Tonight it got dark at six-thirty, and we have two months until the days start getting longer. I have to wear woolly socks in my house to stay warm. And the organic grocery stores are out of fruit, except for apples, which I don't like.

I am moving to Florida next year, and I am not looking back.

I'm applying to Ph.D. programs--have been for a while, and am planning to finish my applications by Thanksgiving (but hoping for earlier than that, since just the fact of it hanging over my head is overwhelming and paralyzing). I'm looking specifically for schools with a concentration in medieval literature, and have narrowed it down to five.

The University of Oregon, in Eugene, is in a beautiful hippie town only an hour and a half from Portland, where I have a lot of friends. They have a decent program which I might be able to combine with another of their emphases in folklore, another interest of mine. I would like to be on the West Coast, just for a change of atmosphere and scenery, but I do need sunshine and Oregon is so cloudy (and don't tell me it's not--I realize that "cloudy" might be relative, but I'm looking for a place that gets about 300 days of sun a year, and nobody can argue that Eugene is that sunny.)

The University of California-Santa Barbara is in the most beautiful place I can imagine--right on the Pacific Ocean. From what I hear, it's warm, sunny, and very liberal and artsy (my kind of place). My colleague, Karl-Heinz Schroeder, went there and really recommends it. I don't have any friends there, but it is within driving distance of L.A. and some other places where I do have friends. Their program is good, but their application has an essay asking how I intend to use my degree to help minorities and the underprivileged, and right now I don't have a lot of specific ways I can use my knowledge (to-be-gained) of Middle and Old English, and the lais of Marie de France to help people other than academics. Hmmmmm. Also . . . it's super-expensive to live there.

The University of Tennessee-Knoxville is only an hour and a half from where my parents and several good friends live. I am know of two girls in Knoxville with whom I get along decently, but I really hate the city. Or at least what I remember of it when I visited the Knoxville Zoo as a second-grader. Their program is fine. The weather is warmer than Nebraska. My general feeling: "Meh."

Purdue University in Indiana is an unknown to me. My good friends Buffy and Michael Covarrubias live/attend there. I'm going to visit this weekend, and I hope it's nice. It's only a couple hours from my alma mater, Andrews University, where I still have many good friends. The students that I've met, through Buffy, have been really nice and helpful--I've heard a lot of great things about the community they have there. And the program is supposed to be good. But the weather is cold, and the winters are not sunny. After spending the last eight winters (and this one to come) in cloudy, snowy, cold places, I REALLY want to live in shorts and flip-flops.

Florida State University has a growing medieval program. They have lots of teachers and classes, but not as much structure or support for the concentration as some of the other schools, like Purdue which has a medieval symposium and Oregon which puts out a journal, the Medieval Feminist Forum. But they're only eight hours from home, in a warm climate, near the Gulf of Mexico, and they have a TA program that allows qualified TA's to spend a semester teaching and learning in London at an affiliate school. And I have a couple of friends in Orlando. Plus, because they are trying to be intentional about growing their program, I feel like there might be a higher possibility of being accepted there, and maybe even having some kind of impact. This last idea is very speculative, but my imagined scenario goes like this: if they're really a small program and don't have a journal, or a yearly conference, or even a medieval scholars club, I might be able to start something like that--which would look good on a CV.

So now you all know what I'm doing next year, right? That's it--working at McDonald's. No, that's just a dream I had the other night--that my contract at Union was ending, and for some reason I hadn't finished my applications, so I had no job and nothing to do. It was a nightmare. Literally.

I still have a lot to do on my apps, and even when I do submit them, I probably won't receive any notices until March/April/May, so don't ask where I'm going until then. Actually, I'll probably let you know in person--when you pick up the phone and hear me screaming and laughing maniacally, try to pick out a place name amongst all the noise--that's probably the school that accepted me.

The only annoying thing, except for all the work I have to do for the apps, is being in communication with all these academics. Not that they're mean--they're nice people (if you're on an admissions committee and have somehow found my blog, please read what follows as a joke) but they ALL sign their e-mails "Best." I'm sure it's meant kindly, but it comes across as flippant, like the academic version of "Laterz." I hope I don't have to agree to sign all communication "Best" once I get my Ph.D--I'm still a fan of the good ol' "Sincerely," "Talk to you later," or "With hot passionate kisses." Except I got in trouble for using the latter with students. Just kidding, admissions committee!