I submitted my applications for the fall semester at Dawson on Tuesday.

Now I�m all churned up again about �Will they like me?� and �What will I do if I�m called for an interview?� and �What will I do if I don�t get called for an interview?�. I checked the contract dates for the summer job postings again; they start in mid to late June, so I might still get a call. The fall semester begins the third week of August, with the deadline for submitting applications being tomorrow, so who can say when those interviews will be conducted?

I want this job. A lot. I need a severe change. I require mental stimulation again. I can feel my spirit straining to return to the academic world once more.

Then I read Ceri�s post on her union being broken.

Teachers are unionized. I�ve never been a part of a union before. I�m one of those people who believes that teachers and nurses don�t get paid enough. Would I stand up for that belief? I�ve never had to test myself like that before.

For those of you keeping track: MLG fixed my laptop�s modem. What would I do without him? (Other than lack for a serious SW dealer and someone to look at me somewhat sternly yet invitingly and say, “You know that if you ever need to talk…”)

Snow. They’re calling for snow. Up to five centimeters of the stuff.

It’s May, for crying out loud. May!

Comment dated May 13, 2002, 2:20 pm:
Curse you, foul temptress! Must….resist….beautiful…saxophone…

At three-thirty, Ceri had called me to tell me she’d broken down and gone to her music store to rent a shiny new Yamaha sax.

Thank you, honoured ones and gentlebeasts, thank you. I’ll be here all week.

That “Do it” wasn’t me whispering temptation in your ear specifically, Ceri… I was voicing that seductive siren’s call to everyone who had ever considered holding a musical instrument, or who had buried their clarinets or guitars in their closets at home and forgotten about them. You just heard and responded to it a little more immediately, that’s all.

Everyone needs more music in their lives.

I love BlogSnob. It’s that box to the left where there’s a different link and catch-phrase each time you pull up my page. Basically it’s a database of hundreds of blogs, and you put the random link script on your own page in return for the boon of being part of the mass of random blogs which can appear on someone else’s page in a similar link box. Increases exposure, traffic, and incites cool networking.

Anyway, I’ve discovered a couple of really fantastic blogs this way, but the last one tops ’em all. Check out Shakespeare Spun, a blog maintained by Clara, a.k.a. Poppy (bonus points to the theatrical types who know where the nickname is from!), a Bard-inclined sixteen-year-old who reminds me way, way too much of myself. Except I didn’t direct at sixteen. Heck, still haven’t; it’s just not one of my Things To Do Before I Die. Anyway, Clara’s one of those people I’d love to sit down with in a small coffee shop with a pile of books and our laptops, chat for a while, read a bit, write a bit, get a fresh cappuccino, chat…

The Internet holds so much crap, so much superficial trivia, very little in-depth information, and the souls of bloggers bared like diamonds in the rough for people to stumble across. Clara revives my hopes for the future.

It’s dark and dreary. I want it to rain. No, I mean really rain. If it rains then the husband comes home from the terraforming he does, and we get to go on a recon mission for the top-secret costume bits we need instead. (New phrase: “My husband is a terraforming engineer.” We like it and intend to use it until a better one comes along.) I will invoke rain by playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Note in my in-box this morning: “Oh, and happy mother’s day, cat-mama!” Very kind. My own little furry bratlings woke us up at an insane hour of the a.m. and didn’t care a smidgen about it. The flowers I got were from my in-laws’ garden.

On the menu today: Write. Correct homework and half-complete exams. Review Greco-Roman culture and religion for my lecture tonight. I just discovered two books on my shelves that I didn’t know I had: one on Greek art, and one on Roman art and architecture. Well, all right, I’m sure I knew at one point, but after several moves I had forgotten I owned them.

CURRENTLY READING:
Well, it’s another currently read-past-tense, actually. I just finished the new David Lodge book Thinks… and once again I’m all fired up about writing. Lodge tends to write what he knows – authors and professors – and I associate him with my thesis, so I’m excited about sitting down and producing text once more. Eventually readable, even. Possibly even publishable.

I go through stages where I know I’m good, then long stages where I look at the book industry I work in and think that it’s all futile anyway. Then I remember the thrill of idly flipping through the electronic card catalogue at the university and finding my thesis in not one, but three places. It’s real. It exists. It’s, well, good.

I also go through waves of fiction versus academic analysis. When I wrote for the local Pagan journal I reviewed books with a magical element to them, looked at the systems, the effects, the moral issues and so forth. It was a baby exercise, but it kept me sort of in form. Now I’m seriously considering doing something a little more serious and sending it out with a query to journals. You never know.

I woke up this morning with an overwhelming craving for oatmeal cookies. Not just any oatmeal cookies, but the warm, soft-but-crunchy-on-the-rim, size-of-bread-and-butter-plates oatmeal cookies I used to get before homeroom down in my high school cafeteria.

I have no idea where it came from. It was so strong, though, that I detoured and went to the grocery store across from work, looking vainly for something similar. They had bakery oatmeal cookies, but they were too small and looked too hard. So I bought bakery chocolate chunk cookies instead. Fabulous – you can actually taste the sugar and butter – but I’m still a bit wistful.

I’m also dying for sushi, but I bought a lasagna for lunch instead.

Let’s see if I can get through my eleven-hour shift from hell today without a Coke. I had a salad for lunch yesteray and felt virtuous, but then realised at the close fo the day that I’d had two Cokes somehow as well. I go for days without one, then I have two in one day? Eh. No man can plumb the depths of my food cravings (and by man I mean the all-inclusive species thing, not just the gender). I certainly can’t.

The Witch ≠ User of Technology rule that governs my life strikes again. I tried to connect to the Internet with my laptop and naturally, I’m getting modem errors. This happened last time I changed computers, and when I changed ISPs too.

There’s an oddball theory that runs around which I trip across every once in a while that suggests people who use energy in other ways have difficulty matching their energy to the kind of energies we use in our modern households. This includes things like lightbulbs, toaster ovens, VCRs, and computers.

For some people (read: technopagans) that’s patently ridiculous. For others (read: my husband), it’s not so far off the mark. He can’t even wear a watch without killing it. (Come to think of it, neither can my mother.) It’s got to be something about the electromagnetic field that everyone has (which is simply a product of being a biological machine); exactly what, though, I have no clue.

None of which explains my ability to use computers pretty decently, just not when it comes to connecting to the World Wide Web.

If anyone makes a crack about all things within the universe being a part of the Web anyway, I’ll deck ’em.