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ravenSo, I am nursing an insomnia-induced headache, avoiding going to bed, sitting in the kitchen of my parents' house trying not to wake anyone up and reading SG-1 fic to pass the time.
...it's 2002.
ARGH. I have a degree, I have a degree, I have a degree, repeat to fade. Also, I have a (minor) job. It's the same job I have had for five years, but I have it. I went into work on Monday for the first time in three months and was surprised by how easy it was to be back. Most of the customers greeted me with variations on, "Oh, you're back! What do you mean, you've finished?" and by lunchtime, it had quietened down sufficiently for Book Monkey-in-Chief to go out delivering, leaving me on my own.
So, I propped the door open, perched on the counter and re-read Ballet Shoes, occasionally breaking off to do a whole batch of school orders, tidy up the poetry and ring up a publisher in Middle-of-Nowhere, Arkansas. It was delightful. I have the odd shift here and there for the next two weeks, notably next Thursday, when I'm apparently helping with a signing - Anne Fine (former Children's Laureate) is coming to visit again, and I guess my job will be to hand her pens. I'm looking forward to it, anyway.
Other things, other things! I should really stop sitting at home and moping, as I don't have to do it for much longer - my parents are going to London at the weekend and I'm tagging along (my fifty-three-year-old father has decided he has reached far too advanced an age without ever going to a rock concert, so we're going to Hard Rock Calling, god help us all). Actually, I shouldn't be so uncharitable - it doesn't sound like bad fun at all, and a trip down south with my parents is never a bad thing, anyway. When I was small, they used to make blatantly transparent excuses and take me out of school for just this purpose. The weekend after, they are going to London again, this time to, in my mother's words, "visit a baby". An old family friend's son's baby, this is. Said son is about twenty-three, twenty-four, went to India to get married - i.e., presumably he couldn't get a girlfriend over here, so went over there to "get" some girl, because, aha, Indian society in women-as-commodity shocker! - and now they've had a baaaaaby, etc. I am excusing myself and going to visit![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shimgray instead.
Of course, my few days in Oxford should be pleasant and delightful and I fully mean to dig outluminometrice and chiasmata and do Fun Things, but, alas, this is also when my degree results are published. So, er, I cannot recite "I have a degree" over and over to keep myself sane, because, er, the jury is still out on that. So in fact I may just enlist people to hold my hand when I go and look at the list.
Moving swiftly on from that, I am going to San Francisco for a week, and then back to Oxford, then home, then most likely to Edinburgh for a few days at the beginning of August, and then back up north yet again, but not for long. If I've got myself a degree of a certain standard - argh, etc. - I will be moving back to Oxford in late August, and right now it looks very plausible that I'll be moving in withchiasmata to a house in East Oxford we have named the Mousehole. I whole-heartedly approve of this - it's a very pretty little house, very nicely located, and I really am looking forward to living with friends for a year without the hassle of moving every few months.
Once I have moved back to Oxford, what then, one might ask. One possible answer: working for the LSAT. The next test date is early October in London, and I've more or less decided that I'm going to register for it. As for whys and wherefores - I don't know, but I'm not happy with how I left it. I could've done better on it. Ah, fuck it, there's decent evidence to suggest I'm in the ninety-ninth percentile, I could've done much, much better on it. And I'm reluctant to let it go until I have done much better on it. Whether I subsequently use it for any additional American applications is contingent on whether a) I actually do any better in practice and b) my by now thrice-damned degree class. Argh, etc. I don't know. I don't know anything.
Anyway. I should possibly not just talk to myself on the internet. But I have plans, and things to do, and it is rather frustrating to just not do anything for two weeks.
...it's 2002.
ARGH. I have a degree, I have a degree, I have a degree, repeat to fade. Also, I have a (minor) job. It's the same job I have had for five years, but I have it. I went into work on Monday for the first time in three months and was surprised by how easy it was to be back. Most of the customers greeted me with variations on, "Oh, you're back! What do you mean, you've finished?" and by lunchtime, it had quietened down sufficiently for Book Monkey-in-Chief to go out delivering, leaving me on my own.
So, I propped the door open, perched on the counter and re-read Ballet Shoes, occasionally breaking off to do a whole batch of school orders, tidy up the poetry and ring up a publisher in Middle-of-Nowhere, Arkansas. It was delightful. I have the odd shift here and there for the next two weeks, notably next Thursday, when I'm apparently helping with a signing - Anne Fine (former Children's Laureate) is coming to visit again, and I guess my job will be to hand her pens. I'm looking forward to it, anyway.
Other things, other things! I should really stop sitting at home and moping, as I don't have to do it for much longer - my parents are going to London at the weekend and I'm tagging along (my fifty-three-year-old father has decided he has reached far too advanced an age without ever going to a rock concert, so we're going to Hard Rock Calling, god help us all). Actually, I shouldn't be so uncharitable - it doesn't sound like bad fun at all, and a trip down south with my parents is never a bad thing, anyway. When I was small, they used to make blatantly transparent excuses and take me out of school for just this purpose. The weekend after, they are going to London again, this time to, in my mother's words, "visit a baby". An old family friend's son's baby, this is. Said son is about twenty-three, twenty-four, went to India to get married - i.e., presumably he couldn't get a girlfriend over here, so went over there to "get" some girl, because, aha, Indian society in women-as-commodity shocker! - and now they've had a baaaaaby, etc. I am excusing myself and going to visit
shimgray instead. Of course, my few days in Oxford should be pleasant and delightful and I fully mean to dig out
luminometrice and chiasmata and do Fun Things, but, alas, this is also when my degree results are published. So, er, I cannot recite "I have a degree" over and over to keep myself sane, because, er, the jury is still out on that. So in fact I may just enlist people to hold my hand when I go and look at the list.Moving swiftly on from that, I am going to San Francisco for a week, and then back to Oxford, then home, then most likely to Edinburgh for a few days at the beginning of August, and then back up north yet again, but not for long. If I've got myself a degree of a certain standard - argh, etc. - I will be moving back to Oxford in late August, and right now it looks very plausible that I'll be moving in with
chiasmata to a house in East Oxford we have named the Mousehole. I whole-heartedly approve of this - it's a very pretty little house, very nicely located, and I really am looking forward to living with friends for a year without the hassle of moving every few months. Once I have moved back to Oxford, what then, one might ask. One possible answer: working for the LSAT. The next test date is early October in London, and I've more or less decided that I'm going to register for it. As for whys and wherefores - I don't know, but I'm not happy with how I left it. I could've done better on it. Ah, fuck it, there's decent evidence to suggest I'm in the ninety-ninth percentile, I could've done much, much better on it. And I'm reluctant to let it go until I have done much better on it. Whether I subsequently use it for any additional American applications is contingent on whether a) I actually do any better in practice and b) my by now thrice-damned degree class. Argh, etc. I don't know. I don't know anything.
Anyway. I should possibly not just talk to myself on the internet. But I have plans, and things to do, and it is rather frustrating to just not do anything for two weeks.
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no subject
on 2008-06-25 01:57 am (UTC)There is another part of Arkansas?
no subject
on 2008-06-25 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-25 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-25 04:11 am (UTC)Aww, I love your dad.
no subject
on 2008-06-25 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-25 08:03 am (UTC)working for the LSAT - I read that as 'working for Lestat'. *looks up LSAT* Your answer is far more normal. Working to be a fictional vampire wouldn't have been quite right.
*squish*
no subject
on 2008-06-25 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-25 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-25 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-25 02:02 pm (UTC)Also, house: I believe I was going to speak to a friend for you. In fact I think I did, but I don't remember what she said, which is useful of me. But does the Mousehole imply you have no need for further housemates? If so that's probably ideal, as said friend won't know until September whether she's got funding for a Master's or not, and she can't afford it without.
no subject
on 2008-06-25 11:30 pm (UTC)I have no need for further housemates, this is true. But, however, and all of that, if your friend gets her funding, let me know in September - there is a distinct possibility I might know of somewhere going, which is always handy with these things!
no subject
on 2008-06-25 09:59 pm (UTC)O HAI from the town barely AN HOUR away from the Forth Road Bridge. *hints mightily* I will be back at the tail end of August but OH WAIT it's my TWENTYFIRST on the 11th of August and I will be ALONE with nothing but my mld alcoholism and cheap cocktail deal night at a local bar.
no subject
on 2008-06-26 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-06-25 11:21 pm (UTC)Also, Anne Fine - aaaaah! Your mention of her had me running to the top of my warderobe, to check if it was still there - I have an A2 poster, from way back when "the tulip touch" came out. (Whitbread gave it a prize).
If you're here pre-meeting her, do you want it? Could make her think it's the 90's all over again.
Or I could be v demanding and ask if you could possibly ask her to sign it (for a 20something who should know better)...
no subject
on 2008-06-25 11:25 pm (UTC)Also, Anne Fine! Is awesome! Stick it in an envelope and send it to me - address coming by email - and I will get it signed and return it to you when I see you, how's that?