joyce

a couple of hours ago, the ideas i'd had about my religion and poltics final clicked, and it made a lot more sense. i've got three single-spaced pages written, and i'm about half done, and i haven't put in quotes or cites or cleaned it up yet. he's going to regret not putting a page limit on this. :) it's not that i'm deliberately trying to set out to write it long, and i'll try to edit it so it's as short as possible, but my writing style is chatty at the best of times, and if there's no page limit, i have less incentive to try to edit it down to really tight writing, when i know that he likes my writing well enough as is.

besides, some topics just can't be dealt with in a brief manner.

Jeff's got a few days of work this week - yay - so he's off doing that. it's nice having the house to myself - i don't get that very often. i love having him around, don't get me wrong, but the quiet is nice too.

i've got to do something about my phone. it's really getting annoying - it randomly drops calls, i don't get service inside most buildings (including my house, and despite what some folks have said, i don't find that an unreasonable expectation). it won't ring at all, sometimes, and just tell me that i have voicemail. i'm not sure if this is Sprint's service (i'm heard mumblings that other Sprint people in the area have issues too, though nothing concrete, since unlike Seattle, most of my friends here don't use Sprint. though then again, i'm not sure who most of my friends here do use) or my crappy phone, which has been dropped and beaten up on continously for the last three years. i'm not sure what precisely i want to do about it, though. my cell is my only phone.

• option one: stay with Sprint. there's a couple of special offers on the table that give me a decent credit towards a new phone. this is a good option if it's my phone that's the problem, not Sprint. i like my plan ($35, 300 anytime minutes, nights and weekends free, $2 a month for 30 text messages, 25 cents for each extra one.) all their plans are national, so i don't have to worry about roaming if i go somewhere out of state. however, if it's not my phone and it's Sprint, then i'm stuck for another year's contract with crappy service (my current contract is up, so i'm free to hop ship if i want to.)
  
• the original plan was to put me on a family plan with Jeff, who was with AT&T. however, i never got around to that, and his account got bought by Suncom. their family plans suck ($30 to add a line if it's a one year contract, which isn't that much less than i pay now.) it's region based, too, and i do occasionally leave the state, and i can't find what their roaming policy is. they are the only ones doing hiptop service in the area, but much as i kvetch about wanting a hiptop, i'm not sure i really want to pay for voice + data right now. if i can get a phone that'll send text messages, i'll be happy. =p
  
• the rest of my family uses Verizon. i know they get good signal in the (relatively) middle of nowhere, including my parents' house. i also know it works fine here, from Hope's visits. they have free in-network mobile-to-mobile, which means that i could talk to Hope whenever i want, regardless of the time of day. that would be very nice. they do have a pay as you go option, which might be well worth running the math on (and that i just noticed, so i haven't really looked at it yet). their cheapest plan is 39.99, which is more than i'm paying now, but includes another 150 anytime minutes. they do national service, no roaming (woot). text messaging is included, but the messages themselves are 10 cents to send, 2 to recieve. then again, i'm not really getting my $2 a month out of Sprint right now. i'd have to pay for a phone, as opposed to the credit towards a phone that i might be able to get out of Sprint.
  

hrms. any other great options around there that i should know about?

wahoo! one of the beasts (my soc project, all wonderful 29 pages of it) is done. my abstract even hits the required word count. =p i need to let it sit for a day and then go back over it tomorrow and make sure i actually made all of the requested revisions, and that my rather rambling conclusion makes sense. but still. yippee. :)

[20:58] Ginger: lazy.
[21:00] jfclapp: yea, i hear that.
[21:01] jfclapp: unfortunately, i have questions to answer like "How would you respond to the suggestion that the formulation of Muslim societies can not be understood apart from the legacy left by colonization and the internal difficulties witness as a result of colonial subjugation? How has colonization shaped modernity in the Islamic world?"
[21:01] Ginger: ...I can't even follow the first question, let alone formulate a coherent answer.

i made flashcards for the new Islamic vocabulary (the stuff that wasn't on the mid-term). i just tested myself on them, and i can provide at least some explanation of what each other them are. i need to review for details, but the basics are there. i also need to review the mid-term vocabulary - i might make flashcards for them tomorrow. and i've gotten six of the ten essays written out. i'm pleased.

the saving grace here is that there's a lot of overlap. remembering that mutah is the kind of temporary marriage that only Shi'i do, is helpful, when both Shi'i and mutah are on the list. that's one fact for two words. remembering who Mawdudi was (a man who implemented a horrible cross-breed of the Western practice of precedent with Islamic law, leaving out the natural flexibility and analysis of Islamic law, to disasterous result, in Pakinstan) spills over into the essay question about Islamic political movements that arose in response to the failures of the modern nation-state in the Islamic world. the overlaps make it easier.

i'll stop talking about school eventually; right now, i have all these interesting facts burbling out of my brain and no one to share them with. maybe i need to start making friends in my classes.