Not starting the new job till the end of July just became a blessing in disguise.

IUP's online C&T journal selected the life story interview I did for publication! The paper was the result of a project I did in ENGL 729/829 Second Language Acquisition.

Projects from five MA students were selected (the others are Handoyo Puji Widodo [from Indonesia] Patricia Hankins, Amanda LaBreque, and Tatsuno Chinen [from Japan]) along with projects from five Ph.D. students for issue 4.

I'm elated!

Kayla, my roommate, walked ahead of me. I walked slower, trying to put my phone on vibrate and get my keys into my purse.

"Aw, Karissa, there's a bird..." Kayla said, pointing.

I looked up from the landing and saw a brown ball of feathers repeatedly smash itself into a window. "Hm, I guess he thinks he can get out this way. I wish this window opened." I climbed up to where the bird was and thought for a minute about what I could use to help usher the bird outdoors. The bird continued his quest to get through the window. "How can we get him out?" I rummaged through my bookbag and pulled out my umbrella. I extended it, but left it wrapped tightly and snapped closed.

I was hesitant to do it, but I poked the bird away from the window. He scurried back. I poked him again, and he fell over, prone, little birdy feet tucked in close to his body.

Kayla and I looked at each other. There was no way he was dead. I was using a blunt object with minimal force... so I poked him again. He flopped down one stair after another. When we reached the landing, I knew he was playing dead.

"It must be his defense mechanism or something," I said. At this point, the bird hopped up to his feet and began ascending the stairs.

"Nooo!" we both wailed.

"Birdy, go back down! You can't get out this way." Kayla said. We both blocked him from the window.

"Yeah," I said," can't you hear your friends? They're down there!" I began poking him with my umbrella again, and he played dead again. Down, down, down the stairs. At the landing, I slid him along the linoleum floor into the sunlight from the open door, thinking he would see or hear the outdoors and flee. No luck.

"Go, bird!" Kayla said. "Go outside! Go!" Kayla had joined me on the lower landing. I had tried pretending to chase the bird, thinking--again, incorrectly--that the bird would flee. And the bird continued to play dead.

I started laughing at this point, realizing what I had just done. We were yelling at a bird. I had just poked it down a flight of stairs--twice. The bird was most likely terrified and really just wanted us to leave so it could pound through that window. Our class started in less than ten minutes, but our bird friend would probably kill himself on the window if we abandoned him now.

I did the only thing I could think of:I pushed that bird down the stairs with my umbrella. When he plopped to the ground floor, he got to his feet. He seemed kind of dazed (I guess anyone would be, having been escorted down several stairs by an umbrella).

"Go, birdy!" I yelled.

And our birdy left. He hopped towards the door with nary a backwards glance to his rescuers. We watched him fly away... I wondered what he would tell his friends.

Kayla and I finally got to our classroom and got settled. Some of our classmates were there already, and they greeted us.

"Guess what?" I asked. "We just rescued a bird!"

Kayla and I told our story and it turns out that our friends were grateful because they felt bad but didn't know what to do for the poor little bird.

"We were scared he'd kill himself on the window," Kayla said.

"Yeah, so I pushed him down the stairs with my umbrella," I said. I still couldn't say it with a straight face.

First of all, thanks for all the well-wishes, friends. I'm feeling much better. The weekend has been good to me and I've been able to get quite a bit of work done while still giving in to naps on occasion (and getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep).

The blueberries I got at the grocery store on Friday are awesome. I love them. I think I'm going to save a cup or two so I can make muffins with them, though.

I wish the person who lives above me would learn to walk more gracefully. It sounds like she has a pet elephant up there, honestly. She's petite in size, so I'm not sure what the deal is.

I wish the person who lives above me would stop dropping the toilet lid. How do I know this is the source of the "thud" I hear? It's followed by a flush every single time. It's startled me out of sleep a couple times, it's so loud... plus I don't know how many drops it takes to break a toilet lid (maybe that owl from theTootsie Pops commercials can find out for me... that or I guess I'll never know).

Thinking long and hard about linguistic identity construction makes my head hurt (and makes me wonder how I articulate who I am when I speak and write).

I wish I knew what my dog was thinking when she attacks her toys. It's hilarious. Trixie is walking along, towards the window, say, and suddenly (I'm guessing) her stuffed tiger looks at her funny so she's got to go teach him a lesson. She wails it around the room, pouncing on it and growling at it until she's decided he's had enough. Then she leaves him until next time.

I love pretty much everything that is wholesome and good about the Internet--blogging included--but I am beginning to dislike the concept of testing online for varying reasons.

I love Animal Crossing on Nintendo DS. It's by far my favorite game. Yesterday I went fishing when I played and I caught an ocean sunfish (which was as big as my character!). I still struggle with the idea of going fishing in a game where the animals are my neighbors--they're owls, dogs, birds, rabbits, frogs, and the like--why is it okay to fish?

I am totally psyched for next Friday. Wall-E comes out in theaters (and the previews before the other movies I've seen lately have made it look adorable!). Also, the 27th is my roomie's birthday :-D

Great, so my talent lies in beating my immune system into the ground.

Maybe I've been asking for it... I had one week between the end of spring semester and my pre-summer session course and during that week "off" I moved. I had a three day break between the end of my pre-session course and the two I'm taking right now. I read till it's late and get up early for class. I know my diet is lacking because funds are lacking too. I'm in that difficult shifting period between stages of my life, and money is tight till I start my new job... (I'm honestly scared if I spend on food now I won't be able to pay bills when they're due.) So maybe I've been lucky I haven't been sick yet.

The past few days have been characterized by dealing with unseasonably cool weather, doing the minimum amount of work required for classes, wishing I could just have someone take care of me, and calculating when to fight off or give in to urges to nap. This weekend is for resting up, catching up, and getting things done. At the very least I'm hoping my throat will stop feeling like it's lined with tree bark.

My laptop, binders, and textbooks are spread across my tiny table. I finished my cherry pastry long ago, but my napkins and tray remain. My coffee cup has gradually been emptied of its delicious hazelnutty contents and now sits begging me to refill (but my jitters beg me not to).

There's a fellow two tables away from me plugging away at his laptop, it seems. But he gets up every five minutes or so and meanders over to the sample table. I don't have a clear view of it, but I know he must have cleaned it out by this point. He carries slices of bread back to his table two at a time. Three water glasses filled with lemon peels and a single coffee cup crowd his laptop on the small geometric table. And the bread crusts. They are stacked on a few napkins he's unfolded onto a chair adjacent from him.

Just as I'm wondering if I should relocate, it hits me: public places have their own set of unique rules (or unique lack of rules).

There have been children running off from their parents and people having loud phone conversations as my afternoon has dwindled into evening, but I've still been able to accomplish several things. I feel like I'm nearly immune to distraction at times... But restaurants like this often remind me of how messy humanity is because so many things are going on at once. I guess the self-serve beverages probably make me think of the messes, specifically, but free samples are a different issue altogether. Public places are just that: public, and they shift as the public within them shifts.

I could only write something like this with caffeine overrunning my thoughts... I had to stop reading though because my hands were shaking my book and my highlighter and it was making my head hurt. Too much coffee...

So what are social networks?
Social networks in plain English

That video is genius. Wonderful. A big "thank you" to CommonCraft for that one. I couldn't have said that better myself... but I'll expand.

Before I move on: let's remember that, although the Internet has adopted and metamorphosed the term, social networks do not require a computer... even though the Internet-based kind offer great examples.

We're all part of social networks from the time we're born because our families serve as initial primary functioning networks. As we grow up, we become members of many networks simultaneously and our networks vary as we move through our lives. Childhood networks, however, have a greater effect on our linguistic patterns than do our adult networks (Meyerhoff 2006, p.195).

Think of some of your childhood networks: Girl Scouts? Boy Scouts? Swimming, gymnastics, art, dance, karate classes? Play groups? Others?

How do you think those helped to define your speech?

Meyerhoff (2006) explains that every social network we are involved with has an impact on our linguistic behavior, but the question of how is what is most intriguing for sociolinguists (and one I would love to look into more deeply myself!).

Social networks are patterns of association or interaction. There are many ways to define them: