-My students and I need to have a conversation about what "5-7 pages" means. Over half of my class seems to think that it means 4.5 pages. They are mistaken.

-I am very nervous about the election. I keep reading very positive polls, but I am still nervous. I am glad that I am going to a friend's house after class to watch election results.

-I bought my plane tickets to fly home for Thanksgiving break. I really wish the university gave us more time off. I fly to Spokane Tuesday evening, and I fly back Sunday night.

-I really want to get over this cold.

-I hope everyone is doing well.

-If you haven't already done it, VOTE tomorrow!!!

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. -Albert Camus

I am especially fond of fall. I was thinking about this as I was driving home from a lovely coffee date with my good friend Brandi . Besides the incredible beauty of the season, fall brings with it hot cider and other warm beverages, delicious food, the return of some of my favorite TV shows, and a reassuring cold that reminds me that I am alive. Unlike a lot of people, I do not miss the warm days and bright sunshine, both of which seem more oppressive than enlivening. For me, it is in the fall when I feel most awake and most alive.

Fall is also an incredibly liminal period, and more so than spring, fall announces its liminality. The various shades of leaves, the ups and downs of temperatures, and the return of the rain all signal a the transition from summer to winter. This particular fall, I definitely feel like I am in a liminal state, too. I am new to graduate school, and I am breaking into the world of academia. I am constantly moving between identities. I feel like half the time I am a student and half the time I am a teacher. I go from sitting in class to teaching a class to sitting in staff meetings. The transitioning from being a member of the department and a student in the department can feel sort of exhausting sometimes, but it is also really exciting. I like both positions for different reasons.

The season also brings the election, and this election has such potential to create change. As it approaches, I am more and more anxious. It is scary. I want to sit here in this in between moment because I am not sure what Tuesday will bring. Everything will be different. I hope for the best.

I meant to say more in this post, but it has all disappeared. I cant seem to focus tonight. Tomorrow I will receive a huge stack of 101 papers, and that has me a little frightened. I am doing well...tired, though. I hope that all of you are doing well.

( more fall pics )

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

-Audre Lorde

Today is the birthday of one of my dearest friends. Miranda, your beauty, intelligence, humor, and incredible depth (both critical and emotional) continually amaze me. I am so lucky to know you, and I hope that you have a lovely birthday. I wish that I could be there. I would make cupcakes, and we could watch wonderful TV.

I am sent a little something out for you yesterday.

I love my students. I didn't think that I would, but there is something about them. My more experienced collegues keep telling me that it will all change once I have to grade their first essay. Maybe it will. Right now, though, they just seem so on top of things. I love that they like each other and that they are willing to engage in discussion. I ran into this one lovely student in the Viking Union this afternoon, and she introduced me to her friend as her "English professor." It was all that I could do to keep from dying.

I have really enjoyed teaching so far. I think that my students like me, and they seem to respond to most of my jokes. I am still so surprised how confident I feel in front of them. I am always so anxious presenting in front of peers, but teaching is different. It feels so performative. I am sure that the power differential helps a great deal, too. I hope I am doing a good job. It is such a scary profession. Today didn't go as well as the two days last week. Today, I felt like I just didn't have enough time. I had cut things from my lesson plan before going to class, but I still didn't have near enough time. I also didn't want to cut discussion short. I was sort of flustered, and I ended up really rushing through the discussion of ethos and pathos and quickly blurting out the assignment for next time right before the students left. I dont think it was quite as bad as I think that it was, but it still just wasn't what I wanted it to be. I think that a lot of it is because I am not feeling that well, and it has been a really hard few days.

I have to say that I absolutely love being in graduate school. More than anything, I love the sense of community that comes with it. I know everyone in my classes, and it is great to be able to talk about the readings and about academic interests with other serious students. I also absolutely love to get to read so much theory. I spent all yesterday at the cafe upstairs in Village Books reading and thinking. So energizing.

*sigh* I feel like I dont know what to write on here lately. My life seems so incredibly quiet. I keep thinking that I need to post, but I am never sure what to post about. I miss the days when I would post two or three times a day.

( Break up stuff that no one wants to read )

Yay! I finally got to see the trailer for Doubt. I love Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman so much!





I also really like the trailer for Milk.

The fall/winter movie season makes me so happy!

A real post to come soon!

Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto
-Terence

Nothing human disgusts me...unless its unkind, violent.
-Hannah Jelkes in Tennessee Williams's Night at the Blue Iguana.


It is curious that our culture is so obsessed with excess in the world outside of ourselves. Big food, big cars, big houses....more money, more space, more things. There is always something new, something bigger, something more. Change and progress and advancement are master narratives that we readily accept and consume, even with our postmodern skepticism. What is curious about this, though, is that the exact opposite seems true about our personal bodies. When it comes to the body, we fear excess. With a few exceptions, one doesn't want to be more "bodily," and natural evolutions of the physical body are often feared and fought against. I was thinking about this earlier today at the Farmers' Market. Stopping after making the walk downtown, I was incredibly repulsed and embarrassed by the fact that I was sweating. There was a slightly damp spot on my side. In this moment, I felt entirely too much. Everything about the excesses of my body come to the surface. Too fat, too hairy, too many pores, too much! Though excess is loved in the outside world, in our bodies, excess is thought of as grotesque.

Bakhtin is probably the most famous theorist associated with the grotesque. Bakhtin argues that the grotesque is "that which protrudes from the body" and is "all that seeks to go beyond the body's confines" (92). For Bakhtin, "the grotesque body...is a body in the act of becoming...it is never finished, never completed" (92). Here, Bakhtin exposes the element of change in the grotesque; the grotesque body is continually changing, and, in this way, the grotesque is, of course, the living body. Life is the process of becoming. What Baktin calls the grotesque's "bodily drama," the eating, drinking, defecation, sweating, reproduction etc, are what keep the body alive. But, these things also remind us about death. The grotesque becomes the place where evidence of life and death meet. Kristeva has an excellent discussion of this in her "Essay on Abjection," too.

Our fears and attempts to erase the grotesque and the abject are interesting. We try to solve our bodys' excessive flaws by going to the place where we normally seek excess--our consumption culture. Weight loss programs, pore refiners, "prescription strength" antiperspirants, nose jobs, and other products seek to make body less grotesque and to hide abjection, to minimize the signs of life and decay. We also just erase a lot of the abjection and the processes of the grotesque body, pretending they dont exist. Tampon and pad commercials are always such a great example of this. The mysterious blue liquid that is almost always used in them prevents viewers from being shocked by seeing menstrual blood. On a related note, Alan Ball had to defend his decision to show a bloody tampon in his new film Towelhead. The fact that people are easily upset by media that displays abjection seems telling about our culture.

I think that our fears of the grotesque and the abject are especially strong because they are essential about our fears of private space meeting public space. The body is so incredibly private, and the attributes that make it grotesque and the body’s abjection make it noticeable. Were I sweating at home, I wouldn't likely think anything about it. It was the fact that other people would see it, that I was revealing things about my body to them, and reminding them of their own. The grotesque and the abject move the private body into the public space. There is a sort of border crossing that goes on that is both physical and social.

Today was a difficult day. I attended my great aunt Tick's (Cecilia Agnes's) funeral. I had lived with Tick for several months when I was going to school at NIC. She was always sort of the wild one out of my grandfather's brothers and sisters. She had a loud laugh, loved to drink and go out, and after her husband died, she had a male companion that she would go out with all the time. I remember her sloppy kisses and bright red lipstick and her jokes.

Towards the end, dementia had started to set in, and she had accused me of stealing and had told my other great aunt and uncles and my grandparents that I had. It was an absolute disaster. I hate that I was so mad at her, when it really wasn't her fault. I don’t think that any of them actually believed her because most saw that she was slipping away and becoming confused. She buried both of her daughters in the last two years, one of her daughters had pretty much bankrupted her, and I think that it was just really too much for her to handle.

I hate to attend a funeral mass. It is almost too much for me. The homily was decent, but the ceremonial crap involved made me want to scream. I hadn’t been to mass in so long, and it all sounded even more robotic and emotionless than I had remembered.

Seeing my other great aunts and uncles was really nice. They are all amazing. They are all in their 80s but are all in such great shape and full of energy. My Aunt Mary is always so excited to hear that I am going to graduate school and that I want to teach. She taught for like a million years and thinks that it is like the most amazing career choice ever. She is so cute. Apparently, her children contacted the DMV and told them that she shouldn't be driving. So she went down there and had a physical and took and eye exam, a written test, and a driving test, and they gave her license back. hehe. She hardly drives anyway. I think that she walks everywhere. She is the woman that did Bloomsday 6 months after having open heart surgery at the age of 80. It is so great.

There are only 4 of the 10 siblings left in my grandfather's family. Going to the funerals is always so shocking because there are so many people. My mom has 50 cousins just on that side. Those crazy catholic families.

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."

-Neil Gaiman

I dont know what else to say. I am emotional and scared and so unsure of everything right now. I feel rediculous.

I haven't talked too much about the English 101 class that I am teaching this fall. Because the summer has been so awful, I have been sort of putting it out of my mind. Now that it is just around the corner, though, I probably should be dedicating more thought to it. Dr. Qualley, the Director of Composition, sent out an insanely long e-mail (complete with a 109 page annotated syllabus) about the course and the week long crash-course on teaching 101 called "Comp Camp."

"Comp Camp" basically is an intense seminar that will go from 8am-5pm the week of the 15th (my bday) through the 19th. Yes, I will be in class 9 hours a day for 5 whole days. I may be dead by the end of it. Also, I have to come up with an "artifact" to bring on the first day to share with the group. It is supposed to have "personal and/or cultural significance" to me. I have been madly trying to figure out something to bring. I hate activities like this. I obsess so much about what my choice might say about me. I do the same thing when people ask me what my favorite book or movie is. I worry about all of the subtext that might be hiding underneath my answer. Very scary.

If I survive "Comp Camp," the 101 class should be okay. Composition classes can be so boring sometimes, and I hate almost all of the textbooks that I have read. They are all dense, vague, and not very helpful at all.

For the class, I am using Joseph Harris's textbook Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts. It is a very small, simple book. In the text, he, like almost all authors of composition textbooks, uses the metaphor of a conversation at a party to describe academic writing. There is a conversation when you arrive. You contribute to that conversation--maybe challenging or countering some of the thoughts already voiced, and the conversation continues after you leave. Harris argues that all academic writing is a form of "rewriting" and that it works by "drawing from, commenting on, [and] adding to the work of others" (2). In his text, Harris explores several rhetorical moves that writers make to accomplish this "rewriting." He names these moves "coming to terms," "forwarding," "countering," "taking an approach," and "revising" and has a chapter on each of these moves. I actually really enjoyed reading his book. Like I said, it is very short (only about 130 pages), and he is very conversational and provides good (but pretty simple) examples of these moves.

In addition to that textbook, I am also using the reader portion of From Inquiry to Academic Writing. As a class, we are going to examine 4 academic essays to see how the authors make use of the rhetorical moves Harris speaks of and how the authors are participating in ongoing discussions. These essays make up the bulk of the assigned reading for the class. I really like the essays that we are using. Some readers for composition studies use essays on composition studies, and there is nothing more dreadfully boring than that. This reader is pretty interdisciplinary, and I really like that. It also has a lot of essays that are written for those outside of the academy, and I think that is important to see that the rhetorical moves that we are examining exist and are used by writers outside of the academy. I think that the essays I am using work well together. They are all sort of about consumerism and popular culture. The essays I am using are below.

-Mark Edmundson, “On the Uses of a Liberal Education”
-Robert Scholes, “On Reading a Video Text”
-Steven Johnson, a selection from “Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter”

and I am still going back and forth about the last one, but it is between:

-Henry A Giroux, “Children’s Culture and Disney’s Animated Films”
And
-Ann DuCille, “Dyes and Dolls: Multicultural Barbie and the Merchandising of Difference.”

I am sort of leaning towards Disney, but that is probably because I want to teach a class on Disney’s animated films.

The assigned writing is designed to allow the students to work with the moves Harris describes and to interact with the assigned readings. In addition to those writing exercises, students also examine a cultural phenomenon/activity that is not discussed directly in the course and write about it. All of these assignments are drafted and responded to by other students, and I conference with students several times throughout the quarter. As the quarter progresses, students will work to put together a portfolio of their work at various stages of the revision process. They will also have to produce an abstract and cover letter to go with their final essay, and these items will also be in the portfolio. I really like the idea of having them write an abstract. They can be so hard to write and really force a writer to “come to terms” with his/her own writing.

I am pretty excited about the class. It should be fun. We are watching a lot of youtube videos to see commercials and things like that, and I think that students might like that. Still, I am realistic. I know that English 101 is not the class that everyone wants to take. It will be an adventure. I will have to keep everyone updated.

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

-John Donne



Ernest died last night. I had known that it was coming. He had been losing weight again, and we hadn't been able to manage his diabetes this last month. I just seemed that nothing really worked. I dont think that he was in any pain. He didn't seem to be. He crawled into bed last night and just sort of went to sleep while I stroked his fur.

He was a beautiful, graceful, and incredibly affectionate cat. I have been an emotional basketcase ever since it happened. I cried myself to sleep last night and have broke down a couple times today. It is so hard because he had this amazing ability to always know when I was upset. Whenever I would cry or be really stressed, he would find me. It was strange not to have that this time. It has been a really hard summer on me. I feel really tired and mentally and emotionally exhausted.

I have been reading a lot of poetry about death the last couple days. I always come back to Donne's "Death be not proud" sonnet. I have written about the poem several times and about its use in other texts. I love Margaret Edson's play _Wit_ and the way she uses the poem in the play. One of the things that I like about the poem is that I think that it is not only about considering death (and one's own death); it is, of course, also a poem about life...about transitioning from the thought of death...about moving on...about waking up after death....about the people who survive waking up again. It is a poem that I seem to turn to when I experience the death of someone else.

I dont know if that makes any sense. I cant really think or communicate anything effectively. It is just what I am thinking.

I keep thinking that I should update my livejournal, but then I sit down at my computer, and I realize that I have absolutely nothing interesting to say.

Life in Idaho has been fairly boring. The heat is horrible, and it makes it difficult to do anything productive (I am so far behind on my reading for my English 101 class). I did manage to make another batch of jam. This time I made some huckleberry. I broke all the rules: I used the food processor for the berries because huckleberries are a total pain to crush by hand, and I also doubled the batch. Both of these actions are sort of against the rules of jam making because they sometimes prevent the jam from setting. It is maybe not quite as set as it should be, but it doesn't move, so I think that everything is fine. Plus, I dont really like my jam to have the consistency of jello, which is what the pectin people seem to think it should be.

I did get to go out with two of my BFFs the other day. It was so good to see starmiranda and travelbytrain. I love those ladies so much. We had wonderful sushi at Takara in Coeur d'Alene. Though I am so ready to go back to Bellingham, I am really going to miss them. It has been so nice to get to hang out with them several times this summer. They should definitely come and visit me in Bellingham!

marcusito and I seem to be doing well. I, of course, went against everyone's advice and spent my entire time in Seattle with him. I think that it was a good decision, though. We had time to talk and discuss how to move forward as friends. I also had a lot of fun going to dinner and to the movies and just hanging out with him. We got drunk and watched way too much trashy tv on E! and just had a lot of fun. He means so much to me, and I am glad that ending our romantic relationship hasn't destroyed the friendship that I treasure so much.

There were other things that I was going to post about, but this is already getting long, and I seem to have lost any energy that I had. This damn heat. I keep hoping that my bedroom will cool down enough so I can sleep.

I love you all!

I am ready for the summer to be over. I just feel like I need to be back in school. I need the distractions that it would bring. I also want the cooler fall weather.

I am sure that I have summer seasonal affective disorder. During the summers, I get so anxious, irritable, paranoid, and depressed. The heat and the bright light give me headaches. I feel exposed and vulnerable and like people are watching me. I also feel guilty about how lazy I get. I feel like I become this grotesque and irritable monster--one that feels bad about himself and snaps at others. It is not fun.

I keep hoping it will cloud up and rain.

Rest in peace, Estelle Getty. Thank you for giving me the giggles when I was just a little kid and thank you for always making me smile and laugh and think.

You managed to do so much in your life...to help so many people. Though you are gone, your work will live forever.

It happened. Marcus ended our relationship today. It is amazing how simple question/statement combos can turn one's stomach. "Do you have a moment? I think we should talk." Those were the words that started it, and my simple "sure" allowed him to say, "Before I say anything, if you don't believe anything I told you, please believe that I think you are an amazing guy and that I love you. As cliche as it sounds, it is totally me, papa. It is my fault. I don't think I can be in a relationship right now. It is nothing that you did. I totally suck at these things. I guess I said before that I am not able to be a good boyfriend." It is true. He said it from the very beginning. We dated eachother 9 months before we were "officially" a couple.

I tried hard. I tried to explain that there is no such thing as a "good boyfriend" that "good" means nothing. That I dont want a "good boyfriend" that I want HIM. I explained that I dont need the labels. I dont need "boyfriend" or "relationship," but I need him. It didn't work, though, of course. The person doing the breaking up has the advantage in these things. They have had the luxury of time and contemplation. For them, the break up is a release, it is the goal. The person who is broken up with gets to be caught of guard--put into a state of shock. They have to lament the loss of a partner, of a relationship, and at the same time, they have to know that the other person wants to end the partnership...wants the relationship to end.

He told me today because he knows that I have made plans to come see him in Seattle next friday because I miss him and because it will be his birthday. He doesn't want me to come so far to be heartbroken. He didn't want to wait until fall because he was afraid it would have a negative impact on my first quarter of graduate school. I wish he'd waited. I mailed his bday card today. I keep going over the words that I wrote. They are all so true. I cant cancel the trip. I have paid for things that cant be refunded, and I cant explain the reason to my parents or to anyone else right now. I just cant do it. In the fall, I would have school and people to distract me. Here, at my parents', I am alone for almost 12 hours of the day in the middle of nowhere. Now, I will be accompanied by this horrible cloud of depression. I wish he'd waited. Maybe if he'd waited, my trip to Seattle would have changed his mind. Maybe in the fall things would go back to normal. sigh.

He said that he still wants to be friends. That things dont have to change. That he still loves me. That he would still love to hang out next weekend when I am in Seattle. I wish things wouldn't have to change, but they will. I will feel so awkward. My social anxiety is so bad these days. There are so few people I feel comfortable being around. What hurts the most is that I fear that I have lost one of the few people I could be myself around.

Oh, God, I just dont know what to do. I haven't slept next to anyone besides him in almost two years. I feel lost.

I dont know what to say. I dont know what to do. I feel crushed and broken and destroyed. Oh, God, I dont know what to do.

Jesse Helms, the long-serving (racist, homophobic, sexist) senator who once referred to the University of North Carolina system as the "University of Negroes and Communists," would die on the 4th of July, wouldn't he?

I keep meaning to post, but the 90 plus degree temperatures make it difficult for me to do anything. I get so flustered and crabby and stressed.

Life at my parents' has been okay, other than being a little lonely. I have been rather domestic. I spend my days cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, gardening, and watching the endless marathons of Law and Order that seem to be on every day. I just pulled a peach cobbler out of the oven. I am not a huge fan of peach cobbler, but my dad likes it. I am always afraid that I am a total disappointment to my father. He seems very stressed lately. I tried helping him and my brother build this fence on Sunday. Fence building in near 100 degrees is not fun, and fence building has never been my forte, but I think that it is good that I tried and did "help." Today they went to go pick up a load of hay. I knew that I would be absolutely useless there and would get stressed and probably yell or be yelled at. He didn't seem to mind that I didn't volunteer to help with the hay and even told me that I should go up with him and visit with my aunt GraFran.

Last night I had a wonderful dinner of Japanese food with starmiranda. An escape from the parents, air conditioning, sushi, yummy desserts, and one of my best friends make a great way to spend an evening. I miss Miss M. so much. She and I will definitely have to hang out more this summer.

The textbooks that I am teaching from will be coming in the mail in the next couple days. I will be using Re-Writing: How to Do Things with Texts and From Inquiry to Academic Writing.I have sort of skimmed both of them and know some of the essays in the one anthology. I need to read through them more carefully, though. Ugh.

I wish that exciting netflix movies were coming tomorrow, but my little brother keeps moving the worst movies ever up to the top of the queue. Tomorrow, he has Drillbit Taylor, Semi-Pro, and The Comebacks coming. Seriously, it is like a joke. Who would watch those movies? Hopefully he will let me get something good soon. I have my account paused for the summer to save some money, so I have to rely on my parents' netflix queue. It is so tempting to start mine up again just so I can get something good to watch.

Anyway, I should go. I hope that everyone is having a good week.

I like to post one of these type of memes every now and then. They are a good way to share with people and to catch up. mrsbrewer posted this one, so I decided that I would follow her example.

( meme under the cut )

Well, my spring grades are up. They are below.



My undergraduate GPA is 3.98. So close. If it wasn't for that A- in the Victorian Novel class, I would have a 4.0. Oh well. I am still happy with everything, and the A- was totally fair.

A long post. I am sorry.

The last couple weeks have been really busy. I managed to finish my final papers and projects without getting too stressed out. I almost always freak out and panic during finals week. I cannot believe that it is over. It still feels a little bit like a dream, and I just cannot believe that my undergraduate career is over.

On Friday, I had to go to the Outstanding Graduate Ceremony. It was nice. Each of the outstanding graduates was introduced by a faculty member that nominated them. Dr. Nancy Pagh introduced me and gave a very nice speech before presenting me with the award. She was kind enough to include a copy of the speech in a card that she gave me. The speech is below.

I met Zach in Winter quarter 2007 when he enrolled in an advanced composition course with me at Western. Zach stood out immediately--before students even turned in any work--because of his warmth, his sense of humor, his insightful questions, and his thoughtful contributions to our discussions. Zach is that "dream student"--the one who never dominates, but who makes a group of people feel like a community with his presence. when Zach began turning in writing, I discovered that no matter what the assignment, he always found ways to surprise his reader. His work was imaginative, original, witty, tender, honest, and intelligent in a way that is both impressive and pleasurable. Although I think most teachers and most of Zach's peers would tell you that he is a modest person, intellectually Zach is fierce. And I am so proud that Zach will be bringing these abilities back to Western's English Department this Fall, when he joins the faculty as a teaching assistant and a graduate student.

Professor Lysa Rivera, Zach's Faculty Mentor, adds these last remarks:

"I know I speak for so many other faculty members when I say it has been a pleasure to work with Zach, whose humility in the classroom is as remarkable as his talent on the page. His writing is at once incisive and graceful, reflecting the intellectual maturity and theoretical refinement of a student far more advanced in years. I have no doubt Zach will continue to reap awards and accolades as he makes his way through graduate school and beyond. Western is lucky to have him for another two years!"

It was a nice night. I am still so shocked that I was chosen, though. I felt sort of undeserving among the other students who had all done so many wonderful and impressive things. After the award ceremony, there was a wine and dessert reception. I didn't stay there too long, but it was still fun.

Yesterday was graduation, and I survived it. I was really nervous and tense, and I was probably sort of grouchy and snappy with my parents. I hope that I wasn't too terrible. It was an absolutely beautiful day in Bellingham for graduation. It was so nice to see a bunch of friends at graduation who were also graduating. I was escorted by Lysa Rivera in the procession and across the stage when I was handed my degree cover, and that was fun. The faculty look so cool in their academic attire. Academic processions always remind me of Jude the Obscure. hehe. I am such a nerd. My friend Joey came up, and that was really nice. It was good to see him. Though graduation lasts a long time, the time went by fairly fast. I hate having my picture taken, but a couple pictures from graduation are below.

Joey and I


My Parents and I


After graduation, my parents, Joey, and I went out for Thai food, and then after Joey left, my parents and I went to Whatcom Falls Park and walked around for a while. After that, we drove Chuckanut Drive and went out for milkshakes. It was a a lot of fun.

The parents left this morning at 5:30am after I gave dad his Father's Day present. I hope they had a safe drive back home. I slept in after they left, and that was very nice. I have just been sort of relaxing all day. I miss marcusitio so much. It will be hard to be apart this summer.

Speaking of Marcus, he has two pieces that will be published in The World's Muse, a literary journal published by Western Washington University. The journal publishes creative and academic work that is written in languages other than English. One of his poem's won second place in the poetry category, and an essay of his on The Sea Inside won third prize in that category. The awards come with some cash prizes, and I think that is awesome. I am so proud of my brilliant boyfriend.

I am incredibly behind on livejournal. I am sorry about that.