Those of you who have no idea what those are: may nothing ever change that!

To make a long story short, they take up a LOT of time...

And headed back to Iowa once Thanksgiving festivities are concluded down here! My cat sure is happy to see me again! It's nice to be missed, and I wouldn't put it past her to have totally forgotten who I am in a few months, either, considering the tiny size of her cat brain.

Won't be long once I get back before the end of my first semester of graduate school. I wouldn't exactly say things have gone smoothly but at least I'll have a better idea what I'm up against and what to expect from now on.

Everyone here says they can see I've lost weight in Iowa. Hooray! Still a long way to go, though.

I do believe I am finally caught up on sleep now, and I seem to have made it through that rough couple of weeks mostly unscathed except one paper I got a B on. (Serves me right, I guess, one of the students in the class I teach seems to be kind of upset that I gave him a B on one of his papers.) At least now I have a better idea what I'm up against and how to plan things out.

Getting cold and windy here all of a sudden. The cicadas don't seem to like it. They seem to have gotten really quiet all of a sudden.

I somehow managed to get an A on the linguistics paper from HELL. So I feel a bit better about things now. Still, no rest for the weary, got a big pile of my own student's papers to correct by tomorrow and a huge headache... aaargh...

Delirious, sleep deprived thoughts of all of you!

I have officially kicked off my stint as a graduate student by turning in what I consider to be quite possibly the worst paper I've ever written. Fortunately I have a bit more time to prepare and work on the others coming up, this one was sprung on us kind of cruelly before any of us had much of a chance to get situated.

I'm still trying to figure out how the drunken idiots around here find time to be drunken idiots, as I assume they are taking classes too and that they also have assignments to submit if they do.

And, I am currently being pestered on DA by banner ads offering me the exciting opportunity to find out "What do you smell like to EDWARD CULLEN?"

I honestly don't know what to say sometimes.....