Philadelphia

Here's the thing. I miss Philly tons. I miss the noise, I miss the streets, I miss the vastness and I miss the people. I belonged there*, and already it feels like last semester was a lifetime ago. The living situation provided a balance between public and private that cannot be replicated. We were just in a great community there, and I miss it.

Surprise sort of grabbed me when Ryan (the RD) emailed me about a job during May-term. The family's got a vacation planned almost exactly during that timeframe, so I obviously can't go, but I am sooo tempted. Seriously, my parents are taking me to Yosemite (!) and I would rather go to the city and work. I still may get to spend the summer in the city (work-study please?), but just the opportunity to go do my old job with friends made me realize exactly how much I miss the place.

*Not that I feel I don't belong in Grantham - Messiah's awesome :)

Illness sucks

That's all.

Title

You all know that the most difficult thing about blogging for me is figuring out the titles of each post, because, above all, I hate when the first line of the post appears in the sidebar. Just when it goes onto two lines and then trails off...agh!! Absolutely horrible. The past few days I've been composing entries in my head, and I would have an excellent title to go along with it, but I was never at a point where I could actually sit down and write the post, so of course I forgot them all.

Anyways, I have not been blogging a lot, but I have been writing a lot, so here's something from my journal.*

So, I'm not totally sure what is happening in my head right now. Which is probably good, because then I can't mess it up. That verse "I put away childish things" comes to mind. I'm looking at all the books on my bookshelf and thinking that several of them probably don't belong on an English major's shelf. Not that it's the worst writing ever (I've seen much worse, including my own), but what I choose to read (and often buy) ought now to be something that challenges me to be better: reader and writer. Thus, Middlemarch** is now in my bag, though I haven't yet begun it. I need to get used to the idea of it first, and I'm sure George Eliot would appreciate a chance to evaluate her reader.

I have a lot of YA (young adult) fiction on my shelves, some of which is excellent (The Graveyard Book, Beauty, Crown Duel), but more aren't very spectacular (This is a books-are-sentient-beings journal, so I won't name names). I need to stop buying books before I've read them, because then I feel pressured to love them.

*My journal is an interesting little brown leather notebook with an extraordinarily difficult fastening. For at least two years I've been trying to figure out the best way to hold it shut, and recently, I've found that a paper clip holding the strings together is very reasonable. The other day though, I had an epiphany about a way the designers may have intended it to be kept shut. However, it's way to complicated for my talents to describe that way, so just rest assured that my notebook is now staying closed quite consistently without the help of a paper clip.

**Also, I decided approximately 30 seconds ago that I will not underline the names of books here, primarily because it's my journal and I will enthusiastically demolish unnecessary rules of punctuation whenever I can, but also because I would like the books I write about, particularly the good ones, to feel at home here. Being able to shrug off a binding and let your punctuation down is a valuable gift, one which I hope all my book friends will accept with my compliments.