I just woke up for the second time today. The first time I got brunch, this time I'm up for good. Sleep is a wonderful thing, and I am quite happy.

So, yesterday and earlier today:

The choir concert was good stuff. It made me want to sing with the group again, which is good, since I've signed up for next semester. I was actually still in the program, which amused me.

The inaugural Soul Calibur II drinking game was a success, though we may have to rethink the rules somewhat. We tried to do it in Science Center 101, but then determined that the cords weren't long enough to work very well... So we moved over to 199, and that worked fantastically. We played from about 11:30 to 1:30, I'd say... Me: 4, Kyle: 6, Rob: 8. Most of those were due to perfects - we've determined the game works that way because we're Swatties. But really, 1 for all of us was due to an honor starting shot, 1 for both Kyle and Rob was due to a double KO, and maybe 1 of Kyle's was because of life-draining weapons. All the rest? Perfects. Rob actually got better for awhile, but around the 5th drink he hit his peak. It was rather amusing. Well, I thought a lot was amusing at that point. We had to quit when a very bemused pair of public safety officers came by. We didn't get in trouble, we were just told to leave. Which we did. We dropped the stuff off at Mertz, then went over to Paces for a little bit. All in all, a fun night.

This morning I got brunch when I initially woke up. It was quite nice, and I got to ooh and eye over Sam's Tiger operating system (the new operating system for Macs)... I felt like a massive geek, but really -- the thing is very well designed and has some awesome features. Getting a Mac has made me more of a computer geek, at least in terms of design, since Apple things are just so nicely done.

After brunch I went back to sleep, and now, finally I have emerged to face the world. No work will be done today, but that was the plan all along -- today is a day for rest and destressing before I start attacking the papers.

A little thing:

Your Birthdate: December 7

Born on the 7th day of month gives you a tendency to be something of a perfectionist and makes you more individualistic in many ways. Your mind is good at deep mental analysis and complicated reasoning. You are very psychic and sensitive, and you should usually follow your hunches. You may not take orders too well, so you may want to work alone or in a situation where you can be the boss. This birthday gives a tendency to be somewhat self-centered and a little stubborn.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

And another one:

American Cities That Best Fit You:

60% New York City

60% Philadelphia

55% Chicago

55% Miami

50% Honolulu

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

Ice cream (well, really a smoothie for me and a milkshake for her) with Joy was fantastic. Chatting with Joy is wonderful -- I will miss having her around next year, but I'm glad she'll be having a wonderful time in Paris.

Time for my delayed nap. Mmm... Naps are lovely things.

So, bizarreness that works in my favor: I didn't actually have to hand in my god-awful WA draft today. My WA apparently had to go home for some family thing, and is therefore not here to read my paper. Instead, I have to just take it to the writing center (or in my case, hand it to Emily), and get it dealt with that way. Which means that I can actually write a draft, get it WAed, and then revise it over this next week, and all will be well. And I no longer feel guily about sleeping instead of working, which is always nice.

Joy is coming by to take me out for ice cream, which is awesome. Then I shall nap, get dinner, kill time, go to the choir concert, and then (Mom, you probably don't want to read this...) have the inaugural playing of the Soul Calibur II drinking game.

Classes are over, and life is good.

Last day of class!

This is currently the worst WA draft ever... It doesn't even reach the stage of an outline. It's basically "Here is my thesis, here is my support - in no particular order. Enjoy!" But honestly, I just don't care at this point. I'm going back to bed for another 3 hours or so.

I slept for a bit, and now I'm staring at the computer screen, attempting to outline this paper. I don't even have the energy to do that, it seems. I just want to go back to sleep and not do anything at all. Not turning in a WA draft, however, means an automatic 10% off of my paper grade, which is no good at all. So I must turn in something...

Oh bed, why do you have to look so nice and comfy and inviting?

Headache? Check. Strong desire for sleep? Check. Completed English paper? Check!

It took much longer than I had planned, but it is now done, coming in at roughly 13.5 pages. All I need to do is slap an oh-so-exciting title on it and print it, and I'm good. Well, good for that class, at least...

The plan for the rest of the night: go back to ML, take a brief nap, consume some coffee, and then attack the classics paper. My goals for it are not that high... I plan on starting it off with a note that I had another paper due that received most of my attention as it was a final draft. I will apologize for neglecting this WA draft, and then say that I will try to send her a better draft before the conference. I will then proceed with the "paper," which may end up being little more than a glorified outline. But I will have something, at least.

Another paper update as I figure out how best to transition into the next section...

About halfway through page 11, but a great deal of the 10th page was me adding more clarification... So now I've got a full 13 pages, leaving me with about 3 more pages to revise, which was about the same as an hour ago. It's hard to make progress when I keep on creating more text and push back the stuff I'm trying to edit.

Also, sleepiness kicking in big time... Caffeine may have to be procured somewhere, or I may have to take a quick nap between papers. We'll see.

I am now starting page 10 of the revision, yay. Interestingly, this process has not led to me shortening the paper like I had planned to. I started the process with an 11.5 page paper, and it has actually grown to about 12.75 pages. It's insane. To prove how insane, let me quote from the syllabus about this assignment:

"Your explication will probably be no shorter than five pages, probably no longer than ten..."

Yeah, so I've more than doubled the minimum length, and have gone beyond the suggested maximum. However, I am doing a close reading of a 77-line poem -- this would undoubtedly be a hell of a lot shorter if I was dealing with W.H. Auden's "Now the Leaves are Falling Fast," which is only 20 lines. But hey, at least I'm not trying to explicate the entirety of Eliot's "The Waste Land" or anything...

I think what really gets me about the length of this paper is that it just keeps going, completely unforced. Yes, writing it took effort, since I didn't want to think, but the fact is that this paper is not space-filling b.s. I mean, it's a close reading, so that's kind of a license for making stuff up, but this time it is grounded in my actual analysis of the poem and its subject matter. I'm not going off on weird tangents just to fill up space; I've actually got a good 9 pages of stuff to say about the poem (I've subtracted 1 page for telling the myth of Eros and Psyche, and another 2 for the poem itself, because I end up quoting all of it as I analyze it)... It's kind of weird.

Hopefully I'll this much to say about Ovid... You know, when I actually get to around to THAT paper...

Disturbing news: the little study carrel that I'm sitting at has become my carrel in my mind - I keep on going to the same one. This, to me, is a sign that I need to get done with these papers and get out of here as soon as possible.

Also: the adventurous squirrel actually climbed 3 stories to get to my window - while I think of this floor as the second floor, as it is 1 level above the ground floor, the lower level is not underground on this side of the library. Therefore, 3 stories of climbing.

Almost done with page 8, meaning I'm 2/3rds done with the revision process. Rock.

Nearly done with page 7, which leaves me with about 5 more pages. Joy of joys... It's probably not going to get finished before dinner -- in fact I know it won't get finished before dinner. Still, I've made some decent progress. I'm going to try to finish 7 at least, and then go to dinner to pacify the grumpy stomach and allow my eyes to unglaze themselves before I'm forced to engage in round 2.

I'm thinking my WA draft for the classics paper is going to be pretty sad, with another note to my WA on top, followed by an attempt to make it a better paper before the actual conference. We'll see.

I've been listening to the songs by Marvin the Paranoid Android (and have discovered that two of them at least were actually released on a record), and I have decided that Alan Rickman is the perfect voice for Marvin -- he sounds quite a bit like the vocals on the songs, and those vocals fit the personality of Marvin wonderfully. Man, I want to see the movie...

I was just staring out the window, pondering how to best phrase the transition I'm working on, when I locked eyes with a squirrel that was sitting on the window ledge. It scared the crap out of me, because a) I am easily startled and b) it was completely unexpected. Worthy of note, I think, are the following facts: I am on the 2nd floor of McCabe. There are no tall trees near the window I'm sitting by. Through this reasoning, I am lead to believe that the squirrel must have climbed up the walls of the building, which leads to this question: why?

I think I scared him just as much as he scared me -- he scurried off pretty quickly. I guess he may have been looking for a place to hang out -- the sky is getting very grey and cloudy rather quickly, and he seems to be smart enough to want to get out of the possibly imminent rain. Still, a pretty bizarre encounter with the furry little fellow.

I am now on page 6 of the revision process, which means I'm roughly half-way through, with about an hour and a half until dinner. Grar.

Blarg. Just finishing up page 4 of the revision. I want to get this done before I go to dinner, which gives me another 3 or so hours. Then after dinner I'll deal with the classics paper, which will most likely not be the most stellar WA draft I've ever turned in, but oh well.

I'm fighting a very, very strong urge to curl up and sleep. My adopted desk on McCabe 2nd seems to be losing some of its attention focusing powers - I feel like I could fall asleep in this hard wooden chair. That's never a good sign.

Work time. Really.

A moment of venting in the direction of Worth/Psych Services: Grr to making it hard to get a new Rx written for a medicine that I've been taking for 5 years with no adverse side effects. Grr for requiring regular therapy in order to actually get such an Rx - in my case all signs point to chemical imbalance (family history, great response to meds, etc), and both psychiatrists I've seen over the course of these past 5 years have basically said that I don't need therapy. I understand the need for caution, the desire to evaluate things for yourself, etc... But good grief. My family is moving, I'm not going home for most of the summer, the shrink I was seeing told me to just start getting the Rx through my normal doctor, but I'm between family doctors... I'm stable and I just want to continue my prescription so I stay that way - is that really so much to ask?

However, yay for the doctor who wrote me a Rx for a month to see me through the rest of the semester and give me time to figure out what to do. And yay for the psychiatrist back home who will most likely write me an Rx for 3 months to see me through the rest of the summer and give me time to get a new doctor and see them about this.

I managed to get my toe smashed by a chair at lunch. It hurt like hell, but the pain has now subsided, though it smarts a bit when I bend it. It doesn't look pretty at all - white scrape along the base of the nail, some obvious damage to the nail, perhaps a little blood. My toenails are sparkly pink, so I can't tell if underneath the nail is bruised... However, it's not broken, and it's not too bad, so it's okay. It just hurt like hell for a good 3 minutes or so.

Time to do some serious paper writing now, even if I can't make myself focus.

Among the student groups with negative balances in their accounts that need to be dealt with are the College Republicans (well, if it works for Bush, it must work for us as well...) and the Conscious Consumers. I am amused.

The plan last night was to work, work, work. Then I got distracted by things online, as I often do. But then I resolved to work, work, work. Around 1:30 am I thought sleep would be nice. So I planned to take a nap, wake up around 4 or so. The alarm went off at 4 am. I grumbled, rethought my plan, and set it for 8 am. I slept, and had pretty disturbing dreams that seemed to involve a lot of people dying.

So. I am rested, though still weary, and on page 4 of the 11.5 page revision process. Lesson I have learned: I can't pull an all-nighter or anything close if the paper isn't due the next day. However, as this paper is due tomorrow, along with another paper draft that I need to do, I will be doing my very best to work, work, work today and tonight. Which means that after lunch, I'll probably be holing up in McCabe and working until dinner. Then after dinner I'll either be going back there or coming home, depending on how much work is left. The other day I accomplished a lot while working in McCabe, so hopefully the trend will continue. If I continue to stay focused, I'll try to stay in McCabe as long as needed.

Tonight may be the first (and hopefully only) time I here the closing buzzer at McCabe at 1 am.

It seems that I'm only capable of working intensely for a certain amount of time. That time period seems to be up - I have hit a wall, and I cannot stay focused. It's more than a bit problematic, to say the least.

Now to force out a revised draft of my English paper...

Bad: Realizing that I left Ovid in my room when I left ML this morning -- the only book I really need today... This realization was followed by a dash back to grab it, which ate up most of the between-class time I wanted to spend reading.

Good: Now being done with the reading, and having a general idea of what I'm going to write about.

I'm torn between napping and working on an outline. I know I SHOULD do the outline, but a nap sounds simply fantastic. Either way, in about 2 hours I have acting class, followed by dinner, followed by crazy English paper revising time.

No classes tomorrow, lunch with Joy, paper-writing, and a doctor's appointment. Hopefully that won't take long... The dream scenario would go something like this:
Me: Hi, I'd like a new Zoloft Rx. I've been on it for about 5 years now, there's not much to discuss - just give me the drugs.
Random school doctor: Okay.

Somehow, I doubt that's going to happen. The nurse told me that I could get the Rx for free, but there was of course a catch. I would have to see someone at psych services and then see a school doctor, and I'd basically have to check in with the psych services folks on a regular basis - i.e. low-key therapy. Not very high up on my list of things to add to my regular activities. Even at my worst I didn't go to regular therapy; I feel no desire to start now. Right now, I feel any time spent seeing psych services would probably be better spent napping. Not to suggest that I don't have issues, but I feel like I'm managing fine most of the time. Things come and go, but that's just life.

Enough soul-baring rambling. Time for a nap, I think. I need to fend off the headache I feel settling in my temples.

Spoon is playing at the TLA on June 4. Tickets are $16 plus Ticketmaster fees. Bloc Party is playing at the Trocadero on June 18. Tickets are $12, with perhaps some fees that are not Ticketmaster. Both are highly tempting...

Oh man. And Sleater-Kinney is playing at the Troc too, June 24, $15. I think they might win. Anyone want to go?