Graduation

I graduated last Saturday. Much fun was had!

This is me getting bonked on the head by a large 16th century book titled "Prince Arthur: A Heroick Poem." I had never heard of it before, but it's about Arthur, so I guess it was appropriate. It looks like she's going to hit me pretty hard, but it wasn't that bad.

Afterwards we all went to Medieval Times for dinner. It was pretty fun. I had never been before and was shocked to discover that they do not give you utensils! You have to just drink your soup out of the bowl and eat half a roast chicken with your fingers. Weird! But fun. It's officially over! Yaaaaay!

Fat Fatty Fatterson

Toad has been limping all week, and it's getting to the point where he can barely make it up and down the street on his walks. So, I took him to the vet yesterday to see what's going on. It turns out he's got arthritis in his left back knee, so we have him on anti-inflammatories to see if that helps him. However, the vet also weighed him and he has gained 2 1/2 pounds in the last two years! For a 15-pound dog, that is like 20% his body weight! He's a total fatso, and it's ironically because the joint food we feed him (vet recommended) is so high in fat. So, Toad is on a diet, and he needs to lose 2 pounds. Of course that will help get some pressure off of his knee, and hopefully the combination of the medicine and the weight loss will stop his limping!

Hester

So we started shopping for a car this weekend. On Monday we test drove the Dodge Avenger and Chrysler Sebring, and I really didn't like either one of them. We were interested in the Ford Fusion, and I found an ad for one at a Kia dealership in Lewisville for an incredibly good price. So, we drove all the way to Lewisville only to have them tell us they sold the Fusion last week. I was pretty miffed. Anyway, we test drove the Kia Optima and the Kia Spectra while we were there, and they were cute, but nothing spectacular. As we were driving away, we passed a giant Honda dealership with a huge "HAIL SALE" sign on it. We stopped by. Apparently Lewisville had a huge hailstorm last month, and a ton of cars were damaged so they were offering pretty big discounts on brand new cars with minor damage. Both Jonathan and I really like manual transmission cars, and they had five Civics with manual transmission and minor hail damage. We test drove one and were both really impressed with the car. We agreed to sit down and talk about numbers, never intending to buy a new car - we hadn't even brought our checkbook. After quite a bit of haggling over the hail damage discount, they actually caved in to our incredibly low-ball offer! We are now the proud owners of a Honda Civic named Hester. Here she is:

Jury Duty

I had jury duty today. It was my first time. I had been summoned twice before, but I had class both times, so I was exempt. This time I had no excuse, and I was actually pretty excited about going. I've always wanted to have jury duty, and here was my chance! I brought a book with me, and after two hours of sitting with about 400 other people in a huge room, they called my number. Then I went upstairs to sit outside the criminal court room and wait around for another hour.

While I was sitting, a man who had been convicted of murder and served 26 years in prison was exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence. This event happened in the courtroom next door to the one I was assigned, and there were news crews and a huge round of applause when the verdict came through. It really got me thinking about how serving on a jury is a really important thing. I mean, the jury that convicted that guy originally had to feel that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, right? And yet he was innocent. One of the guys in my jury group told some story about how he served on a DUI case where the guy was so obviously guilty that he felt like the trial was a waste of time. I replied that it's every American citizen's right have a fair trial, guilty or no, and it's their right to be judged by a jury of their peers. And you know what? I will so go spend three hours sitting around a courthouse reading a book to ensure that every citizen receives that right, guilty or no.

My case was dismissed, by the way. I never even got interviewed, and I was home by noon. I was a little disappointed. I wonder when they'll send me my $6?

Movie Reviews

So, I saw two movies this week. What freedom finishing my thesis brings! Jonathan and I actually went to a movie theater and saw “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” Then last night, we bought “30 Days of Night” from Amazon Unbox. So, this post is going to be a sort of double review of two very dissimilar movies, although not as dissimilar as you might think since Sarah Marshall had a hilarious Dracula subplot to it. Here we go.

“Forgetting Sarah Marshall” was really funny. I liked it a lot. I was a little bit sad that it relied so heavily on sex jokes though. I am tired of sex joke movies. We need to figure out how to be actually witty and clever instead of just exploiting bodily fluids and functions. That said, the movie was witty and funny in places, and I laughed out loud in parts. The Dracula part was really funny, and there was a kind of smart undercurrent to the whole thing that addressed the stigma of men showing real emotions. There are some funny parts where the guy is unashamedly upset about his breakup, and they make it amusing and entertaining, but at the same time they are pointing out the double standard where it’s OK for girls to lie around for a month in sweatpants and eat ice cream to console themselves, but men do not have an equivalent acceptable outlet. Several characters in the movie just tell the main guy to have sex with anyone and everyone he can in order to get over his ex-girlfriend, but it totally backfires, and I thought that was a pretty good message, too. And I just love Paul Rudd – he makes every movie better.

“30 Days of Night” was also very good. I was surprised. I thought it was going to be kind of dumb. But it was kind of like “The Diary of Anne Frank” with vampires. That sounds crazy, but it’s true. The vampires were much more like “Nosferatu” than like the “Count Dracula” figure with the satin sash, big cape, and widow’s peak. They were gross and monstrous and scary. And just when Jonathan and I had said that out loud, there was a scene that really kind of humanized them. It gave it a “Blade Runner” feel. Yes, they’re ruthless, cruel killers, but really they just want to escape their eternal hunger and pain. It was scarier than most movies I watch. I don’t, as a rule, watch horror movies, but I can handle most vampire ones simply because I don’t believe in vampires. Other kinds of horror movies – “The Exorcist,” for example – I cannot watch because I believe in supernatural forces that can actually affect humans in that way, and I don’t want to freak myself out by watching fictionalized incidents of things that might actually be possible. Vampires are pretty safe that way. We also kept commenting that the suspenseful buildup was very typical – the music stops, there are scary noises and unidentifiable figures flitting across the screen – but the action of the movie was very unique. The whole time we were watching it we were like, “This is a GOOD movie!” Who knew? And Josh Hartnett didn’t ruin it as he is so wont to do.

And the funniest thing of all is I woke up this morning with half an introduction written in my head for my new thesis on vampires. Ha ha.

I Am the Master (of Arts)

I just defended my thesis and passed! Yay! I am officially done!

New Haircut