Zit Happens

All of the momentous occasions in my life seem to be marked by at least one large zit on my face. Is it possible that in thinking about the zit and waiting for it to go away I am less stressed about the pending event that has caused the zit in the first place? Maybe.

I leave for Nashville tomorrow to present at my first research conference. And my left cheek is carrying extra baggage for the flight.

1984

Maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake here, but I just realized that whenever I receive a message from someone on my Gmail account, the ads on the side of the message correspond with the content of the message. We're being watched and it's eerie. If the program thinks a message might be spam, it'll even offer links to Spam recipes on the side.

So.

We're being watched by idiots, but it's still a little disturbing.

Slogging Along

I realize that this has been one sad blog lately, but here's the thing: I can't get myself to do anything. I have books to read, papers to write, talks to prepare, lessons to evaluate, research to conduct, and hats to knit, but as the to-do list gets longer and longer, I get lazier and lazier. Although there are aspects of this that don't suprise me at all, there's also some other element that's really not like me. I'm hoping it's just a phase.

Even after nine months of dating, I have so much to teach him.

D: "Thanks for coming to watch the race."

Me: "Oh. No problem. It was fun."

D: "Did you eventually wipe that booger from your nose?"

Me: "What booger?"

D: "The one you had hanging from your nose when I stopped. "

Me: "Oh god. I had a booger hanging from my nose?"

D: "Yeah. Huge. I could see it through my foggy glasses."

Me: "Huge? That's great. Why didn't you tell me it was there?"

D: "Well, I just thought it was so nice that you came out to see the race, and it was cold."

Me: "Right. All the more reason to tell me. I'm so embarrassed. Now that you mention it, the runners all seemed to be looking at me."

D: "Yeah. It was gross. I'm sure you'll survive this, though."

Level 43, 430 Lines

Today is the last day of my winter break, and I am proud to report that I have managed to do very little in the past three and a half weeks (which includes blogging, as many of you have pointed out). This break has been sort of a turning point for me. You see, usually I feel overwhelmingly guilty for all that I've neglected to do during my downtime. This time, however, I feel overwhelmingly grateful for the fact that for once in my life I simply
r e l a x e d, guilt-free. That's not so say that some things weren't accomplished. I did relearn how to knit, read an entire book for pleasure, earned the top score on Cassie's hand-held Tetris game, and watched The Office, Seasons 1, 2, and 3 (the internet has everything if you search hard enough, although perhaps I shouldn't be admitting that here).

So, I'm quite ready to get back on that horse tomorrow. May even be looking forward to it in some small way. In a small, small, small way, that is.

Passing Time on a Rainy Afternoon

“I’m going to count how many negative statements you make.”

“Fine, I’m going to count how many negative statements you make.”

“Alright, we can keep a tally. It’ll be fun. Don’t you think that will be fun?”

“No.”

“Okay. That’s one.”

Hosting

Anxiously awaiting the family's arrival. It'll be a cozy Christmas in my little house. Busting with love and laughter.

Cheesy. I know. It comes out this time of year.

Paper-o-meter

College roommate Angela and I used to argue about whether the paper-o-meter was pronounced paper-ah-meter or paper-oh-meter. I like paper-ah-meter, but you can call it whatever you want. The important thing is that it measures how many pages left to write at the end of each semester.

The count as of today? 17.

And blog entries don't count.