satisfied sigh
Jun. 29th, 2005 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7My room is still a mess. However. Before you judge me: I did some useful work this afternoon. How truly useful it was, I don't know. But it felt awfully useful at the time.
I have decided that we use our back porch more than the living room at the moment. So, it is set up right now as simultaneously a dinette and a living room. We took our couch, the World's Ugliest Couch of lore, and moved it from our actual living room to the back porch. Which now has comfortable seating for five, and less-comfortable seating (but reasonable) for five more.
Our living room, however, is echoingly empty. I don't know what to do about that. But at least it will be spotlessly, spotlessly clean. We don't own enough furniture is what it boils down to, and that's that. Hey, maybe while it's empty like this we can repaint the walls. A thought. (They're purple and we really don't know why. Urgh.)
Meanwhile back at the ranch, I decorated the back porch. It now has a kind of a jungle theme, with the houseplants that wouldn't really be thrilled by an outdoor sojourn carefully placed all around, and all of Dave's monkey stuff that isn't intolerably creepy all strewn about. Which should please his mom. It's now the nicest room in the house. I may sleep out there on the couch. Because it's damn nice out there.
I do feel accomplished. We'll see how I feel at sundown on Friday when my parents are here and the sun's shining in there and someone suggests that we might be more comfortable inside and I realize that I truly honestly don't have enough places for five people to sit down inside unless I put them all on folding chairs or the floor. "Sure, let's go inside. Mom, you get that end of the couch. Fiona, get the door."
But anyhow. It's nice out there. And shiny. I am determinedly not thinking about my room just now. Once i get started it will take no time. I will do it tomorrow morning before it gets hot. Yes. Pigs also will fly, and they'll build a cold fusion reactor in France. (One of these things is true.)
Oh, I briefly pawed through one of the boxes in my room today, and discovered, of all things, my Junior Project. At my high school, all juniors had to do a huge research project in English class-- the idea being, I think, to prepare us for major thesis-driven research papers in college. It was this big stinking deal, and really, it actually only had to be eight pages long. I over-read, over-researched, overthought, and overwrote mine to a ridiculous degree, as I recall, and handed in a twenty-page thesis as my rough draft, with about sixteen more pages of endnotes, dealing with a massive and complex topic when really, it should've been a whole lot shallower and less intense.
The draft I found (I have lost the computer file, sadly, although I have most of the files I've ever composed) is the final draft, with commentary and notes from the teacher. To my astonishment, the grade on it is only a 90. I remember being a better student than that. But I think that's always been the case-- in my head, I've always considered myself among the best students in my class, but in reality I've always been a solid B student with flashes of brilliance and occasional stupendous failures.
I haven't reread the paper (composed in spring of 1996, when I was 16), but I glanced over the comments, and obviously I lost the ten points because I had too much to say and couldn't focus on what was important. It's also a little overlength even eviscerated as I remember it being. But it had a damn good cover page. I wish I had a scanner, to convey the awesomeness of this hand-drawn cover page, probably the first in a very long series which most notably culminated in the Papers I Wrote For Professor Higley set, which were truly wonderful. (I did one in crayon for "Monsters Tearing Off My Face" in the Alien Sex class. She held it up for the whole class to see. I think Morris did one too. I loved that class. But I digress.)
But I should transcribe the thing, and post it up here. We'll see; maybe. Almost ten years now since I wrote it; I was a couple years already into the composition of that first novel by that point, too. Am I nostalgic?
No, I was a twit, as I've mentioned. I now understand my father's response, when we, innocent children just noticing the youth-obsession of our culture, asked him if he'd want to be young again: "No," he snorted, disgusted, "it was tough enough the first time, thanks very much." Ugh, being young sucked.
Right: Bed. Must clean tomorrow. I promise I'll finish.
I have decided that we use our back porch more than the living room at the moment. So, it is set up right now as simultaneously a dinette and a living room. We took our couch, the World's Ugliest Couch of lore, and moved it from our actual living room to the back porch. Which now has comfortable seating for five, and less-comfortable seating (but reasonable) for five more.
Our living room, however, is echoingly empty. I don't know what to do about that. But at least it will be spotlessly, spotlessly clean. We don't own enough furniture is what it boils down to, and that's that. Hey, maybe while it's empty like this we can repaint the walls. A thought. (They're purple and we really don't know why. Urgh.)
Meanwhile back at the ranch, I decorated the back porch. It now has a kind of a jungle theme, with the houseplants that wouldn't really be thrilled by an outdoor sojourn carefully placed all around, and all of Dave's monkey stuff that isn't intolerably creepy all strewn about. Which should please his mom. It's now the nicest room in the house. I may sleep out there on the couch. Because it's damn nice out there.
I do feel accomplished. We'll see how I feel at sundown on Friday when my parents are here and the sun's shining in there and someone suggests that we might be more comfortable inside and I realize that I truly honestly don't have enough places for five people to sit down inside unless I put them all on folding chairs or the floor. "Sure, let's go inside. Mom, you get that end of the couch. Fiona, get the door."
But anyhow. It's nice out there. And shiny. I am determinedly not thinking about my room just now. Once i get started it will take no time. I will do it tomorrow morning before it gets hot. Yes. Pigs also will fly, and they'll build a cold fusion reactor in France. (One of these things is true.)
Oh, I briefly pawed through one of the boxes in my room today, and discovered, of all things, my Junior Project. At my high school, all juniors had to do a huge research project in English class-- the idea being, I think, to prepare us for major thesis-driven research papers in college. It was this big stinking deal, and really, it actually only had to be eight pages long. I over-read, over-researched, overthought, and overwrote mine to a ridiculous degree, as I recall, and handed in a twenty-page thesis as my rough draft, with about sixteen more pages of endnotes, dealing with a massive and complex topic when really, it should've been a whole lot shallower and less intense.
The draft I found (I have lost the computer file, sadly, although I have most of the files I've ever composed) is the final draft, with commentary and notes from the teacher. To my astonishment, the grade on it is only a 90. I remember being a better student than that. But I think that's always been the case-- in my head, I've always considered myself among the best students in my class, but in reality I've always been a solid B student with flashes of brilliance and occasional stupendous failures.
I haven't reread the paper (composed in spring of 1996, when I was 16), but I glanced over the comments, and obviously I lost the ten points because I had too much to say and couldn't focus on what was important. It's also a little overlength even eviscerated as I remember it being. But it had a damn good cover page. I wish I had a scanner, to convey the awesomeness of this hand-drawn cover page, probably the first in a very long series which most notably culminated in the Papers I Wrote For Professor Higley set, which were truly wonderful. (I did one in crayon for "Monsters Tearing Off My Face" in the Alien Sex class. She held it up for the whole class to see. I think Morris did one too. I loved that class. But I digress.)
But I should transcribe the thing, and post it up here. We'll see; maybe. Almost ten years now since I wrote it; I was a couple years already into the composition of that first novel by that point, too. Am I nostalgic?
No, I was a twit, as I've mentioned. I now understand my father's response, when we, innocent children just noticing the youth-obsession of our culture, asked him if he'd want to be young again: "No," he snorted, disgusted, "it was tough enough the first time, thanks very much." Ugh, being young sucked.
Right: Bed. Must clean tomorrow. I promise I'll finish.
