I love the smell of photo chemicals

And yes, I know that's weird.

Well, it's almost the end of October and I feel like I've been back at Georgetown for months and months already. Life's pretty busy lately. I would explain all of what I've been doing but why do that when I can just use this handy pie chart?!

Don't you just LOVE the internet???? (I love how classes are such a relatively small part of all this)

Katherine

Aaahhh boredom

In order to assuage myself from the fact that I want to kill James Elkins right now (just trust me on that one) I'm posting a blurb I found in an issue of the Levee over the summer that both hit home and made me laugh. For those of you who don't know, The Levee is a satirical sort-of magazine that was started up in New Orleans a few years ago. Think the Onion, only specifically Gulf Coast related. Sometimes they get a little too silly for me, but every once in a while I love their stuff. This one, from what I believe was this year's August edition, was one of the latter, which is why it is currently staring at me from its place of honor on the back of my bookshelf:

from www.nolevee.com


New Stages of Acceptance
Zach Poche

The traditional five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance - have been updated to accommodate New Orleanians and Gulf Coasters who have had to deal with the federal levee failures during Hurricane Katrina and now the massive Gulf oil spill that has changed and is changing lives every day. The new stages are:

- Disbelief
- Anger
- Sadness
- Acceptance
- Confusion. You subconsciously accepted what happened, but more oil kept spilling. It's like if your friend dies, then keeps getting more dead day by day.
- Back to anger
- Frustration
- Defeat
- Little more anger
- Ennui
- Hunger
- Sadness
- Frustration. The mind needs a release. It decided to watch a rerun of "The Cosby Show" to have some positive vibes, but it hits the wrong button on the remote and accidentally sees an oil-covered pelican on CNN.
- Anger. But not the furious type of anger - more like the type when a parent says, "(Sigh) I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed in you."
- Horniness (Yes, the human mind is a strange thing)
- Reminiscence of the way things used to be.
- Boredom. Leading the id to need to waste time looking at random YouTube videos. Then it keeps seeing advertisements of how BP is helping the cleanup.
- Furious hatred
- Bloodlust. Directed solely at Tony Hayward.
- Forgiveness. For Tony Hayward. The super-ego overrules the conscious saying that no human deserves the torture that you would deliver if you could get that British bastard alone in a room for an hour or two.
- Anger. The mind reverses its position as the conscious tells the super-ego it can go help some old lady cross the street. If you ever meet Tony Hayward, God help him.
- Sleepiness.





Fantastic, right?


now enjoy this little gem: http://www.nolevee.com/?article=city_trying_to_kill_pothole




Katherine

In That Number

Today's a big day for anyone from the Gulf Coast. As much as we try to forget what happened 5 years ago today and as much as we may want to forget, Katrina's legacy remains for everyone. So in honor of the culture of New Orleans which isn't recovering but has survived (get it right newspapers!), I'm sharing this mix I've put together from various benefit albums and compilations. I like it, and I hope you do too.

http://www.mediafire.com/?yhda0go93mbilr0




Katherine

Airports

In honor of the fact that I will be leaving to head back to DC in exactly one week I'm doing a little experiment for myself as to the airports I've been in in the past 365 days. Or rather, the past 358 days as I will be going up to next Wednesday. So without further ado I present to you a list that tells you just how much of my life I've wasted in these things lately (in no particular order, with official names if I know them off the top of my head):

New Orleans (Louis Armstrong International Airport)
Atlanta (Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport)
Washington, DC (Reagan International Airport)
Washington, DC (Dulles International Airport)
Boston (Logan International Airport)
Memphis (the Tennessee one, not the one in Egypt)
Detroit
Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport
Tampa
Chicago (Midway International Airport)
Paris (Orly)
Paris (Charles DeGaulle)
Florence-Peretola
Pisa (Galileo Galilei)
Frankfurt (am Main)
Berlin-Schönefeld
London (Gatwick)
London (Heathrow)
London (Stansted)
Glasgow 
Glasgow (Prestwick)
Dublin
Edinburgh
Venice (Marco Polo)
Verona-Villafranca
Milan-Malpensa
Tokyo-Narita
Osaka
Taiwan Taoyuan




Next up - train stations! Ha, just kidding, that would be horribly difficult and at least 5 times as long (hooray for European and Asian train systems right?!)


Now this is just making me sad because this year this list will be much much shorter. As much as I dislike airports I do love traveling. Shame. Oh well, I'll just have to fit in some trips somewhere! Suggestions?

Books, books and more books!

I know it's been quite a while and to be honest, this doesn't even really count as a real post, but it's summer so I'm okay with being super lazy. And I stole this from Malin.


Rules of the game:

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (almost)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (at least halfway)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

The end... almost.

Well, I'm done. Finally. Seeing as I finished classes almost 2 months ago exactly, the end of exams has been a long time coming.

As I was taking my methodology of art history exam this morning (in a chapel!) I realized that art was most definitely ingrained in me at a young age. I was writing an essay about how psychoanalysis has affected the assumption that artists are the people who best know the meaning of their on work, but my mind kept drifting off to a series of books I used to love when I was a kid.

Malin might remember this moment - but when we were in Venice, in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection's gift shop, I happened to find a copy of one of the "Katie's Picture Show..." books. Now, for some reason, the memory of these had been completely erased from the forefront of my mind but when I saw this book I immediately remembered reading them (and having them read to me!) For those of you who don't know, these books are amazing. They recount the stories of Katie, a little girl whose grandmother always takes her to museums (usually it's too hot outside) and then falls asleep on a bench while Katie wonders around the galleries. She's able (magically!) to jump inside paintings and talk with their inhabitants, and invariably causes a bit of trouble (like flooding a gallery or losing a hoop) but in the end everyone is restored to their paintings and Katie and her grandmother go off and get a slice of cake, or some ice cream. At the end of the book there's always a list of the paintings that Katie explores with a little bit of information about all of them - fun and educational at the same time!

When I was little I remember imagining that I was Katie (it didn't hurt that we had the same name!) and that I could go inside paintings and explore them. I still wish I could, but I guess studying art history is about as close as I'll get ;)

Katherine

Unfortunately, as I've just realized from reading his blog, James Mayhew, the author, was in Edinburgh in April and somehow I missed his talk!! I would've loved to meet him :( More fortunately, the next Katie book will be about adventures in Scotland!

Spring Break - Cuid dó

(That's Gaelic for Part Two)

I've been meaning to get to this post for a while now but as usual, life has gotten in the way. In other words, I've been lazy, and then I had visitors for a while, so I'm just now sitting down to think about the 2 weeks I spent in Scotland with my parents. As I'm sure anyone who reads this doesn't actually care that much about what exactly we all did, I won't bother regaling you with a day by day recap. Instead, just a few points of summary:

- Sheep are AWESOME. As are lambs. Unfortunately, they are rather skittish and do not like being approached.
- My dad kicks ass at picking hotels. Seriously.
- People at American consulates are not very nice.
- Scotland has good food!
- Scotland is also cold. Seriously. It snowed when we were in Edinburgh. On April 20th. Not cool.
- Highland cows (aka coos) are also awesome. And shaggy.
- It gets WINDY on the Isle of Skye.
- It also gets BEAUTIFUL.