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abyssinia4077, Five Questions Meme
Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity.
Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
1) I'm assuming jobs dictated your living in Florida. Is it a state you'd choose?
Hahahahahaha! Oh, good one! I don't know how many times I said I would never live in Florida before I got a campus visit and then an offer here.
Now, I feel a bit different. I like it here—in Tampa. I'm glad I don't live in Miami, or Gainesville, or Tallahassee—or almost anywhere other than here. It has never yet (touch wood) gone above 99° in Tampa in recorded history. Other parts get hotter (and perhaps even more humid). I also like the city of Tampa. They say it's the one part of the state where you have to go north to get south. Tampa is fairly cosmopolitan. We have museums and music and theaters and culture! And restaurants. Lots of restaurants. (Too bad we don't eat out so often any more.)
2) What one thing should everyone know about Beowulf?
One thing? I have to come up with just one? OMG! I don't think I can do that! If I fit it all into one sentence, does that count as one thing?
Everyone should know that to get the full effect you need to read it in the original Old English, but there are some good translations out there, and I think Roy Liuzza's gets you closest; skip the high school bowdlerizations and the prose translations and a lot of just plain bad translations and forget any movie you ever saw with that or a similar name.
Oh, and if I could tell you a second thing: pay attention to the women; one sees very little of them and they may look unimportant, but they matter.
3) Relatedly, how did you end up in your field?
A long time ago, in a state far, far away, a high school girl got bored with her classes, and her small Catholic high school decided to do something about that. They let her skip sophomore English and move straight to junior English, and when she got to Brit Lit she fell in love with a translation of the OE poem The Wanderer. It wasn't actually a very accurate translation, she later learned, but it caught the sounds of the poem, and she was lost. (The translation, by Charles Kennedy, can be found here.) Of course, having taken senior English her junior year, she had nothing to do but take an independent study her senior year, and she spent a good chunk of it reading Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, with which she also fell in love.
She then went off to undergraduate and managed to find a school that let her major in medieval studies. She discovered this only equipped her to go on in medieval studies, not so much in other fields, so she went on. Her choice of dissertation topic was the result of a third-year graduate student panic, and that fixed her as an Anglo-Saxonist, although she retains her love for Middle English as well.
She also has a great love for stories, which is why she gravitated to English out of the various disciplines in medieval studies, and possibly also why she is currently writing about herself in the third person.
Despite a few difficult years, she has no regrets about her field or choice of career.
4) How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?
Three.
5) You get to be one fictional character for a day. Which character do you choose and which of their days do you experience?
I sat here stymied for minutes. Then I got up and walked around the house for another few minutes, looking at books and videos. Finally, I have it:
I want to be Thursday Next, from the Jasper Fforde series, on a day when after I have finally sorted my feelings and married the love of my life, just some day when I'm moving easily in and out of the book world and maybe hanging for a little with my buddy Spike. I think being able to move in and out of the book world is perhaps the biggest attraction, but she also has a great husband and some great friends.
abyssinia4077, Five Questions MemeLeave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity.
Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
1) I'm assuming jobs dictated your living in Florida. Is it a state you'd choose?
Hahahahahaha! Oh, good one! I don't know how many times I said I would never live in Florida before I got a campus visit and then an offer here.
Now, I feel a bit different. I like it here—in Tampa. I'm glad I don't live in Miami, or Gainesville, or Tallahassee—or almost anywhere other than here. It has never yet (touch wood) gone above 99° in Tampa in recorded history. Other parts get hotter (and perhaps even more humid). I also like the city of Tampa. They say it's the one part of the state where you have to go north to get south. Tampa is fairly cosmopolitan. We have museums and music and theaters and culture! And restaurants. Lots of restaurants. (Too bad we don't eat out so often any more.)
2) What one thing should everyone know about Beowulf?
One thing? I have to come up with just one? OMG! I don't think I can do that! If I fit it all into one sentence, does that count as one thing?
Everyone should know that to get the full effect you need to read it in the original Old English, but there are some good translations out there, and I think Roy Liuzza's gets you closest; skip the high school bowdlerizations and the prose translations and a lot of just plain bad translations and forget any movie you ever saw with that or a similar name.
Oh, and if I could tell you a second thing: pay attention to the women; one sees very little of them and they may look unimportant, but they matter.
3) Relatedly, how did you end up in your field?
A long time ago, in a state far, far away, a high school girl got bored with her classes, and her small Catholic high school decided to do something about that. They let her skip sophomore English and move straight to junior English, and when she got to Brit Lit she fell in love with a translation of the OE poem The Wanderer. It wasn't actually a very accurate translation, she later learned, but it caught the sounds of the poem, and she was lost. (The translation, by Charles Kennedy, can be found here.) Of course, having taken senior English her junior year, she had nothing to do but take an independent study her senior year, and she spent a good chunk of it reading Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, with which she also fell in love.
She then went off to undergraduate and managed to find a school that let her major in medieval studies. She discovered this only equipped her to go on in medieval studies, not so much in other fields, so she went on. Her choice of dissertation topic was the result of a third-year graduate student panic, and that fixed her as an Anglo-Saxonist, although she retains her love for Middle English as well.
She also has a great love for stories, which is why she gravitated to English out of the various disciplines in medieval studies, and possibly also why she is currently writing about herself in the third person.
Despite a few difficult years, she has no regrets about her field or choice of career.
4) How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?
Three.
5) You get to be one fictional character for a day. Which character do you choose and which of their days do you experience?
I sat here stymied for minutes. Then I got up and walked around the house for another few minutes, looking at books and videos. Finally, I have it:
I want to be Thursday Next, from the Jasper Fforde series, on a day when after I have finally sorted my feelings and married the love of my life, just some day when I'm moving easily in and out of the book world and maybe hanging for a little with my buddy Spike. I think being able to move in and out of the book world is perhaps the biggest attraction, but she also has a great husband and some great friends.
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From:
no subject
So, uh, yeah, resistance is futile. :)
From:
no subject
2. Do you like your job, or is it just what you do to enable you to continue to eat and have a place to sleep (and to read, and to write, and to watch).
3. If you could live anywhere you wanted, where would you be?
4. What do you like best and least about your own writing?
5. The classic desert island question: what three books would you want when stranded on a desert island for goodness knows how long?
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
And indeed: resistance is futile.
From:
no subject
2. Do you enjoy grad school (even sometimes), or are you mostly waiting to get out and do what you really want to do?
3. Do you write any purely original fiction? Do you want to?
4. Do you have a favorite movie? If so, what? (You can name more than one, if you really want.)
5. What's your favorite food?
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
But um - hit me up if you wish. :)
From:
no subject
1. Is Enza your first dog, or have you had dogs for a while?
2. You said you want(ed) to be a history professor; was history your major, or what did you study?
3. What languages do you speak or read?
4. How and when did you get into Stargate?
5. This is probably a silly question, but: you have 27 userpics, some of which are really funny; how come I hardly ever see any but the one you've used here? (Which rocks, but so do some of the others!)
From:
no subject
what always stuck with me were two things:
* the spread toes of Grendel (leading to me visualizing it as the Kothoga on the book cover of "The Relic" before I ever saw that book)
* the two sets of paragraphs, one on the left side of the page and one on the right side.
>3) Three
ah the classics of the commercials once aired. thank you.
>I want to be Thursday Next
my mum would like your autograph. ;)
Resistance Is Futile
From:
no subject
1. Only if it's not too personal: what do you do for a living?
I ask partly because of:
2. How do you have time to read and write and watch so much? (I asked Astro the same question above, actually.)
3. What are some of your favorite books?
4. Do you have any pets (and if you don't, would you like to?)
5. Is there any historical era in which you'd like to live, even briefly?
From:
no subject
it was spread toes or broad foot...something that my biologist brain approved, as Grendel was living in a swamp/marsh.
>1. Only if it's not too personal: what do you do for a living?
presently between jobs.
>2. How do you have time to read and write and watch so much?
I have no social life. (that's the reason for - not the result of - reading and writing and watching so much)
and a swiss cheese memory holds some memories of shows and books.
>3. What are some of your favorite books?
"The Ark's Anniversary" by Gerald Durrell.
"Far-Seer" by Robert Sawyer.
"My Zoo Family" by Helen Martini.
>4. Do you have any pets (and if you don't, would you like to?)
used to have fish. (my favorite was Guardian, a foot-long Pleco)
>5. Is there any historical era in which you'd like to live, even briefly?
Mongol Empire (under Temujin) or Imperial Rome (under Augustus)...anywhere else, my lifespan would be measured in months at most.