What's the buzz? Tell me what's a'happenin'!

I discovered a wonderful thing today while looking for a parking spot. There's a Faculty/Staff lot at the bottom of the hill, and on weekends and weekdays after 5:00 it is open to anyone. I still have to walk up the atrocious "gordy hill" but it's much shorter than walking in from that commuter lot out in east butt wad, which is especially nice on a cold, rainy day such as this.

I'm ready to finish up my socioling paper, thank gawd. Bizarro's dialect has a strange back vowel that isn't consistent with the Northern Dialect found in Cleveland. It would appear that our friend Mr. Club might have a similar situation, but further testing is needed to learn anything more. Wow, I'm turning into a dialectologist before my very eyes!

I've thought about a pro-sem idea: comparing dialects of the WWII generation and my generation (Gen X? what are we, again?) in Elmira, NY. That area is interesting because there's a mix of Northern Dialect coming down from Rochester and Syracuse, but there's also the Midland dialect that moves up and over from PA, since Elmira is right on the PA border. That would be a very personal and interesting project that would incidentally require me to spend time amongst my family and friends in Elmira for a couple of weeks. :) I will think about applying for one of the Graduate Student Senate travel grants to be able to spend some time there over winter break, since I'll have teaching responsibilities in the Fall. This should work out very well.

Thoughts of the friend in Boston, I'll call her JEB from here on out, keep pestering me. Yesterday I dipped a toe into stalker-waters by searching for her on one of the people finder search engines. I'd written her address and phone number down a couple years ago (which was the last time I tried contacting her) but had tossed it out. So I have her address and phone number, again. I've been thinking about writing a letter, but what good would it do?

If she's not "softened up" it'll be like casting seed upon stones, to paraphrase the great J.C. Most of me realizes that she really and truly never wants to speak to me again, and that she is steadfast in her ways. But the other part of me, the idealist, the part that prefers dialogue over dissent, keeps insisting that one day she'll be ready to re-open the friendship and start over. It's that Idealist voice that keeps nagging at me all the time not to give up on her.

There's that, and there's the fact that I don't like loose ends, and to me that relationship still feels like a loose end. I've done my best both literally and figuratively to close my end of things, to let it go, etc. But obviously I can't, not entirely.

Anyway, I need to get my head back into paper-writing space. More later, perhaps.