Friday, October 24, 2003
 

So I got up around 4 AM to finish grading papers and to do the reading to teach today.

I was on campus by circa 7:30 AM.

My first conference, with my least-favorite student (Mr. Women Are Frigid Sluts), was at 8:00 AM.

Inhuman.

I then had conferences until class started. The students were dead and hard to provoke into response. I then had MORE conferences, until 11:45. In the company of another student, I then hightailed it over to a local restaurant to meet up with other students (a few of us lunched with a visiting speaker). It was a free meal, at least, though the speaker wasn't too entertaining and made us do all the conversational footwork. Then I had the weekly teaching lovefest from 1-2. At 2:10, the speaker's talk started. She talked for AN HOUR AND A HALF, which is unheard of. And, again, inhuman. Not to beat the word to death. Then there was a lengthy Q&A. I struggled to keep my eyes open (and, for once, I'd even read the text in question).

I then went to a local mall with three people. I didn't look at my watch, but we must have been there several hours. I DID find an awesome pair of black pants at Express, which is good, given that I lacked fitting black pants in which to teach. (the What Not to Wear people would die if they knew that I lacked basic black pants, and my Vogue subscription would be revoked) By this time, even though it was fun, my feet ached, my back hurt, I needed a nap, I was hungry, etc, etc, etc.

One person left to go to a birthday party (she has an actual, non-grad-school life), and the remaining three of us went out and got Mexican for supper, which was good because we got to sit down and consume fluids (I was horribly dehydrated).

Then the other two came by here for the purpose of socializing with Alice, who strutted her stuff in a major way. Siiiiigh. My cat is an attention ho. We experimentally held out a pack of cigarettes for Alice to sniff, and she was ALL OVER IT. That's just weird. She loves the smell of cigarette smoke (and of Sharpies, and of wood stain, nail polish, etc).

So the day started out rough and picked up toward the end, but the result of all of this is that I'm seriously freaking exhausted. I hurt all over.

So, in 10 minutes, I will watch my well-earned episode of What Not to Wear. While wearing my flying saucer pajama pants, an ancient black too-big tank top, and a junior high era flannel shirt. Let's just call it a statement.

Statement: Too tired to care.

Elvisette philosophized at 10:04 PM