I've had this dilemma for over a year now, when I decided I no longer wanted to keep my myspace account due to its time-sucking, vanity-inducing, and voyeuristic qualities. I felt I'd become addicted to viewing public profiles online--of people I both knew and didn't know, and that just felt icky. I also had developed what I considered an unhealthy fixation on maintaining my own personal profile, frequently worrying about how I was presenting myself. To a lesser degree, I also found that I was concerned about the design and layout of my page, as the myspace profile designs have become increasingly elaborate and, dare I say, competitive. As a perfectionist, I felt overwhelmed by my inability to have a perfect profile. Thus, I began my long and irksome quest to cancel my account. Myspace allows users to cancel accounts with little hassle--that is, unless the user happens to have a nonexistent email account, as did I. When I first signed up for a myspace account, back in ...

I want to express a late farewell to Tim Russert. His death shook me up when I heard about it on TV, as he's really the only political journalist and commentator that I really listened to. And this was by accident. In the days before I had cable (most of my single-living days), I would generally roll out of bed around 10am on lazy Sunday mornings, and as nothing else was on my four television channels of any interest to me, I would watch "Meet the Press." I grew fond of Tim's show and his reporting, and I made it a goal to get out of bed by 10am on Sundays so I could catch the show (not always an easy feat in those days). I found him to be relatively unbiased, or at least if he seemed biased I tended to agree with him. I trusted his reporting, and I looked to him for honest reporting and for finding, or at least searching for, the truth in politics. Perhaps there aren't really any political correspondents who are truly unbiased or who convey the complete tr...

I finally finished copyediting my first manuscript, and I've now left it in the trusty(?) hands of the postal service. I had grown very attached to the manuscript, Women, Power, and Justice in English Renaissance Drama . I think I lucked out and got a great one. I happened to be taking a Shakespeare course when I got it, so I was reading plays while also editing new criticism on them. It was pretty cool. I must say, though, it was uncomfortable at first to correct and question the writing of professors who are far more advanced in their schooling than I am; but for this same reason, I found great delight in finding errors. Is that wrong? I learned more about grammar this past month that I think I learned throughout all of my school years. Ask me anything :) I did spend way more time on the manuscript than I "should" have, though. I could claim a minimum of eight pages per hour (with an hourly pay rate), but I probably more realistically edited six pages per hour...