- We now live in Norman, OK. The day we tried to pack up and move from Jersey was a nightmare. Absolute nightmare. But we made it. =)
- We had a great time on the Morgan family trip to Hawaii in May. I am a huge fan of parasailing and can't wait to do it again. I'm also a huge fan of Hawaii. Note to self: Never, ever, under any circumstances plan to move across the country two days after returning from Hawaii. Or anywhere.
- We did the summer camp for the abused and neglected foster kids again a few weeks ago, and it was great. There were lots of returning campers, so it was wonderful to see them again. If I can get a little more control over my daily schedule, I want to become an official DHS volunteer so I can keep up with some of the campers (we're not aloud to have any contact with them after camp if we're not approved by DHS).
- My cousin Joie got married and had a wonderful wedding.
- My nephew Titus is adorable. You probably already know that.
- My other nephew, Jameston, is also adorable. I get to see him a couple times a week. He's.. um.. 18 months I think? We have quite a relationship. I like being an aunt.
- Oh, by the way, I'm a teacher. Yeah. I'm teaching Basic Comp at Cameron University. It's a developmental/remedial writing course. I'm currently putting off making lesson plans. This might be the longest semester of my life. hehe.
- I interviewed for a job as a copy editor for Tate Publishing on Monday. I'm hoping to hear about that tomorrow or Friday. I hope I get it because the money and job itself would be nice. I hope I don't get it because I feel a little overwhelmed with my teaching gig.

Cheers!

Last night was my sort of last night at school. I had a few hours in the writing center, my wonderful wonderful place of work, and then my last senior seminar gathering. Bittersweet is the best way to describe it all. My work friends and my boss are amazing and fun and inspiring. My senior sem was the best class I've ever had. My professor is beyond words brilliant but not in the I-Have-A-Ph.D-And-Will-Therefore-Talk-Above-You way. Not at all. My classmates were great, too. We all were quite involved in one another's projects, so it was very sad leaving them.
And I am very pleased with my thesis - the one on Harry Potter. Thanks again to everyone who said go for it. There is still more I could do with it, and I plan to return to it someday. And I've had a potential online publication offer, so I think I'll try to revise it for that some time this summer.

I still have one more paper and final before I'm all the way done, but I'm not too worked up about them. I might actually start writing and studying today...

Now I just have to figure out what to do with myself. As much as I was looking forward to being free, I have been very unsure of life after college, especially when I have no job. Yet. I will find a job. Later.

Spring break, oh spring break, how I loved thee.
Now that I'm a graduating senior, I finally got the hang of having a successful but still relaxing spring break. I did all the necessary homework (I even worked a little bit ahead on some assignments), I did some minor spring cleaning, and I still enjoyed some free time.

When I was a young girl, I read a ghost story set in Providence, RI. The protagonist time traveled back to colonial Providence and had a grand little adventure. I fell in [literary] love with Providence. I wanted to be there, live there, die there. I was going to go to Brown and major in biomedical engineering and spend my summers giving prosthetic limbs to crippled African children and enjoy my quaint life in Providence the rest of the year. (Oh, and I was maybe going to alternate my summers between limb-affixing in Africa and beach-enjoying in Madrid...) Needless to say, I soon realized that a life of science was not going to be had by me. Instead, I was destined to become a Music Therapist. Wait a minute. That didn't work out either. =) What I'm trying to say is that I did not end up in Providence, but my kind husband took me there for 1 day/1 night, and I have since informed him that if he has an untimely death, I will be taking up residence in Providence. The town of my heart.

Hey! I went a whole post without mentioned Harry Potter. Until just now. Man! I knew it was going to spill out at some point!

PS. "What did you do in Providence?" you may ask. "Nothing," I would tell you. I walked around the streets. That's all I needed. Oh, we did go visit the capital building, which was kinda cool. And I went into the State Library, and it has the marvelously tall bookshelves (20, 30 feet?) that one accesses by heart rate-increasing tiny winding staircases. I went up to look at the old books on the top shelves. That was awesome.

Accio. Just let one spell work for me. That's all I'm asking. I just want to use Accio.

Life Observation: Getting behind on something makes it so much harder to ever start. (This is not, by the way, related to the following paragraph.)


Thank you to everyone for the positive comments on my last post! I am officially writing about Harry Potter, and I'm liking it so far. [SPOILER ALERT. If you haven't read all the Harry Potter books, you might find some generalizations about how the series ends, and you might be upset with me if you wanted to be surprised. So skip to the next paragraph.] I've narrowed down my topic to examining Harry and Voldy as metaphorical Philosopher's Stones; Voldy tried to defeat death (like the Stone which at least puts it off for a long time), and Harry saves his life and the lives of others. The factor in their success/failure is Love - Harry understands it and uses it, so he succeeds as a Stone. Voldy, on the other hand, doesn't value its power, so he dies. So he failed as a symbolic Philosopher's Stone. Poor guy. The neato part about this is that Poe and Hawthorne also show how love reflects qualities of the Stone! Poof. I have a thesis! I think the most difficult part may be deciding which book to use! =/ I want to use examples from all the books, but I've been told that's an undertaking for my dissertation - not my undergraduate thesis. And I agree. Tackling all seven books at once is a bit much.

Alright, it's safe for you to start reading again!

Tutoring writers who have... an unusual command of the English language can be extremely tiring. But then every now and then, I run across something so odd that I can't help but laugh (after the session, of course). Example A: "an unorthodox, impressionable, jealous feeling." Maybe my emotions just aren't sophisticated enough to relate to that. =)