The Update for Everybody Else

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I really, really hate business hotels. And modern cities. And especially business hotels in modern cities, no matter what country they're in.

I do agree with you there - though I'd hardly ever stayed in them much till the last few months. Why were you in a business hotel?

I'm in Japan for six weeks and hadn't planned out this particular section of the trip properly beforehand. I know better now.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm in a Japanese rest stop with internet access fading in and out and an Oricon Top 40-type station playing, so, you know. I'm all right.

I'm so sorry, Jbrase. I can't even imagine losing my mother. Take all the time you need; you'll be in our thoughts and prayers.

Details, Antonio?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I have three more days left in Japan and I'll be going home into a moving-house situation, so that's going to be interesting.

Angry twitter types, stop trying to make 'cisgender' happen.

I have to admit that I really don't understand the supposed problem with this term. It's the neatest antonym for 'transgender' imaginable. What else ought one say to communicate the concept? Is the idea that the concept of 'the set of people who are not transgender or a member thereof' should not be or should not have to be communicated?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm back in the United States and tired.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, I love how it seems like p much everyone here was on drugs friday night

I mean, do sleep deprivation, Cards against Humanity, and salt-and-vinegar potato chips count as drugs, or...?

Anyway, my mother just moved back into the area. We have a vaguely Lovecraftian house next to an old Puritan graveyard in South Deerfield.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Overwhelming surge of self-hatred in me right now. Can't go to sleep until I've dealt with it. Convinced I'm worthless, stupid, an incompetent and fraudulent student of my major, deserve to die, et cetera.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Halloween tree?  What kind of evil, parallel universe is this!?

The same one that will have the Thanksgiving Bunny visit us next month

Just stay safe, afleitch.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I had a test in Advanced Modern Japanese that didn't go at all well by my standards, but none of my classmates really did that well either, so our professor's going to just curve the grade to Hell and back and not give us a comparable test again. I'm still a little jumpy about my grades, because I'm also starting divinity school applications. (Yes, I'm going to divinity school. No, it's not on an ordination track.)

Congratulations, Torie! It sounds like you've really come to a good place in your life.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I had a test in Advanced Modern Japanese that didn't go at all well by my standards, but none of my classmates really did that well either, so our professor's going to just curve the grade to Hell and back and not give us a comparable test again. I'm still a little jumpy about my grades, because I'm also starting divinity school applications. (Yes, I'm going to divinity school. No, it's not on an ordination track.)

Congratulations, Torie! It sounds like you've really come to a good place in your life.

Which divinity school?

I'm hoping (hoping) for BU, Yale, or the Atlantic School of Theology up in Halifax. I'm also applying to Queen's (in Newfoundland), Harvard, BC, and Iliff (in Colorado; the only one outside New England and Atlantic Canada).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I had a test in Advanced Modern Japanese that didn't go at all well by my standards, but none of my classmates really did that well either, so our professor's going to just curve the grade to Hell and back and not give us a comparable test again. I'm still a little jumpy about my grades, because I'm also starting divinity school applications. (Yes, I'm going to divinity school. No, it's not on an ordination track.)

Congratulations, Torie! It sounds like you've really come to a good place in your life.

Which divinity school?

I'm hoping (hoping) for BU, Yale, or the Atlantic School of Theology up in Halifax. I'm also applying to Queen's (in Newfoundland), Harvard, BC, and Iliff (in Colorado; the only one outside New England and Atlantic Canada).

Hmm, yale? Granted idk anything about their divinity school but that is definitely not on the list of places I'd imagine you at.

Neither would I if it were for any other program, but the divinity school is pretty separate from the rest of the university in terms of its campus culture, history, and ideological bent. I'm still a little leery about it, and currently leaning away from it if I get into more than one of my top three.