Have a Merry Hawkeye Christmas!
Love,
Thomas
Archive for December, 2006
We bought a car today. See:
I bet you didn’t even know we were looking for a car (unless you are my parents who we called approximately 33,000 times today).
It’s a long story involving no heat and a blown gasket, but the result is a 2005 Pontiac Vibe with 22,000 miles on it. We had been fantasizing about the Toyota Matrix, and got a tip from friends that the Vibe is actually made in a Toyota factory and is the exact same car except that it’s a little cheaper, so we got a good deal. Just in time to drive to Philly next weekend–hooray!
I had a weird dream last night. Since I hardly ever remember my dreams (or even that I had any dreams in the first place), I thought that perhaps it was blogworthy.
In the dream I was at my parents’ home in the small town in Iowa where I grew up. This town is predominantly Catholic, and my family (in real life and in this dream) attended a Catholic church. But in the dream, for some reason I had been asked to play piano at a service at an Evangelical church. (I don’t think there is really even an Evangelical church in the town, but whatever.)
I had agreed to play, and didn’t feel very worried about it, until I got there and remembered that I can’t actually play the piano very well. So all of a sudden there were all of these people waiting for me and someone put the music in front of me, and I looked at it and realized I couldn’t play it. I tried, and sort of made it through the song, but it was pitiful–lots of one-handed plunking of the melody, no chords, no harmony, and lots of missed notes.
Now, here’s the thing. My mom is a fantastic pianist and a piano teacher, so everyone in the dream assumed that I must be a decent pianist, too. But I’m not. Never have been. I dutifully took piano lessons for eight years, and got to the point where I could play intermediate-level pieces serviceably, IF I had lots of time to learn and practice them first. But I never could sight-read, and I definitely couldn’t improvise. And for all practical purposes, I quit playing the piano thirteen years ago or something like that.
Nevertheless,the dream went on through the entire (long) service, with everyone staring at me and whispering to each other about how surprisingly bad I was. I discovered that not only was I supposed to play the piano, but I was supposed to lead the singing at the same time, and the musical tastes of the congregation seemed to be of the Southern Baptist variety–lots of improvisation, vocal melisma, etc. None of which I was able to do. I suffered through several more songs, but finally someone came out of the congregation to take over (I didn’t know who she was, but she did a good job), and I sat uncomfortably behind her.
Weird, huh? I wonder why my subconscious was thinking about piano. I’m not feeling particularly inadequate about anything right now (I’ve definitely felt worse about my dissertation in the past few months than I do right now, which is not to say that I think it’s great, but whatever).
The thing that’s funny about it, is that IF this had happened in real life, it would have gone pretty much exactly the same way as it did in the dream. The dream wasn’t unrealistic in any way, except that I probably wouldn’t have agreed to play piano in public in the first place.
Any ideas on what this means?
The tush-up sleepers, that is:
The sleeping has gotten back to normal, at least in the sense that it happens for long stretches again. We still put him down on his back, as per doctors’ instructions, but he immediately flips over, scrunches up his legs, and sticks his thumb in his mouth.
What is particularly adorable, as of late, is the way he crosses his feet:
The picture’s not that good, and it’s so much cuter in person anyway, but imagine how sweet it is to walk into his room and see his tush in the air and his little feet crossed just so…
A few weeks ago, I graded another batch of Shakespeare exams (see here and here for previous installments in this series) for Prof. K, whom I’ve written about here. As always,the pressures of time, space, lack of sleep, and general midterm stress made for some pretty amusing reading. So, I submit to you the gems I uncovered.
First, some interesting new words (I solicit your definitions for them):
- exasberated
- intelegent
- crudgle
- quarky
- splender (I wondered, splender than what?)
And now, some pearls of wisdom from the essays:
There were several points where students revealed a little bit too much about how and how much they studied for this exam, particularly on the section where they had to identify passages:
- “I don’t remember which sonnet this is, and I’m not sure a number is a good name for a sonnet anyway.” Fair enough, I guess, but maybe you should keep your criticism of Shakespeare’s titles to yourself. And while you’re at it, don’t draw attention to the fact that you didn’t pay attention to the numbering.
- “As this is the only 14-line passage in the text, it must be one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.” Thank you, Captain Obvious. Excellent (and transparent) use of the process of elimination.
Then there were comments in which the students made interesting connections between Shakespeare’s texts and their own lives:
- Here’s a conclusion to an essay about images of time in the sonnets: “In his sonnets, time passes and things change, much like my allowance to keep writing this miniature essay.”
- In response to a question about how and why Shakespeare incorporates both comedic and serious elements into his plays: “Mostly, Shakespeare uses both of these devices to entertain the audience. Without seriousness, no plot would get done, however, without comedy the audience would probably go to sleep.” Have a little trouble getting into the tragedies, do you?
Finally, here are some that defy categorization, but are pretty funny:
- I think this had something to do with comedy and seriousness also, though I’m not totally sure what’s going on, to tell the truth: “Mercutio is a lightning rod for blame because it is love of a pleutonic nature that overpowers [Romeo's] heterosexual love for Juliet. This is proof that Shakespeare believes Pleutonic love is everlasting, thus making Mercutio and Romeo tied together in eternity, not Romeo and Juliet.” ??!?!
- Here’s one in response to a question about Shakespeare’s use of metaphor in a particular sonnet: “There is eleborate use of metaphor in describing the fall of earthly monuments, as well as personification of the monuments, and of “praise”, “war”, and the object of the sonnet herself (who is a person, so that makes sense).” Whoa, dude, thanks for the parenthetical because I might have missed the way deep point you were making. Personification of a person! Brilliant!
- And last but not least, my favorite: “Bottom displays the fact that he is not self-aware at times and uses dramatic irony.” Wow. Pretty impressive that Bottom is able to overcome his complete lack of self-awareness in order to employ a highly sophisticated literary technique! Go Bottom!
