Lord of the Rings, Kate Turabian, and Pretenses

So, I decided to buy a present for myself that I've been meaning to buy for quite a while: The Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD (extended version of course!). I bought them all used for about $25 total, which I felt like was a reasonable price to spend for something I've wanted for the past five years. While I was at it, I also bought Children of Men. I can't get enough of post-apocalyptic/dystopian movies.

I finally had my meeting with the Seminary Librarian, the venerable Norma Sutton, to go over my footnotes on the first three chapters of the thesis. I was a little nervous about this meeting, as it could require quite much more work depending on how bad I screwed up the Turabian citation. However, the meeting went quite smoothly, and I probably will only have a solid hour of work to clean up the footnotes and make them worthy of Kate Turabian.

My political thought for the day: everyone thinks budget cuts are good until you start making them. I think it's going to be an interesting few months for the "fiscal hawks" who now are hearing and seeing the backlash from their abstract-turned-concrete budget cuts.

I hate when gas prices go up, not so much because of the added cost but because every time I turn on the TV or radio I have to hear about it. Who needs to be told that gas prices are going up? Who needs an interview with some random guy on the street complaining about gas prices? It's almost as bad as NPR pledge drives, which coincidentally are also happening right now. It's a perfect storm of airwave nauseation.

I don't like when people say "niche" with a french accent: "neesh." Just say "nitch" like the rest of us. That goes for most French words that have made it into the English vernacular. It just sounds pretentious. It's like that episode of Seinfeld when the lady at the party keeps saying "fianceeee!" really annoyingly, and finally Elaine retorts in an aussie accent...well, watch for yourself (although the editor of this video decided to put in a picture and some sound effects):

I just had an hour talk with a great friend from high school, Joe Idziorek. I haven't talked to him in ages, and it reminded me of the good times we had (especially) senior year on the basketball team and playing copious amounts of X-Box hockey with him and Brady Anderson every free moment we had. He's down in Aimes getting his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering (give me a moment to push my glasses up nerdily).

Okay, I'm going to read through some Cov History notes and call it a night.