School's Out Forever, Almost

    This past weekend, I finally got the results of my exit exam for graduate school.  Actually, I got the email last Monday, but I was so busy early last week that I kept forgetting to check.  When I did get the time to remember to check, I had problems connecting to my account.  So, that is why I didn't find out my results until Saturday.  Well, I passed.  I immediately posted the news on my Facebook page, although I now realize I maybe should have posted it elsewhere as well.  Like here, one my usual post day.  To be honest, I was seriously thinking about dropping out of grad school is I hadn't passed.  The odds of me being able to take the test a second time on my terms.  Now, I only have to take and pass two more classes to get my degree.  I have mentioned in previous posts about what my options are.  I have decided to not take the class being offered in the intersession.  I just don't think I would have the time to get everything done with all of the holiday planning going on, as well as other possible changes.  Therefore, I will probably take the two classes being offered in the spring.  One covers the works of Thomas Hardy, five novels and a selection of poetry.  Not my first choice, but I believe I can handle it.  The other class is something vague about something to do with American literature.  The course description doesn't go into much detail, and there are no books listed for the class.  At least not the times I have checked.  I really wanted to know more about the class before I enroll.  Yes, I was supposed to sign up for these classes a few weeks ago, but I wanted to know the results of my exam first.  There is still space available for both, but I still have those doubts about that second class.  I don't want to risk taking a summer class, only to not have an option that could work.  As to what I will do after getting my MA in English?  I have no idea.  I don't want to go into teaching one the grade or high school level.  I don't do well working with children.  I wanted the option of working on the collegiate level, but my degree wouldn't be enough.  I had wanted to get an MFA in creative writing, which would have given me the option for doing just that.  With just an MA, I would first have to get into a doctorate program.  At my age, that just isn't an optimum option.  Maybe if I hadn't taken those two years off trying to get into a creative writing program would have changed things.  I don't know what will happen next, and I really need to talk to someone to help me out.  So, does anyone have any suggestions for me?

What's Cooking with Toby

    I have never shied away from the fact that I consider myself a creative person.  While the majority of the creativity pours into writing, I do have other ways of expressing myself.  I make art.  I film videos, frequently of my making art.  I decorate. One thing that I don't always mention here is that I cook.  It's just about the only household chore I was allowed to do growing up.  I was more interested about helping around the house when I was very young, but my mother always felt I was too little to do much.  By the time she felt I was big and old enough to help out more, I had just about lost all interest by not being involved sooner.  The lone exception was cooking, which has the potential to be one of the most dangerous of chores.  The reason I got involved in cooking is actually a big secret.  See, my mother can't cook.  Seriously.  She has all of these foibles about eating that has left her with a very bland palette and a strange idea about how food should be cooked.  Her cooking style compounded my own special need.  I have a fairly delicate sense of taste.  While it is not always infallible, I can sometimes detect subtle nuances of flavor that others cannot sense.  In particular, I could tell when I was eating leftovers, even when I didn't know I was doing it.  When I finally caught my mother fixing leftovers one day, I finally understood why I didn't like certain meals sometimes, when I had no problems at other times.  This could even extend to just reheating takeout for a few minutes after getting it home.  Not as often and mostly with meat, but it has happened.  From that day on, I haven't eaten leftovers.  To insure of this, I starting getting more involved in the cooking process.  See, if I was doing the cooking, I could tell whether or not leftovers were involved.  On the one hand, it meant that I could make things that I liked in the way I liked them.  On the other hand, it meant that my mother would wind up eating more leftovers than she would have liked, but I have always tried to compensate by fixing smaller portion sizes.  However, my mother always seems to find a way to have leftovers, even when she barely has a single portion size left.  Yuck.  This has led my to come up with many recipes over the decades.  Many are just jazzing up kits and boxes rather than cooking from scratch.  I do have a few favorites though, with a quick and easy meat sauce based on a Bolognese.  I am having it tonight, in fact, over some rotini with some garlic bread.  I'm also planning a new take on chicken tomorrow for Thanksgiving.  I don't like turkey.  I also don't go too overboard for the holiday either, as both of my maternal grandparents died around this time of year and my mother doesn't like the associations this brings.  I know it is kind of foolhardy into planning something entirely new on such short notice, but I have a feeling I can handle it.  I've done similar takes before.  I just have to plan a little bit extra this year.  I mean, cooking is not rocket science.  It's chemistry.  And an art.

Where Will All the Elk Herds Go

     I've posted about the elk many times before on this blog.  While I might go months without seeing one, a field I drive by everyday is a frequent location to spot them.  However, it might not be for much longer.  A few months ago, over the summer, I noticed that a few posts with flags on them had been planted into a roughly square shape near the road.  One or two more had been planted further back.  They seemed to be planted in the wrong place to indicate a future building project.  In didn't really matter much anyway, for they are displaced in the downpour that inundated the area a week after the devastating late-July floods.  A mudslide had come down the hollow at the rear of the field and covered a large swath of the field in mud, right up to the road.  The other end of the field, near a drainage ditch, got covered in water for weeks.  Even after regular rain, that end of the field could get flooded, due to a large bowl that was there.  Then, just a few weeks ago, heavy equipment came in and started rearranging the entire field.  Dirt from the end near the hillside was dug up and used to fill in the bowl by the ditch.  The entire field got leveled.  More posts and flags were placed.  Last week, gravel was placed along a a makeshift path to the former bowl.  Gossip suggests that a discount store will be coming in, but no one seems to be sure which one.  There is a Family Dollar less than a mile down the road.  While it was slightly damaged during the flood, this project seemed to start well before the floods.  There is already a Dollar General barely five miles away in one direction, and another one twelve miles or so in another direction, and a third about the same distance away in a third direction.  Now, the closest store is a little cramp with a smallish parking lot, the elk field isn't too much larger.  Maybe that one will close and be replaced by this new one.  This could even be in response to the frequent wrecks delivery trucks have been wrecking on their way to one of the other stores.  On the day of the July floods, one got stuck for about four hours.  Now, this may have lasted so long due to the fact that flooding had shut down one road for the wrecker to arrive and a downed tree blocked the other access road.  I even passed by the delivery truck as it was led by a state trooper to its destination later that afternoon once it was cleared.  Still, there is no clear answer to what is going to be put in.  What is even stranger is that it is the wrong time of year to start erecting a building.  It is mid/late November when I write this. The weather is too cold now to lay a foundation easily.  The flooding could have delayed the schedule.  This still doesn't take the poor drainage into consideration.  The ditch still overflows during most rains, even after the bowl has been filled.  Whatever store goes in, the building could be prone to have multiple problems.  The one problem that the owners might not have considered is the elk herd.  While the animals might be scared off during the initial building, the herd might return in their usual wanderings.  Even if their usual access was blocked off, I've seen them scale the nearby hillside.  The elk, as well as deer, might congregate wherever they can looking for fodder.  This could lead to major problems for whoever is between the elk and where they want to go.  Some might even try to cross the road if the former field gets completely paved over.  This could lead to many traffic problems, as I've seen elk get awfully close to the road before.  If this project had been more in the open, people could have been more output for this project. This is only my opinion, but I do believe more people would have wanted a place for elk to show up than the fourth (or possibly the fifth) outlet for a discount store chain in a twelve-mile radius.

Yep, Another Post about the Music Charts This Year

     Last week, Taylor Swift made history on Billboard's 'Hot 100' chart.  Swift had all of the top ten songs on that chart.  This concurrently made it the first time in the chart's history that there were no male artists in the top ten.  There had been multiple instances where there were no female artists in the top ten.  These are just two of the records that had been broken this year.  In fact, there were quite a few records that were broken this year.  Here are just two noteworthy example, before I get into the really big ones.  Disney's "We Don't Talk about Bruno" from the Encanto soundtrack became the first song from one of their animated films to hit number one.  It is also the number one song with the most credited performers.  (Other songs, most notably "We Are the World," have more performers, but not all of the artist's names were featured.) "Keep Running up That Hill (A Deal with God)" by Kate Bush made it to the top three, about forty years after it first debuted.  The breaks a record for the longest period a song has ever taken to reach a peak position after its original debut, at least for a non-holiday recording.  Some Christmas songs could break that record, particularly Brenda Lee and "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree," which could happen as soon as this year if it reaches number one past Mariah Carey.  However, two of the biggest singles of the year, which I feel are the only songs vying for Billboard's number song of the year, have some of the biggest records themselves.  First, there is "Heat Waves" by Glass Animals.  It holds the record for the longest time to reach number one during its original charting period, fifty-nine weeks.  Some Christmas songs, such as "All I Want for Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey, have taken longer, but took multiple charting periods to do so.  "Heat Waves" also now holds the record for most consecutive weeks on the chart, with over ninety.  This occurred just a year after The Weeknd achieved the record with "Blinding Lights."  In fact, the two songs were on the chart at the same time for many weeks.  Another minor achievement by "Heat Waves" is that it went to number one after debuting at number one hundred on the chart.  Not that rare, as another song just this year, "Bad Habit" by Steve Lacy, also achieved this milestone.  On the other hand, "As It Was" by Harry Styles, achieved its own record by going to the number one spot five times in one year.  Whenever a new song debuted at the top or passed Styles, "As It Was" would only drop a spot or two, and then climb back up to the top.  It was only Taylor Swift who would end the yo-yoing.  For now, at least.  With only a few weeks left in the charting year, I doubt the song could do much more climbing, not with holiday music starting up.  One of these two songs will probably be the number one song of the year, depending on which criteria is weighed more heavily.  "Heat Waves" has quantity on its side.  It has been on the chart the entire year, giving it multiple points week after week.  "As It Was" has quality, though.  After it bumped "Heat Waves" out of the top spot, it stayed in the top three, giving it higher point totals per week.  Until I start doing my won calculations next month, I wouldn't fathom a guess at which one will be the overall winner.  Last year, I guessed rightly the "Levitating" by Dua Lipa would be number one, before I started tallying.  My other guesses were way off, though.  This year, I'm pretty sure I've got the right final two.  What I won't be trying to guess is next week's Grammy nominations.  Those are going to be crazy again, and only one of my final two is fully eligible for awards. 

Exit Exam Strategies

     As I mentioned a few weeks/posts past, I had been contemplating my options for taking the exit exam for graduate school.  In case the point wasn't clear, I did sign up to take the test.  It's this Friday, in fact.  For the last few weeks, I had been studying for the test.  The test is in the form of three essays, with a choice of three prompts, one each from three different categories (American literature, British literature, and a general literature catch-all category). The works used for the test are from a list of twelve writers, with a supplement listing of three more works that changes every few cycles of years.  I initially read two of the works (The Scarlet Letter and "Macbeth") back in my college days.  I am fairly certain I had read selections form some writers back in college as well (poetry from Donne and Coleridge, selections from The Canterbury Tales).  I read two more (Moby-Dick and "The Waste-Land") in graduate school.  I also read some poetry from Dickenson in graduate school as well, but maybe not the exact same poems as those highlighted for the test.  I had to read the supplemental work Mrs. Dalloway in both college and graduate school.  (Hated it both times.  I feel that it is a little overrated.) I probably read some portions of Paradise Lost back in college, but that escapes me, for the moment.  I thought I had read "Waiting for Godot" in college as well, but when I looked back over it, I couldn't place it.  I had never read the remaining two main works, Middlemarch and Beloved, or the two other supplemental works, The Women of Brewster Place and The Penelopiad.  I'm not sure I had even heard of the last one, as it is the only work that came out this century.  Still, for the last few weeks, I have been reading these works, as well as going over some of the major critical analysis for them.  I have been hating it.  Sure, such analysis is the foundation of my degree, but it is not something I like.  As I keep mentioning, I consider myself a writer foremost.  While literary criticism is somewhat helpful in that regard, it is the part of this degree that I like the least.  I prefer creative writing most of all.  That is why I should have tried harder to get into a Creative Writing program, instead of sticking it out with the standard MA in English.  I still feel like this degree is going to be a mistake.  Regardless of the outcome of this test, I still have to take two more courses to finish my degree.  I have a choice of three over the Winter and Spring semesters, none of which are screaming out at me.  If I don't pass the test this first time, I have one more chance to take it, either late this coming April or next November, after I will have finished up my course work.  If I don't pass the test on the second try, that's it.  I don't get my degree.  I'm not sure what I would do then.  Even if I do pass my test and get my MA, I'm not sure what I would do then.  I feel that I'm too old to try out for a doctorate degree, but I wouldn't be able to work soon the collegiate level without it.  I have huge doubts about getting into the Creative Writing programs that I would prefer that would get me working immediately.  I definitely don't want to teach on the grade or high school level.  I'm in a 'catch-22' situation.  I have to continue what I'm doing, even though there is no plan afterwards.  If I don't continue, there is no plan to move onto.  Not sure what will happen this Friday, but at least I didn't have to go somewhere to take it.  That wouldn't have been the case if I had taken my courses and test without interruption, and it might not be that way if I need a second chance.  I'm not sure what would happen then.