20 days until the draft is due.

i've decided that the first thing that i am going to do after i defend, other than collapse in a puddle of grateful and exhausted goo, is go to the bookstore and splurge on a couple of books that i've wanted to read but haven't.  this decision was spawned by a weekend of resentment that i don't get to do anything that i want to do, and also by the guy i just passed who was sitting out in the rather chilly sunshine reading a book.

now, i'm on the campus of collegetown u as we speak, so i know that it is most definitely a specious conclusion that said sunshine reader was reading something that he wanted to read, but the mere idea that one could throw caution, deadlines, and a neverending series of employment responsibilities to the wind to take advantage of an almost-springlike day inspired me.

so there's that.

my students today looked like someone just told them their dog died. they were depressed to be in class. i knew exactly how they felt.

i just don't think that nose rings are that attractive. i'm not talking about studs. those i can almost understand. i'm talking about the full on rings that people put between their two nostrils, in that little piece of cartilege that separates the two.  the only way i can describe them is that they look like the rings that they put in bulls. aren't those so that they can be led against their will?  i think so, but i'm too tired to google it.  if the only metaphor/descriptor i can use to describe your choice of a fashion statement is one of a bovine imprisonment instrument, i just don't think you're on the right track.  (no offense to any of my readers with nose rings. i have family members with the studs. there's no judgment of you as a person. it's just like those shoes of mine that you hate.)

there's a special floor in the library for the grad students here at collegetown u. i used to pooh-pooh it, thinking it was stupid and small and who the heck needed it? then i started working up here on fridays with a friend. now i think it's great. it's nothing especially different from the regular library floors. it's just you have to use your specially activated student id to get up here and there are tables and cubicles and maybe they are a little bit nicer. but really, it's just like the teachers lounge. there's nothing special about it except the mystique and the fact that you more than likely don't have to fight with someone for whom you are responsible to grade for a chair and an outlet for your laptop.

i made apple crisp last night and it was all sorts of yummy. surprising discovery? dannon vanilla yogurt (light & fit of course, because i do everything that heidi klum tells me to) makes a surprisingly tasty (and healthy!) substitute for ice cream. it was so scrumptious.  and it wasn't too terrible for me, even though i scarfed down like two servings of that bad boy.

i am frustrated by my lack of progress on the weight front. i am stronger and my leg muscles are coming back and as soon as i get new shoes i'm going to try the whole running thing again, but i'm not losing ANY weight. in fact, my body seems to just wait for the moments that i lose my will to watch calories and then pack them all on.  i'm feeling like it's probably the amount of sugar i consume on a daily basis (so much...so so much) that's doing it to me.  i need to balance more.  but balance requires forethought, planning, and carrot sticks.  sigh.  i'm still working on it, and to the persistent go the spoils.  (yes, i just changed that. give me a break, huh?)

daylight savings time can suck it.  i know we only lose one hour one night, but it creates a strange and dangerous cycle in which i get sleepy at a normal time, fall asleep for a few minutes while musicboy is most definitely not asleep and is in fact watching gilmore girls because he is so unasleep (something that wouldn't really bother me normally), then wake up hungry and not tired at all.  staying up until 2 am on the day before i have to be brilliant in the quiet library? not so good.

why do people who misspell quiet as quite not understand that they are NOT the same word?

i'm starving. time to eat my tuna lunch (oh everyone on this floor is going to LOVE me) and start thinking about the tension between the two definitions of domestic.

yay. 

20 days.

i can do anything in/for/during [insert appropriate preposition here] 20 days.