Retold

I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure it would all work out and now that it has, I have something exciting to share.  Pardon the upbeat tone of this entry, I’m still feeling pretty positive.  I’m sure I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled cynicism in two shakes, but for now, I’m happy.  So what’s my news?  Yesterday, I signed up for my first grad class!  I’m still an undergraduate until December, but when a student is within 12 hours of graduation, with a GPA of 3+ on the last 60 hours of coursework, they’re eligible to sign up for up to 9 hours of graduate coursework.

Initially, before the semester started, I had decided against signing up for graduate work in my last semester.  I wanted to make sure to give myself every possible chance at success as I approach graduation.  The last thing I need is to mess this up and be stuck in undergraduate studies until I need wrinkle creams or something (jokes on me, I guess, since I already need wrinkle creams, but I digress).  At that point, I went ahead and signed up for my last 10 hours of undergraduate work and was happy with my choice to wait for grad classes until I was a graduate student.

Then, yesterday, I found out that there’re some rules in the English department about signing up for more than 6 hours of coursework until a student has taken “Methods of Bibliography and Research Analysis” (Engl 598).  It makes sense, I thought, since the Bib and Research class is the foundation for all of the coursework for thesis based graduate students.  Unfortunately, Bib and Research is only offered in the fall, which means in the spring I would have only been eligible to register for 6 hours, which would have made me ineligible for a graduate assistantship, as one must take 9 hours of course work to be eligible for the GA position.  I want to be a GA when I go to grad school, I’ll even apply for it though the GA position usually begins in the Fall semester.  So, my only really good option was to sign up for Bib & Research this semester, while I’m still an undergrad, bumping my course load to 13 credit hours.  I can handle that!

So, after lunch yesterday, it was like flight of the bumble bee!  I went to the English department and asked them how to proceed, they weren’t sure, but told me to talk to the College of Graduate Studies.  I walked across campus, as parking is a nightmare, and thankfully the grad office was able to help me.  Yesterday was the last day of late registration, too, which had been something I hadn’t known.  I only had a few hours left, but I met the requirements for registration for a grad class as an undergrad, so the dean of graduate studies, Dr. Jones, signed my form and I was off to registration.  They registered me!  Then, it was off to Financial Aid, for two reasons.  First, I had to see if they could fund the remainder of my grant since I’d signed up for more hours.  Second, we needed a book loan to pay for textbooks.

In financial aid, I ran into some issues.  The people that work in the financial aid office at my school are clueless in a way I cannot begin to express with words.  You would have to experience these people to understand.  I asked them about my grant and I got mixed answers.  The prevailing state was clear confusion.  One of them told me that I might lose my grant because it was a grad class.  When I asked her what could be done, she looked me right in the face and said, “you should drop the grad class.”  I almost strangled her!  No way was I dropping it.  Luckily, she was wrong, my grant went ahead and funded because I am still an undergraduate.  So far, so good.

Today we went and got textbooks, which came out to about $350.  I was thinking I’d be okay this semester, that the work would be moderate, but not terribly difficult… then I saw how many textbooks I needed.  I walked away from the bookstore with 7 books and one on order.  When it comes in, I’ll have bought 8 books.  Technically, I have 9 books for my 4 classes, but I already had one of the books I needed.  At this point, I’m thankful that it was only $350!!

Anyway, I start my grad class Monday night (6-9pm).  Grad classes at my school are only one night a week each, but there seems to be more than enough work to go around.  This class I’m taking has a 25 page paper due at the close of the semester.  Thankfully, but also dauntingly, I can choose the topic I want to write over.  I think I’ll likely do something over one of Kate Chopin’s works, as I plan to write my thesis over Kate Chopin’s work.  It’ll be good practice!  Oh, and I get to take class with Melanie again (yay!!).

Here’s the funny part of this whole tale… it turns out the information that Melanie was given, which she gave to me, about Engl 598 being required before more than 6 hours could be taken was false.  When I emailed the professor for the course to let her know I’d registered, a professor who also happens to be the graduate coordinator for the English Department at Tarleton, I explained that I had signed up for the course because of the requirement.  She said no such requirement exists, but that it’s a good idea for me to get this class out of the way now!  3 cheers for misinformation!

Now if I could only get Matt to stop going around telling people I’m a grad student already, things would be awesome!!  Technically, I’m not a grad student until January… or will be once I get my application submitted, anyway.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

If you know me at all, or if you read here with any regularity, then you know that I’m somewhat obsessed with NaNoWriMo.  I love it!!  October and November have become my favorite months of the year.  October because I love Halloween, Hallows End (a World of Warcraft celebration of Halloween), and because the lead up to NaNoWriMo is amazing fun.  November because November is NaNoWriMo!!  Every year since 2005, I’ve been participating in the month of noveling madness that is NaNoWriMo.  I fail at it every year, well every year except 2005.  In 2005 I succeeded at writing a 50,000 word novel in the month of November, and it is one fantastic piece of crap of a novel.  I mean, I’m proud that I did it, but the book is terrible, with a side of horrible and will likely never see the light of day again, or at least not without hefty edits.

This year, like all those before it, I’m going to give NaNoWriMo a try!  I can’t wait.  I’m already looking forward to it, and it’s not even September yet.  Of course, I’ll likely fail again, especially since I have so much going on right now with school, but that is not going to stop me from trying.  I’ll probably haunt the forms, do too much planning, make videos with my little Flip Mino camera for the NaNoWriMo Viddler Group, and buy a ton of candy corn and hot cocoa in preparation for the awesome November writing challenge.  Every year I prepare, enjoy the festivities, and tell myself that this year will be the year I win again.  This year will be no exception.

So, while haunting the NaNoWriMo site earlier today, I saw that they had released the new site badges for NaNoWriMo 09′!!  So, in early preparation for the awesomeness that is National Novel Writing Month, I wanted to share them with you!!

The web badges for this years NaNoWriMo were made by Graham Dobson, who did a fantastic job!!  Every year NaNoWriMo has something new and interesting to decorate the websites of participants and this year is no exception.  Man, I want October to get here now!!  Just one more month between now and the start of festivities in preparation for this years noveling madness.

So, now that I’ve declared my intent to participate… how about you?

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

When I was a little girl, I use to pass the time dreaming up spaces.  What I mean is, I use to take notebook paper and pen and design rooms.  I didn’t do it visually, we’re not talking sketching out rooms, we’re talking about paragraphs upon paragraphs, pages upon pages, of room design written out in long hand.  This was before I realized it would be more productive to measure the room out, sketch it out to scale, and then draw the furnishings in the space.  I designed it down to the rugs and wall hangings, attention paid to colors and patterns.  I always wanted to be an interior decorator.  Now that I’m all grown up, not much has changed, I would still love to be an interior decorator, though it’s more of a dream job, than a realistic career choice.  It’s like a little kid wanting to be a rock star, it’s that kind of dream, the one that thrives in your head, but fails in reality.

When I say nothings changed, I mean it.  In moments of rare spare time, I’ve been day dreaming about fixing up the office.  It’s all in my head, rather than on paper, but I can see it just as surely.  We only have two bedrooms, but as we have no kids, so we don’t have to worry about using the 2nd bedroom for babies (thank goodness!!).  Right now, the room is being used for storage, it’s filled with boxes and random pieces of furniture, many of which need to go to the dumpster because they’re broken.  The room is at the front of the house, has only one small window and a tiny little closet, which isn’t a huge deal because the room is fairly small.  The closet is filled to the ceiling with boxes of gods know what and the window is hidden behind a stack of stuff.  The room needs a make-over in a major way.

The first thing that needs work is the carpet.  We lost our cat, Chummer, a few years ago.  He was very sick and couldn’t use the cat box, which made a huge mess in there, so the carpet is stained.  To add to the problem, Anakin and Galileo can still smell Chummer in there, so they think the room is a toilet.  We need to get the carpet out because, well, it’s disgusting!  Not to mention, when Chummer was sick, we put him in there and closed the door for a while because we didn’t want Anakin and Galileo to bother him while he slept.  Galileo was so desperate to get in there that he tore up the carpet in the doorway.  Luckily, the carpet is ripped up in the room, not the hallway, which should make things easier.

What I want to do is lay down Bamboo SwiftLock Laminate Flooring¹ or maybe Maple SwiftLock Laminate².  It locks together, it’s easy, and something I could do myself as a weekend project!  It’s also about $35 a box, which is really reasonable, especially considering that space is so small.  If we did it ourselves, it would cost us about $350.  I’m figuring that will be the biggest expense when we get around to getting that room done.

Other than that, I’d like to get some book shelves.  I probably won’t get anything too nice, as we’ve a lot of books and are pretty hard on things sometimes, so probably something we could get at Wal-Mart.  I’d also like to get a couple cardboard displays³ for our magazines and comic books.  If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, click the link.  Comic book stores and libraries use them to store comic books and the like.  They’re not terribly expensive and seem like they’d be perfect for what I’d be using them for.  I’d like to get some of those plastic drawers that stack, for all our random crap, and an area rug.  Then, I’d like to put the desks back in there, along with one of the TV’s so we could watch TV in the office.

It’s still a ways off, but maybe next year we’ll be able to get it done.  I’d really love to reclaim that space and if the flooring goes down well and looks good, then I might try doing the living room.  I hate carpet, it just gets gross and needs constant shampooing, especially with animals.  Laminate is so much easier to care for.

If we get it done, I’ll definitely take some before and after photos!!   For now, I’m off to daydream some more.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

Anyone happen to know if refrigerators that don’t have an ice maker still use refrigerator water filters or not? My fridge isn’t staying as cold as it should, I think I might need to replace it, but I don’t even know if it has one. I’m not terribly mechanically inclined or knowledgeable about some things. I feel like I should know this, but I have so much else going on, I don’t feel like pulling my fridge out and trying to figure out which thing is the filter and I’d rather not order one unless I need it. So, anyone?

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn