<2317>

Karaoke was pretty exciting. After Happy Hour and delicious Iggie's for dinner, we headed to Max's. I once again got to sing three times: Don't Leave Me This Way, Since U Been Gone, and It's Raining Men. The latter was a "duet" with some woman who also sang a lot who I was hoping could be inspired to belt one out instead of her usual unhearableness. But no. Anyway, I feel warmed up for my Boston trip in a couple weeks.

Since I'm old now, even when I'm not drunk at the end of the night, I'm hung over the next day. I hate being old. I was mostly useless Saturday, so I didn't get in my 40 hours for the week, stopping at a pitiful 34. This after feeling like I worked my ass off this week, leading me to believe I was actually getting in about 10 hours of work a week before. Totally sad. I watched a bunch of West Wing instead. Sunday I went with Lynn and her mom to the Renn Fest, and it was pretty fun and not too dorky. We did lots of shopping and eating. There was cheesecake on a stick.

Today I worked 10 hours! Go me! Lots of TA stuff, some dissertation proposal/grant progress. I got some ideas down in pictures, which is useful. I only have like 4 conceptual models right now, though. It's not my fault I like to make pictures.

Tomorrow is my second-to-last day of class, like, maybe ever. Although knowing me I'll take classes next year.

<2209>

I've been busting my ass the past week... that is to say I'm trying to wrk for 40 hours a week. Turns out that's hard! But I've been fairly productive. I ran into some bureaucracy-related panic this week that threatened to take my decent salary for the year and chop it big time, but I think we figured it out. I go to an amazingly dumb school that makes me pay even when I'm not in any actual classes, and yet won't let me work more than 20 hours a week during term because I'm a student. Please, school, can you find more ways to make me poor?

Tomorrow we're going to go to karaoke, so I'm pretty happy about that. I'm going to some kind of Renn fest with Lynn on Sunday... I hope it's not too dorky.

<2130>

There's also no nice way to write on a paper, "I can tell you just kept adding paragraphs until you hit the page minimum."

<2105>

Every time I get stuck with a stack of papers to grade, I put it off. Then I ask myself, why do I procrastinate this grading? Then I do my grading, and I discover why: Many people are terrible writers. Now, to be fair, some of them probably, like me, don't bother to proofread or edit much to ensure that sentences make sense and don't have too few or too many words. But it's clear that some people lack the capacity to build sentences with parallel structure and paragraphs with sentences that all work toward making the same point. I'm about to beat these people with a five paragraph essay exercise. A few of them might be undergrads, and some of them are not native speakers of English, but most of them are allegedly graduate students of some stripe. There's no excuse for such hideousness.

<1402>

I consider myself a fairly decent writer. Most of the time, if I pay attention, I can make clear arguments that actually say something. But, beyond my own writing skills, I am an incredibly brutal reader. This makes grading papers really an exercise in restricting my comments to only the most egregious of sins in paper writing. Like, "You haven't said a damn thing in this paper."

I kinda wish I was going to Boston this weekend... there's going to be an interesting field show, and it's not the worst weekend in terms of work. There's a web special going on, so I bet I could use my vouchers and make it a freebie. It's sort of tempting. I really ought to get a chunk of my proposal written, though, so I can shop for committee members next week. Still...

<0111>

I repeat, sir: I don't like you, and LEAVE ME ALONE!

<1634>

Despite what it looks like, I'm not dealing with a stalker, just an asshole. People just can't seem to be Good, and there's a time to stop expending energy on trying to convince them.

What are people doing for the holidays? As usual, I'll probably cobble together Thanksgiving plans. But I'm more concerned about booking a Christmas flight... more specifically, where should I spend New Year's? I'm tempted just to stay in NM longer, but I dunno.

<0038>

Some of the bad seems to be working itself out. Sometimes people figure out they're being jerkoffs without me needing to tell them.

In other news, I can't figure out a way to be straightforward without sounding mean. I prefer straightforwardness to passive decay, but only if I don't have to go somewhere that isn't incredibly awkward.

In even more news, someone sent me a link today, and it made me giggle.

<1113>

Ugh, I am so over you. I am over being over you. Go the eff away.

Just when I think I'm getting to minimum life drama... I can't seem to get rid of the bad, and now I may be attracting good, but it could just be more bad. There are so many ways of bad to creep in.