and then there was Winter

Winter quarter was sadly not much of an improvement over Autumn. I didn't do any theater, so I got out less. Perhaps I was less stressed, but as things ramped up with my thesis, I didn't notice, and was only aware of my ever-narrowing social life. However, I still had my delightful quartet, and only went to the doctor once and the hospital not at all. This was an improvement over my bi-weekly doctor's visits and one ER trip in Autumn. :) I was more or less over the mono, and returned to my daily gym work out, until one fine morning, hives appeared on my arms, and spread and worsened. 'Oh, hullo, hives,' said I, 'and where are you from?' 'Wouldn't you like to know,' they replied coyly. Having rid my apartment of allergens, at least to the best of my ability, I betook myself to the doctor, who said, 'oh, well, it's probably stress.' I felt like this was a bit unfair, not of the doctor, but of life, since the hives had significantly raised my stress level. Sadly, this saga is not completely ended. The bad hives only continued for two weeks, defying a course of antihistamines and the first round of steroids, succumbing eventually to the combined powers of atarax, steroids and calamine lotion applied three times a day. However, they still take any opportunity to reappear, such opportunities including but not limited to: hot showers, scented lotion/sunblock, and heat such as that which is currently afflicting the midwest. :( While I have always had sensitive skin, this is a bit absurd.
But having that be essentially the only health problem for the quarter was still an improvement. My classes were interesting. I continued with ASL (joy!), and took my last Core requirement: math. Actually, I took geometry, and loved it. It was a tiny class, and the professor was engaging and patient, despite being a genius (he had a PhD from Columbia at age 19). He said he had no interest in failing any of us, but in teaching us as much as we could learn in the time allotted. I was also reminded of why I loved geometry (it makes SENSE unlike the rest of math). Since he didn't really fancy giving an exam (well, for finals, there were two midterms), he suggested we write papers. As I was writing enough to be going on with, I didn't like this plan, so instead, he suggested I write a series of proofs, and I did this in the best main lesson book style. Once a steiner student, always a steiner student. I did a cover page and everything. :) I also took my last degree requirement, the one and only American lit course I took in my college career: the poetry of Moore, Bishop, Lowell, and Plath. I enjoyed it more than I expected, again mostly due to the brilliance of the professor, a young PhD candidate, who clearly adores these poets. Her enthusiasm was infectious. Moore was my favorite, with her carefully constructed poems and stunning imagery. I liked Bishop for her emotion, some of Lowell for the crazy, but not much of Plath. Both Lowell and Plath, but especially Plath, occasionally took too much joy in being shocking simply for the sake of it, with no other point than the shock. In fact, if I'm remembering correctly, my favorite poem of Plath's was the one about Ted Hughes (I forget the title), in which she imitates his style. oh well. We read their letters at the same time, because they all knew each other, and were friends, and Plath's letters were delightful, and I enjoyed them much better than her poetry.
At some point, I met with my thesis adviser, and made the mistake of asking for an extension on an intermediate deadline (not the final deadline), as I had been so ill. She said she couldn't do that, and offered these alternative options as comfort: I could not graduate in the Spring, and thus have until July to finish the thesis, or I could give up and not finish it at all, seeing as how it wasn't necessary for the English degree. I didn't think much of either of these suggestions, and in fact, they just increased my stress level, since I felt in them a judgment (almost certainly imagined) of my personal ability to finish this project. In reality, I believe my adviser was trying to give me the options of ways out of my situation.
On the positive side, Winter Quarter did include the Brent House retreat. We went to St. Gregory's abbey in western Michigan, and it was lovely. The monks there do all of the daily offices, starting at 4am, and I made it to several (not all of them this year). The services are comfortingly regular and straightforward, meditative. There was also a lot of snow, and we went sledding, which was loads of fun.
Oh, and I forgot about Winter vacation! I went straight from school directly to visit Kate in Texas, where I got in lots of good riding. A highlight of that was when I was doing a course, probably of five small jumps, and as I was coming up to the last one, the instructor called out that I should add on the roll-top, something I'd never done before. Not having time to panic, I just sailed over it like it was nothing. Ok, so maybe to most riders it *is* nothing, but not to me. And I did it. :D From Texas, I went to California to visit Jayne and see the San Francisco Dickens Fair. I loved it! It was indoors, and quite similar to Renaissance festivals, but the entertainment and costumes were, of course, different. A lot of the vendors overlapped though. My favorite part was Pickwick's Warehouse, where they had dancing. Sometimes, it was groups performing, and sometimes it was open dancing, when you could either dance with the people who were there (and knew what they were doing), or with your friends if you preferred. It was great fun. Caroline joined us for that, looking elegant as ever. Here is a picture of the three of us:
My dress was courtesy of the wonderful Helen Welford.
From there it was home for Christmas, the comforts of home, my family and my cats. :)
And with that happy memory, I will leave you until later, when I will return with the final catch-up post, covering Spring quarter and the first month of the rest of my life, post-graduation.

In which I try once again to catch up

As always, I must apologize for the long delay in posting. My hope is to catch this blog up to the present, so that I can update more frequently, and that without the pressure of months of news, I will be able to tell the more entertaining stories of daily life.
When I left the last post, I had just gotten to the end of the summer, and the Michigan Renaissance Festival. I went straight from there to Chicago and school. During the Festival, I had begun doing reading for my thesis (by begun, I mean, I had a tub with some thirty books, and I read the relevant passages of all of them before school started). Once I got back to school though, the work started in earnest. I was frantically trying to come up with an actual topic, having finally settled on my text, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In addition to work on my thesis, I began studying American Sign Language, which is incredibly fascinating. That class (which I continued through Spring quarter) ended up being one of the best parts of my year. I also took a far less interesting course called Sense, Sensibility and Sexuality on nineteenth century novels. It was rather disappointing, despite the tantalizing title. The third course was the spot filler which I dubbed the 'please research for your thesis' class. Basically, it allowed me (or any student writing a thesis) to only take two classes, and still count as a full time student. Still, I kept busy.
I was, of course, still working at the library. I got promoted, which meant that I got to play with fun tools. I checked books in, and eventually also got to do data entry--actually, this is not sarcastic. Any task which allows me to sit while at work is a thing to be coveted. The best part was the machine that printed out new barcode stickers. It made very futuristic noises. (hey, simple pleasures are the key to happiness).
One of the other pleasures of this year was a quartet that I organized with David Bevington, who plays the viola (when he's not busy being a world-famous Shakespeare scholar, of course). We recruited a couple of violinists, and had a lovely informal group. We met every few weeks, and sight read every time, just enjoying the music, and not expecting great quality. Afterwords, we would sit in David's kitchen and drink tea and chat. It was really lovely. David Bevington is one of the great things at the University of Chicago. He is technically retired, but teaches almost as often as the full-time professors. His lectures are brilliant. But beyond that, he fosters the culture on campus. He plays in the Chamber Orchestra and supports University Theater, as well as always being up for such ventures as my little quartet. For all of these things, he hosts great parties, with good drinks and boundless food, and usually music. During my second year, he hosted a small party, only for musicians, and we all sat down and quaffed, and sight read, and I felt very bohemian in the best sense. When I grow up, I hope to be half as cool as David, and not just for his excellent scholarship.
I costume designed for the play The Shape of Things, by Neil LaBute. It is a version of the Pygmalion story, with the subject's social clout changed through appearance, set in modern times. It is a good, although slightly traumatizing, play, but costumes are absolutely vital, since they tell a big part of the story. Still, this is the show design of which I am most proud, so it was worth the hard work. I built a prosthetic nose for the main character, who had to undergo a nose job in the middle of the show (eventually, the director decided to have the nose job happen on stage...), and friends of the actor even had time recognizing what was different about his face. I'm pretty proud of that. Of course, all of the costume changes, the nose not least, meant that I had to be backstage every night.
This brings me to what made Autumn quarter so stressful. In the midst of all of these responsibilities, I came down with mono. I was quite sick, but didn't have a diagnosis until the week before the show opened. At that point, I felt that I couldn't let everyone down, so I slogged through. It was rather epic, to be honest. I suppose I must not have had the worst case of mono, since I made it out of bed, but it also required huge amounts of will power, and I wonder who could make a quantitative judgment of how bad one person's experience of a disease is. Someone with a worse case of mono could have more strength of will and do more, but by the same token, someone with a milder case could still spend 18 hours in bed. I certainly wanted to, but felt that it wasn't an option. I also had a lot of scares, for lack of a better word, of worse complications. First, a two-week long stomach ache, which the doctor thought might be pancreitis. It cleared up, and the tests were negative: phew, what a relief. I was also having quite a lot of trouble breathing, which, after it had continued for a long time, made the doctor worry about blood clots in the lungs. A blood test showed something that indicated that this might indeed be what was wrong with me, so I trotted off to the ER for a CT scan, and a five hour period of languishing in uncertainty. Luckily, the scan came back clear. The doctors in the ER were rude and dismissive the whole time, and it was a rather miserable experience. I am very glad that these things ended up being empty scares, but I am also glad that the doctor in the Student Care Center took them seriously and investigated them. It was terrifying at the time, not least the periods of waiting for results. Anyways, thank goodness that's all passed!
Amidst all of this, I dated a boy. The best thing to be said about this is that if one has to kiss a lot of frogs before finding one's prince, well, I'm one frog closer.
I started attending Church of the Atonement, in Roger's Park. This church is *very* high church, to say the least. However, they are very liberal, and everyone is incredibly welcoming (N.B. these things do not always go hand in hand, btw!). I am enjoying it there, and look forward to spending more time and getting more involved now that it's not an hour and a half commute via the CTA. :) I love coming home smelling of incense I continued to attend Brent House in the evening, although I did not get as involved as I had in previous years. I preached once a quarter, which was good practice. Does it ever get less nerve wracking? I would also like the writing process to become less fraught. There were some pretty tough spots. I am told that, on the whole, my sermons were quite good, but I don't have an unbiased opinion on that front.
I think this brings us through Autumn Quarter. I will leave Winter and Spring for later posts (hopefully sooner rather than later though), as this is getting quite long.
Dear readers, should any of you still exist, I thank you for your patience and fidelity. Perhaps the content of these posts can present my excuses as to why I have not written sooner. Otherwise, I can only apologize.
God bless!