happy happy birthday to my favorite flight attendent nee goddess, captn_midnight, and the effervescent and beautiful literary wunderkind, jewelbox21!! hope your days have been teh awesome!!

has anyone else noticed the "my lj" dashboard-type thing? i noticed it today, which is how i knew about amy's birthday. i saw it a week ago, but had no idea about that. a nice feature.

also, i am really enjoying the new madonna record. i've been listening to madonna for a good part of the day. new and old. pop goodness.

i'm posting this mostly so i can show off my new lj icon, which cracks me the fuck up.

happy birthday to the wonderfully awesome lovessweetexile!! hope you have had a great day full of good things. *mwah* i miss you!

happy happy birthday, misskitty2!! hope it is a glorious day! :)

an aside about the weekend: i went downstairs on saturday morning to have a smoke in front of the crappy days inn. when i got in the elevator, i saw a dude that was clearly a musician. i got downstairs and there was a van parked outside and they were loading up. then ben lee walked out of the hotel and asked his bandmates a question, then got into the van. i saw him for about a minute. i would have said, "i love you ben lee," but i was too tired to think of that quickly enough and he was gone before i knew it.

at any rate, he is very very cute. and i instantly thought of you, c_land. my next thought was, "why the hell was he staying at this shitty hotel??" ha!

of course, i'm scrambling to finish a paper that's due at 6:30. i'm trying to wake up enough to write.

it dawned on me the other day, with the help of the woxy boards, that "coin-operated boy" by dresden dolls was mostly about a girl and her vibrator. sweet.

this week is busy between school and work. going to chicago on friday evening for the iso midwestern conference. should be a good time.

i'm ready for this quarter to be over.

it's raining. for some reason, i don't mind it today.

ohmygosh. i totally forgot! happy happy birthday to thatabbygrrl!! (i'm glad it's still your birthday on the west coast!) i hope your day was splenderific and that you are feeling good. the world is so much better 'cos you're in it. *mwah*

it is way, way too hot for the end of september. 87 degrees! i was dripping with sweat by the time i got to sitwell's. maybe i should have taken the bus instead of walking down clifton ave from school.

my feminist theory class was pretty good. the prof is carribean, i think, and she has the most listenable voice i've heard. (well, besides mister p.) there are a couple of familiar faces from classes i took the last two quarters, meaghan and ohmyican'trememberhernamenow, so that was comforting. the latter does a poetry night called lyrical insurrection and i guess it's been moved closer to campus. (wanna go sometime, diddy_wah_diddy? i hear it's really cool.)

there were about three people who raised their hands when the prof asked if there were people who hadn't taken the pre-reqs, intro to women's studies and feminist critical readings. ouch. if i were them, i would drop the class. (and besides, why would you pick a 400-level class out of the learning opportunities if you just needed an elective? it's understandable for intro, but this is a class that's almost graduate level work.) one chick seemed especially disoriented and not-that-bright and hadn't taken either class and was a bit overwhelmed with the syllabus. THEN when we had to pick a presentation topic, she picked bloody existential feminism. uh WHY? that particular presentation is going to hurt, assuming she doesn't drop the class. *praying to random deities*

i feel like a snob for writing the above, but i really just don't understand why you'd ignore the pre-reqs in the course description and take it anyway. i walked into the class knowing that there would be a ton of reading and writing and discussion and that it was going to be a more challenging class. and if were in their shoes, without the basics taught in intro (intersections of race/class/gender, history of first and second wave feminism, very basic gender theory, blahblahblah), i think i would drop it immediately and find something else. but the panic on some of those faces... i swear, every quarter there are two or three people who take a WS class thinking it will be an easy A and find out quickly that there's much more to it. and i admit, i like to gloat about my grades and comprehension. so nyah. i take a lot of umbrage to the idea that WS classes are easy. even intro can be rather challenging, given the right prof. and if you're dumb enough to take a class that has TWO pre-reqs and you haven't taken either, well, you deserve what you get. (well, unless you have permission from the prof and/or some working knowledge of the subject matter. then it's not so bad. but these people strike me as the "easy A" people.)

we have a couple of men in the class. one is younger and seems okay. the other is an older guy. he looks like he could be someone's grandfather. it will be interesting to see what he brings to the table. there, that should balance my snarkiness above. i also like the prof's way of viewing the syllabus as a contract that we all agree upon and asking us to "approve" each section. i've encountered that method of beginning a course and if i ever teach, that's what i will do.

i returned two books i bought mistakenly and got $71 back, so that will cover the amazon order i placed last night with ten extra. hurrah!

the beginning of this song is so gorgeous. nothing from peter today. hmm. that's kind of strange. hope he's okay. he sent me an email to thank me for the webtastic greeting and said it was definitely the nicest thing that's happened today. apparently, this week is lousy for him. poor dude. i'm sure he's looking forward to getting away for two weeks.

i am incredibly babble-y today. pardon me. i'm going to take care of a couple of ISO matters, then do some reading before the meeting. woohoo! my first reading of the year!! (what is wrong with me??)

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