walkingshadow | quantitative glottopsychiatric investigation of the wellsprings of curmudgeonly usage prejudices

afropuff linked to The Mike Matas Blog some time last week—specifically this entry on how to make what he called a "life poster" using your iPhoto and 98 of your digital photos. And I said, hey! I took almost two thousand pictures when I was in England this summer; if one out of twenty of them are decent landscape-oriented shots (or can be cropped that way) covering a wide variety of color, content, and detail vs. panorama, I too can make a poster! And that's what I spent yesterday doing. He tells you it can be done in 20-30 minutes, but that made me giggle. Hee. Now if I can get

gjstruthseeker to burn me her pictures of us in London and Edinburgh, I'll at least have all the ones I'm deciding between, and after that I'll just have to be RUTHLESS. I'll still have to get a few printed and framed on their own; there are some I want to blow up a little bigger and stand alone, and there are a few vertical ones I really liked that don't work at all if I try to crop them. But I think this is a good start.

Today I was almost early to LAH, but I got cocky and stopped at the Hub first for a smoothie; that was okay, but it was taking the time to fill out the campus dining survey that really screwed me up. Three minutes late then, as usual. On the extremely plus side, LAH has gotten interesting! I don't even do the crossword anymore, and not just because I feel enormously guilty! He played music at the beginning, examples of the Afro-Cuban son and some of its derivatives. He talked about Latin America in the early and mid decades of the twentieth century weighing Europe in the balance and finding it wanting, then turning inward for its intellectual and cultural inspiration, embracing its indigenous populations and its mixed races. And we held discussion on some of our primary-source readings (which I hadn't read, but I also hadn't realized we were supposed to read them) which revealed that not all who embraced the mixing of the races actually meant it to mean equality among the races. And some did.

After that I left voicemail for

silentfire on the way to the bookstore, where I browsed for a while and bought A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I'd meant to order a cap and gown, but I got confused over whether I would be renting or buying, and what am I going to do with a cap and gown when I don't have a graduation ceremony to fidget through? I'll be going back tomorrow to sort it all out. Got home in time to change my clothes and head back out to the gym—which kicked my ass. Why is this semester one long game of catch-up at the gym? I got back over two hours ago and then sat down at the computer, which was fatal. When I'm finished posting and can drag myself away, I'll shower and then head out to Publix. Tuesday seems to have turned into shopping day.

Still no plans for Spring Break; my dad kept saying he was going to take me to New York, but he hasn't mentioned it since Intersession, and the first week in March crept up on me like it does every year (February is too short, dammit), so I haven't even looked at flights to Boston. My mother would be thrilled to pieces if I went home, and I've certainly got enough work to keep me busy for a week. If only I had less work to do and more money to spend.