For the last three weeks, I’ve mostly just been eating one real meal a day. The rest of the day is spent eating peanuts and those Dove dark chocolate squares. Individually wrapped. Smooth. Caffeinated. During lunch, I’ve been trying to get extrabajicular stuff out of the way.

I finally posted grades for the section of composition that I taught this last semester, so that frees my mornings up some. I have to use those mornings this week to do some networking projects for some friends (backup solution for a law office and network troubleshooting for a private elementary school), but after that I should have some additional time.

I’m also on the home stretch for getting all of my grad school applications sent in. I finished the application for the University of Missouri-Columbia before the new year, but I had another couple of schools (both in SoCal) to finish apps for by the 15th of this month. I got my GRE subject (Literature) exam scores this week, and did better than I expected: ninety-second percentile. In looking at my applications, I’ve noticed that while test scores (and I hope essays) are my strong suite, my GPA wasn’t all that hot. Personally, I have nothing against getting a B in a class, but at least one of the schools I’m applying to says that they admit people with GPA’s that are 3.7 or higher. That’s really a lot of A’s. I tend to do better the more difficult a class is. If the class either isn’t difficult or is full of uninspired people, that rubs off on me. That’s why I’d like to get into the most challenging program possible.

suberbigfam
Last week Heather and I went and saw the lame film Cheaper By The Dozen, and I have to ask the question: why are people making movies and choosing to name them after books with only vaguely related themes? The Dr. Dolittle movie had no push-me-pull-you or Gub-Gub. The Cheaper By The Dozen movie had no efficiency schemes, no Dad saying “Are my little Stallions cheaper by the dozen?” Read the book, really! Actually, there was a film version of the book released in 1950 and directed by Walter Lang that was much more faithful to the actual text. Better yet, go see Life with Father, a film that doesn’t seem to have been based on the book but which was probably even truer to its spirit. So what other films do we have that fail in this way? Hook didn’t call itself Peter Pan, so it passes scrutiny. James and the Giant Peach? Bram Stoker’s Dracula was bad, Clueless was a great example of a successful deviate adaptation. Wizard of Oz was an improvement on the original (none of those Baum books were that great), Apocalypse Now stands as great in its own right….

Anyway, back to big families… tomorrow.