Okay, I admit it. The Yankees really have sucked this April- the pitching and hitting have both been mostly awful, and the defense has been consistently putrid. But these past few days have been promising. Though the Yankees ended up losing the games, Kevin Brown and Randy Johnson did really well in their last starts. And today, Chien-Ming Wang, who was brought up from the minors to replace the horrid (and injured) Jaret Wright, pitched wonderfully in his major-league debut, and the Yanks actually managed to make their lineup function at the same time as their pitching for the win.
Yes, Mike Mussina still hasn't gotten it together, Jorge Posada is a 33-year-old catcher who isn't hitting, and Bernie Williams looks like he probably won't ever hit again. But Derek Jeter is hitting as well as he ever has, Gary Sheffield and Alex Rodriguez are still chugging along, and Carl Pavano has been a solid bright spot in the rotation. Not all is lost. With more games like yesterday's, these Yanks might even manage a .500 record. :)
I had my final classes today, and spent the evening performing Bach's Mass in B Minor with the choir. My voice is shot and I'm completely exhausted, but that's three end-of-year events down and six to go. Four exams and two papers. I can do this.
Okay, so I still have 2 essays, 4 finals, and a new London schedule to worry about, but as usual, something shiny has popped up to distract me. I know I'm hopelessly behind the times, but RSS feeds? Very nice. I probably won't be using Bloglines to read LiveJournals- my Friends List is better for that- but how nice is it to stick all the Xanga, GreatestJournal, Movable Type, Blogger, and news sites I read in one place?
Sadly, I have 81 feeds right now, 36 of which are from LJ. The others are various news, baseball, theater, and movie sites, a few weblogs, and, well...any place that'll give me a feed when I click the clicky button. Seriously, never give me anything with buttons; I'll be occupied for hours.
In other meaningless news, I think my mouse is going crazy on me. I really don't know what I'll do if it conks out altogether. Probably something involving tearing my hair and jumping out the window.
My day started innocently enough- I lost track of time a bit but still managed to make it to Old English. I got in a good comment during Constitutional Law. I picked up a copy of The New York Times and had a bagel and avocado from home for lunch. Now, I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself, and that's when the trouble started.
I went downstairs to transfer my clothes to the dryer, and realized I'd locked myself out of my room. I hauled my laundry basket, wet clothes at all, to all four floors of my dorm, looking for an RA to let me in. No such luck- I had to call campus safety instead. So I did, and the cheerful lady at the other end of the line told me to wait by my door. So I did. For half an hour.
Now, finally allowed in my room again, I checked my e-mail and found that next year's schedule for Queen Mary's English and Drama department was here. Off I went to check the thing (Conveniently in PDF format. Did I mention I hate PDFs?), only to realize, to my horror, that all the classes I had planned were no longer available to me. Yipee! Now I get to schedule and beg the heads of department at my school for pre-approval all over again! And really, what's more fun than that?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to break something. We have our final chorus dress rehearsal tonight for a concert on Friday, I still haven't done my statistics homework for tomorrow, and oh yes- there's one week until finals. If I were actually keeping kosher for Passover this year, now would be the time when I collapsed in a gibbering heap in the corner. As it is, I'll probably be able to hold out until 10:30 or so.
Well, if the pitching and defense idea doesn't work, having a lineup that absolutely pounds the crap out of everything you throw at it works, too.
Yankees win, 19 to 8.
Okay, my roommate is back from the housing lottery, and she's seriously unhappy. I feel bad for her- she had a high number and now she's stuck on the waiting list because she didn't go for one of the aforementioned holes in a basement somewhere. But it's really not fun to listen to her ranting to her friends on the phone about how she can't stand having a double and must have her own room, so she chose the waiting list over sharing a room. Come on, woman! Roommate sitting five feet away from you! Oy.
So, guess who volunteered for a Monday afternoon shift at work for extra money? Me! And now I'm so drained, for some reason, I barely made the walk home. It helps that today consisted of not sleeping, not eating, having to work the mixing board and recording devices simultaneously, then cleaning up by myself. And now I get to do homework. Joy.
On the other hand, I could be at the junior housing lottery, waiting miserably as all the good rooms get taken and people burst into tears at the prospect of living in a smelly hole in a basement somewhere next year. Instead, my roommate will pick a second-semester room for me in December from whatever's available, because in London I'm going to have a snazzy single.
Yes, I am smug and self-satisfied. Why do you ask?
How am I supposed to take advantage of the spring weather and work outside when my school insists on having an outdoor taiko and gamelan concert during most of the afternoon? Just hearing that banging from hundreds of feet away in my dorm room is distracting.
Oh, well. Back to linguistics. In my room. While it's sunny out. In one of the few calm days I have left before finals. *whines*
After years of false taunts, it looks like this season the Yankees really do suck. Somebody get this team some real pitching and defense. Please.
Today I went to my mailbox and found:
My housing lottery number, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
A package from home.
A Queen Mary College acceptance letter. I'm going to London in the fall.
What I'm listening to today: Oklahoma! (1998 London Revival)
They left bits of vomit in the stairwell, damn them. You win, party people...for now.
What I'm reading today: Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare
After a couple of quiet weeks, no doubt induced by a combination of midterms and drug-related arrests, I should have known the peace and tranquility of my dorm wouldn't last. The floor of my room is vibrating slightly with some obnoxious bass line from a generically dull dance song. I hear the garbled yells that pass for "conversation" among my drunk and high neighbors.
But mostly, I hear the lovely strains of Follies: In Concert, turned up so high my ears start ringing every time the orchestra swells. And yes, I'm singing along at the top of my lungs. Take that, you rude bastards. I wonder how Elaine Stritch sounds to someone intoxicated?
I signed up to be a bone marrow donor today. I know I can't possibly help the person I want to help, but it's something, right? That's all I can give- little pieces of myself- blood and hair and marrow.
I think I want to work for Habitat for Humanity again this summer.
I was walking outside in a short-sleeved T-shirt today. There was actual air touching my arms. Crazy.
And you know what warm weather means? Baseball! The Yankees won their second game in a row against the Red Sox today in thrilling fashion, with Jason Varitek homering off Mariano Rivera in the 9th to tie the game and Derek Jeter doing the same of Keith Foulke in the bottom of the inning for the win. Not a good day to be a closer, but a great day to be a Yankees fan.
*watches as all friends and family members die of boredom*
***
Since midterms are over and finals aren't until May, you'd think I'd be able to put in a few extra shifts at work, but nooo...I have to skip three days of prime work calls this week because I have moot court tomorrow. Remind me why I volunteered to switch from the session on the 20th? All that money, slipping through my fingers. *sniffle*
Anyway, other than eating, drinking, and breathing constitutional law (with an occassional tidbit of Old English on the side) for the next week, I'm waiting for my foreign study application to be processed on the other side of the pond. In related news, I haven't uncrossed my fingers in 4 days. Heaven help me if I don't get accepted- I'll actually have to go through 4 years of dining hall food.
Okay, I was wrong. The weather today cannot be described as mere rain. It's something more akin to an apocalyptic flood. I didn't walk around campus today; I waded. And now I have no pants left- they're all hanging, soaking wet, in my closet, while I sit in my pajamas hours early. What a day.
When I wasn't wandering around in a thunderstorm while carrying a convenient metal umbrella like a "Kick Me" sign over my head, I worked tech for the jazz ensemble concert today. Unlike the other concerts I've worked so far, this one had amplification, so we got to whip out our handy-dandy sound board and learn what all the pretty knobs and buttons do.
But really, the biggest difference between this concert and the others is that I had to tape down twice as much cable. My poor knees. Oh, and because it was six hours of work, we got to order mediocre pizza from town. Yay!
During the concert, I read 80 or so pages of Anna Karenina. I'm starting to think that the great Russian authors and I just don't get along.
I want to go to an outdoor performance of Twelfth Night this weekend. Naturally, it's going to rain.