Well, the power's back...

You never truly appreciate the little things like taking a hot shower or sleeping in a warm bed until they get taken away. I honestly had a little bit of fun with the blackout. I felt like I was roughing it...I gathered around candles with a bunch of people and made the best of a bad situation. However, it really made me think not only about how much we take for granted, but also how dependent we've become on technology to communicate with each other. I think people were freaking out about not having charged cellphones and laptops more than not having heat! I think that says something interested and kind of sad about how, in the modern world, the devices that we base our lives around can betray us in a second...and most of us are so used to having them available that we don't have a backup plan. Well, that's all the deep thinking I've got in me for now. Oh, I am officially accepting cash donations to replace all of my food that went rotten when my fridge stopped working. I also take Visa, MaterCard and American Express. Think about it.

Busy Weeks Ahead

These past couple weeks have been sort of a blur in this office. The interns have spent several hours logging submissions to The Southern Indiana Review, Marielle and I are working on Lee K. Abbott's poster, and Tristan and Whitney have been working on the program for his Ropewalk Reading on January 29. Ron, Jenni, and Adrienne have been getting things set up for the The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (commonly known as AWP) conference in early February.

I am really excited about the coming weeks. Yes, they'll be insanely busy, but man will they be fun. I have never been to a writers' conference before, nor have I had an internship, so this entire semester is going to be filled with new experiences. I look forward to working with Ron and the other interns. We're going to have a blast.

New Semester

Well, it's the start of a new semester, coincidentally, my last here at USI. From here I will hopefully be going to graduate school and not back home to my cats (who I love very much but... grad school...).

SIR has a whole bunch of new interns this semester (Tristin, Marielle, Crystal, and Whitney), who I am sure will be introducing themselves and blogging later and it's shaping up to be a good semester. We have three great authors coming for the RopeWalk Reading Series: Lee K. Abbot, Molly Giles, and Norman Minnick. I've had a chance to pick up a book by each and can't wait to read them.

In other news, we're all excited about AWP in February and have signed up to work as volunteers. None of us have gone before so it's going to be an education experience for us all, plus it's in CHICAGO. If anyone reading our blog is going, we hope to see you at our table!