Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Writin, and Readin', and Stormin'

Ladies and gentlemen! I've been mostly at home for the last couple of days, writing my first version of my preliminary proposal. It's really ridiculous how frightening a concept it can be. It's 15 pages long, and should convince my committee of many things about my competence as a grad student.

"Justify your existence" comes to mind. Justify it on paper in just 15 pages with enough detail to be understandable but not so much that it's a mire of detail. It's freaking hard to do, but when the sun is shining I relish the challenge. It's only at night, when I'm trying to sleep, that horror and self-doubt really seeps in.

While I was running yesterday, two black cats crossed two of my paths. One while I was running uphill, so I turned right, and then NOT A BLOCK later, a cat who could not have been the same black cat crossed my path. What are the frickin' odds?

Also in the omen category, however, is that I had a really good dream last night. I was driving to the Ohio Valley Mall, along that stretch of highway that's open to the sky and goes on for miles. All of the sudden, tornadoes were everywhere. I didn't think I had time to pull my car off the road and hide in a ditch, so I just kept driving. I drove straight through the tornadoes, hitting the gas hard so that the forward momentum would push me through to the other side. I got through, and called my mom to tell her what happened.

It was a good dream because I chose to face those first tornadoes, and survived. I also dreamt later on that I was sitting at a table with Angela, Dave, Chris, and Andy. Dave was really happy and talkative, and that, well, made me happy. I've been getting a couple "closure" dreams lately, and this is the nicest of them. I want him to be happy, just like I want all the other people I care about to be happy. So yay!

Check out the weather for today!
THERE IS A MODERATE RISK OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS THIS AFTERNOON OVER PORTIONS OF SOUTH-CENTRAL WISCONSIN...GENERALLY WEST OF A LINE FROM WISCONSIN DELLS...TO MADISON...TO JANESVILLE. SLIGHT RISK OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS OVER THE REMAINDER OF THE AREA. STRONG AND DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH...LARGE HAIL TO THE SIZE OF GOLF BALLS...AND ISOLATED TORNADOES WILL BE THE MAIN THREATS...ALONG WITH POSSIBLE FLOODING FROM LOCALLY HEAVY RAIN. STAY TUNED TO NOAA WEATHER RADIO FOR UPDATES ON THIS SEVERE WEATHER THREAT.

1 Comments:

David Dembinski said...

Hi Amber! Just checking in to make sure you're doing well, and I wanted to show you this picture. Be careful, though, because it might make you die of a cuteness overdose.

http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/3980/hammie0eq.jpg

5/25/2006 10:17 AM  

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