Saturday, February 17, 2007

The Time Traveler’s Wife

We read The Time Traveler’s Wife this month. The whole boy meets girl scenario is confused here. 36 year old boy time travels to where 6 year old girl lives with her family. (The actual difference between the two is 8 years) He tells her that in the future she will be his wife. During the next 12 years of girl’s life, boy keeps ‘visiting’ her from different time frames and by the time girl is 18, she is totally into boy. Now you tell me how messed up is this?

My reading group was split. Some saw boy as the Romeo of our time, while others thought our Romeo was manipulating our Juliet. I thought it was a fun book to read in terms of how the writer arranged the chapters and kept us captivated. The dialogues are at time boring, but mostly appealing and rather significant in their simplicity. But I thought boy is one messed up kid who started time traveling at the age of 5 and by the time boy is 15, we read this:
“I’m in my bedroom with my self. He’s here from next March. We are doing what we often do when we have a little privacy, when it’s cold out, when both of us are past puberty and haven’t quite gotten around to actual girl yet. I think most people would do this, if they had the sort of opportunities I have. I mean, I’m not gay or anything.”

And our messed up kid decided to mess up another kid in the process.

But think of the potential this would offer. If you know your future husband/wife, you would time travel to when they were kids, and mold them any way you wish. So by the time they are old enough to be ‘enjoyed’ (because our noble hero is no pedophile and he refuses to touch our girl until she turns 18), they have been totally shaped the way you want them. What a delightful idea.

My travels plans aren’t coming through. I think I will just end up using the holiday to relax. I am in dire need of this. These last few weeks, or months(?), were rather hectic. Were? Are. They are still going. But I like hectic. I like busy. Between classes, preparation for English Day, book club, and timetable hassles, I am left with barely enough time to watch my current TV addiction: McDreamy meets McSteamy is where I’m at right now. And Lost is back so we have that as well.

I am still on the look for keyboards that we can rent for use during our rehearsals for and at the actual English Day. These things are not so easy to come by. But the rest is going smoothly. Plays are being rehearsed, stage being checked and everyone is doing a wonderful job preparing for this day.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Piano...Books...Paris...Rome


There’s a piano somewhere at KU that I’m trying to locate. I heard we had some kind of a tiny music room somewhere in the hidden niches of our esteemed university. But finding it might be a problem. Can you actually lose a piano?



University policy dictates that new orders on books have to go through department council to actually be approved, after which an order is submitted, and pending the university budget, I might or might not be getting the books by March which is when I’d be needing them. Our department is on vacation now so nothing can be done till February 10th which would definitely be too late. Now you might ask why I haven’t done that before. And the answer would be that I’m a procrastinator. Lazy and laid back and always leaving things till the last moment. So what to do? I might have to ask students to either get the books online or make copies of them, which I really hate doing.


.....Paris or Rome?