'tis a wonderful thing to kick back at the end of a long day of work and class with some cheese, crackers, and a cold Blue Moon with an orange wedge. the day wasn't TOO long considering i had a nice lunch of nachos and frozen margaritas with christina, lol, but 4 hours of work and 3 hours of class were just about all i could handle.

the highlight of my day was a rather unexpected e-mail from professor connolly (in charge of the Linguistics graduate program) telling me that the dept. somehow got ahold of some money and would give me a $4,000 stipend plus 9 free credits (half a year's tuition) in the form of some sort of assistantship. this is obviously wonderful news, considering i a) had never asked my department for money and b) i still haven't secured the means by which to pay for my Master's. it, is, however, a bit complicated if i end up getting the assistantship with media and technology services, however unlikely that may be.

the deal is that the MTS assistantship pays 18 credits (a full year's tuition) and gives an $8000 stipend, double what SELL can give me. while i would love to stay in my department and organize the library or work as a research assistant, the fact is that i need to take whatever gives me the most money, obviously the MTS position. so if i do get the media job, i'm going to need to have a chat with connolly and perhaps try to work out a deal where i could reduce my assistantship to 5 hours (the MTS one is 15 hours and you can only have 20 hours of assistantships as a full-time grad student) and get whatever money that translates to in the form of a stipend.

if i only get the SELL one, i still have two interviews with the Office of International Partnerships and programs, though both of those are pay-by-the-hour positions for 10 hours/week. i'll still need a loan, but at least i'll be getting as much money as possible under the circumstances. i now need to make sure that someone can, indeed, hold more than one position regardless of the hours involved...bleh

well it is too fucking hot to think right now, and has been for 3 days. i don't understand how it can be legit chilly one day and then change to 97 in less than 24 hours. not having air conditioning is really wonderful this summer. i would love to buy an air conditioner, but naturally i can barely make ends meet and can afford neither an air conditioner nor the subsequently higher electric bill.  

that is all. 

'mornin

gaaah things can be so frustrating...

i once again have no idea what i'm doing with my life, not that i ever did. my academic interests over the past few months have shifted primarily to Romance languages, namely Iberian, i.e. Castillian, Catalan, and Portuguese.  I get on kicks and go about e-mailing Professors of Portuguese at Brown, the Mass. Association of Portuguese Speakers in Allston, etc. etc.  

yesterday I decided it might be a good idea to split my M.A. apart, and spend a year inbetween on a Fulbright grant.  this is obviously quite a production, with a hardcore application process with a slew of recommendations and other such things.  my thoughts were to go to Andorra on an English-teaching scholarship, and to on the side research the linguistic reality of the tiny country - with Catalan as its official language, but ample speakers of French, Spanish, and Portuguese throughout.  now i'm reconsidering for a variety of reasons....

instead i may try to find a hardcore summer program somewhere that would enhance my knowledge as well as help me figure out what to write my dissertation on, etc.  but what would i want to do? i know of Portuguese language programs in Portugal, as well as at Middlebury (the latter being more hardcore, but the former obvi IN the country of the target language) Then there's the possibility of finding TEFL certification in Barcelona or Andorra, or attempting to do some kind of Catalan language course in Barcelona.  Last but not least, there's good old Eastern Europe, which I feel bad for somewhat abandoning.  I found this great new summer program in Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo all about state-building and minority issues through SIT. ahhhhhhhhh!

I really should be studying Latin right now if I hope to get an A in that course...my grades so far have been in a steady decline, lol. 96 > 90 > 88. hopefully today's will start a rising trend

brief update

so i managed to get drunk enough off of four beers last night to embark upon an extensive eating binge involving bread, lox, cheese, oreos, peanut butter, and granola bars, lol. i'm pretending it didn't happen and am continuing to work out and eat well. i'm definitely already seeing results, which is great.

anyway, today was somewhat productive. i worked 9-1, then had an interview for the MTS position at 1:30. i think it went well, but the last time i thought an interview went well i didn't get it. so...yea, about two weeks and i'll find out. worked out afterwards, then just hung around the apartment - hookah'd, did a load of laundry, and some other stuff.

now its off to dinner with mel and some LAGgers!

bom dia!

'tis a lovely morning, friends...

the weather is beautiful, my first paycheck is deposited, I don't have work, and most importantly...

NO MICE IN THE TRAPS!!!!

after a week of mouse-hunting and slaughtering, it appears the saga may in fact have come to a close. over the past two days the maintenance guys have come to caulk up the holes both in my kitchen and in my room, even affixing a metal plate underneath the massive space underneath my radiator. it seems as though we really do have a great landlord. the last mouse was found dead yesterday morning after I had been woken up by squeaking and looked to see a mouse nibbling on a Yubari Melon Kitkat through the bag on my floor. i hope to ne'er see one again. we're buying mint at haymarket today since its apparently a repellant....just incase, lol.

speaking of haymarket, i love it. once Mel wakes up and has breakfast, we'll probably head out. today I plan on getting dill and cucumbers to make a Bulgarian cold cucumber soup as well as some freshly caught salmon to make my own Gravad lox a la Barefoot Contessa. by the time i leave this apartment I hope to have greatly advanced my culinary expertise. i'm sure we'll get a menagerie of other veggies as well, perhaps some eggplant and zucchini.

my Latin class has been a continual pain in the ass, and now aside from the difficulty of it, I have to pay $1148 - the cost of the one-credit course. i e-mailed student services asking if they had a payment plan for poor people like me, lol. apparently my parents have no interest in paying for it....gross. i also need to fill out a FAFSA, because if I don't get an assistantship I am royally fucked. i wish i had rich (and not dead) grandparents.

as for my other academic interests, i've returned to a fondness for portuguese. i feel as though with so many portuguese speakers here in Boston it would be a shame to not take advantage of the opportunity for field work. i'm actually considering volunteering with the Brazilian community, but don't worry, its primarily for my own language advancement, not to help them, lol. i've also decided to start saving for Spring Break in Rio next March. christopher apparently doesn't get a spring break, so my very new and tentative plan is to meet up with Cara ( who will be living in Peru). hopefully my Portuguese will be hot by then.

tenho que fazer cocô, então, até logo!

another week...

the above image sums up a lot of what has been going on lately, lol. we have had QUITE the mouse sage. several nights ago we saw this mouse, and the next day proceeded to buy traps. well, the first night it managed to eat the food from both traps, but escaped. the second night i awoke to a loud SNAP, but then a clanging of sorts. in the morning i saw that the mouth had set off the trap, but somehow escaped and left a small trail of blood.  well the third night we weren't fucking around - we baited two traps with peanut butter as well as a third sticky trap. what you see above was the result of that. muahaha. 

but it didn't end there - of course now there's a second mouse.  we baited everything again, and late last night i heard squeaking, so sure enough there was a mouse stuck in the morning. however, we stupidly decided to just let it die there, and in that perhaps half-an-hour period it managed to escape. now we have some sticky-ass mouse running around. we are definitely speaking with the landlord today to fix this problem asap. 

other than that apartment living has been wonderful. last weekend we went to haymarket, the big farmer's market downtown, and picked up a ton of fresh veggies (and a lb of fresh squid) for dirt cheap. its a great day excursion since i don't work on fridays, and it will give us a nice assortment of cheap/fresh groceries. 

spent memorial day with mel, bryan, peter, jeremy, and adam in the Fens at Bryan and Peter's little garden. it was a gorgeous day, and i had never been to the Fens before. i never realized what a gay cruising area it was - there are these tall, lush reeds along the river, and people go and hook up in there and make paths. the sketchy people, along with condoms and wrappers on the ground attested to that, lol. afterwards we had wine and grapes on their front stoop followed by dinner in the south end. 

work is just about over today. i need to fill out the mail forms and head out. tata!

and so it begins...

well here i am sitting at my desk in the Slavic department. i have a bachelor's degree, a new apartment, and am  pursuing a Master's in linguistics. pretty sweet deal. 

graduation weekend was among the most stressful times ever at bc. it was a mess of emotions, from bitterness to happiness to total sadness.  since i'm still in boston and i'm still still here for grad school, its not really any sort of goodbye, but at the same time, my bc bubble is totally burst. no longer can i just go next door and hang out with lou. i can't sit in the common room and have alex and jeff there ready to booze and walk the runway. chris doesn't live just in the next building over. this is going to take some getting used to. 

my parents came in friday, but seeing as i had so much going on, and my commencement ball on saturday, i didn't even see them until sunday morning at the baccalaureate mass. that ended up being total shit in that because of a mistake in song order made my my director, my solo verse during the senior blessing was cut. normally, that might not be so bad, but when it is the last time you get to sing with a group that has really defined your time at bc, it makes you extremely upset and angry. whatever. 

i managed to cool down and have a nice dinner in the north end with the family. that night i hung out with christopher and co., but seeing as we had to be up at 5 for the sunrise, we didn't stay out too late. the sunrise was a mess. i was already fighting back tears on the way, so when i got there to see my friends already sobbing, i just let go. that continued on and off for the next half hour or so. i had a nice breakfast with jack, joe, chris, and lou, and then at 8:30 it was already time to meet on linden lane for the commencement march. 

the ceremony was long as shit, but David McCullogh, the author of 'John Adams' and '1776' gave a very engaging speech.  by the time the individual diploma ceremony was over, it was around 230. i was crabby as shit all afternoon, but we moved some of my shit to the apartment and packed up pretty much the rest of my room.  dinner at the capital grill was delicious, and it really was nice to have 10 members of my family there all just to see me graduate. i made out pretty well in graduation $$$, and once dinner was done with, i headed back to gabelli for my final night in the dorms. 

got up at 8 to start moving everything yesterday morning, and it was QUITE the exhaustive morning/afternoon. by evening time, however, and after lunch with lauren and her mom who had helped us, we were all settled in. bryan came over and brought us champagne, and later on robbie came by for leftovers from capital grille and bertucci's. all in all it was a great, though tiring day.