Hello everyone.

Yes, I'm still alive. :D

Still living in Virginia, still working at this museum, life is much the same - but I find myself gripped up in a sudden nostalgia for the life I used to have, for people I used to know, and so I'm randomly updating.

Hello, out there, if any of you are still out there.
I've missed you all.

xoxo Elske

Wow. *boggles*

It's been about a million years since I've written, hasn't it?

I'm all nicely settled in Virginia now, and after about a month of training, I'm finally ready to actually start my actual job. That's oh-so-exciting. We had a practice day on Thursday (in costume and everything!) and it really was the greatest thing ever. I had my picture taken about a million times and I got to smile and Patrick Henry referred to me as "his lovely lady" and it was just excellent. I'm so in love with my job. We get to wear 18th century costumes, talk about history, meet interesting people from all over the place, schmooze with the tradespeople, get our picture taken...it's just great. Such a change from my last job! My co-workers are really great too. (Although honestly, I hope none of them are reading, as I think they'd be disturbed by my Lord Dunmore icon. What can I say, Lord Dunmore's just incredibly awesome.)

When I talk to people from the past, everyone always says the same thing: that I sound so happy. It's funny, but it's true -- at the moment, I'm very happy here, and that's a wonderful thing. Almost unbelievable.

I promise not to wait months before the next time I update. Promise!

Well, the big news is that I Got The Job. Yep!

Which means that sometime between now and September 18, I'll be moving to Virginia. Said job is at Colonial Williamsburg; I'm going to be a historical interpreter in the orientation department. Basically I get to wander around in costume and entertain complete strangers by babbling on about history. I'm quite excited. (:

I keep waiting for something to HAPPEN, so I have something to write about. Instead, I'll just write to you all about nothing, and see how it goes.

Life's just been, I suppose. I've been keeping busy by going to the movies all the time [seeing Pirates, naturally], writing small crappy stories, trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. You know, all that. Hah.

It's my mummy's birthday today! And also Philip Larkin's birthday, which is a random fact stuck in my brain thanks to having heard about it a million times during presentations in a class I had at Niagara. I told mummy that it was Philip Larkin's birthday, and when she asked who he was, I said he was a poet that looked like Richard Deacon and wrote the "they fuck you up, your mom and dad" poem. It was early in the morning, you see, and that was the only Larkin I could think of. Now that I am awake, I can recite all of "The Explosion" (coughing oath-edged talk and pipe smoke shouldering off the freshened silence), which doesn't do any of us any good, does it? Especially not you, as I have to quote poetry into the void of the internet now, not being a student anymore. Aha.

It doesn't look like I'll be going to Scotland anymore, but the good news is that I've interviewed for a very interesting job and I'll have another interview in Virginia next weekend. I'll write more about that when I know if I've been hired to said interesting job or not...I'd hate to get all excited, only to not get the job and suffer the subsequent disappointments.

Right.

In case any of you were wondering which Johnny Depp character you were most like, fear not, because I've the answer right here for you!


Lookie there, I'm most like JM Barrie! Quelle surprise, that. I suppose asexual authors are all alike. Haha.


I know I had more things to write about than Larkin and Johnny Depp, but now that I'm actually writing, I forget, of course. Such is life, such is life.

Hayley!! I got your postcard from London yesterday. It made me squee. Thank you. (:

Erin, thank you again for the shiny coffee and James-Franco-prostitute movie you sent. That made me happy.

Hmm. Well, if I think of what else I was going to write, I can always go back and add on, eh?

Ohmygod.

...I could talk about my real life, but what I'd rather do is squee over Pirates. Because, PIRATES.

Ohmygod.
Discuss?

Edit:
Have now seen said film twice and can only squee unintelligably about it. And how much I love Norrington, now more than ever and have possibly even forgiven the lack of Lt Gilette because the movie was THAT cool. Yeah.

...I thought I was over the piratelove. But was wrong. Haha.

Do you ever wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it?
...I'd quote Daisy correctly, if I had my copy of "Gatsby" handy. I always think of that, on the longest day of the year. Yay for summer. Of course, the only bad thing is that it's going to start getting darker now. In reading about Scotland, I learn that parts of the country only get six hours of sunlight a day during the winter, and the rest is dark. It's enough to make me want to reconsider, look into going to Australia instead, but then I stop and tell myself that I can't be afraid of the dark forever.

I just spent way too long dragging the trash-can to the curb, because it's garbage day tomorrow and I wanted to be sure the trashmen took the garbage. I usually let my upstairs neighbour handle the moving of the trashcan - it's too heavy for me to move when it's full and he's a big strong guy! - but I didn't want to take any chances with the garbage not being picked up this week. It's extra-full today because I filled it up with two garbage bags full of paper...class notes and articles and handouts and rules and planners and stories and all the things that were so vital this past year. But now they don't mean anything. I bundled up this last year of my life and my short-lived teaching career and pitched it in the trash. And, you know what? It felt really, really good.

I'll finally be out of here as of this weekend...moving back to my family home for a couple of months. I'm not looking forward to the moving process one bit...but it'll be good to be home, I think. I can get my feet back on the ground and start planning the next adventure.

As I may have whined about before, my coffee-maker suddenly decided to go on strike in the middle of finals week, leaving me terribly uncaffeinated. I reached heights of desperation at the grocery store yesterday -- the instant coffee section. I couldn't bring myself to buy instant coffee proper, so I settled for a box of "General Foods International Cappuccino Mix". It's not bad, I mean, it's coffee. It tastes like a slightly-stale version of Tim Hortons Café Mocha (without the non-dairy whipped topping compliment, of course.) Some sort of bizarre chemical reaction results in its making its own foam. I'd rather not try to wrap my brain around that.

However, reading the box (while waiting for the caffeine to kick in and this headache to subside), I have to say that this International Cappuccino Mix does not quite live up to the hype that it promises. And I quote: "Never bitter, this cappuccino is a cup of frothy pleasure." ...okay, I mean, it's coffee. I'll give them that. And it's not bitter, but I wouldn't really go so far as to call it a cup of frothy pleasure. My judgement of what exactly constitutes "frothy pleasure" is, quite possibly, off, but somehow I don't think this qualifies. Later in the packaging: "Or try frothy CAPPUCCINO -- an exciting way to indulge your senses." That kind of recalls the infamous Professor Snape Potions Monologue from the Harry Potter films and makes me giggle, but...well, this is just some 'instant coffee' and my senses don't seem particularly indulged. Hmph.

I've had this song in my head for about a week now, and somewhere in my caffeine-deprived brain I've twisted it around to being about coffee instead of sex and that way I can relate to it. "Have you come to ease my headache?" I ask rhetorically. Maybe the second cup will be better.

In other news, onegoldenapple wins at life a little bit (even if she is on vacation and therefore not reading this) for agreeing that Magneto in his purple suit at the beginning of the new XMen movie is oh-so-Dedalus. Hahahaha.

Hmmph. I really need a coffee icon.

Do you ever wake up with the last line of whatever it was that you were dreaming still stuck in your head? I did that, this morning. The line in question?

"Yes, but these eyebrows have friends. We'll find him."

I really wish I could remember more of it, because it seems intriguing. A bizarre case of...I forget which literary term I want because my coffee maker is broken and I'm desperately un-caffeinated but I remember talking about it in my intro to theory class -- where the part stands for the whole? Yeah, that, with the eyebrows standing for the people they're attached to. Bizarre.

My eyebrows, I must say, are completely awesome at the moment. I can't believe I survived finals without any eyebrow baldspots. (:

I am currently giddy with the sort of freedom that comes with being on summer break...or possibly a more substantial year-long break, as that is what I am currently planning -- taking a year off, and starting over next fall in a graduate program in library science. It's quite a change from the French literature thing that I've been doing for the past year (well, past five years, counting undergrad!), but after a lot of thinking and stressing, it seems like the right thing to do. This past year's been a learning experience, in which I discovered that being a college French professor is oh-so-not how I want to spend the rest of my life. Being a young adult librarian sounds like a better plan. I've got lots of time left to plan for forever.

What's more immediate is what I'm doing next year, and my current plan is to do this. I'm thinking of leaving in September, and between now and then...I'm going to move out of this apartment and this city, go back to my family, get a job, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So, that's what's new. (:
I expect that I'll have more time and more inclination to update my journal now that it's summer and now that I have more to say than 'I hate school//I hate life//I hate humanity!' over and over and over again!