I am Still Breathing

Well that's one day down about 31 more to go. It seems all my classes are going to be fairly entertaining as well as informative (I have not had my Modern Short Novel class as that is only a Thursday night class). My Brit Lit class is going to be a nice over view from Milton on into 1780, however it is WAY TOO EARLY (9:30am). Chaucer:Canterbury Tales should be really fun (John I may need your help on some Middle English you crazy guy). In Late Shakespeare we are only doing five plays, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and The Tempest. All those classes together should really help me understand my other two class Modern European Novel (though this class is more focused on the continent) and of course Modern Short Story (I think this is also more focused on the Continent). Overall I'm really looking forward to these courses. Modern Euro Novel will probably be the most illuminating as I'll be reading seven texts of which I've only read one before (and that a bit ago in a class that I didn't pay much attention to, though I'm fairly familiar with Metamorphosis by Kafka).

I've got two papers in Chaucer both of which should be fairly easy as they will require no research for the first (900-1200 words) and provided research for the second (2000-3000 words).

Modern Short Novel's syllabus states there will be two, two to three page papers for that class (critical essays on works read). These should be fairly easy.

Modern Euro Novel is going to have two papers. First (500-1000 words) no critical refrences. Second (4-6 pages), analytical paper on a topic from a list. This one is a bit more developed and researched, will probably one of my most difficult papers.

Brit. Lit. has one in-class writing, not much prep on that except to read and think. There is also a research paper on an outside time/social topic for the period (I think I may do coffeehouses/newspapers/The Royal Society or who knows). This paper is not to exceed eight pages and has to have five sources cited. However as it is not a critical essay but a topical essay of choice this essay should prove fun.

Late Shakespeare is going to have five summaries (one for each play) she wants these pages to be less then two pages (closer to one preferred), no problem here. There is also going to be a research paper for this class however I currently don't have any information on it.

Overall, I'll be doing a serious quantity of reading. A fair bit of easy writing, and a small, very intensive amount, of researched/critical writing.

Sanity slipped a bit from my grasp this morning (I was waking up at 7:00 AM this morning - usually if I see this hour I'm about to fall asleep).

Anxiety

The third definition found at dictionary.com suites me best.

3. Eager, often agitated desire: my anxiety to make a good impression.

In seven hours and ten minutes from the time of my typing this I'll be a student in college once again. I'm a person very much concerned with first impressions, not only with my teachers but my fellow students. I haven't looked forward to a semester of school this much since probably high school (sadly about five years ago). Not only am I excited about expanding my mind I'm a bit nervous at my work load. Besides working in a restaurant probably about fifteen to twenty hours a week, I'll also be taking fifteen hours of classes, Literature/English classes to be specific. Let me just say that my reading list will very soon be extensive and have multiple volumes on it as once. I'm beginning with Don Quijote, The Canterbury Tales, Night, some 17th century poets (then onto Milton), and Hamlet (do plays get underlines?). Needless to say I'm going to go insane rather quickly the spiral into madness will be preserved for posterity here within my blog, I ask forgiveness for this while I am still coherent and lucid.

Now as I promised Crystal here is the Philosophy test that apparently everyone that is cool is doing (now ensues the jumping off a bridge question). Take the test here.

1. Ayn Rand (100%)
2. John Stuart Mill (84%)
3. Epicureans (75%)
4. Aristotle (71%)
5. Aquinas (67%)
6. Jean-Paul Sartre (65%)
7. Nietzsche (63%)
8. Kant (56%)
9. Prescriptivism (56%)
10. Jeremy Bentham (54%)
11. Cynics (51%)
12. Thomas Hobbes (47%)
13. Plato (46%)
14. St. Augustine (45%)
15. David Hume (42%)
16. Spinoza (41%)
17. Ockham (40%)
18. Nel Noddings (33%)
19. Stoics (33%)

No great surprise that I ended up with Rand as my 100%.

John, the statcounter I use can be found at Statcounter.com located at the bottom of my sidebar. Just sign up and follow their instructions if you have any questions let me know. Sidenote, I learned from the Statcounter that you Crystal are not using Firefox or Mozilla, but rather MSIE 6.0. Escape the domination of Microsoft and convert to the world of the Gecko family. See the link in my Navbar or at the bottom of my sidebar. I guess I'll still love ya if you continue to use IE but at least try out Firefox, it's so nice.

I also learned who my California visitor is. Apparently it is InktomiSearch which is a webcrawling search engine spider that apparently likes to visit my site fairly often for some unknown reason. Ah, well not gaining national recognition afterall. I guess I'll have to tell the few people in California that I now recall I do know that I have this. That way I can say I'm read Coast to Coast. Haha.

The Power of the Internet

Okay so I recently installed a StatCounter on my blog here, just to see how many visits I was getting, and how long those visits were lasting. I'd like to thank John and Crystal for stopping in as often as they have. As well as Lewis(I believe) and a few others who have stopped in from Infinite Monkeys. But what really intrigued me was that someone from California has made multiple visits to my website. Now I personally do not know anyone in California so it intrigued me when I saw that someone from there had stopped in at least twice on two separate days. So I just wanted to say hello to everyone that I don't actually know who reads this. Feel free to introduce yourself as I'd love to check out your blog in return. By the way the StatCounter is totally free and is pretty interesting to see. Things like 63 Unique visitors on Friday but only 9 on Sunday. In any case hello to all the strangers that the power of the Internet has brought here.

Next up my Fantasy Football Draft. If you care to know here is my team. Feel free to comment.

Team Name: The Fall Down Drunks
1. Dante Culpepper - QB
2. Laveranues Coles - WR
3. Roy Williams - WR
4. Jimmy Smith - WR
5. Clinton Portis - RB
6. LaMont Jordan - RB
7. Deion Branch - WR
8. Brian Westbrook - RB
9. Carnell Williams - RB
10. Jake Delhomme - QB
11. L.J. Smith - TE
12. Mike Anderson - RB
13. Larry Johnson - RB
14. Philadelphia Eagles - DEF

Now I opted not to take a kicker because the differences between kickers really aren't all that great so I wasn't too worried about picking one up after the draft completed. I'm a bit heavy on RBs but you need depth due to injuries. Our league starts 3 WRs and also has a WR/TE flex position. Being a match-up league I'm feeling fairly good. I've got probably the highest scoring QB. Larry Johnson for RB for when Priest Holmes gets hurt. Delhomme as a very nice back-up QB for Culpepper's bye week as well as in case of injury. I've got some decent RBs but I'm hoping someone will trade multiple people for someone that is a bit higher up in the rankings. Now all there is to do is wait for the first week of games to start on 9/8 through 9/12. After that then my serious trash talk will begin. Good night all.


P.S. As I ran the spell checker over this I noticed that Blog is apparently not in the dictionary for this spellchecker. How hilarious. Of course neither is spellchecker. Haha.

Spamorific

I'm sorry to announce that I'm going to have to turn on the word verification in the comments. Made after a week or two I'll turn it off and see how things have settled down but for now I'll turn it on. You can still post anonymously, you just have to pass one of those annoying word verification tests for any comment post (yes I know they are hard to read and annoying but not as annoying as spam, at least to me). Hope it isn't that a big a deal for you folks, if it is...well comment on it. =P