Daily Newsie

A renegade ice storm swept the region this morning, prompting all our patients to cancel their appointments. In the ensuing boredom, my boss and I decided to clean house, throwing away a cubic buttload of spine-related fol-de-rol in the process. I just ventured outside to chuck a bag full of shredded paper into the garbage can, and had to laugh when I saw a pelvis and attached spine (fake, I think) jutting up from the piles of assorted crap.

I hope the garbage man sees it and wonders what in the name of all that is holy is going on inside unassuming suite number eight. He probably won’t, but I can chuckle to myself at the possibility, right?

Last night, in an effort to combat my professor’s tendency to let people ramble on, I talked about the following topics: quiescently frozen confections, homeless kids, George Orwell’s 1984, how Popsicles from my native Pennsylvania rock so much harder than Popsicles from Kentucky, and the media. OK, so the last one wasn’t such a stretch, but it was still random enough to make me happy. And you know what? Class flew by. It was insane.

I could be on to something here. Time to brush up on my minutiae.

(Speaking of minutiae, can we discuss my current obsession with “Go Now” by the Moody Blues? I don’t even like the Moody Blues. Seriously, I just looked at their greatest hits album, and aside from “Go Now,” the only one I’ve ever even heard of is “Your Wildest Dreams.” Weird.)

* I no longer enjoy two of my three classes, since the professors see nothing wrong in letting students share stories about their own experiences until suddenly we’re talking about how my university cut its men’s soccer program when we’re supposed to be talking about the three periods (or whatever they’re called) of organizational rhetoric. I appreciate a good anecdote as much as the next person, but when people blather on and on about “this one time? at band camp?” it makes me a little stabby.

* Planning a wedding is not fun — at least not when you’re a full-time graduate student with a full-time job — and I don’t want to do it anymore. My best friend-slash-maid of honor has graciously offered to take a load off my back, as it were, but I can’t think of a darn thing for her to do except call the bakery with the nasty workers (all I wanted were some cupcakes, people) and have words with them. Is it pathetic that I’m already anticipating Spring Break and it’s only week four of this semester?

* My student loan company says they sent the check for this semester to my university three weeks ago. My university says, “Oh, no, they di’int!” If this isn’t resolved within two weeks, they’re canceling all my classes and I’m going to go crawl into a cave and refuse to come out until everyone is being more reasonable.

Will the semester get any better? Will the cupcake people get their comeuppance? Will DailyNewsie’s educational institution pull its metaphorical head from its rear? Stay tuned for the answers to these questions and more!

(I won’t be so harried next time — promise.)

Remember when I blogged about the kid who made fun of me in seventh grade? Every year around this time, I remember something else he did to torment me and I wish all over again that he would fall into a vat of cow manure (or “manerr,” if you wish): To further exploit my dorkiness for his own comedic benefit, he said to me, in front of the entire class, “I bet you don’t even know who’s playing in the SuperBowl this year.”

He was right — I didn’t. It wasn’t a big deal to me up until that point, but as my fellow students waited with bated breath to laugh at me, suddenly it was. A friend tried to pantomime the answer behind his back — Wikipedia says it was the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills — but I couldn’t answer in time to prevent his mocking. He probably followed it up with something derogatory about farms or braces or 4-H and weaseled back to his cronies to have some company while he laughed at my expense, but I can’t really remember anything other than the unrelenting urge to kick his teeth in.

I can’t believe I still think about this stuff. Maybe I need some sort of intervention in which I can confront him, the girl who pointed out (in front of my fifth-grade crush) that I was still flat as a board, and the gaggle of girls in sixth grade who laughed at everything I said and did. Is Maury Povich still on the air? Better yet, does anyone have a big vat of manerr?

Stacie asked about my classes a few days (weeks?) ago, so without further ado I give you DailyNewsie’s Three Classes of Awesome, otherwise known as Applied Organizational Communication, Organizational Rhetoric and Family Communication. And, yes, it is Friday night, and yes, I am contemplating doing some homework so I don’t spend all weekend with my nose in textbooks, so I’m hoping that writing about my classes will dull the urge to be a responsible student.

Applied Org Comm (Tuesday night) is my least favorite of the three courses because the final project is a case study, and does it look like I have time to do a case study? The good part is that I’ve maintained a great relationship with our local police chief and I’m fairly certain he’ll let me have the run of the police department for this project. I still know a good deal of the police officers, too, so this might end up being my favorite project — but, for now, I shall sulk. The class itself isn’t so bad — there isn’t too much to read, the professor likes to use clips from “The Office” to illustrate her points, and my friend S sits next to me — but my dread for the final project tends to lend a deathly pallor to Tuesday nights.

Org Rhetoric (Wednesday night) is taught by my favorite communication professor ever, who also taught my communication theory class in my first semester as a graduate student. She’s funny and smart, and doesn’t want to have class until 8:15 p.m. any more than we do. The aforementioned friend S is in this class along with J, who giggles a lot and so I like her. The readings are interesting (surprisingly), and I find myself having a lot to add to the conversation. I like when that happens.

Family Communication (Thursday night) may just be my favorite class, mostly because a whole heap of my friends are in it with me. I have a lot to add to that class, too, especially as my thesis (as it stands now) will be in the area of family communication — specifically, the changes in communication between mothers and daughters when the mother is diagnosed with cancer. This last week, we were told to write down the most significant events in our families’ histories (my birth, of course, was huge), and I totally put down the time my little brother said a bad word and we were banned from watching “The Simpsons” for several years. (I didn’t know the professor was planning to collect our papers.) I like talking about my family, so I think I’m going to like this class, although I’m not sure the professor likes me because J and I got the giggles toward the end of class and could hardly breathe.

All in all, this semester should be a refreshing change of pace from the bi-term classes of yesteryear. I’m looking forward to it, and also to inching nine credits closer to graduation. May 2009, here I come!