Let's see. Providence was fun, plans in tatters vis-a-vis immediate grad school (but in a good way), overworked here during the week but not overly exhausted, Mardi Gras parade on Saturday, day off Sunday...

and I've finally stopped translating new stuff frantically to pause and go back to the only book I've "finished." Good Lord, a lot of it isn't really English, I'm now coming to find. I'm taking an axe (well, maybe just a penknife--a red penknife) to the monster I've made. I think it can be fixed. It's a good thing no one's read it yet, really, I suppose. For now.

Like [a member of] a group of college freshmen rejected by Harvard and forced to go to Brown, I'm Rhode Island bound, as the saying goes, for only the second time since graduation.

I'm excited, though, especially as I've put my notice in at my filing job and will be down to one full-time job, at which I've recently been promoted, as of March 10. And hopefully by then I'll have a transcript on the way and a couple of recommendations in for that master's application.

Loading up my iPod and working on tomorrow's plans, which include lunch in Boston, getting alumnus library access (no borrowing privileges, but still) meeting with an old professor, and maybe a women's basketball game at the Pitz. Breakfast in VT, lunch in MA, dinner in RI should be pretty nice, given that I haven't been out of the state in over three months.

Hey there, what do you say?
I'm going on a holiday.

[Edit: got my state tax refund today as well. Score!]
[Edit edit: and my federal was directly deposited yesterday, apparently. Wow, my evening just keeps getting better.]

Penguin...plunged.

That dress has been retired. Got caught up in a group of acquaintances to plunge with, which was fun...and can now add Lake Champlain in February to my list of interesting swimming experiences.

Toes a bit cold, but remarkably bracing, all things considered.

Stephen Colbert, satirizing portmanteau names for celebrity couples, finished the bit with the following:

"Filliam H. Muffman."

I laughed almost as hard as he did. I wasn't on camera at the time, but...

man, I really missed out on the movie "The Splendiferous Zeppelin Adventures of Filliam H. Muffman," that's for sure.

/randomness

A visit to scenic Frost Heave, Vermont.

I did, in fact, get out of town (after some breakfast and a quick hour filing) and up to Craftsbury, which went smoothly enough, except for the fact that the Kingdom is twenty degrees colder and has apparently suffered some thaws as well, given the frozen ruts in most of the roads. Got to catch up with my stepfather, get some work in at the somwhat-recently-built "new" town library, took a nap with my dog...good times all around. Saw my mother as well, who returned that evening from a trip to Florida, and caught up with her as well. Got some fast interstate driving in after dark, too--a good day away from it all when it was desperately needed, all in all.

Funniest thing I learned today: My mother gets asked about cell phone coverage a lot running a vacation cottage--and it turns out that there is some reception up there. It turns out the enterprising and/or desperate have found three places on the common that cell phone reception can be obtained:

1) The turnaround of the parking lot in the library
2) Standing on the granite benches outside the high school (near the payphones, amusingly)
3) In the middle of the cemetery.

Not a lot of people with cell phones up there, but it's amusing how this kind of information spreads nontheless. And that must be really fun to tell someone who really wants to make a call.

“Lo, I have lost my ertia, and am now ert.” --The Golux (paraphrased)

I have been in a bit of self-diagnosed lull recently, and that’s probably being a bit hard on myself. I bought a few CDs (Built to Spill Live and Von spring to mind) and have been doing some reading (Fuks in Czech and some Ethan Canin. [If these last few sentences don’t draw Jef’s attention, I know not what will.] Still, in terms of writing, I haven’t been finding or making the time as in my madcap grove of the end of last month—but I probably shouldn’t be beating myself up too much.

But headed up to my mother’s for the day tomorrow and to Providence in a week and a half, both of which will be relaxing and hopefully productive. Refresh myself a bit. A few diversions. I’m taking…

And this is when I realize I make allusions to my own translations all the time, which seems silly, as no one’s read them. I’ve got something of a Nihilartikel going here, haven’t I? Well, I guess it exists; it’s just really, really, monumentally obscure. A literary hapax legomenon of sorts?

Yeah, these probably aren't the sort of pep talks to use to claw my way back into productivity. Ah, well.