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King of Etruria

Secundo quoque anno iterum Tarquinius ut reciperetur in regnum bellum Romanis intulit, auxilium ei ferente Porsenna, Tusciae rege, et Romam paene cepit.
          - Eutropius, Breviarium ab urbe condita, Liber I

Weblog

23 May 2005

 I've gotten eerily good of late at scaring the bejeezus out of the cat. He routinely wakes me up by standing on the bed and sniffing my mouth, which is creepy as hell because it makes his whiskers tickle my face. My strategy is to open my eyes really quickly and yell as loud as I can and wave my arms, all in the span of, like, half a second. This causes the cat to jump two feet up and backward away from me. But if he's going to wake me up at 8 every morning, I'm going to enjoy watching him fall off the bed in fright.

 

Posted at 1523.

21 May 2005

 Juline wanted me to teach her to play racquetball today, so yesterday I went to Wilson to sign up for a time. The only name on the entire signup sheet was "Coach K." I began to fantasize about how we would be playing on the other court, and Coach K would suggest we switch partners, and I would get to play him. Unfortunately, she couldn't play at 3pm when he was signed up. So I did not get to realize my dream of playing racquetball with Coach K. So sad.

But I did get a package in the mail today from my aunt, which was a little surprising. Last week, she called my mom when she was here visiting for graduation to ask what she should buy a family friend as a college graduation present. I suggested either monogrammed towels or a sterling keychain from Tiffany's and pointed her to some websites. It took me a while, but I think I finally convinced her to get the key ring. It didn't occur to me that she would send me one too for my graduation. But, yay, every girl wants to open up her mail to find a Tiffany's box!

 

Posted at 2222.

16 May 2005

 Happy AIA news from today! They accepted my abstract for a workshop entitled Classical Bioarchaeology for the January meeting. It's just the next step in my devious plan to coin a new phrase for which I will be quoted in aeternitatem! Mwahahahahah!

 

Posted at 2034.

15 May 2005 - Congrats Grads!

 So graduation was fine. I got a book. Yay. I wore a stupid outfit. Boo. I got a wreath of ivy. Yay. Pics of both the UNC classics ceremony and the William & Mary religious studies ceremony are online here. My favorite is this one of me and Erika, even though it's washed out and Erika's making a face. Don't we look oddly like the Caryatids? My mom came down for the ceremony, since Patrick was up in Williamsburg at his sister's graduation. Before she left this afternoon, I literally gave her the shirt off my back. She really liked the peach-colored silky Old Navy tank I was wearing and asked if she could borrow it. Ah, well. I suppose it's payback time for all the clothes I borrowed from her as a kid.

 

Posted at 2345.

14 May 2005

 The worst television news segue in history, on NBC-17: from a news story of a child's drowning, the anchor said, "And now on to happier news, re-enactors have staged the end of the Civil War." Uhm, how exactly is occupation and martial law following the worst war on US soil any happier than a child's death? Or is it true what Dan said, that we Southerners don't actually believe that we lost?

 

Posted at 1810.

13 May 2005

 I got a response from General Mills to my May 8 e-mail (see below)! Well, OK, so it's not much of a response:

From: Corporate Consumer Response
Subject: General Mills Web Response 2005/05/12-1879 BYY

Dear Mademoiselle Mortforet: (note my clever nom de plume, inspired by their drop-down menu from which you can select such titles as Reverend, Monsieur, and Senora)

Thank you for contacting General Mills. We appreciate the time you have taken to share your comments. The information you provided will be carefully reviewed with other members of the product team.

We hope you continue to enjoy our products.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Yates

That was oddly ungratifying.

 

Posted at 1458.

I would hate to be a travel agent. Trying to find the best airfares really drives me insane. I just dropped $1,300 to get from here to Lisbon, Lisbon to Rome, Rome to Lisbon, and Lisbon back here. It was a lot cheaper to buy two round-trip tickets than the three-city ticket that I needed. Stupid Europe in the summer. But at least I don't have to fly Air France again. Now I have to go apply for a job to pay for this and find a place to stay in Italy. At least I have another lead... grading GREs.

 

Posted at 1056.

9 May 2005

 Guess who was in the N&O this morning? I was reading this blurb about Peace College starting an osteology program and out of the corner of my eye, Juline's face jumped out at me. I showed it to Patrick and he responded, "Wow, Juline's in the paper. Wait... I took that picture. One of my photographs is in a newspaper!" She's also on the Duke webpage here.

 

Posted at 1042.

8 May 2005

 The other day when I was waiting at the temp agency, I was munching on a Nature Valley granola bar. After a few bites, I hit a spot that undoubtedly had a fleck of coffee bean in it. Weird. Then, I hit upon an idea... So I tried to e-mail General Mills about it, but their web form is broken. Bastards. I guess I'll have to waste 37 cents on them. Not like anyone ever writes me back when I send them a lovely letter such as this one. Perhaps the next time I'm up in Minneapolis, I can drop in on my new friends at the Mills.

 

Posted at 2152.

7 May 2005

 Well, I think the Seis de Mayo party was a success. I can't quite remember all of it, of course. I got to the stage of drunkenness when I started hugging inanimate objects again. The weirdest thing, though, was when I woke up this morning and came downstairs. There was almost no evidence that there had been a party. Even the lights outside were gone. I really thought for a second that I had imagined the entire night in some sort of drunken stupor. But, no, Patrick stayed up until 4am cleaning up. What a sweetie.

 

Posted at 2306.

4 May 2005 - Happy Birthday Andy!

 I was typing up the shout-out in the date line of the blog, and I realized if I abbreviated, it would come out as: HAPPY BDAY ANDY. Then I thought if I dropped one of the p's in happy, it would be HAPY BDAY ANDY. Now all the words are four letters, all end in Y, and all have an A as the only vowel. It's like one of those puzzles where you change only one letter at a time to make a new word. HAPY = BAPY = BDPY = BDAY = ADAY = ADDY = ANDY. Hm, maybe that's not as interesting as I thought it was.

 

Posted at 1802.

There's no better ego-booster than taking random Microsoft software tests while applying for a temporary secretarial job. Especially nice was when the manager's jaw dropped when she saw my scores. Apparently they're twice as high as everyone else's. Go figure.

I did learn that I am only a couple correct questions away from being able to get a Master Certification as a Microsoft Office Specialist from my vast knowledge of how to use such glossy point-and-click applications as Word, Excel, and Access. Think I can put that on my CV after my BA and two MA's? Kristina Killgrove, BA, MA, MA, MOS? More like POS. Microsoft is evil and has apparently infiltrated my life, nay, my subconscious more than I ever thought possible. I haven't used Access in over three years, and yet I'm nearly certifiable. Wait, that came out wrong...

And for those of you who were wondering, my typing speed today was clocked at 90wpm with 99% accuracy. I need to work on that.

 

Posted at 1743.

3 May 2005

 Mark, Erik, and I were studying for our ceramics exam this morning. I was quizzing them on how vessel form can indicate vessel function based on notes from class. "What kind of vessel would you have if it has low frequency of access and high containment security?" I asked, expecting an answer of "storage vessel." Mark replied, "A really frigid girlfriend!" and high-fived Erik. Later, at brunch, we were talking about my upcoming Seis de Mayo party (To which you really need to come! You know I'm talking to you!), and I asked if a pinata would be considered a storage vessel because it has low frequency of access and high containment security. And Erik replied, "Definitely, because a pinata is also like a frigid girlfriend... you have to beat it to get anything out of it!" I nearly snarfled my eggs it was so funny.

And for an end-of-ceramics-practicum wrap-up... some choice quotes from the semester:

  • Erik: Heh heh. He said, "smectite."
  • Mark [to Vin]: This pot has two faux handles. But we don't know what they're fo'.
  • Mark [to me, Erik, and Jenny]: You can tell that this sherd is earthenware! Here, lick the crack! Come on!
  • Erik [concerning pots as tools]: The smudging visible on the surface of an ass could be a function of unwanted residue deposition, or it could be the result of sooting after someone lights a fart on fire. Large quartz or feldspar inclusions in an ass are indicative of poor squatting technique, putting the ass in contact with various minerals on the ground. How deeply they are imbedded in the surface of the ass-matrix is directly related to the weight of the ass where A=weight of ass, M=depth, and E= size of mineral particle. AM-E/A-3.4 = 2[cosA]M/E.
  • Kristina [to Mark and Erik during a study session]: My notes say that this article is about the Shipibo and Conibo. I don't think those are real people. They're fake, you know, like the Yanomamo. Plus, they remind me of Evel Knievel.

 

Posted at 1513.

I went to Cosmic Cantina yesterday for lunch and got a veggie burrito with a side of their hot sauce. I thought the sauce was usually green, but yesterday it was kind of an amber color. But it smelled and tasted fine, so I ate some. It was quite hot, though, and my upper lip in particular was burning after I finished lunch. Well, this morning I woke up to a big cluster of tiny, itchy bumps on my upper lip. Ick! Since I've never had a cold sore, I figure it was the hot pepper reacting really weirdly with my lip (especially considering jalapenos tend to turn my fingers red when I cut them up). That doesn't change the fact that Cosmic gave me a lip disease. And this is following on their old-shoe-flavored-bean fiasco, which kept me away from the Chapel Hill location for months. I think I'll stick to the Durham one from now on.

 

Posted at 1454.

1 May 2005

 This Sunday's Kroger flyer in the N&O advertises in ginormous red-white-and-blue letters: MEAT MARATHON! It is accompanied by this little graphic of anthropomorphized Pork, Steak, Poultry, and Fish crossing a finish line. Granted, I'm a vegetarian, but I wouldn't want my meat exerting itself for 26 miles, getting all tough and stringy. At least they're all conscious of disease and are wearing shoes. But my main question is, what's Hot Dog doing there? We've got all the main meat-producing animals already: pigs, cows, chickens, and fish all beating him in the race. Is he there to represent all the chopped up offal that couldn't sprout legs and make it into the race? Is he there to make his parents, Head Cheese and Haggis, proud? Ah well. He's not the best... he's the wurst. Yuk yuk yuk!

So I decided to google for "meat marathon," and the second hit is for an "artist" who ran the Staten Island half-marathon with coldcuts taped to her body. This woman is truly insane. The meat marathon was tame compared to her stunt of taking lactation-inducing drugs in order to become "a fully self-sustaining entity, the embodiment of perfection, nourishing myself and others through food created from my own body." But she proved to be a woman after my own heart in her letter to Jacques Chirac in which she asks his permission to marry the little-known (and very dead) French novelist Comte de Lautreamont.

 

Posted at 1759.