A Few Small Observations

1. Am I the only one who's alarmed by the commercials for those drugs that treat toenail fungal infections? "Get at the source of your yellow toenails! Side effects may include severe liver and kidney damage or serious rash!" Hey, but who needs the liver? MY FEET ARE PRETTY!

2. Last week, for the first time in my life, I think a professor lowered my grade because I disagreed with him. It's not that simple, of course - I did a midterm on "the most interesting thing we've covered so far in class" and was stupid enough to choose one of his own works that he'd assigned for us (sidenote: Professors who give us their own books to read should be removed from tenure track immediately). I had the audacity to disagree with him and allowed myself to be cowed in the presentation when he argued back to me. So my grade dropped because I had "prepared inadequately". Well jeez, dude. On a related note, I'm presenting on his OTHER book on Monday, a project which magically transformed itself from "do the reading and present on it" to a research presentation with two days' leeway. I HATE THIS CLASS. I HATE THIS PROFESSOR. I WOULD TELL YOU WHO HE IS BUT THAT WOULD BODE NOTHING GOOD FOR ME. Art history majors at Duke can feel free to solicit my advice on professors via private contact.

3. Registration for spring classes is next week. Here is what I have bookbagged:



Your eyes are not deceiving you. I am taking two Phys Ed classes (fencing and yoga, in case you were interested), a survey Spanish course, and an independent study. I would be gleeful except for the fact that this schedule implies ThesisFest2006, a hopefully more successful continuation to the non-existent ThesisFest2005.

4. On that note, I promised my professor 10 pages by Monday. Guess how many of those I have written? Guess! ... 0! YAAAAYYY! And with the now-research project and CPR class this morning (I can save people now!) and work tonight and choir and choir redux tomorrow and Epworth Halloween party and work tomorrow night, it's not looking good. There may not be sleep involved in my life for a while. Wheeeee.

WHY are the Bills 3-4? Why? Why? I will not have kids with Kelly Holcomb unless he wins the next two games. Singlehandedly. Against the Steelers defense.

I have not said anything because there is nothing to say, except that on this Friday oncall I discovered that Lilly Library is packing the first four seasons of Star Trek on DVD. As you may be able to guess, this means I spent all of Friday and a good share of Saturday wishing I were from the 24th century while sitting on the couch in my pajamas, eating peanut butter straight from the jar. So now I'm out of peanut butter, but I think I needed the vegetation considering that next weekend promises to be what I like to call "a big fat hairy inconvenience". It will include CPR training at some unheard of time that combines the symbols "9" and "AM" and an extra (depressing) choir doodad.

To recap: October has sucked. I must have forgotten to say "rabbit rabbit" this month. Foolish me and my rabbits!

I'm going to go scurry under something until Monday proper starts. I hate Mondays proper. Whine whine cry cry snork snap hurk.

Ring Ring Ring!

This cartoon brings me great, fuzzy joy.

In other news, I slept for 12 hours last night.

Ah, Durham

So I got out of work about 10 minutes ago and was walking across the quad with Tamara when all of a sudden we heard

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

nine times, in perfect succession, echoing somewhere behind us.

What is a quality Sunday night without some gunfighting? I mean, really.

So Much for Drama and All That

So.

I've had this mapped out in my mind for a little while, how I've wanted to do this, and though what you're about to see isn't exactly the way I'd have liked it to turn out, it's the closest I can get.

I had delusions of getting an assignment, changing the blog name to AlliBelize or whatnot, and hitting you with a definite while you were still trying to figure out what was going on. However, apparently the gubmint doesn't work that way and I won't have a country assignment until, like, the minute I get on the plane. Here is what I do have:

"Hi Allison,...

...I have come across two programs that I think will be a good fit for you. Please look these over and let me know which, if either, you are most interested in.

1. English Teaching - E. Europe/C. Asia - departs Aug/Sept 2006 - will teach English at the high school level

2. Health Extension - Central Asia - departs Aug/Sept 2006 - community health working with nutrition, HIV/AIDS, 50% of time may be spent teaching or running workshops. Will live with homestay family for the first 6 months at site."

Central Asia. Central Asia. CENTRAL ASIA. Here is a map of the relevant part of the world. All the colored countries, minus Tajikistan, are options.

The short version: I am going to die. In the meantime, I am not going to get ANY of my mail (or there will be a six-month minimum lag, four months of which it will spend strapped to a camel somewhere).


***edit***

There seems to be some interest as to what the hell I will be speaking while in these places. It depends on the country, but most of them (esp. the more centraler parts) have their own languages but use Russian as the official or to communicate cross-culture (like, say, with Quechua or Aymara in Peru). You can CIA WorldFactbook the countries, which is what I did; if you google the country name, in most of these cases, it's the first link to come up.

That said, if I go to Azerbaijan or something and start speaking Russian I don't think they'll appreciate it.

Also, some of these places have really astounding infant mortality rates (which I usually use as the best indicator of a country's not-messeduppedness), some along the line of 60-80 deaths per live births.

I emailed Robyn back, saying that my preffing a cold country wasn't a matter of life or death or anything and that I'd rather sweat for two years and be useful than be comfortable (or, you know, frostbitten) and suck. Part of this is true. The other part has to do with wanting to live with monkeys.



(Funny: the CNN article I stole this from is about cloned monkeys. The descriptive part of the source url - know how they're usually utilitarian, like new.york.subway.threat? - is monkey.monkey. Cute, CNN.)

All joking aside, Central Asia would be nice and I would feel useful and all, but you know that thing? about how I like trees? about how when I'm not around trees I get really cranky? Yeah. That would be bad. I want to go somewhere with trees, not steppes. I wonder if I could tell Robyn that. "I don't care where you put me as long as I can climb plants there". Or maybe I could just ask for the Eastern Europe part of the range. Or something. Or maybe they could just airdrop me into the middle of a pack of wolves. Would I be happy then? Huh? WOULD I?

I wonder if they'd let me rent an elephant.

***edit edit***

Turns out Northcentral Asia is Eurasian wolf country!



When can I leave?

Nothing to say. Just wanted to post this to break up the lines on the page a little. Go see Serenity, for it is awesome (and needs to make about $30 million more).