I spent a fair amount of my evening searching the house for a bottle of super glue, because I know I have a bottle of some sort of glue called E-6000 or something like that somewhere in this house.
I need this glue for several reasons, but the biggest is for the window of the Monte Carlo. Without going into shameful details, let's just say that what I need it for involves handles and suction cups, and leave it at that.
Anyway, in search of this glue (which I, eventually, found), I was looking through my big metal file cabinet where I tend to store my more interesting and/or important things, when I came across something strange. Or, at least, something forgotten.
It was a camera. A digital video camera.
I will say that I had long forgotten that this camera existed; the former girlfriend's mother bought it for us for Christmas several years ago off Woot, long enough ago that we were living in Missouri at the time, and neither of us could get it to work correctly with our computers. It also sucked its 2 AA batteries dry within about five minutes of use, and didn't come with a wall plug. Because of this, it sat on tables and desks for a long period of time, and then upon moving to Kansas it somehow got stuck in with all of my "electronics that may prove useful eventually but currently aren't" box o' stuff. The former girlfriend would later buy a really nice digital camera fairly cheaply, I got her old 3.2 megapixel camera, and the video camera was quickly forgotten.
I pulled it out of my file cabinet and examined it like a caveman would examine a primitive tool. I knew it wouldn't be a great camera, but I figured messing around with it wouldn't hurt. I took a one-minute-long test video of the cats, and watched it play back. That in itself was enough to run through a set of cheap batteries, completely. I searched around my room until I found the batteries I purchase specifically for my cameras (high-end Energizer lithium ones), and was loading them into the camera when I noticed something.
The camera has an SD slot. I have spare SD cards.
I slid one of the SD cards into the camera with the new batteries, and immediately I had full battery life and two hours' worth of full video capability. Hm. This could be interesting.
I took a four-minute video of me and the cats wandering about the house, this time making it a good, solid test. Upon playback on my computer (oh, I so love the fact that my PC has a front-loading SD slot), most of the video is grainy and dark. Clearly, 2AM in my house is not the best time to take video, even in my Man Cave. But, in the more well-lit rooms (such as the bathroom) it ended up taking decent video.
Hmmm, I thought. It's finals week. The department is very, very well-lit. I'd love to get some video of all of us around the school.
I have a very small photographic record of my graduate school education, and very few photos have been taken of me as a graduate student or with my friends. Aside from an embarrassing photo of Rae in her office (freely viewable on Facebook, by the way) and a few pictures of me with Jay and/or the former girlfriend, not a lot of recent pictures of me exist, and aside from a poetry reading the library filmed last spring, no video of me exists at all. Call it my sense of sentimentality kicking in, but I'd like to get at least some video footage of my friends while I'm here in graduate school, if only to watch said footage many years from now (probably while stinking drunk) to say something along the lines of a slurred "Those were the daysh. I mish those peoples."
Please note: while I am a nostalgic person (the former girlfriend always said that I was living in the '80s, or sometimes '70s, due to my love of all things retro), I am rarely a sentimental one. I don't generally keep collections of things simply because of sentimental value, with one of my few exceptions being my collection of old, sometimes falling apart t-shirts that I've had since middle school (and still wear). I recycle old papers and the like, and I tend to throw away -- or donate to various charities -- anything I don't need after a while, usually once or twice a year. But videos and pictures of my friends from this period of my life? Those are things I want, things I want to hold on to. Despite the sheer amount of work and bullshit involved at times, graduate school has been a very big, exciting, and important part of my life, and I want to record it. I want to remember it. I want to be able to focus on the good parts of it when it's all said and done.
Yes, of course, I could've been doing this already; I could have taken $150 a year or so ago, when I had that much money to spare, and purchased one of those FlipHD cameras or something like that, but the thought never occurred to me. A lot of thoughts don't occur to me when I'm bogged down with as much work as I am on a regular basis.
Now that I'm poor, of course, I don't have that money to spare. I was paid today, for example, and more than half my paycheck went directly to bills. More of it will go to this week's shopping when I go out tomorrow, which is okay only because my mother told me she'd be dropping my birthday/Christmas money into my account tomorrow.
But I digress.
So, on Monday, I'm going to try to get some video of some of my friends in the department (those who don't mind being filmed/interviewed, anyway), and maybe a professor or two. I do have several professors who adore me who would more than likely submit to a few questions or short video sessions. I just want to document something, you know? Even if some of them, and some of my friends, are already gone for the semester, getting anything would be better than nothing. Monday is video day, for lack of a better way to put it.
Anyway, in other news, I have accomplished relatively little this weekend. It is almost 3AM on Saturday morning, and I have barely touched anything school-related. When I say "school-related," I really mean "grading my students' papers." I have about twenty of them left (give or take), and while they won't take too long, I intend to get them done in the afternoon so that I'm not stuck rushing through them on Monday morning before the exam, calculating points and totaling grades before said exam.
By the way, that's why I make sure I have all of my students' work graded every semester before the final exam takes place -- it means I don't have to calculate points. I tally up what they have out of the 900 available points in the class going into the exam, and then add the exam score to it to get their percentage. There's 1000 points total in the class. This means, after their exam score is added on, if they have 875/1000, their final grade in the class is an 87.5%, which I'd round up to an 88% B+. Pretty simple. Saves a ton of time. Getting all of that done beforehand makes my final grade calculations take about ten minutes total.
Like I said, I'm learning things about being a teacher. Valuable, time-saving important things. The irony in this, as I haven't done anything this weekend thus far, is not lost on me, and is in fact staggering.
I didn't mention in my previous post about what the final exam for the Middle Eastern/Asian Lit class will actually entail. It includes six questions, split into three parts. We have to write three essays, picking one question from each part to answer. This was expected, pretty much, except for the fact that we don't exactly get to pick which books we'd like to write on. We've read five books between midterms and now, as I mentioned before -- the first section deals with one of those books, the second section deals with Anil's Ghost (meaning, even though I disliked the book and didn't finish it, there's no way I can get out of writing an essay about it,) and the third section we can pick from one of two books. The book I wanted to write about the most -- Bharati Mukherjee's The Holder of the World -- was left off the exam entirely, and we don't even have the option of writing about it. Instead, we're forced to write about Anil's Ghost. Whether we want to or not. Our professor must really love Michael Ondaatje. It may be the most recently-published book we've read this semester, but Ondaatje's much better at poetry, in my opinion. The novel is fucking dull. But then again, that's just me, and just my tastes.
So, between Monday and Thursday night, I'll be taking notes in the books and crafting some sort of study guide for the exam, a study guide which I can basically memorize in order to spit it back out on the page. The rules of the exam are that we can use our laptops to type up the exam in-class, and that we can use our books and use any notes we've written in our books, but we can't use our class notes or the internet. As my laptop is unable to pick up a wireless signal anywhere in the building with its (very) weak wifi card, I don't have to worry about the internet thing anyway. In my office it's always hardwired into the wall, because that's the only way I can get network access on campus.
Studying for all of these exams has become more of a time-sink than anything else, really. I'm used to said professor and these types of exams at this point; what takes the most time is the crafting of notes and talking points inside my books, and the thought processes that go into structuring a study guide and then memorizing it enough to write a strong, well-planned-out essay for each question. I always do exceedingly well on his exams, but that's only because I invest so much time into the work involved for studying for them. Again, I can do this because I have no social life to speak of, and live 20 miles north of all of my friends.
The car needs air in its tires again, especially the back left one. I think that's the one which seems to be most "worn." I've pumped it up twice this semester already, but it slowly begins losing tire pressure over time and sags quite a bit after a while. It's nowhere near flat, of course, but it does get lower than the others. I always try to keep them all properly inflated; if I don't, not only will it raise my risk for a blowout, but it'll kill my gas mileage and mess with the way the car handles, obviously. Both of those are rather important things, as you may have guessed, especially with bad weather right around the corner. Luckily, I won't have to drive the car a lot over the winter break unless I choose to, and I'll be lucky enough not to have to change the oil for another 300-400 miles or so even after the semester ends.
I do, at some point, want to make a trip over to Hutchinson to the mall and to Target, though that may wait until well after Christmas, and well after all of my financial obligations are taken care of. Keep in mind that I have an extra expense of about $300 this month due to my car insurance coming due again. This is another reason I'm glad my parents are dropping birthday/Christmas money directly into my bank account very soon.
In other news, I have been passively wooing a girl over the past few weeks. This probably doesn't come as a huge surprise to most of you who are close with me in real life (and not just here on the blog), as I've talked about her in conversations before, usually in hushed tones for fear of jinxing things. When I say "a girl," I sort of mean it; she's young. Younger than the former girlfriend, by several years, and I'll leave it at that. She's an undergraduate student (though, thankfully, not one of mine, or even a former student of mine, because that would be weird). She's the sister of one of my good friends and she's an adult, and that's all anyone really needs to know right now. I am, as I've said before about many situations, cautiously optimistic.
When I say passively wooing, I also mean just that. It's a very passive thing. I've become old and wise, and have learned to expect (nor offer) nothing until we get to know each other better, which is what I've slowly been trying to do as of late. We spent a few hours together in my office on Wednesday afternoon, just hanging out and talking. Her sister thinks we're "a perfect match," despite the age difference, though I don't know the girl well enough yet to gauge what she actually thinks. I'm also not going to ask, as we're just starting to get to know each other better (obviously). It's an interesting situation, that's for sure, and I'm treading lightly. I greatly respect the girl's sister, as she's been a good friend to me and has encouraged me, at least, in my endeavor of wooing. My luck with women, however, is historically bad -- the former girlfriend being the only exception (well, until the end) -- so I have to tread even lighter than usual. It's not about being commitment-phobic or anything along those lines; I'm keeping it very cordial, very chaste to prevent myself from being an idiot and screwing everything up.
Luckily, as far as I know, she doesn't read this blog. As far as I know.
If nothing comes of it, that's fine; as I've mentioned before, repeatedly, it's not like I have the money to support a full-fledged dating relationship again anytime soon, though in the spring I will have the time. If something does come out of it, obviously that would be very, very nice. I already know that if a relationship of any sort blossoms, things will move very slowly, and I am prepared for that.
I will say, however, that this girl has some of the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen; they're almost hypnotic. I'd follow those eyes anywhere.
She's also a drummer. And I play guitar. What wonderful music we could make.
Ahem. Anyway.
Once the day breaks and I crawl out of bed sometime in the mid-afternoon hours, I'll be spending my time grading and making a run to Walmart for necessities, getting air in my tires at the gas station, etc. In the meantime, however, it is after 4AM and I need to get some sleep. I've been awake for 20 hours or so now -- uncharacteristic of me for a weekend, when I don't have to be awake any longer than necessary.
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