Home Stretch

Thanksgiving really is such a tease. A five-day taste of freedom followed by a prompt return to three weeks of papers, finals and sleepless nights in the library. Kind of a freezing hell. Is it bad that I've come to associate the Christmas season with finals? "Last Christmas" now brings memories of test anxiety, sore throats and rushing to the airport with a massive sleep debt.

However, my end-of-semester to-do list isn't looking too bad. It's considerably shorter than others I have seen. All I really have to do over the next few weeks is:

-Write and polish Shakespeare research paper
-Complete Shakespeare "essence" final project
-Shakespeare midterm
-Attend two bio lectures and write two responses
-Edit and turn-in creative writing final masterwork
-Class class class
-Read read read
-Plan Writing Center Christmas party
-ELANG Final
-Marriage & Family Final
-Bio Final

And that's really all I can think of at the moment.  If I wasn't working this semester, I think it would have been my easiest one yet. Including Freshman "honors" classes that are basically high school in disguise.  Though I'm sure many other little things will come up. The only real problem is that the majority of the items on this list must be completed in the next three or four days.

At least I can sit back and watch this in my Elang class at the moment. (Did you know a "small language" becomes extinct every two weeks?) And eat chocolate provided by the instructor. And fine-tune my Christmas list.

I really want to go to India. And take Chinese again. And walk to class without risking falling flat on my face.

html

Is not my best medium. I haven't tried so hard to decode (encode?) it since myspace. Who knew creating a custom banner could be so difficult? Where's microsoft paint when you need it.

I think I just wasted an hour of my life. At least I got paid for it.

Procrastination Sensation.

Welllp. I've done just about everything one can do to avoid writing my bio paper on the relationship between water temperature and algae (algal?) growth in Provo River. Including:

-3 hour nap

-Shower

-Blow dry and style hair

-Clean room

-Make dinner (wheat penne with roasted vegetables and grated parmesan)

-Clean kitchen

-Compile Christmas playlist

-Check Facebook, Gmail and all the blogs I routinely stalk

-Check blogs I rarely even visit

-Double-check Facebook, Gmail and blogs

-Clean kitchen

And I'm running out of ideas. This would be a whole lot easier if I wasn't making quite literally all of my data up. And if I could figure out how to make charts in Pages. And if I could actually find some relevant, peer-reviewed sources. Maybe I'll make those up too? That seems too obvious. Oh well. I'll just restart Sufjan's Christmas album and try again. Last assignment before Thanksgiving!

p.s. This is quite nice.

I see you stir the fog around.

This song shuffled onto my ipod this afternoon and I immediately deemed it the perfect first-day-of-November tune. A little lonely and foreboding. Yet a comfortable brand of melancholy.

It has taken me awhile to adjust to his voice, but I'm warming up to it. Kind of like Joanna Newsom. After a year of cringing at her occasionally screeching vocals, I'm learning to appreciate her for the lyrical genius she really is. And her voice isn't half bad either. If you're new to Joanna I'd start with this: