Grab the Lapels

Sunday Lowdown #264

WHAT I ENJOYED THIS WEEK . . .

  • We’re talking more about internships. Some places simply agree to my professor: “Yet, that student can come here.” Others are more competitive, and we must apply. I’m not sure which side the Dallas agency is, but my professor has a connection there.
  • I’ve been on a horror movie binge because Nick was working in Chicago from Wednesday to Saturday. See the watch list below.

WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK

  • I found out that starting in fall 2024, gym and fitness are no longer required at my university, meaning that game of chicken I was playing with signing up paid off.
  • I may be able to take the required communications class online next fall, meaning I won’t have to drive in 3x per week for 50 minutes of learning how to stand in front of a group and speak.
  • I learned that banana pudding used to be a complicated yet vague recipe that required a double boiler because Nilla Wafers got involved.

WHAT I WATCHED THIS WEEK

  • The Tow (2022) — stopped watching around halfway mark
  • It Lives Inside (2023) — by-the-book demon movie, sadly, just Hindu, not Christian
  • The Mist (2007) — loved everything except the main actor!
  • M3GAN (2022) — loved it

GROUP ACTIVITIES THIS WEEK

  • Indiana’s giant wardrobe change: Hoosiers on Tuesday — 🩴👕🩳 Hoosiers on Wednesday — 🧣🧤🧥
  • I played horror trivia online with my Huntsville Horror friends and won.
  • Music Bingo date night — did not win.

REACTIONS TO MY REVIEW

Reactions to my review of Jumping the Queue by Mary Wesley: in general, I now see that I had not considered how 50 might be a different type of old for a woman living in the 1960s. On the one hand, hard labor wore people down, and a lot of folks were surprised to live past 65. On the other hand, the main character was not a motherly mother, and so you would think she would be relieved once her children moved out. In general, this novel is all over the place.

FORTHCOMING REVIEW

SHOPPING AT THE LIBRARY PHOTO

I love that my library has free DVD rentals. I pay for zero streaming services between the library and Tubi.

23 comments

  1. I am slightly jealous that your library has free DVD rentals! I think ours still has DVDs somewhere, because occasionally when I search the catalogue for other things they pop up, but they aren’t out on the floor any more so it’s impossible to know what they actually have available. They used to have several shelves of DVDs and it was £1 to rent one for a fortnight.

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    • We use to have to pay to rent them until just a couple of years ago. I’m glad they did away with the fee, because otherwise I might as well buy a streaming service. A library should be a library!

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  2. I still remember the first communications class I did – Business Communications 101 in my Accountancy degree. I was absolutely horrendous at standing in front of a class and talking. Still am probably.

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    • I imagine you don’t comfortably chit chat given that in 2020 I asked if folks wanted to video conference and you said nay rather emphatically! I understand, though. Some people do the best talking in their heads and then it comes out in writing (blogs!), music, art, or, if you’re Biscuit, sometimes it comes out of your mouth even if no one else is around.

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  3. Banana pudding with Nilla Wafers was my favorite snack when I was a kid! It would still be a fav but Nilla Wafers aren’t vegan and there is no good substitute. However, my mom never used a double boiler to make the pudding because she used instant Jello pudding mix 🙂

    Excellent that all your class troubles are slowly getting sorted out!

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    • If I took gym in the summer, it would be just under $1,000 for the two credits. However, it was not going to be offered in the summer. If I hit 12 credits or more, tuition jumps up to one price for a range of classes — over $16,000. But if you have 11 or fewer credits, it’s about $1,000 per credit. Overall, summer is the cheapest tuition, and I need to stay at 11 or fewer credits. If gym was not offered in the summer and I HAD to take it during the fall to graduate, I would jump from a tuition of about $10,000 for 10 credit hours to the flat rate of $16,000 if I add on gym, meaning I effectively would be paying $6,000 for gym class. I said I would not graduate if that was the case.

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  5. Oh man I’m glad my university didn’t require gym/fitness credits, yay for your game of chicken paying off! And congrats on your horror trivia win, perfect fit for a week of horror binging. Nice to see you loved M3GAN, I’ve been curious about that one for a while!

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  6. Yay to for not having to do that gym class. You are adults now … even those who are straight out of school. Forcing you to do classes like that is just treating you like kids.

    This “I may be able to take the required communications class online next fall, meaning I won’t have to drive in 3x per week for 50 minutes of learning how to stand in front of a group and speak” is pure Melanie and made me laugh.

    I’ve never heard of that banana pudding and since I hate bananas I have zero interest in making it with or without a double boiler. Good luck though.

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    • I understand the point of the gym class based on what I learned when I was the professor. Kids show up, have full access to cafeteria food (not healthy), and are no longer participating in varsity sports, etc. They prioritize school over physical self-care, put on a bunch of weight, get depressed, and drop out. It’s almost like the school is forcing them to take care of themselves, which….I get. Yes, 18 is adulthood, but they’re not really adults, not even a little bit.

      I’ve never made banana pudding, but I believe I’ve eaten it. The Nilla Wafers are where it’s at.

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      • I get it too – but I’m going to say this, and don’t be offended, but my daughter did an exchange year at UVA for her second year of University and she felt, compared to her Australian University, that it was all a bit “young” – the students were acting out more like her peers did in Years 11 and 12, the education did not feel as tertiary-level academic to her. For example, multiple choice questions in humanities subjects. Being forced to do subjects (that aren’t essential prerequisites for a next course / level) was another part of this. In one way we get it – love the goal of a liberal arts education – but she didn’t really see it working that way. Of course, we were seeing it through our own cultural lens – and we know how powerful our own cultural lenses can be.

        I don’t recollect Nila Wafers, but I’m guessing they are similar to some wafers we have here.

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        • I would guess that American teens are a bit young just by comparing Australian and American YA. You guys have the much darker stuff that feels like the characters are unsafe, because many teens are. We also had the big helicopter movement in the U.S., and instead of students talking to me directly about their concerns, they would have their parents contact me, which is weird because U.S. law states that I cannot speak to anyone except the student about the student (or other staff/faculty at the same school if it is a need-to-know situation). I’m also curious if the push in the U.S. to measure education through standardized testing has leaked into universities. In fact, I had a professor last year who gave us quizzes, but would tell us exactly what would be on each particular quiz. We had two paper assignments, but instead of engaging with those papers in an academic dialogue, he wrote things like “don’t use contractions.”

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          • Ah, that’s an interesting idea Melanie, to compare Australian and American YA. (This is probably not related but when I lived in California, 1990 to 1993, I volunteered in the elementary school library, and they were discussing removing children’s books with nude art – you know, like Michelangelo etc. I was a bit gobsmacked.)

            That’s really interesting about students having parents contact you. No self-respecting university student I’m aware of here would do that – at least not up to when my kids were at university which ended around 2009. There was an interesting duty-of-care case here – Helen Garner wrote about it in her book, Joe Cinque’s consolation – in which parents contacted a university expressing concern about the mental health of their daughter. It’s a long time since I read it, but my recollection is that the university did not take as much note as, in retrospect, would have been good.

            You might be right about the push to measure education. Our daughter was at UVA in 2007/2008 and what you are saying is a bit like what she experienced. That said, the experience of being an exchange student was a great one.

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    • On the one hand, I was cheering for M3GAN. She took out the bully, she defended the little girl from the dog. It was sort of a “strong woman” doing what you’re supposed to do to protect children. I’m sure the dog part super upset you, now that I’m thinking about it. 😬 There was also the part of the movie where they were talking about how parents are so distracted with their own devices that parenting could be handed off to a robot. It made me think about how some families hire nannies, especially immigrant women who have to leave their own children, to parent children because their parents can’t be bothered. In the end, the fact that she’s outsmarting everyone because she’s a learning machine is a stretch, but I already accepted it in Terminator 2, so why not with M3GAN. I think, overall, it’s less horror and more sci-fi, so if you went in expecting something really close to Child’s Play or Dolly Dearest, you’ll be disappointed for sure.

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      • I probably did go into it thinking that it was going to be more along the lines of Chucky. (You know how much I love Chucky too.) I don’t enjoy when animals get killed but I realize it isn’t real so I get over it quickly. I think I just expected MORE from it. Other than one kill scene, it wasn’t that good when it came to the murder aspect. But then, after watching Terrifier, maybe nothing will seem as dramatic. Lol.

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