I'd go with B, Laga. But I am a big wet blanket that way.

congratulations Meara and Nicole!

it is an obnoxious east coast hour. can't sleep. Iris got sick & I was in Baltimore, not here, for the day. guilt. guilt translating into work worries. my brain makes odd connections.

Sparky - wonderful! Maybe they'll come visit sometime (er, unless you told them what the threadcount was - sorry about that... workingonit)! It would be fun to have them over... we need our mower sharpened. Sorry about the open house. sucks.

Very early '90s, I pretty much ignored the lovely people in college counseling; applied to 2 schools, did portfolio days at some more. Got in at three mid-range portfolio schools without application (early admission/early decision heyday), was laughed at by RISD for not being serious enough, ignored at Cooper Union [well, it was _free_], and accepted early at Virginia, where Charles Wright and Rita Dove were. Didn't much care what school #2 did after that. Didn't much care what any of my teachers did after that either. Nov. 1989-June 1990 = heavenly non-stressed state. I can't remember what that feels like now.

it seems like the costs of applications to schools have skyrocketed and that the claim that schools want only serious applicants and are pricing the cost accordingly is a little hollow. Esp. in light of the USA Today ranking stuff. I refuse to do the math on college cost for Iris. Nope. Not gonna. Can't make me.

wow today was far too busy and long. Just skimmy-caught up on 210 posts. Lesse if I can highlight some things.

OK... Fay. I think I'm swooning for your posts. They bring a smile, and I swear, it's not because of the nakie thoughts. Who knew I'd start such a thread with the 300.

WindSparrow. Have you heard of or tried Xylitol as a sweetner? Its natural, not chemically made. And apparently quite popular in China and parts of Europe. I confess, I have never tried it before, but heard you can use it like sugar in baking. Diabetics digest it fine, and doesn't rot your teeth. Wiki quote:

"Xylitol was first derived from Birch trees in Finland in the 19th century and was first popularized in Europe as a safe sweetener for diabetics that would not impact insulin levels."

As for schools. I graduated HS in 1989. I'm pretty sure I applied to 3 schools. But for the life of me can't recall the 3rd. Elizabethtown College was my 1st choice, and I got in. SUNY New Paltz my back up, which I got accepted to, and immediatly poo poo'd the thought (despite my mothers urging and excitement... maybe because it was 20 min up the interstate, and not 4 hours across state lines). But for the life of me, can't recall the 3rd or if I got in. But I know it was 3, because the HS said "YOU SHOULD DO 3" much like others had said earlier.

Either way, I **LOVED** E-town College. For you east coasters with kids, I'd say look at their program. Small school, 1500 students, and always ranked good in USN&WR.

OK, nuff product placement, themz bitches ain't paying me ;-)

O, and I totally envy Nicole's raise. I found out my raise today, and I wish it was half as much as hers. By the theaters math, I got a 'better than average' raise (as the average was 3%/week, and mine was 3.125%). But then I noticed my contract was shorter than last years, and mentioned that it cuts my "raise" in half. My boss agrees I am underpaid. agrees with all the bullet points I have presented. Said I did a real good job with talking about it at my review with his boss. But said it was the wrong person, as the corner office makes that decision. Apparently my salary is "in the middle" of the salaries for my job level, so bloody unlikely of getting 'extra attention' to raise it, when there are folks lower than me that needs the attention. If only I didn't like my job, I'd leave. :: sigh :: My boss did say wait until the musical is up, as it looks like I'm doing a great job so far, and then use that as a stepping stone to stroke corner office into at least listening to my plea.

/whine

Time for bed now. And a longer day of work tomorrow.

When the ads for 300 started coming out I wasn't aware it was based on a non-historic book so I was sitting there going WTF and accumulating anachronisms.

Is the book wildly non-historic? I'm not an expert on the period myself, but I thought the book was pretty good. Certainly not jarring the way the movie was, with the campness and the monsters and the whole LoTR-wannabe vibe.

I have a blog friend who watched it in the theater like three times because she was all "Gerard Butler! SQUEEE!!!" And I look at his pictures and think, "Really? Squee? Not seeing it."

Yeah - funny, that. My former flatmate was a huge Gerard Butler fan after Phantom of the Opera. (The movie was her first encounter with the show. The BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was her first encounter with Jane Austen. This makes for a weird cognitive dissonance, when you're geeking out over things.) Anyway, because she's mad into him we saw quite a few of his movies, and although he's not my cup of tea as a lust-object, I can see the whole 'He's a big strapping bloke' side of things. And I'd recommend Dear Frankie... as a really rather sweet little not-too-saccharine Scottish chickflickish movie which is worth checking out. He's rather good in that, and so's the rest of the cast.

I understood that you had to take the highest ranked one that wanted you, but I'm not sure how that was enforced. Of course, if you were Oxbridge (Oxford or Cambridge) you got to have an elaborate system plonked on top of that, and I'm guessing no one ranked them lower than 1st, ever.

I think that the UCAS board probably make it happen. You had to rank them in order of preference, and then they could reject you out of hand on the basis of your results in the mocks, or they could make you a conditional offer. And then the one nearest the top of the list whose conditional offer you achieve HAS to take you, iirc. (Or they can make you an unconditional offer, or something laughable, like two Es.)

Oxford and Cambridge, of course, make their own rules.

Yeah, i applied through UCAS as well as the Irish system, just in case, and you have to take the one at the top, basically, assuming they make you an offer, I think. Oxford and Cambridge, you can only apply to one of the two, and you have to apply outside of UCAS. So. Retarded.

I loved 300. The way I think of it is that if the Greeks got to watch it 2500 years ago, they'd think it was the best thing ever. They'd love seeing the Persians as crazy monster people, and the Spartans kicking their assholes, even if it was the Spartans.

If everyone moves out west, I am going to cry forever. Come on, people! Some of us have to stay east of the Mississippi!

HEY! I just got back here! I count for *something* don't I??

I applied to three schools - EMU, CMU, MSU - got into all three and wanted desperately to go to MSU. CMU came through with more money and there were residual bio-dad issues with me going to MSU. I loved my year at Central and wish I had had more than the one.

So very tired and am wearing jeans today because somehow my work clothes didn't make it to the new place from mom and dad's. Oh well. THere is laundry detergent and a washer and dryer, so laundry will happen while we paint the dining room and prime the living room.

And YAY NICOLE!!

YAY MEARA!!

WindSparrow. Have you heard of or tried Xylitol as a sweetner? Its natural, not chemically made.

Thanks for the recs for sweeteners - here at the house we have only the blue stuff, the pink stuff, the pink stuff in liquid, Splenda and highly concentrated stevia. I don't suppose anyone has any tried and true recipes for the xylitol or blue agave that will make it worth going to the health food store to buy more fake sweet stuff? Some, "Hey, I make this awesome dessert for a dinner party, and no one guessed it wasn't made with cane sugar, with a side of corn syrup and topped with honey. Here's the recipe," would be brilliant. I mean, I've got some ideas of my own, and there's a whole wide internet full of recipes. But in the end the only way to find out which recipes actually work is to test them, and I simply am too lazy to start randomly trying them out.

I was a slacker in high school and I applied to one state school and one community college. I got into both, went to the community college. Dropped out. Worked. Quit work, went to private college. Dropped out. Etc.

I kinda wish I had some kind of traditional college experience, but this is the way it worked out.

Go meara!

GO Nicole!

YAY! It's about time we get some good job news around here!

So, applying to colleges. Each time I've gone (and I've been to four. Crazy), I've applied to one and only one. I knew where I wanted to go (well, except for the first one...I didn't really have a choice; dad taught there, so it was free for his kids), and put all my eggs in one basket. The third one was a community college, so I wasn't worried at all. And I really wasn't worried at UMB either. I'd met with the honors department, and they seemed certain I'd get in. So, I said, "Ok. Here we go."

Here's a funny for the morning:

While priming the dining room last night, Joe accidentally stepped on Em's dinosaur and smashed it to bits. He valiantly tried to get it into the garbage before she noticed.

Not so much.

For the next half hour, we were treated to a barrage of, "You broke my dinosaur! HEY! You broke my dinosaur! You broke my dinosaur!"

Finally I snapped and said, "Em. Daddy said he was sorry. We will get you a new dinosaur. That dinosaur is dead. Everything dies. Get over it." (I was verry tired and cranky.)

Joe says, "You're using a broken dinosaur to teach her about death? I thought we'd wait for a hamster or a goldfish."

"You want to listen to a half-hour of 'You broke my goldfish'?" I ask him.

He's about to respond when Em bursts back into the room.

"YOU BROKE MY GOLDFISH!! HEY! YOU BROKE MY GOLDFISH!!"