. Paul that I LOVE. We have no internet access right now (won't be able to get that hooked up until a week from tomorrow), so I won't be blogging for a while. Wow, I hope I can get caught up in my Women's Studies class, do my syllabus for the (new) class I'm teaching, and get all this other stuff done by the 20th. Yikes. I feel like I'm going to have to work 14-hour days for the next two weeks. On top of all that, I'm really homesick. I've decided that I'm going to try to find work in the south after I finish my degree--the other day when my mom took me to Birmingham to the airport, I was nauseous in the car during the entire drive. As soon as my mom drove away, I started bawling and didn't stop for a good hour and a half. Ugh, I'm not happy to be back here. Is this what burnout feels like? I have so much to do and no desire to engage any of it.

One of those cute email surveys sent by a friend:

1. Name one song you hate to admit you like.

Here are three (how embarrassing):

"I'll Be"--Edwin McCain
"A Thousand Miles"--Vanessa Carlton
"Mmmmm Bop"--Hanson

2. Name two songs that always make you cry.

"A Case of You"--Joni Mitchell
"Romeo and Juliet"--Indigo Girls (NOT the Dire Straits version. Only Amy Ray infuses it with that intensity.)
An honorable mention is "The Circle Game" by Joni Mitchell
(Edited to add "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues" by Elton John)

3. Name three songs that turn you on.

"Is It a Crime"--Sade

Halley at Misbehaving.net wishes us a happy 2004. She says that "someone once gave [her] the great advice, 'If you don't hear NO at least three times a day, you aren't asking for enough stuff in your life.'" Hear, hear. I'm going to take a cue from Halley and from The Smiths:

Shyness is nice, and

Shyness can stop you

From doing all the things in life

You'd like to

Fabulous news: Assuming our applications are approved, my roommate and I are moving to a new place! It's going to be a little more expensive--(not much more though!), but worth every single penny. Check out what we get in return:

This is my personality to a T:

Via Invisible Adjunct, who is cadet blue, and golden Phlebas.

Oh, and another thing--last night this Anagram Generator brought me lots of giggles. My favorite anagram for my name is Cat Fancyfrill. :-)

The scientific breakthrough of the year:

Around 23% of the universe is made up of another substance [besides stars], called "dark matter". Nobody knows what this undetected stuff could be, but it massively outweighs all the atoms in all the stars in all the galaxies across the whole detectable range of space. The remaining 73% is the new discovery: dark energy. This bizarre force seems to be pushing the universe apart at an accelerating rate, when gravitational pull should be making it slow down or contract.

Now we know that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Science Daily has more on the story, with an additional list of significant scientific discoveries of 2003, including this sad and disturbing one: "Climate Change Impacts: Global warming was no longer an abstract concept in 2003. Scientists reported melting ice, droughts, decreased plant productivity, and altered plant and animal behavior."

If you have ceiling, consider yourself lucky! I don't! I implore you to click the "read more" and read this whole post. Really, it would mean a lot to me. If you consider yourself to be my friend or friendly internet acquaintance, please do me the courtesy of reading the post and looking at the pictures. I would really appreciate it.



At 7:15 yesterday morning, I was awakened by the sound of a BIG SLAB OF PLASTER falling from my ceiling. A week ago, a crack formed in my ceiling with an accompanying leak of cold brown water. Then more cracks branched out from it:

Thurmond Kin Acknowledge Black Daughter. When Strom Thurmond was 22 years old, he took advantage of his 16-year-old maid, Carrie Butler, and they had a daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, whom the Thurmond family is finally publicly acknowledging. It seems that Washington-Williams and Thurmond had a close relationship, but he would not admit that she was his daughter, and she kept the secret "out of respect" for him and his political career. I'm with Jesse Jackson on this one:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a native of South Carolina, said he was struck by the similarities between Mr. Thurmond's situation and that of [Thomas] Jefferson, asserting that they reflected "a deep and ugly Southern tradition" of white men taking advantage of young black women in their employ.



"By day, they are bullies," Mr. Jackson said. "By night, they manipulate race to their advantage."



Referring to Mr. Thurmond and Ms. Washington-Williams, he added: "The point that strikes me the most is that he lived 100 years and never acknowledged his daughter. He never let her eat at his table. He fought for laws that kept his daughter segregated and in an inferior position. He never fought to give her first-class status. Thomas Jefferson did pretty much the same."