I spent last night playing Mario Party 7 with some good friends at their place. It was nice to be back visiting the outside world! Right now I'd love to just play GameCube and Pogo all day, now that I've been reminded how nice and absolutely essential to sanity it is to reeeeeelaaaaaaaax, but I'm trying to make myself work on a paper worth half my course mark that's due in a week and a half. My brain doth protest. It wants more video games, and to go Christmas shopping. I'm also compelled to do my usual weekend house cleaning, etc. This paper though, it's big, and it interests me, and it isn't going away...
I may have been born and raised in Northwestern Ontario, but 103 lb. me is still not built for this. Not even with the biggest, warmest marshmallow winter jacket or biggest, thickest, longest wool coat, and wrapped up in a hat, scarf and mitts. Maybe I should think about eating more red meat, I wonder if that would help? As it stands right now, outside in the morning is literally painful. My parking at work is nowhere near my building, and the way the buildings are there, the area creates its own windtunnel, meaning that although it's -23 with the windchill right now, there's a good possibility there's MORE of a windchill there and being outside in that for a good length of time first thing in the morning? Oi.
I don't think I'm headed back to Cali til May... I'm tellin' ya, as much as I love my friends, my job and co-workers, and my house here, the only thing that prevents me from moving there is a work visa and a job, and you kind of need one for the other and vice-versa, hello there catch-22. Yes, those are big things...
Is how I'm feeling? I'm pretty sure it's the exhaustion, about seventeen-hundred layers deep, that I'm still recovering from as I work on my final assignment for the term, go to work, do all the daily life stuff and try and keep in contact with everyone. Big apologies if I've neglected to return a phone call or e-mail anytime in the last couple of days, 1) I won't remember until I re-check my voice mail or e-mail and it's not you, it's the scrambled egg-like consistency of my brain at the moment, and 2) You really would not have wanted to talk to me anytime since this weekend anyway, because I am somewhat incapable of holding coherent conversation, and have been prone to some quasi-narcoleptic tendencies over the last few days.
Either I'm getting older and my favourite sport of X-treme Multitasking/Living Two Lives At Once is wearing me out more than it used to, or I just never realized how much of myself really was going into my MRP and other assignments, so the recovery after this round that finished last week is for something beyond the usual mental/physical energy depletion that I'm used to.
I'll sleep this weekend, as much as I can. I do have a date with the library and working on my term paper but it's not going to be quite the level of intensity I have been working at. I'll wait til next weekend for that, heh. No, I know, get this done and then I have a month off til my final class... I get feedback on my MRP this weekend so I'm a little nervous.
At any rate, it's about time for my work hours to start now, to chill out on the school side and focus my brain on work, so until later, I remain exhaustedly yours...
My MRP has been sent to my supervisor, and my seminar is done... I'm thinking it's time for some GameCube. And definitely a night to order in food.
I can't even explain the last week to you. Happy, exhuberant, but definitely exhausted. All very okay, though. My office is a complete paper tornado at the moment, so later today I'll take all the drafts and articles and other assorted scribblings and give them their own file. But mainly today I'm going to relax.
Well, that just took five years off my life. Apparently, my smoke/carbon monoxide detectors beep and TALK to you when the battery is low, both in English and en français. They also will not stop until you either put in a new battery, or disconnect it until you can. I know this, because my upstairs smoke/carbon monoxide detector just scared the living something out of me as I was working, completely absorbed in my seminar notes. That might mean it's time to take a break for the night. I guess I should be glad that my appliances (can you call it that?) are so on top of things.
What a week ahead, but one full of the feeling of major things getting done. I read and read and read, and wrote and wrote and wrote this weekend. Today? Delirium, but a very happy delirium, because my Masters Research Paper is written. Now I'm just going through each paragraph, re-wording or adding to things, working with my concluding section and fixing up some electronic source citations. It's all there, at word count, it's now just polishing. I'm in the MRP "zone" right now, but I had to return to my seminar notes today, since I'm giving it this week. Once that's done and my paper is in the hands of my paper supervisor and I've had a good night's sleep ;), I can, for a day or two (or at least a couple of hours), relax into and enjoy the euphoria I can feel bubbling just below the surface of what currently feels somewhat like a non-alcohol related hangover -- brain fuzz, but rewarding brain fuzz.
Why yes, Staples *is* one of my favourite places...
I wonder if I'll ever be able to read a book again without marking it everywhere with post-it flags, highlighter and musings scribbled in the margins -- my own added marginalia.
Grad school is the true initiation into the cult of the Office Supply Store Fanatics. When I run out of post-it flags, it's touch and go until the next time I find myself wrapped into the warm embrace of Staples. Aisle upon aisle of alluring temptation...
Yes, I've been doing a lot of schoolwork this weekend. ;) Three-and-a-half weeks til this semester is over. Is that even possible?
Confessions of a former, now-reformed, news junkie
I have a bit of a confession to make. When I graduated from journalism school, back in the spring of 2003, I immediately launched a rather extensive moratorium on the news. I had just spent four years memorizing sections A-J (or however many there were) of local and national newspapers, consuming television and radio news broadcasts and scouring online news sites each day, in preparation for surprise news quizzes and for story ideas, while learning news values and being all-too-aware that "hard news" can often translate into somewhat unhappy news. To tell the honest truth, it got a little bit depressing. When I went to j-skool, there were some pretty major news events, including the 2000 U.S. presidential election and subsequent appointment of George W. Bush; September 11, 2001; the Virginia sniper case; and the attacks on Iraq, including "Shock and Awe," just to name a few. By the time I finished my last journalism class that April, I'd had enough. So I retreated, first with all-out avoidance, and then gradual re-immersion on a much lesser scale through my CBC news digest headlines and anything I'd catch on the radio in the morning. That, and talking to people, kept me informed enough for awhile.
Tonight, I turned on the local news as I sometimes do, and in the span of ten minutes was reminded of why I had this self-imposed ban to begin with. Murder trial of a Canadian at Guantanamo Bay. A reminder of the unceasing natural disasters and the inevitable spread of disease. School shootings and killings. An update on the rioting in France. A lawyer in the Saddam Hussein case shot and killed. Oh, you're right. Make that another lawyer. Unrest, unrest and more unrest. This "controversial" law. That "controversial" law. (Remember, it's "con-tro-ver-see-al" when you say it on TV.) Interlude: hey, maybe we're going to get some snow! (I should have turned it off right there.) New technology being used in a mid-1970s murder case from the area, complete with description of death. Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd... commercial. After all, we need something to remind us that it's not all a pixelated death show -- it's just our representation of daily life here on Earth.
Oh, I read news stories every day. A lot of them, though, are specifically selected ones that go out via media monitoring and pertain to my area of work. I sometimes can't believe what we're inundated with on a daily basis. Not that it isn't all happening and isn't important -- it is -- but just the sheer rapid pace with which we're pummeled with it. I used to joke that if you watched CNN for long enough, you might start to think that the sky was falling.
I might not know of every little thing making news headlines these days, but you know what? I'm probably a lot happier for it. I want to enjoy the sweet simplicity of sunshine outside without panicking about freak tornadoes/potential pandemic influenza/drive-by shootings/bombs dropping overhead/the hole in the ozone frying me to infinity and beyond, potentially causing some rare, incurable form of cancer, particularly if sun/air exposure occurs in tandem with eating, you know, anything, et cetera, ad infinitum. But wait a second. If we didn't have the sun's rays beaming down on us, wouldn't the entire planet be, oh... dead?
As if once in a day at the end of the first week of November wasn't already surreal, I'm now sitting here watching a spectacular lightning show that's going on outside of my living room window. (It's thundering and pouring, too.) This one started while I was at the grocery store. It wasn't raining yet as I walked through the parking lot, but just before I got to my car there was this huge crack of thunder accompanying a flash of lightning, so loud that it made me jump and cover my ears (much to the amusement of someone sitting in a car parked next to mine).
I probably shouldn't be on the computer right now as it's doing this?
I have what might be a dumb question, but bear with me. How did a thunderstorm just happen outside? It's November 6. In Canada.
Don't get me wrong. I muchly prefer rain to its frozen alternative. But a thunderstorm? Don't you need two fronts to collide for one of those? As in, a warm front and a cold front? (I could be wrong, it's been awhile since I've been edumacated by the Weather Network.) And yes, the fact that it's 10 degrees outside does mean it's warmish, for this time of year especially, but I'm still a little lost...
Now that's it's passed over, I have errands to run. My brain, it is crying for mercy after a weekend of school work. If you've never read anything by Michael Ondaatje and you have no idea what I'm talking about when I say "Kristeva" and "abjection," then chances are good I'd really like to be your friend right about now.
Heh. I don't know why, but about two minutes ago I realized that I'm exactly 25 1/2 today, meaning that tomorrow I'm technically closer to 26. Ask me how happy I am about this realization. (Yes, that last sentence was loaded with sarcasm.)
In my favour, I can probably start using rock years at any time and completely get away with it without question. Not that I'd be a teenager or in my early twenties again for anything -- it was all good, don't get me wrong, but I am enjoying where life has led me thus far. Still, though? I am going to have to argue Madonna's latest assertion that "time goes by so slowly." I wonder where she's been living?
The quarter-life crisis, it apparently continues, as I return to reading all about electronic eros. One more "blog" (WebCT response), one seminar, two papers and eight reading responses and I have a Masters degree. It will be finished while I'm still 25, although convocation will be just after I turn 26. It's sometimes really hard to judge how I'm "doing" for my age, probably because I've spent much of my lifetime around those a few to many years older than me. My expectations of self are to be at that level, and when I stop to think about it, in my cases, in many respects I probably am. It's just that I sometimes forget that people are older than me and have had a few more years. Any quarter-life crisis becomes spawned by my own impatience and occasional Excessive Ambition Disorder.
Then I stop, put it in perpsective. I've been working in a "career" realm and in the "real" capacity (as opposed to "student" although it began during my undergrad years) since just before turning 21; on my own and 20 hours away from all family since I was 19; had some sort of strange Internet fame during my mid-teenage years (web designer-wise and fiction writing-wise); am doing my Masters degree partially toward certain career ambitions and partially for my own entertainment (yes, entertainment), enjoyment and interest, and without compromising my 40-hour work week; have a home, have a life, have some cool projects in the works, and sometimes have so much on my plate that I need five more days in a week... how am I doing for my age? It's hard to say, sometimes, standing in the middle of the wonderful chaos of it all.
Today, though, that realization of time is lighting a fire to finish up what needs finishing in one realm (school), so I can devote more of such precious time to all of the other things I want to do. One life. Rock the hell out of it.
Wow, Friday already? When did that happen? (After Thursday and before Saturday, presumably, but you know what I mean.)
This week has been busy. Bizzzzzzzzzeeeeeeee. The weekend and next week look to be the same, it's at about this point in a semester that I wish I could summon magic seminar-planning elves to dictate to my sub-conscious all I should discuss. I should probably just live at the library, except being at home is so much better. :)
Methinks it may be a fireplace night, to chase away the dampness seeping right through me. Brrr.
Okay, I'm at work, just finishing lunch, and it's bizzzzzzeeeeeee here too, so back to it. I'll hopefully be back this weekend, if I can remember how to write anything that does not somehow include any variation of "According to [critic X]... [quote]" and an analysis thereof.
