Wednesday, March 23, 2011

acknowledgements

Today I spent some time fantasizing about the acknowledgements page for my future first book. Here are some possibilities.


To my husband, Ross: Thanks for making sure that neither the cat nor I starved to death. On an unrelated note, thanks also for making sure the bridges of Maryland don’t fall down.

To the English Departments of Cornell, Brandeis, UMass, NYU, U of Virginia, U of Chicago, Penn State, UConn, Urbana-Champaign: Thank you for your rejection. The English Department at GWU is awesome. You, clearly, are less so. Thanks for helping me dodge a bullet there.  

To my friends on Facebook: Thanks for responding to even my most narcissistic, whiny, and/or needy status updates. Put another way, thank you for responding to my status updates.

To Portland: I think I’m speaking for everyone when I say thanks for allowing me to be the girl who talks about how her hometown “is, like, waaaaay better than this place.” Because everybody loves that girl.

To Don, the man I sit next to on the MARC train almost every morning: Thanks for making room for me. I hope the USC basketball team does well.

To my cat, Creature: Thank you for whining, freaking out, attacking my leg, and generally carrying on while I was trying to write this, and all other, books/papers/articles/emails/shopping lists. Although you make me crazy, unbroken stints of focused writing make me more so.

To Scott, another frequenter of the MARC system: Most flamboyant men are delightful. You’re mostly loud and obnoxious. Thanks for crushing stereotypes.  

To my third grade rival, Christopher C: Thanks for nothing. I still despise you for building a better model of a California mission than I did. I also despise your sister for narrowly beating me in the school spelling bee. A plague o’er both your houses.  

To Kelly Sirles and Chris McDonald: Thanks for being my Portland fellows in this crazy world of English. Chances are extremely poor that more than one of us will be successful and here I am already publishing a book, so, you know. Good luck with that.

Dear Ira Glass: Thanks for everything. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Monday, March 21, 2011

the big red button


Today I pressed the reset button. It was a minor thing, really... I didn't go to a class. But it felt like a really big deal. I always go to class. I'm just that kid. I can be irresponsible and flaky in some other spheres of my life (I'm big enough to admit that, I think), but I always, always go to class. So choosing not to go this evening was:
a) a big deal (I think that's covered now), and
b) extremely liberating.
It's been a slightly crazy couple of weeks, and it's only going to get more so from here. So tonight I just came home early. Ross and I took a walk, we had a nice dinner, and I've had time to sit down and write this blog post. See? Everybody wins.

Friday, March 4, 2011

update friday

Hello all. Remember that time in January when I promised that I’d blog more often? I believe 20 posts a week was my delightfully naïve goal. Ah! Something about the plans of mice and men (and graduate students). Please accept my sincerest apologies, and my (mostly sincere) promise to do better. In the meantime, here are some bullet-point updates for your consideration:

CREATURE:
  • Loves her hexbug
  • Misses her terrace garden
  • Is otherwise pretty much the same she always was
ROSS:
  • Continues to work extremely hard for the State Highway Administration, making sure that the bridges of Maryland don’t fall down. I think we can all agree this is an important service. Thanks, Ross!
  • Had an interesting project lately in which he was checking the plans for a pedestrian bridge that really would have fallen down if he had cleared it. Which he didn’t
  • Organized the bookshelf and “the office,” which means the house is pretty much all done. Thanks again, Ross
  • Is reading the Harry Potter series in Polish
  • Likes Creature a little. Sometimes
  • Likes Haylie a lot. Usually
HAYLIE:
  • Started working a lot more hours at her job with Kid Power DC.
  • Is taking (and mostly really enjoying) classes on Shakespeare, medieval objects, and Virginia Woolf
  •  Is presenting at her first ever conference (at GW, on a graduate panel) in a week!
  • Is presenting at her second ever conference (in SLC! On a real grownup panel!) in April
  • Is flying to Sacramento to visit her dad and family for Spring Break
  • Got a summer job with the Institute of Reading Development
  • Started a design and style blog which has been really fun (and fairly popular) with Kathayoon
  •  Officially became a vegetarian a few weeks ago


ROSS AND HAYLIE TOGETHER:
  • Are hoping to have some adventures this summer
  • Are planning a co-op garden with some friends (who have a yard and a baby on the way!)
  • Can't wait for it to get warmer
  • Are really sad about a certain family moving to Seattle :o(
  • Miss all of you West Coasters an awful lot
Love, 

Haylie et al