Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

I bought an e-copy of RB Lemberg's The Four Profound Weaves, and I had a chance to read it last night. It's about an old man and an old woman who go on a journey - a quest, even - to find the old woman's aunt, from whom the old man wants to receive a name and the old woman wants to learn the final Profound Weave: to weave a cloth from death.

It's part of their Birdverse series, which includes these three stories, which I am too lazy to mark up the html for.

http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/geometries-of-belonging/
http://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-desert-glassmaker-and-the-jeweler-of-berevyar/
http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/grandmother-nai-leylits-cloth-of-winds/

And it is related to the third of these. The nameless old man was a protagonist there.

This story/book is about so much more than the plot. It is, at its root, a profoundly trans and queer story. Both protagonists are trans (spoiler, I guess?), and the nameless man spends time thinking about what it means to be a man and his people's traditions of masculinity and femininity. Among the nameless man's home culture, it is the norm for groups of women (3 seems common, but I don't know if that's a requirement) to form an oreg, a group of lovers who go on trading journeys together. Men remain inside a separate, locked quarter, where they are scholars and artificers.

It's sad, in many ways, and angry, but also incredibly hopeful. The final chapter hit me right in the feels, in a very similar way that The Song of Achilles did: that queer place, where there is hope and anger and sadness, lost family and found.

Lemberg's writing style is poetic without being impenetrably dense, and it reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's prose at its finest. (I'm sure RB would be pleased with that comparison! I know that "Stone Telling" is meaningful to them.)

I highly recommend this book. You can find it at all the usual suspects.
kobo
bezosland
bookshop.org

I don't have a theme for today. I worked on prep for my NaNo project. I've got the story written out, so now I just need to break it into a scene-by-scene thing with Feelings and that type of stuff. I have the feeling that this is going to be one of those things that I have to just write and let it come out and then figure out what it means. I hope not, because revising that kind of work is a royal PITA. Though I'll probably have to figure out some structural elements as I write through it, or in revisions.

So over the next couple weeks, around my column writing, agent-list making, and book writing, I'll be hammering at least a rough shape of this out.

Ooops, I got distracted by the NaNoWriMo page and thought I posted this.

I mentioned that I've been reading a lot this year, and I've been keeping track in the back of my planner, where I wanted to record the games I officiated this past season, but ... well, you know.

I've been interested in radical retellings of ancient stories since I read The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley last year, which is the story of Beowulf told from the perspective of Grendel's mother. Grendel, you may recall, is the monster who kills the Danes in their mead-hall, Heorot, and Beowulf is the one who comes to rescue them and slay the monster (and nails his arm above the door). Mom, who never gets a name in the text, gets revenge and kills Beowulf as he kills her.

The Mere Wife reimagines it in a modern-day setting. Heorot Hall is a gated suburban community in a forested area beside a mountain. Grendel's mother is an Iraq War vet with PTSD, and she takes Grendel up to the cave where her ancestors came from, which is linked to the town through history. Beowulf is a cop.

About a month ago, Headley published a new translation of Beowulf that uses modern idiom (which would make many purists cringe) but keeps a lot of the old Germanic elements: alliteration, kennings (whale-road for sea, for example), verse form. I bought it the day it came out and truly enjoyed it (and got a friend to buy the audiobook on the strength of my recommendation).

A week or so after the publication, Headley was on a discussion about radical translations with Emily Wilson, whose translation of the Odyssey made waves a few years ago, and Madeline Miller, a classicist who writes retellings of the classics from minor characters' perspective. In this discussion, several titles were recommended.

Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad, which is probably more a novella than a novel, tells the Odyssey from Odysseus' wife's perspective, with the 12 servant girls who were hanged serving as the Greek chorus. Odysseus is not the most reliable narrator, and Atwood includes rumors that he's off at a brothel, and other things, from the bards. The part that sticks out most strongly in my memory is in one of the Chorus sections that's set up as a trial (I think it was in this part, anyway) is Iphigenia, Agamemnon's daughter, rage-crying "They told me I was going to my wedding. I was fourteen."

Miller's Song of Achilles was something I'd heard of, probably via tumblr, but never really thought about, but she was so interesting on this panel, and the attendees raved about it, so I borrowed an ebook copy from my new local library. It's the legend of Achilles, as it says on the tin, told by Patroclus, his closest companion and best beloved. Patroclus doesn't appear much in the Iliad, himself, except at the end, when Hector kills him and Achilles makes the river run red with Trojan blood and then kills Hector and drags his body around the city repeatedly.

Scholars (mostly male, of course) have traditionally interpreted this as "friendship" and "very close friends." More recently, scholars (younger, female, queer) have raised a collective eyebrow at this "just bros being pals" interpretation, because, well, you don't get super-mega revenge for your ~friend~, but you will for your lover.

So, anyway, Miller's novel focuses on the special relationship between the two boys, who grow into men, and the way she writes Patroclus and his emotions about Achilles is achingly beautiful. And knowing, as we do, how their story ends makes so many things devastatingly heartbreaking. I highly recommend it!

My absentee ballot arrived on Monday, and I filled it out today. It'll go out in the mail tomorrow. Kinda sad I don't get a peach sticker this year.

I picked up the half dozen things IKEA had from the order I placed 9/21 (and cancelled yesterday because they were taking too long to deliver, even though they only had about half the things I wanted in the store), so now I have a cart with wire baskets for my clothes (a Jonaxel, if you're playing at home). And I feel a bit more settled in here. Most of my things are in boxes, totes, or suitcases (which may suggest that I don't actually need them - but I definitely enjoy having a winter wardrobe and blankets, and most of my things in storage are books, anyway), but I'm ok with that. I also have a matching soap dispenser and tumbler set and a suction cup basket for the shower.

Tonight is the VP debate (and I hope Kamala doesn't get covid from probable plague-bearer Pence and that inadequate af plexi barricade). I'm going to watch with a group chat with roller derby people in another window, because that was the only thing that made the 1st presidential debate tolerable.

I have a bunch of friends who are really into fountain pens. If you also have fountain-pen-loving friends, you know how enthusiastic they are about their hobby. Their frequently expensive hobby.

20+ years ago, when I was a junior in college studying in Germany, I picked up a Lamy Safari (yellow) because everybody in Germany uses fountain pens and I wanted to fit in. I never really got the hang of it, or never used it often enough - the ink always dried out. American notebook paper is too thin for fountain pen ink; it bleeds straight through.

In 2014, when I was doing a job observation thing in Mannheim, I picked up a Lamy AL-Star (the official color is purple, but it's a lovely deep burgundy) and a package of ink cartridges. All of this sat mostly unused for a while ... until my stupid, evil friends enabled me to get ink samples. And also because Goulet was doing BOGO on the Jinhao Shark for Shark Week. (They're $4 pens to begin with. I have 4 or 5. I like them for testing ink samples.)

So, anyway, I bought myself a Monteverde Rodeo Drive in October, and I like the heft of it, but the nib is very dry, and reviewers said that dipping it in water helped, so I'll fill that pen up and see if that works for me. When I bought it, Goulet was doing a free bottle of Monteverde ink with Monteverde pen purchase, so I got a bottle of Mandarin orange, and it's a really lovely autumn orange.

I also have a bottle of Colorverse Delicious Sleep (purple) and a small bottle of Colorverse Antimatter (greyish silver with a shimmer) that came as a freebie with the Delicious sleep. Then there's the Lamy Violet, Kaweco Summer Purple, and Monteverde Black in cartridges. I tested Diamine Syrah, Oxblood, and Sherwood Forest, and I liked the Syrah better as a red, and the green was beautifully perfect.

Serious Fountain Pen Nerds like to match their pens to the inks they put in them (the Syrah matches my AL-Star perfectly, but Lamy uses stupid proprietary cartridges and I don't wanna buy a bottle because I'm lazy, whine.) You don't have to; I assume even the biggest nerds don't do it all the time. But it's fun to try to find the perfect pen for the ink (or perfect ink for the pen, lol).

Honestly, Lamy is probably my favorite brand of pen. The Safari is a very basic resin pen, and the AL-Star is its slightly fancier aluminum brother. There are Very Expensive Lamy pens, too, of course - a friend of mine has a 2000 and says it's the best pen he's ever used, always flows perfectly - but a $25 Safari or $35 AL-Star will get you a lot of value for the money. You just have to either buy their stupid proprietary cartridges in limited colors or buy a converter or two and fill them from bottled ink. (Which honestly isn't that bad, I just like to complain, because it's harder to travel with a bottle than with a pack of cartridges.)

Lamy is a German brand, and, unsurprisingly, it's extremely popular over there. The Safari is babby's first fountain pen for middle school, and it seems like a lot of people stick with that one or go up a step. It's just a great workhorse pen! So if you want to try the fountain pen lifestyle, it's a great place to start.

I don't quite understand the point of $3000+ pens (they exist, seriously); they can't write 100 times better than my Lamy. At that point, it's like wine, I guess: the prestige/collector value. Yeah, that pen is very pretty, and I've heard good things about Pineider's quality, but, like. I just ... can't. (Then there's these, which are extremely pretty, and the least expensive is $200, which is about the highest price I can personally justify spending on a pen, but I get balky about $75. I've never spent more than $50 or so on a pen. I also can't swear that I'll never buy a fancy-ass pen if I miraculously become rich. This one, to be specific. Or this one.)

So, anyway, fountain pens. They're pretty fuckin cool.

I wrote a query letter for the Mars novel I started before grad school and "finished" in November during NaNo, then revised and added things to get it up to an 85k final draft on 8. September. I need to add in the thing I thought of expositionally that will address a crit I got, but then it's Done, except for the final proofreading pass. Then it's time to make a list of agents to query and start doing that.

I also went through the stuff I have in my friends' garage to sort out what's going to join the rest of my non-essentials in my sister's storage unit (tomorrow, we hope). Mostly books, but there's some tchotchkes and postcards and that sort of thing, too. I'm keeping a tote of books here, and some other totes with kitchen stuff and decor, and the rest is in my car. My hosts found an IKEA closet/shelf thing that's set up where a desk used to be, and I can hang my jackets and stuff on it and use the shelves for desk stuff (note cards, etc) and dresser stuff (meds & jewelry).

I'm waiting on an order from IKEA for a storage thing with baskets where my shirts will go, as well as other stuff like a laundry basket and a little trash bin to put used masks in to be washed. Theoretically it's supposed to get here Monday, but since the order tracker is still on "processing" and hasn't made it to "picking," I'm skeptical. I suppose I could call them or something, ugh.

I'm going to be here at least another 6 months, depending on how long it takes for the plague to abate and European countries to let us in as tourists. Or, depending on what happens next month, go and beg political asylum.

I got an Ink + Volt planner for this year (which mocks me every day with its reminders to check my monthly and yearly goals), and it has a X-day challenge every month. I've done German every day (twice), PT or stretching every day, and that sort of thing, so this month, I'm going to write an entry here every day. I miss longer-form social media and being able to interact with people, in this day of more ephemeral sites like twitter and tumblr.

Today I actually had an interesting experience. When I got up to Maryland, I signed up for health insurance through Kaiser Permanente. A few days later, I got a call from the allergy clinic, asking whether I wanted to take part in their program to see if I'm still allergic to penicillin. They got some money to run this protocol on new patients who listed a penicillin allergy in their charts. I said sure, why not, and my appointment was this afternoon.

The procedure is as follows: 1) a scratch test on the forearm with histamine (positive control), saline (negative control), pre-pen, and pen G. If that is negative, you advance to step 2: a repeat of the above, but intradermal injection instead. A negative result on that gets you to step 3: an oral challenge of 250 mg amoxicillin. If step 1 or 2 is positive, the protocol stops there. It takes 2 hours, because they watch you for an hour after the oral challenge to make sure you don't react.

So, as it turns out, I'm not allergic to penicillin anymore. According to the doc, the literature doesn't suggest any future resensitization following use of penicillins, so the likelihood of redeveloping an allergy is very low.

When I was about 35, I decided to start doing things because I wanted to do them, and not because Society or a mentor-type person wanted me to do them. This was about 10 years ago, 2010/2011 I'd say.
( This got really long )

Let's see. I'm officially divorced (since the end of August). I got an upgrade in my office situation, but not because I'm special now that I'm real faculty lol, rather most likely because they had to fit 12 German TAs into 8 desks (plus me), and the extra desk in the instructor office was empty. Not that I'm going to complain; they even got me a name tag for the door.

My teaching load this semester is 10 hours, which I agreed to back in May, because a faculty member was going on medical leave for shoulder surgery this semester and all the classes needed to get shuffled around. The required number of work hours (teaching hours are 3.3 hours/credit hour or so) for a part-time USG employee to be eligible for all benefits (i.e. health insurance) is 30 per week (75%), and I'm currently at 83.something%. 9 credit hours is equivalent to 30 hours/week. My spring offer was 8 credit hours (70ish%), which is, of course, less than 75%, and would make me ineligible for insurance benefits that they pay for (partially, anyway). So I asked the department head if there was any way to get me to 9 hours, even inventing some sort of 1-hour class or others, and he said he'd look into it. (There was no way they would change me from 2 4-hr classes to 3 3-hr ones, because the Real Faculty refuse to teach 4 days a week, and whatever bullshit bullshit permanent employees can get away with.) Then an early Festivus miracle occurred: the faculty member who is currently on medical leave announced she's retiring at the end of this semester, and can I pick up 3 more hours? Which has me teaching 11 hours a week, THREE PREPS, on a schedule that will likely confuse the hell out of me.

1st semester meets MTWR at 9:05/9:30.
4th semester meets MWF at 11:15.
2nd semester meets MTWR at 12:20/12:30.

I'm not going to know if I'm coming or going half the time. But, hey, at least I can afford health insurance and continue to get my medications. And maybe save up enough to pay for COBRA in the months I'm not employed but before I go abroad.

My new roommate is a serious upgrade from the previous one. She is also queer; she studies fashion theory and feminist studies; she is completely social; she's going to roller derby bootcamp. Her cat likes sleeping on my yoga mat (of all the surfaces in the apartment...). She's fannish, and we've talked Stucky and Good Omens and Star Wars. In other words, a normal human being. I was talking about Bitch Planet and decided to get it out to read again (and recced it to her) and she liked it. So, yeah. Serious upgrade in the roommate department.

I did a 10k road skate on Saturday and only fell down (accidentally) once. And I decided, like a genius, not to wear my elbow pads, so of course I fell right on my elbow and scraped it. (My knees, which were padded, took the brunt of the fall.) But I can wear my Star Wars bandaids, so it balances out.

I'm probably going to have to get a part time summer job so I can cover expenses and still have enough for moving. (Fuck, y'all, moving. I am doomed.) I just bought plane tickets to Berlin in May for an apartment- and job-hunting mission. Not sure where I'm going to stay, but I'll worry about that in March. I suppose that if the freelancer visa and teaching a language thing doesn't work out, I could change my mind and get a PhD* (ugh) to get a student visa. Or cross my fingers that I can figure out some sort of writing gig (also covered under freelancing) that pays something useful. Or maybe steady translation work, idk. Something that'll keep a roof over my head and food in my belly.

I'd have more money in the bank if I hadn't had to replace my Mini in July. The harmonic balancer died, and fixing it would have cost as much as the car was worth - and with a 14-year-old car, lord knows what the next thing to break would be. So I sold it to the mechanics and bought a 2016 Fit. Which is infinitely more practical and gets way better gas mileage. And I should be able to sell it for close to what I paid for it (not counting taxes, of course) next year, which means I'll have most of the money back.

*There is some pretty cool research in the Modern German department at Uni Potsdam.

ETA: I might be able to apply for a qualification to work with migrants and refugees based on this. Though I'm not 100% sure where my DaF Grundlagen und Konzepte certificate is.

I sent my thesis off to my committee this morning. Now I wait for them to respond with whether any of the times I suggested for my defense work for them. Two of them are on a lot of committees, but I'm not sure how many are defending anything right now.

I have also transferred a third of the money required for the co-op shares, so that's happening, too. I'm planning on moving to Berlin in August 2020. I'll have to find a WG for a year or so, until the co-op is built, which could be tricky (because housing in Berlin is pretty ridiculous). So I'm counting on having to go back over next May/June to tour WGs and sign a lease, with any luck.

As a way to try to earn more money, I've started a Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/sflinguistics I'm working on my first column at the moment. I plan on writing about portrayals of linguistics in SFF, language use in SFF, and if I get enough subscribers, add an academic end of things (article reviews/summaries) about fandom and language. I haven't done much in the way of promotion yet, but it's on my list.

I've decided I don't want to do a PhD. I want to write about language and linguistics for the general public, and I have a Really Cool Idea that I'll write up as an outline/proposal after I finish my thesis. Then I'll either submit it to a small press or send it to some agents. I could also potentially write it up as a pitch for a blog series at tor.com (which, somehow, strikes me as even more of a long-shot than selling the book proposal). I can do this without a PhD, so I will.

I still, however, want to move to Berlin. Not being a student means I can't just get a student visa, so I need to figure out how to get a work/residence permit. Berlin has an artist visa option, which I think is under the umbrella of Freiberufler (sort of like freelance but not quite, and is different from being self-employed, because, of course, TSCHÖRMANY). The criteria are rather picky. But I have 2 skills (one with certification) that fall under the umbrella: writer and language teacher. I can translate, but I don't have any certification, and Germany really likes people to have certification for their jobs.

What I don't know is whether being there on a Freiberufler permit would allow me to pick up a part-time job at, like, a bookstore or something. Because writing income isn't steady (especially if you haven't got a book contract and all) and I'd really like to have some sort of income so I don't just burn through my savings. There's a line in the details about wanting to work on an Honorarbasis, but I'm not entirely sure what that means. German bureaucracy is legendary for a reason.

There doesn't seem to be a "contact us with questions" email address on the page I'm looking at.

So. Anyway. Here is my current plan with timeline.

May 2019: finish my MA.

summer 2019: finish the novel I started before grad school AND write a proposal/pitch for the nonfiction, then send it out

academic year 2019-20: teach at UGA; continue to work on book(s); save money

May 2020: look for WG-Zimmer, apartments, and condos online; contact sellers/renters

late May 2020: go to Berlin for 10-14 days to view apartments (somehow have proof of financial security to show them because I don't think Schufa works on foreign accounts); hopefully sign a contract; open a bank account.

June-July 2020: pack up my shit & start selling furniture; start getting all the Unterlagen I can together; send boxes of small things over (maybe some books via international flat rate)

August 2020: off to Deutschland

September 2020: appointment with the foreigner office? It takes time to get through bureaucracy. (Though the site says they can give you your Stempel during the appointment...)

October 2020: pop over to Norway for a few days in case I need to keep staying on a tourist visa (it's outside the Schengen area); repeat as needed and with other non-Schengen countries that US citizens don't need visas for

Other things I don't know: whether I can do multiple freiberufliche Tätigkeiten (e.g. be a writer AND a language teacher); whether I can earn income from US sources while in Germany and how that affects taxes.

Also need to think about getting my cat over there (if I still have her).

What things have I /not/ thought about?

Updates: I googled Honorarbasis, and a quick skim of this page sounds like it's akin to contract work/freelancing here, where you are responsible for your own insurance and you have different tax rules to follow. But there seem to be language teacher jobs available on an Honorarbasis, so that could be a possibility.

And this looks fascinating. It's a co-op, and I have no idea how I'd even buy one, but I really like the plan. Coworking space!

I had a pretty good holiday. I went to NC, which was only a little awkward, because I was staying in Ben's house, in my former sewing room. I went to a different trivia night with friends (because Mystery closed, which is sad and a tragedy) on Tuesday, and I took myself out to Med Deli one day for lunch (I wish there were good Mediterranean food in Athens. I KNOW. YOU'D THINK.) Friday night my friends Paul & Laura had their annual solstice party, where I tried a fancy bourbon and a fancy Scotch and talked with people until sorta late but not too bad.

I went up to my sister's the 22nd for my mom's family's annual Christmas party, which I hadn't been to in several years. My sister wasn't home from work yet when I got there, and her husband was leaving for a theater thing, and then my niece woke up crying. I went to try to calm her down, and she freaked out and hid in a corner, so I started to text my sister but noticed that Jose's car was still in the driveway, so I was about to run outside and grab him before he left - then he came inside and took care of his angrily shrieking child. (She will be 4 in February.) So that was a thing.

The family party was fine. I thought it might have been awkward because no Ben this year, but I actually got to talk to my cousins for once. And all the aunts (and grandma) asked about my settlement to make sure I'm covered. So that was nice. My uncle Kurt said I looked really good and happy and my eyes sparkled mischievously. So I guess divorce is a good look on me? Or maybe I'm finally able to do what I want, and happy doing what I like, and it shows.

Staying at my sister's was ok. She and Jose have the 4-year-old, and he has 2 daughters (12 and 8) from his first marriage. There's a lot of drama with his ex, which my sister caught me up on, and that's basically why the 12-year-old lives with them full time. But spending 5 days around children (especially the youngest) confirmed that I have no desire to raise any of them myself. They're so demanding!

I didn't get a lot of presents this year, which is fine, and it was kind of nice not to have a stocking full of stuff I don't need or want from Ben's mom (but also kind of sad). I got a coloring book for adults and some colored pencils, socks, chocolates, and a Grumpy Cat santa plushie. I bought myself a Pixelbook for Xmas so I can have a lighter computer to carry to school for making lesson plans and teaching with. (My MacBook Pro is so heavy!) I like it so far.

I'm back in Athens and working on some background reading for my thesis. Organizational, really - I'm writing the things I highlighted on PDFs onto index cards so I can sort them by topic later and make it easier to find citations when I start writing. Classes start the 9th, so I'll probably work from home this week and then go to campus the 7th & 8th to get my copies made and get my teaching materials together. Or I could change my mind and go in for a change of scenery, we'll see.

I guess I haven't updated since before Readercon back in July. Wow. Between sorting through my stuff at Ben's house and coming back to Georgia and the semester, I guess I got busy.

This semester has been pretty good thus far. (It's almost over, but there's still final papers and stuff.) I have generative syntax (Chomskyan X-bar theory), Old English, and an online language acquisition class. I still don't believe that X-bar (or its successor, minimalism) are what is Really Happening in the brain when we speak, and I am definitely not a syntactician, but unless I completely screw up my final paper, I'll have an A in the class. I'm writing my final paper on let-passives (have in English) in German, Old Norse, and Old English, with modern English for comparison. (An example is "He had a house built.")

Old English is fun, but not as much fun as Old Norse. I'm kind of bummed I can't fit Beowulf into my schedule next semester, but there's nothing stopping me from reading an online edition on my own. Well, other than time and willingness to put in the effort (and not having a good dictionary). Whereas with Old Norse, I will fall down rabbit holes whenever I'm looking something up (like last night, when I was trying to find sources for the example sentences I used that weren't EV Gordon's collection/textbook).

The online class is a lot of work. Every week we have to answer a set of questions about the readings - and cite the readings specifically - then respond to 3 other people's answers. And there's a VoiceThread which we have to record an answer in (to a DIFFERENT question). And there's usually a quiz. And there are 2 papers and an article presentation. The second paper was due yesterday, and the article presentation is due after Thanksgiving.

But the most exciting thing is that I'm done with course work after this semester! I have enough hours, so I'm just going to audit one class I'm interested in (which means I don't have to write the final paper or take any tests), teach 2 classes (6 hours a week plus prep & grading), and write my thesis. On paper I have so much free time (i.e. time to write my thesis), but teaching always takes more time than I expect.

In other positive news, I will definitely be able to stay on at UGA as an instructor next year. I'll just need to do a bunch of paperwork because I won't be a student anymore. My plan is to work on my dissertation prospectus so I can apply to a program in Germany for winter 2020 (though I'd need to contact them to find out if it's possible to apply early enough for summer 2020 and defer for a semester, because I'd need to let the department here know if I'm staying or not by this time next year. I'd need to get them my prospectus by Aug 30 - so writing is a summer project.) Annoyingly, I need proficiency in another foreign language (my Russian is garbage, and I don't feel like re-learning it, so I have no idea what to learn.)

My to-do list for break is to finish the draft of my syntax paper, do my article presentation for language acquisition, and translate Old English. I should definitely read for my thesis, too. I also need to finish grading the tests my students took on Thursday. I'm going to a friend's for a potluck Thanksgiving, and depending on how ambitious I'm feeling, I might make a batch of spritz. I also need to go to the tag agency and register my car in GA now that it's insured here. I want to spend some time goofing off (watching TV) because I can.

This is my last semester of 4 classes; two of those in a row was hell. Very stressful, especially with teaching on top.

I finished my MA in German Studies, however, and that is a good feeling. I got an A in the class I was worried about, because the professor wanted us to write Proper History Papers, and none of us were really cut out for it. So I was worried about that, because she didn't seem too thrilled that we couldn't do historiography or put things into the broader historical context and didn't seem to understand that we had no idea what she wanted us to do. So I wrote the best paper I could (about the effects of GDR-era education & language policies on the Sorbs & their culture) and sent it in.

I rocked the hell out of Gothic; I got a 97 on the midterm and had a 97 average on the quizzes, and I felt pretty confident about the final after I finished it, so 90s probably. But I feel a little bad about that because I wrecked the curve and my friends might not have gotten as good grades as they hoped. I'm just really good at memorizing shit, and it's a Germanic language, so...

I also had a class in German morphology and phonology, which is counting toward my LING MA, and I got an A in that. My last class was a seminar in variationist sociolinguistics, which I managed an A in even though my paper was a chaotic mess.

In fall, I have 3 classes: Syntax (TR), Old English (MWF), and L1/L2 acquisition (online), and I'm teaching 2 sections of GRMN 1002 (which I taught last fall and have a ton of materials for). Then in spring, I only need one more class to graduate.

Right now I'm on vacation until June 1, when I go back to Athens for a week or so, to work on my summer independent study of Old Saxon (and go to roller derby practice). I just watched season 2 of The Expanse, and I want to watch Black Sails, and I want to catch up on anime from the last 8 months. I'm also going to read books I've been wanting to read for ages.

I'm going to a conference Thursday - Sunday, but that's the last school-related thing this month. I'm also visiting family in Maryland on the way up to Penn State, so I can break up the horribly long drive.