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Reader Questions, Round One I've been soliciting questions from my notify list, and I'm going to begin answering them here. If you have something you've been burning to know (or even something you've been mildly curious about), email me! I'm answering two questions today. Jana asks: How are you studying for the GRE? Heh. Badly. I was plowing along there for a little while, and frankly, I got bored. Reading comprehension study questions are so boring. Here's what I'm officially doing, though: General Test: October 7th, 8 AM For the general GRE I've got the Kaplan book/CDRom and the official GRE CDRom, both of which have practice tests on them. I'm about to buy the Princeton Review Cracking the GRE book, though, because it looks really good and I'm panicking a little. I work well under pressure; I think I will do okay on the test but I feel like there are so many words I don't know and I don't know many tricks for guessing. The Princeton Review book seems like the best one out there for that. I'm also making lists of words I get wrong in the practice exercises and studying those definitions. I'm doing lots of review exercises on the computer and playing vocabulary games. The Kaplan CDRom has fun cartoons. As I get closer (the last week and a half, I think) I'll take two more full practice tests, concentrating especially on the new analytical writing assessment (which replaces the analytical section, read: the logic problem part) as a required element. I'm waiting til October specifically so I can write the essay rather than kill myself over the logic problems. I'm very lucky, though - my math score doesn't matter. Literature In English Subject Test: November 9th, 9 AM This is the big scary one, but I just bought the Princeton Review book for this one too and I feel better. I'm going to read the Norton Anthology of British Literature, Volume One - cover to cover if I can. I'll skim it if need be. I've also got a book that explains the various branches of literary criticism which I'm going to bone up on. I'm not really going to study for this test at all until I take the general test. A month should be plenty of time for me to review, and there's no way for me to know everything on the test anyway. It's huge and ugly but usually comprised mostly of British Lit, with American Lit the next largest category and World Lit bringing up the rear (which I would normally be embarrassed by, on behalf of ETS, but in this instance am grateful for because a person can only cram so much). I'm only applying to one school, because it's free (thank you spousal benefits) - so everyone please cross all available fingers and hold all available thumbs that I get in. Athena (hi honey!) asks: What is your favorite/ideal way to spend a Saturday? Oooh, fun. I'm going to do the ideal version. First and most important step: Greg and I sleep in. Until we wake naturally. (If we get up the first time we wake up, this works perfectly. Otherwise we sleep too long and we are groggy.) We shower and dress and are out of the house early, but not too early. We head on down to a local Farmers' Market, where we have breakfast at a tiny little grill they have. I have cinnamon swirl french toast or whatever sort of fresh fruit pancakes they are featuring. Greg, no matter what time it is, has something with meat. It doesn't have to be breakfasty meat; he just has meat. We have some sort of fresh squeezed juice. It's crowded, so we don't linger. We buy our big stack of Amish chicken pies, the best chicken pies in the world, and maybe grab some Amish crack (teeny hot dogs with melted cheese inside, wrapped in pretzel dough and baked in butter) on the way out. Back at home, we straighten up the house a little. Just a little. Only until it's time to catch the train. Then we drive to the train station, leave our car, and go into Philly for the afternoon. We walk around either South Street or Walnut Street, or maybe Chinatown. If we're in Chinatown we definitely go in the Hello Kitty store. If we're on South Street, Jamba Juice is a must (sometimes, it's lunch). We wander in and out of stores, holding hands, and it's sunny and warm but not too warm. It's nice to be alone together in the middle of a crowd. Greg looks at comic books and I look at used clothes and we buy some action figures, and around six o'clock we meet friends for dinner. We probably go to Monk's Cafe, where we had our first date - if so, I definitely have the mussels. Greg probably has meat. Or maybe we go to Beau Monde, the creperie we love, and stuff ourselves silly. Afterwards we all walk through the city together, or maybe stop for a drink or head to More Than Just Ice Cream for dessert. Greg and I take the train home - not too late - and we spend the rest of the evening privately, just us. Too often on the weekends we end up running too many errands, spending hours in stores or doing laundry or organizing, organizing, organizing or we sleep too late and we're cranky and the day gets off to a bad start. I much prefer days like the one I described, or maybe we go to the art museum or see a movie or just hole up in the basement all day watching movies. Or friends come over for games and food. In any event, my favorite weekends always include lots of just Greg and Melissa time! More answers to come!
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