starzki | Before I get working (Reply)

I was a good girl yesterday and finished my personal statement for the fellowship application. I just can't use the original one; it's too embarrassing. But I guess that it is nice to know that my writing has gotten better in the past five years or so. It was kind of fun to write the statement so that it looked like I knew what I was doing when I applied to this school. It's like writing your hypotheses after you've already found your results. "Of course this is what I expected to get all along!"

My professor wants me to write an abstract to submit to ASC in November so that we can have a panel discussion centered around the project. However, there is the issue of me not having done any kind of analysis since the last ASC presentation and the abstract is due the week after next. Oh, well. I'll make something up. I'll probably have done something by November. I should also muck around with my Methods book list a bit more. And maybe start the third (last) one.

Oscars tonight. I think I'll watch. Or at least I'll have it on. I'm rooting for Brokeback Mountain. And this has almost nothing to do with my awesome dream the other night where I was making out with Jake Gyllenhaal. To be fair, I don't think I've seen any of the other movies that are nominated. But Brokeback literally took my breath away. When I was in the theater watching it with my mom and sister, with 20 minutes left until the end, I remember actually having the thought, "This is good, but I thought this would be a weeper. I've gotten misty a few times, but I guess it's not all that wrenching a story." And then that end. That end. I knew it was coming, I wasn't surprised. But that last two minutes where I don't think there's even a full sentence of dialogue just tore me apart. I couldn't even move. The lights came up and my sister started swearing up a storm about how they shouldn't turn on the lights until everyone can at least wipe their tears away because it's embarrassing to cry in public and my mom was saying an astonished, "I actually liked it. Wow." And all I could do was struggle not to break out into sobbing. After a few minutes, I tried to get up, but my breath did that whole hitching thing that precedes audible crying and my mom told me to sit back down and collect myself. I haven't cried like that at a movie my entire adult life and someone should get some kind of award for that is all I'm saying.

I'll also be rooting for Jon Stewart. Love him.