Field Trip City

I got out of bed at 8 AM today, I'm proud to say. Took my time and got ready, had an online conversation with Andrea, and went to class. My first official Touch of Evil Project class. We sat around talking about the film and how the course would take shape. It seems to be predominantly comprised of Film students. We're to fashion a DVD-ROM (ideally), and Professor Columpar showed an example of a CD-ROM done on Hitchcock's Rebecca. It brought back reminders of certain fundamentals of interface design I garnered from my college days, but I haven't opened Director software in years. I don't know if I'd personally be able to retrain myself to create something like that and make it good while still focusing on the rest of my work.

You know, it just struck me that this blog is searchable, and that searching by a professor's name could lead them directly to what I'm typing here. It doesn't bother me, because I'd never talk ill of a professor in this context, but the whole idea of incriminating blogs interests me. Employees being fired for going off about their bosses. Professors becoming aware of how their students really feel about them. Then there are sites like ratemyprofessors.com. I wonder if professors can't resist checking that site out, reading anonymous comments left by their students. Apparently there's a related site that allows professors to fire back at the comments via video. How terrific is that? For the record, I love my professors. They're all the greatest.

Anyhow. Between classes, I came home to some DVD's that had arrived, including a Marlene Dietrich collection I'll be using for my TOEP presentation. I finally got hold of Donna and she was very helpful in giving me advice on applying for the grant and graciously promised me reference letters by the end of the week. I'll be applying as an individual. Over the next couple of days I'm going to get through more of the written application and start preparing my secondary materials.

African-Canadian Lit was engaging, and I get the feeling it will be rife with discussion all term. There are some interesting folks in my classes that I'd like to get to know better.

I hit the grocery store, caved and finally purchased a box of candy bars. Yeah. That's the temptation you run when you live next to a wholesale grocery store. I now have a box of Caramilk Deluxe armed and ready. I better start making use of that exercise room.

Wrapped up the evening listening to SModcast, watching episodes of The IT Crew and a Buster Keaton and Jimmy Durante flick, "Speak Easily" - a screwball comedy that has funny parts (and not-so-funny parts) but is more notable as a speaking role for Keaton. I love him even when he can't act. All he has to do is walk into something and my heart is won again.