A few photos from tonight are in this album now.

Now Playing: Jars of Clay, "The Shelter," "Lay It Down."

18 February 2011. Up this morning with that feeling of disorientation, but I dreamed that someone was singing “The Lord will light my candle so…,” which helped make getting out of bed not quite as daunting. Ate breakfast with Lisa; we sat and talked about Worldliness, the book she’s reading right now. Beth decided to cancel L629 reading group this morning, so I got to have a nice long quiet time before I left for campus. 

IU hosted a “Preparing Future Faculty” conference today, and I went to two of the talks, one at eleven about preparing for the job market and one at two about creating a record of research, teaching, and service. The conference was in the IMU Solarium, an attachment at the back of the IMU, a big nondescript room that opens off the alumni hall. The talks were actually reassuring: it was good to have some clearer ideas about what to expect when going on the job market and about what to do in the meantime (part of the reassurance might also have been the realization that grad school takes a lot of time, and I have several years before I have to worry about this for real!). 

Between the talks I met Mary for lunch at the Sample Gates. The noon was clear with an intense sun and a strong northwest wind. Despite the sun it was actually rather chilly, but no one seemed to mind; a holiday mood pervaded downtown. We walked down to Bloomington Bagel Company and had bagels with smoked salmon cream cheese—delicious. 

After the second talk I drove to the Hs’ house. Lisa and Anne were playing Monopoly, of course. Amy came home from shopping at about four. Lisa and I stayed, hanging out, chatting with Rich and Amy until about five. Love them. At about five Lisa left to babysit for the As; I went outside to play basketball with Anne on the driveway, while Jane pedaled circles around us in her wee plastic car and Breeze loped through the line of spruce trees at the edge of the lawn. 

Anne and I were being silly, passing the ball back and forth, shooting, dribbling, doing all of it absolutely terribly—but the sun dazzled down on us, the fresh wind stirred up the smell of the muddy grass, and Jane giggled and babbled to herself while her car clattered around on the concrete. Expanse of blue sky. I went home at about six when they went to Maggie’s basketball game. At home Laura was on the phone. I wrote a letter to Tara. 

At about seven Lindsay and Peter burst in, laden with groceries, and set to work in the kitchen to cook a fancy meal for us. Lindsay made a Mediterranean salad, while Peter cooked enormous pieces of chicken in a butter-and-wine sauce in a wok on the stove. The luminous full moon glowed through the open kitchen window (though it was really too chilly to have the window open). The smells: butter, fresh parsley, mushrooms, white wine, all cooking together with the chicken; feta, tomatoes, balsamic vinaigrette in the salad; spinach-and-artichoke cheese dip that Lindsay set on the table for Laura and me to eat, piping hot from the oven with a crunchy crust on top; red wine in glasses; sweet basmati rice steaming. 

We had a sumptuous meal, talked nonsense, and afterward sat around talking for quite awhile. Eventually we cleaned up the kitchen, and Peter and Lindsay went upstairs to watch Lost. Laura and I put on The Devil Wears Prada downstairs, but she was playing checkers on her phone, and I was writing e-mails. Lisa came home. 

When the other two finished their episode, they bounced back downstairs, and we embarked upon round two, a monumental banana split. This creation took shape in a big glass baking dish: scoops of fancy vanilla ice cream, crumbled Girl Scout samoas, chocolate chips, bananas (of course), hot chocolate fudge, and whipped cream. We set the epic masterpiece down on the dining room table, whipped out spoons, and devoured it in short order between the five of us. Now everyone has gone to bed, except for Lindsday and Peter, who are trying to finish Lost tonight.

Now Playing: The Decemberists, "The King Is Dead," "Down By the Water."

Hooray for flowers in winter! More pictures here.

"... the Christian should always be conscious that he or she lives before the face of God. There should always be a sense of awe in the life of the believer; a sense of living where we are always visible, always understood through and through, and - amazingly - always loved by the Holy One.

    "This sense of awe produces a special quality in our obedience; it gives it direction (we are not to be men-pleasers, but God-honouring); it gives it integrity (our obedience is tested by a more discerning eye than those of our fellow-sinners); it is an obedience suffused with humility in which self-projection has given way to devotion to the Lord."

Sinclair B Ferguson, Let's Study Philippians (Philippians 2:12-18)

We studied this during small group tonight. Also consider the truth that we are God's children, adopted by Him, named by Him, belonging to Him.

Now Playing: Jars of Clay, "The Shelter," "Run In the Night (Psalm 27)".

Apparently on quite a British history kick these past two weeks: Watched King's Speech with Cindy last Tuesday night and The Queen with her tonight. King's Speech was really well done (despite the language), if only for the beautiful moments where the speech is being read while the second movement of Beethoven's 7th fills the background. A powerful evocation of what it might have been like to be on the edge of World War II? Although Cindy and I both wondered what it must be like for the Queen (or other people who lived through those times) to watch films made about them.

Today I got to talk to Philip and Laura on the phone! Hooray for random crazy sibling fun times! And this past weekend I got to talk to my parents and Stephen, Nicole, and Katie W., so good times. Also this past weekend I went to the opera with Mary, Scott, and Eric. It was Mary and Scott's idea, not mine, but the operas were by Puccini, so the music was gorgeous.

Big day! Admitted to IU's MFA program!

(If I finish, I'll be about as overqualified an English prof as you can get....)

Now Playing: Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, "Pathetique".

I've been reading Tulsa people's blogs. Somehow no one handed the memo to Indiana that we were supposed to get lots of snow and have a week off, too! We just had ice, ice, ice, and then a little bit of snow on top to hide the ice so that when unsuspecting pedestrians (like me) were trying to get to class, they would be constantly in danger of falling and dying on hidden slippery spots. And it took a decent fifteen to twenty minutes of hacking at my car to get the ice off--and that was after it had been sitting in the sun all morning!

Enough complaining. The result of our one day off was an evening of eating omelets and watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with the girls and Peter.

To finish the week off well, Mary, Scott, Eric, Mallory, and I had a lovely little soiree last night, during which we ate beef stroganoff and read poetry in lots of different languages. Mary does Italian, so she brought some Petrarchan sonnets; Scott translated some 16th-century French poetry; Eric contributed Pablo Neruda in Spanish and the first chapter of the Gospel of John in Maya, and Mallory read an Oscar Wilde story. And of course we had some Beowulf, too. Yes, yes, we're ridiculous, but what can I say? It was fun.

Now Playing: The dishwasher downstairs.

You know you're in grad school when your afternoon's reading begins like this: "It is easy to see that hypermedia applications are always explicit acts of remediation: they import earlier media into a digital space in order to critique and refashion them."

Easy? Really? Why should it be easy? What are hypermedia applications anyway? What's an act of remediation? And why is said act so explicit? Why should we care about critiquing and refashioning? Why do I feel as though my brain is exploding right now?

Now Playing: Corelli, Concerto grosso in F, Op. 6, No. 4, "Allegro."

One of the good parts of graduate school seminar discussions and (even!) parties: "A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion makes conversation particularly cheerful...." - Eliot, Middlemarch

Now Playing: Howard Shore, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack, "The Grey Havens."

First of all: White rabbits.

1 February 2011. Woke up to ice on everything this morning! Ice! This isn’t Oklahoma! But there was a nice slick sheen of ice on everything. Beth and Jason picked me up at nine, as usual, and Beth and I skittered our way to class. The sidewalks on campus weren’t too bad, really. I was so sleepy in class today that I didn’t say anything. 

After class Mary and I went to lunch at Noodle Co. on Kirkwood, which was fun. Good to hang out with her again. We pinged from topic to topic, catching up on almost every part of each other’s lives. After lunch we walked to the IMU together. I checked my e-mail and discovered that G601 had been canceled for this afternoon, so I hurried downtown and caught the noon bus home. 

It was strange to be home in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, and I counted on having a long, quiet afternoon to read and practice my flute. I sat down with a cup of tea and some biscuits (proper McVittie’s biscuits, thanks to Alyson) to read, but at about half two, Lindsay came home, and Laura followed shortly thereafter, both of their offices having been shut down for the day. Not long after that, we got e-mails saying that classes had been canceled, and about an hour after that, Lisa came home—and Peter came over, of course, our “fifth housemate,” ready to be snowed in with us.

By the middle of the afternoon it had started to rain again, freezing rain mixed with ice pellets that accumulated on everything. The clouds were so low and heavy that I couldn’t see campus from my window. Rain and sleet rattled against the windows, drummed on the roof, gummed to every available surface. The pine trees across the street bent whippily, and the deciduous trees creaked and cracked in the wind. I spent the afternoon working on paper ideas for L746, in the course of which I found a fascinating article by Renee Trilling on JSTOR about Anglo-Saxon poetry. I read for L629, too, though by the time I got around to reading Middlemarch itself, I was so sleepy that I could hardly concentrate. 

Downstairs Laura had been baking blueberry muffins and listening to musical soundtracks, and when she finished cooking, Lisa made scrambled eggs with tomatoes, peppers, onions, and cheese in them for all of us for tea. Laura and I sat on the stairs like a pair of vultures, giggling, talking nonsense, humming songs (Laura humming songs, that is), and generally keeping Lisa company while she chopped up vegetables and whipped the eggs. The five of us sat down to eat at about half six and ate massive quantities of eggs and toast, and told ridiculous stories and talked about all sorts of absurd and inappropriate things (thanks to Peter, of course). 

Sitting around the table eating turned into sitting around the table drinking tea, which turned into sitting around the table waiting for a batch of brownies to bake, which turned into all of us settling down to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the living room. All very cozy, with the trees tipping and moaning outside. 

When the film finished, at about half ten, I washed all the dishes. Everyone hung out for awhile before Peter left to try to make his way home and the rest of us went to bed. Having said good-night to the girls, I’m listening to the end of the ROTK soundtrack. Sleepy, but I’ve got another half-hour before the dishwasher finishes its cycle—I can hear it loud and clear because my bedroom’s vent is right above that part of the kitchen. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow on top of the half-inch-deep layer of ice.