Spring cleaning

I’m a bit of a slob when it comes to my apartment. This is nothing new. Even as a kid, I’ve always had messy rooms. It’s not to say that I hate cleaning, it’s just that I’ve always found something that I would rather do than clean, such as read, watch TV, or surf the net for hours.

This summer, since I don’t have to worry about classes or homework in the evening, I started working on my mess of an apartment. I’m also a bit of a pack rat, which probably makes things worse. I have a hard time getting rid of things. With computer parts, you never know when they might be useful again. For books, you never know when they might be read again, and so on for other things.

Computer parts won’t be too hard to give up since there is abundance in the apartment and in the office. I cleaned my office at work earlier this year and tried to limit the inventory of cables to two or three of each common type. I ended up sending a very full box of various cables to surplus. At home, I’ll try to limit myself to what I think I will realistically need.

Many articles of clothing will be easy to give up, as well. If I haven’t work a shirt in five years, it’s a good time to get rid of it. The apartment doesn’t have the much closet space, so it’s better to limit what needs to be put in them. On the other hand, I’ve got a couple of suits and some ties I’ll keep, just in case.

Books are a weakness. There are more books than shelves to put them on. It will be hard to get rid of them, but some older computer books (like “Windows 98 Registry”) are probably okay to pitch.

Rather than doing it all at once, I’m working on the apartment in stages. I started a week or so ago with the bathroom; cleaning the tub and the toilet, mopping the floor, and doing three loads of laundry. Friday was the entry hallway. It’s not very big, but I’ve got a couple of bikes there and it tends to accumulate a lot of dirt since it’s the only way in and out of the apartment. I moved the bikes, vacuumed the floor, and dusted off the CDs.

The apartment is a studio apartment. Basically it’s one large room as a combined living room, dining room, and bedroom, plus two smaller rooms for the kitchen and bath. It’s right around 500 sq. ft. Yesterday, I started on the “bedroom” area. I got rid of an old box fan that squeaked annoyingly and an LCD monitor that got fried last year. I put the dirty laundry in the hamper, moved around some books, then vacuumed the floor. I also bought a shredder in anticipation of getting rid of pay stubs and other stuff from several years ago. The only thing I’ve done today is replace some fluorescent light bulbs in the kitchen.

There’s still a long way to go in the cleaning, but it’s nice to make progress. About 1/3 is done so far.

Tested

I took the GRE today and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I can’t say too much about it because they make you write out a confidentiality statement and sign it. Basically they don’t want people telling other people the questions. What I do have to say is stuff you can get from the GRE website anyway.

There were two writing sections, which get sent off to be graded. I’m thankful they were on the computer rather than paper, otherwise I would have gotten writer’s cramp. After that was a break followed by a verbal section and a quantitative (math) section. I forget my exact scores, but it looked like I did better on the quantitative section than I did the verbal section. However, I went to the website when I got back home and found out they are different scales. I did score above the average on each section, so I suppose that’s some consolation.

In the first writing section, they present two short statements and you choose one of them to write about. For the second writing section you are presented with a lengthier statement that you have to analyze and write about. If I remember correctly, the latter is allotted 30 minutes and the former is allotted 45 minutes. The GRE website says they aren’t interested in grammar so much as the persuasiveness of the argument, so I think I did okay. There wasn’t enough time to come up with incredibly thorough arguments, but the cases presented seemed to point to some logical conclusions, so I’m guessing that as long as they arguments seem well reasoned, the test taker (me) should do okay.

The whole thing is scheduled for four hours, so it was scheduled to start at 7:00 and go to 11:00. However, since it is computer based you can work at your own pace more or less (each section has it’s own time limit). I thought it went pretty quick. I was actually done a little before 10:00. Now that it’s over it seems a bit anti-climatic, though I should wait for my official scores which should come in the mail in 10 – 15 days.

Open primaries

A few years ago I found about open primaries. I’m an independent, but a friend of mine who worked the polls told me that independents could also vote in primaries in Indiana, but they had to choose one primary to vote in. In other words, an independent could vote in a Democratic primary, but not a Republican, or could vote in a Republican primary, but not a Democratic one. Sounded like an interesting idea, but it didn’t seem to matter too much…until now.

When I found out that the Indiana primaries were in May, I figured they would all be decided and it would be a waste of time to bother voting in the primary. Years ago, I would have supported McCain over Bush. I like the idea of having an armed-forces veteran in the White House. McCain, Kerry, and Gore are all Vietnam veterans, while Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard, which isn’t quite the same thing. However, the economy is going to be a bigger issue in this campaign than the War in Iraq. The war is still an important issue, but the economy will certainly affect more people than the war does. I don’t know anyone in the armed forces at the moment, but I do know the price of groceries seems to be going up a bit. Even though gas prices don’t affect me directly (don’t own a car), I know that the cost of transportation is figured into the prices of things in stores, and as gas prices go up, so do the prices in the stores. The reason I’m not likely to vote for McCain this time around is because he admitted the economy wasn’t his strong point (This was around he time Mitt Romney was still in the race). McCain might be a good War President, he might be a good leader (despite the occasional foot-in-mouth issues), but I think the economy needs more attention at the moment.

Anyway, since McCain has the Republican nomination pretty much sewn up, I can turn my attention to the Democratic candidates. If I vote in the primary tomorrow (today) it will be for Obama. My first thought about him years ago during the Democratic convention was that he is a hell of an orator. However it takes more than speeches to be a good president. I was a little worried about his experience until I found out he served for many years in the Illinois legislature. It also dawned on me that a lot of others (George Bush and Bill Clinton, for example) also lacked experience yet won the White House. I think who he picks for a running mate and for cabinet positions will be important in winning in November. My suggestions woud be Wesley Clark (a retired general) or Bill Richardson ( a former diplomat).

Despite the fact that his campaign has been sending me junk mail, I can relate more to Obama than I can to Clinton. Obama’s parents divorced when he was young. He went to a bunch of different schools and moved around a lot. His family even got Food Stamps when he was younger, which is something I also remember. I have a lot of respect for someone who can go from a childhood like that to eventually become a senator or even president. Even if I don’t vote tomorrow, I wish him luck.

Summer in the city

Now that classes are over and I don’t begin again until August, I’ve been thinking of some things to do over the summer. As mentioned previously I’m scheduled to take the GRE this week. Once the grades for that arrive, then it’s a matter of making a formal application for grad school. Still, those things won’t occupy much of my time, so it’s a matter of figuring out what else to do.

My office and apartment both need Spring cleaning, so I think that is what I will work on this week, at home and at work. Actually, cleaning the apartment might go into next week. Calling it dirty would be giving it too much credit. I’ll try to work in sections and see how that goes.

I’ve also given myself a reading list for summer. Some have to do with the idea that I’m going to be a grad student (knock on wood) and should bone up while I have the chance:

• Surviving your Thesis by Susan Burton
• Developing Multicultural Educators by Jana Noel
• The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker
• Reflections on Language by Noam Chomsky
• Language and Responsibility by Noam Chomsky
• Formulaic Sequences: Acquisition, Processing and Use by Norbert Schmitt
• Formulaic Language and the Lexicon by Alison Wray

I’ve read the last two already while researching a paper last Fall. Since I keep thinking about that subject, it may be the basis of my thesis. I’ve never read Chomsky before, even though he is supposed to be very influential in Linguistics. What often happens is people will describe what they think Chomsky said or wrote, and they are only mentioning what is needed to support their point. To get my own idea about what his ideas are, I figured I should actually read his books. The other books caught my eye for some reason.

I also plan on reading House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, and maybe Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. When I read novels, they usually only take a day or so to read, so that idea should hold for these books, but not the ones up above. Hopefully, this will take care of all, or most of the summer.