News you can probably...possibly...maybe...use, I mean, like, if you want, and stuff

Some notes related to academics:

I got an "A" on my first essay for the creative non-fiction class I'm taking this semester. I don't see the grade posted in the system, so I don't know if this bumped me back up from the overall "B" to the higher letter grade. I can only hope. I had one very minor punctuation error that my instructor noted, and which caused me a small amount of personal shame, but she highlighted a lot of lines that she defined as being excellent examples of the "showing/telling" rules, and wrote "Ha" around the funny bits, and highlighted a couple of places with notes saying "great details" and "excellent". It may not have been the most difficult essay I've ever tried to write (in all honesty, it was drafted on the fly after I rejected my first essay as being too serious, and only took two hours to get on paper), but it's gratifying to see appreciation for what I was trying to get accross. The next two essays will be more challenging.

I have plans formulating to take Beginning Chinese in the fall term. The prospect of this excites me in a very fundamentally nerdy fashion. I like being able to order a beer and ask for the bathroom in as many languages as possible. Currently, I'm fluent in English (well...most of the time, anyway...), somewhat conversant in German and Spanish, to an extent, and have retained a smattering of conversational French. I have wanted to learn Japanese for quite some time, because one of the countries that I feel that I absolutely must visit is Japan - I've got a fondness for that country's cultural quirks, and I adore the cuisine. I think that Chinese may have a growing use in the business world, globally, in the way that being bilingual in Spanish is sometimes seen as a benefit locally in certain industries. And I think that it would be fun to highlight on my resume: "Conversant in conversational Mandarin Chinese".

Some notes related to writing:

Yesterday I sent a query email out to an online publication (associated with a national publishing enterprise), requesting clarification on whether they consider posting a story to a personal blog as "publishing". If so, nothing that I post here can be submitted for consideration, and I will need to be more judicious on sharing certain things online for input or feedback. I don't think that anything that I've got here, especially the stories based on the F3 prompts, which I consider "practice", would be something I'd submit for payment and publishing rights. At least - not in the form I have them in. I have a couple of partially drafted stories in my writing notebook that I need to polish and do some more work on that might be suitable, though.

I got confirmation that my submission for the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge was received. I won't hear back on how it was judged and if I advanced to the second (and final) heat until mid-March. I'm worried that I didn't really incorporate the subject prompt in the way it was intended, and that my "mystery" story sort of took on more of a "true-crime" atmosphere toward the end...or I could be over-thinking and it will all be fine. Of course, as is typical for the way my brain works, I was pulling blanks for almost the entire week leading up to the deadline, then the following week hit upon a GREAT idea based on the genre/subject prompts...which I neglected to write down, and is now lost to me forever. Thanks so much, Brain!!

Some notes related to miscellaneous other things

Today I said goodby to the third SA administrator I've worked with in the seven years I've been at this institution. No one has any idea of what's going to happen in the long-term. One of the other admins may be ill (I was party to a conversation divulging this fact, which is not common knowledge - yet). So we're potentially down to just one VC. I don't know what this means, or the challenges it will present, but I have a job to do, and that's where I am with all of these changes. The world spins madly on...

Some may be aware (faithful reader M, specifically), that I lost my dog to an aggressive cancer last summer. The disease had invaded her entire body, and it became an issue of quality of life. I chose to let her go, sooner than I'd planned. Of course, she had a nice long life of eleven years that I got to share with her. But it was still heartwrenching to experience, and it left both a phycial and an emotional vacancy that is jarring in its mere existence. Many of my friends and neighbors have dogs, and this is helpful to some degree when I get to spend time with others' pets, but these are not my dogs. I get to hand them off when they misbehave, sure, and that's nice...but I don't get to fully enjoy the benefits of companionship and love. Our two cats offer some comfort, and I love them, but...cats are not dogs, and the companionship and affection is not quite the same.

Which brings me to what I'll call The Dilemma: Following the sudden (although not entirely unexpected) loss of our dog, my husband and I both agreed that the cats were enough, at least for a time. My husband swore off additional pets - especially the idea of getting another dog - and stated that we shouldn't consider another pet until both of the cats were gone. I've never gone a long period of time in my late childhood to adulthood without a dog. My husband and I have lost two pets over the duration of our marriage so far, in addition to the experience of having to surrender a couple of cats that we'd taken on from a family member (that turned out to be more than we could handle at that point in our lives). It's hard to lose a pet, and although I consider it more than worthwhile, I have to consider the wishes & feelings of the rest of my family in those kinds of situations. I'd started leaning more heavily toward getting chickens to keep in the backyard, which is allowed in our city's statutes. We couldn't have both chickens and a dog, realistically, so choosing one would negate the other. I'd like to have chickens, but they have requirements I may not be prepared to meet, and I remain interested in the idea, but it is not something I have my heart set on at this point in my life. This past weekend we spent some time with my husband's family, which included being around his grandmother's adolescent Border Collie. I was enjoying myself quite a bit, and I felt the tug. The wistful, nostalgic thought of "I miss this. I miss playing endless rounds of fetch. And the belly rubs. And having a damp, dirty toy dropped in my lap. And that devoted, hopeful gaze from eyes that convey that you are the most important thing in that dog's life right at that moment. I really miss it." I've recently been asked if we'd be interested in a puppy that is owned by a friend-of-a-friend. We've met this dog, and I found him to be sweet and even-tempered. He's also been raised around a cat and children, and apparently doesn't have a problem with either. For me, that's a bonus. The downside is, he would need to be neutered, crate trained and housebroken (not necessarily in that particular order, though). The other downside is that his exact breed is a mystery. Originally, the people who have him were sure he was a pitbull mix. Pits are on my verboten breeds list, along with poodles. However, based on the shape of his muzzle and his ears, I really think he's more retreiver/hound mix, even if there is a little pit bull in the genetic mix somewhere. I would take him. My husband, because of the breed uncertainty, is hesitant, and is set on the idea of (eventually, when he's ready) getting another lab. :sigh: Dilemmas, dilemmas...