On random bits

So I guess I have a few random thoughts to throw out there and try to hash out. Feel free to help, those of you who have not given up on my blog:

THOUGHT THE FIRST: I have a silly e-crush on some blogger named editorgirl. Apparently a friend of Amanda's, she has a nice blog with a creative name and interesting and regular posts. In my estimation, she's an attractive writer--that is to say, she writes attractively. Whatever that means. Silly e-crush.

THOUGHT THE SECOND: My friend Erin asked me last night how much longer I have in my MA program here at George Mason. Usually when people ask that, I give a nebulous answer akin to the Israelite "40 years" approximation. But I actually thought it out last night and realized that if I keep my current pace, I have five more semesters, including the Spring 2008 semester that starts in January. So that's two and a half more years. If I take one course during the summer for the rest of my MA program, that eliminates one semester, making it an even two years left. That would make for a grand total of three years in the MA history program at GMU. I can manage that.

But what next? Perhaps I'm a little ahead of myself, but I've been thinking already about where to go for my Ph.D. I'm assuming, first of all, that two more years of juggling full-time work with part-time school won't make me swear off academia forever. I'm assuming that I'll have been wise in those two years and saved and invested enough to be able to plausibly quit my job and be a full-time doctoral candidate. And I'm assuming that Ph.D programs will want me.

Just to throw this out there (that's what this post is all about, after all), I think that the ideal place for me right now is Rutgers University's American Studies Ph.D program. It'll be just like a history program, really, with the path I would take. And Rutgers Newark has, get this, the Institute of Jazz Studies, which, according to their website, is "the largest and most comprehensive library and archive of jazz and jazz-related materials in the world." Guh.

So I'd do a doctorate in American Studies where I could interdiscipline myself in 20th century American history with some cultural and musical studies. Throw in a little early-to-mid-20th century literature, and I'd be golden. You could all call me Doctor Jazz.

THOUGHT THE THIRD: I finally got my license plates last night from the dealership up in Silver Spring. I didn't know they weren't going to let me choose my license plate design. I mean, I didn't want to spell anything fancy or anything like that, but they gave me the plain old white plates, when I would have prefered the ship. The ship!

So anyway, the real issue here is a matter of obsessive compulsion. When I was a lad, my mom and I would play a game where we'd make words out of the letters on license plates of other cars on the road. The only rule was that you had to maintain the order of the letters. You got extra points if you could find two words: one that started with the initial letter in the series, and one where the initial letter was not the first letter of the word. For example, if the letters on the plate were HTL, you would say "hotel" and then "shuttle" for the bonus.

My license plate letters are KFF. I'm having some trouble making words. The best I've come up with so far is "kickoff," but you all know I'm not really a football fan.