for emrinalexander and darthrami

for nansi: Credulity and Conviction. harry/snape.

for rami: Best Man. snape/harry.

thanks to resonant8, ellen_fremedon, bethbethbeth, rahalia_cat, and lexin.

wrap-up

thank you all for your support, kind thoughts, etc. in the loss of my aunt. it's been very much appreciated. in particular, datlowen made me smile last monday with "since you have hugs coming out of your arse", and deftly deflected the most annoying man alive from trying to be my friend when i had a Moment at curling friday night; jgesteve kept me laughing through the whole eight-end match; and darthrami took good care of me when i got back and didn't have anything to take my mind off it any more.

( funeral musings behind the cut. )

had a long nap this evening, so it'll be tough for me to get to sleep tonight. but i must, because i have a lot of work to do tomorrow to get back in the swing of things. assignment due monday; papers to read for a meeting on monday; statement of purpose, which i've been intending to write for weeks; should make some progress on at least one of the three major papers i have to write in the next month; papers to grade and lesson plans to make for monday and tuesday, which i especially have to do because last week i bagged it. sigh.

staring down the barrel of the end of the semester

already! didn't i just get here? and now i'm about to graduate? man, when you do one four-year degree, a three-semester one goes by like that. [snaps fingers] seriously.

the good news: the Random W has, in fact, been removed from my transcript. should now be safe to order transcripts to send along with PhD applications.

the bad news: still have not begun statement of purpose. feel alarmingly like bridget jones in this respect; will just deal with scratchy nail first. might as well take off all nail varnish and start again while i'm thinking about it. will get to work once am really in position to concentrate. lunchtime!

the mixed news: finished the assignment due tomorrow at 9 am. graded the papers to hand back to the kids i told not to come to class last week. searched through first 1000 of 3400+ library listings that came up when i searched for "russian language" (or possibly just "russian"), for two of the three biggish papers i need to get cracking on. (the third is in psych, and i've gotten cracking b/c the intro was due a week or so ago. it came back last tuesday -- A-. go me.) this is not quite as impressive as it seems, as vast majority of hits actually in russian or other slavic languages (when transliterated into roman alphabet it's very hard to tell), with a healthy smattering of titles in german and at least a couple in chinese and a couple in french. i do read french, but none of the others, so i've been skimming through looking for english titles and then seeing if they have any relevance. have e-mailed listings including call numbers to self. will print out and head to library at some date in the near future. however. have not read any of approx. 100 pages for meeting tomorrow at 5 w/ psych prof and classmate re: leading class discussion on thursday. thursday is obviously one time will not be possible to coast by only having done part of the reading. also, have no handout/assignment prepared for tomorrow/tuesday, and cannot call off class for second week running. will have to prepare something between lecture and discussion tomorrow, i.e. between noon and 3pm, which is time will need for psych reading.

bright side: there's not a ton of time for this to get totally out of control. it's snowballing, but the hill isn't very steep. :-/

this:

is a much better picture.

(same day, but bigger smile. my parents had gone to visit my brother and his fiancee, and my aunt and uncle came up to see them as well. the picture was almost certainly taken by my mother's brother, who also lives in the area. on the left is my mother's shoulder, with my father's hand on it; on the right is my uncle's shoulder; and the blue background is actually my brother's jacket, because the child is that much taller than everybody else.)