xaara

I may have lied about being back when I posted a month and a half ago.

Currently, I have four classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, thirty-two hours of Borders shoved into the other four days, a fifteen+ page research paper to write, an Old English poem to translate, a draft to revise, a take-home exam to complete, and three tests to take. In addition, I am making just enough money to keep me from destitution (although not according to the Federal government--yay being under the poverty line!--or to my mother's standards, because when I let drop in conversation that I had $1.14 to my name until payday, she nearly had a fit and accused me of bad money management. I did not point out the part about being officially under the poverty line. That would have ended not-well). Between me and The Boy, though, all of us (now including one adorably twitchy and one lazy little pudgeball kitten) get fed, housed, clothed, and sometimes even not-stressed.

(Yes, The Boy still exists, apart from a sort of...glitch? we had back in October when things were bad for a few days. He still rocks most of the time, except when he's driving me nuts playing a video game or ranting about the deliciousness of Chipotle burritos when all we have left to eat is a can of tomatoes and some pasta or demonstrating the "correct" use of the parking brake in cornering on an ice-covered Wisconsin road. But we're still together, and I'm insanely in love with him even when he dries his boxers on the shower rod, so it's good.)

Anyway, I am slightly busy.

As a result, I have not kept up with SPN or FNL aside from the first few episodes of each, which was a giant crisis for me. I ultimately chose 3.5 hours of sleep a night and some semblance of sanity over the media. Besides, I'll be able to catch up at semester break. Hopefully.

On the plus side, working at Borders rocks. Well, most of it does. The pay blows monkeys, and as with any job, there are parts that I dislike, but the discount almost makes up for it, and the fact that I get to find people books all day long wins by a long shot. Also that we sell DVDs, and so I get to rant about Ratatouille and Escape from New York and Blood Simple to unsuspecting customers. They never know what hit 'em.

Oh! Speaking of Blood Simple, All and Sundry should see No Country for Old Men. Easily one of my favorite McCarthy books, easily the best Coen brothers film yet. As creepy as their early Fargo-ish stuff, with that gorgeous eye they have for the scenery and the setting and the characters. Intense shit, yo.

And now! Off to write about effective design strategies for after-school programs targeting minority and low-income urban children!

After due consideration, I'm dropping out of spn_j2_bigbang. What with all the rest of the writing I have to do over the next few weeks (papers, exams, sample columns for a newspaper position I'm applying for), I just don't have the time to do my story justice or to work productively with a beta reader.

Which is not to say I won't complete and post my story eventually; it'll probably just take another month or so. I love the idea of bigbang. It just turned out to be the wrong timing for me this year. I hope it turned out to be the right timing for a bunch of other people because I'm selfish like that.

I went out to the lake today to talk to some fishermen for my ethnography and ended up being adopted by Rufus, Larry, Willy, and Mark, who insisted that I get a fishing license so I could join them on future trips and extracted a promise of lasagna for some undetermined future Sunday morning. The five of us fished (well, they fished and I watched) for about five hours before wandering over to the May Day celebration in a nearby pavilion and eating the hippies' bratwurst. It was excellent. I have a sunburn across my nose and the tops of my cheeks that's going to hurt like hell tomorrow.

The Boy will be back tomorrow from a trip with his father. I'm looking forward to seeing him and trading stories, since I'm sure his vacation was amazing and there's been a lot of work!drama in his absence.

Life is beautiful right now, and is looking to get more so as the winter cascades into spring: eighty-degree blue sky days and frat boys emerging noisily from their hibernation like cicadas seeking the sun.

ETA: I bought a cactus! I forgot about that. He's tiny and adorable. His name is Hjörleif, and I'll have pictures up as soon as my camera's batteries recharge.