--Michelangelo

Has it really been almost a week since my last entry? Where does the time go?

Actually, that's a serious question. I'm trying to remember, but the past week is a blur of grad school applications and mediocre television. Let's see...

The wrench will be used to fix my toilet as soon as I get to a hardware store and pick up a replacement pipe to convey water to the tank. The old one busted a couple of weeks ago. In the meantime, I've been using a bucket to ferry water from the shower to the toilet. Which works, but which has been taking a bit of a toll on my wrists. Repeatedly holding a three-gallon bucket up to a shower nozzle ain't very good for you, although once I figured out why my wrists were hurting me, I started making more trips with less water, which has helped. Still, this would be easier if I had one of them shower heads on flexible cords.

Then again, this would be easier if I just got a new pipe for the toilet.

Mind you, it's a nice screwdriver. It has four different heads, transforming into a large or small Phillips or straight screwdriver with ease. It was an impulse buy at a discount store shortly after I moved here, and it's been one of my better purchases.

But a screwdriver can't handle everything. Sometimes, you need a wrench. I wish I'd had it a week earlier, in fact, when I was faced with a stubborn cap on a bottle of ginger ale. (After wrestling with it for three days, I gave up and hacked the cap into pieces with a steak knife. Not an elegant solution, but it worked.)

But I digress.

...I'd heard rumors that I'd be getting the other. As long-time readers of this journal may dimly remember, I've wanted a new coat for years. Every year, I look longingly at the Land's End catalogs, and every year I renew my decision to get myself a new coat just as soon as I win the lottery.

A brief history of coats I'd had until this point:

Mid-1990: Got a new coat, a fairly spiffy blue number that I was mostly happy with. My only complaints were that I'd have liked it to have been a bit longer, and I really wanted a better hood; it had a thin windbreaker hood that neatly stowed under the collar, but wasn't terribly useful otherwise.

Early 1996: In Israel. Most of the way through the winter, my coat got stolen, along with the contents of its pockets, including my Discman, ten CDs, my keys, and a kazoo. The loss of the CDs was the most devastating blow; they formed the bulk of my collection at that point, as I'd gotten my first CD player only the previous spring. One of them (For Our Children) had taken me months to find, and I still haven't replaced it; two others comprised a 2-CD bootleg of Deborah Gibson in concert that I wasn't sure I'd be able to replace. (But I did.) The coat was less of a loss; the zipper had started getting flaky shortly before then anyway.

I don't recall exactly how I got through the rest of the winter, but I probably borrowed a coat from a cousin.

Late 1996: I got the coat I've been wearing ever since. It's green, and I hate green. And it has no hood at all. It had one -- and only one -- virtue: my mother got it for free. Which is, I admit, hard to beat. At any rate, given that I hated it, I was told to just wear it for one winter, and I'd get a new one the next year. This was to become an annual refrain.

Late 2000: Apparently, my mother and my siblings were listening. I heard through the grapevine that my annual requests were finally going to be answered. And, lo, they were.

Sort of.

It was from Land's End. It was three coats in one, as the lining could be zipped out, and the shell could be worn separately as a light windbreaker if desired. This is a nice feature, even if it's one I don't need. And it did have a hood, albeit of the almost useless windbreaker sort.

And it was slate grey.

Now, I shall grant that slate grey may be marginally better than green, but not by very much. Colorwise, it could be summed up in the single word "blah." And I'd really wanted a substantial hood, for that matter...

I managed to keep up a nice front of enthusiasm for most of the visit, breaking character only when I went upstairs to speak to my sister in private. But when it came time to leave with my new coat, I realized that I couldn't go through with it. I'd waited years for a coat, and it was sure to be years more before I got another chance at this, and I wasn't ready to settle for one I didn't much like.

"Umm, I don't mean to look a gift coat in the collar," I said, "but... umm... could I trade this one in? For something blue, with a real hood?"

No problem, it turns out. My father will be taking this one, and I was given free rein to find something suitable in the same price range.

Which I did, on Land's End's Web site. It's cheaper, it's warmer, and it looks better. It has goose down instead of Polartec (so it's heavier, but warmer), and has feathers in the hood, too. It's reversable, giving a choice between "midnight navy" and "water blue," neither of which, to be honest, would be my first choice. The former is too dark, and the latter is too light; something right in the middle would be about right... but it's close enough for shouting, and the best I can find. Midnight navy will have to suffice.

It's also out of stock in my size and color choice, but it'll be back by mid-January, they say. Good enough. My current coat will serve for now. And as I'm likely to be in a colder climate next year, it'll be especially nice to have the new one then.

This is probably as good a place as any to tell y'all about those applications.

I decided to apply to four schools. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I decided to apply to three schools, after which I got talked into adding the fourth. The four are as follows:

Brown University. Probably my top choice, by a very slim margin. It's in Providence, Rhode Island, which may be the best geographical location of the schools I'm applying to; it's far enough to be comfortably out of town, but still close enough to return to New York when I want to.

More to the point, the interests of the English faculty looked perfect. Exactly up my alley. "Although our distinguished literature faculty is known for its range of approaches to literature," it says, "there is no question that they share an interest in cultural-historical research and theoretical issues concerning literature and sexuality, literature and politics, literature and mass media, and literature and race and ethnicity." Mmmm.

That a couple of my favorite professors turn out to have been to Brown as undergrads doesn't hurt either. And I know there's an Orthodox Jewish community in Providence, so that much is good.

The downside? Well, it's a relatively small school, certainly different from what I'm used to. Which could be good or bad. If it's bad, however, it could end leaving me feeling more boxed-in than I might feel at a larger place, where I could find some niche to fit into.

That, and it's the probably the place I'm least likely to get into. It's kind of exclusive, I understand. But, hey, you never know.

This school, incidentally, was first brought to my attention by one of my readers when I asked for advice last month... whom I've only just now noticed I owe an e-mail reply to. Oops. Sorry about that, Jean, and thanks again!

University of Chicago. Almost tied with Brown for the top spot on my list. Suggested to me by four professors -- one of whom was unaware of the other three; the rest were working in tandem -- and enthusiastically seconded by several others. It's known for its intellectual environment, which I'm told would be perfect for me, its English and Women's Studies departments look good, it's in an urban center, and it's got a nearby Jewish community. Admittedly, the kosher pizza shops I know of are way the heck away on the other side of town, but it still looks good on the whole.

University of Michigan. Recommended by an online friend in Ann Arbor. Also looks good on the Web site. The Women's Studies department is strong to the extent that it offers a Ph.D., and English department's interdisciplinary ties are so strong that it offers a joint Ph.D. with them. And there's a program in American Culture with which it works also. Given that I've been specifically looking for departments that encourage interdisciplinary work, this is good.

'Course, on the other hand, Michigan is cold, even more so than Chicago. But, hey, I'm getting a new coat, right? All I need is boots, and I'll be all set...

University of Iowa. This is the exception to the rule. In the other three colleges, I'm applying for a Ph.D. program in English. At Iowa, I'm applying for an M.F.A. in Non-Fiction Writing.

This was Professor J's idea, after he spied Iowa's literature among the catalogues in my knapsack. (Jean's influence again.) The program might be just the ticket, he declared, and quickly overrode my objections by offering to pay the application fee. Nothing to lose, I figured, and, who knows? It may be the best choice, at that.

Although I should note that I have no idea at all what sort of Jewish community, if any, is present in Iowa. Well, I'll cross that bridge if I come to it...

(And there will be an entry tomorrow. No way I'm gonna miss putting an entry up on the last day of the millennium.)