serenity now My advisor (the new and improved, informally-adopted one, not the evil old one from whom I have now fully divorced myself) stopped to say hi in the cafe today and said something like, "you must be doing well--you look totally serene!" No one has ever dared to make such an absurd claim about my state of mind around here before, including myself, but I feel pretty serene, actually. Things are good. I'm in pre-dissertation land with my research, which is all Very Exciting and is generating a lot of interest and support from people around here that I care about. Various strands of unfinished business from last year are all coming together, and I should be up to date on everything by the end of January. After that, I only have 2 more classes in the spring--a political theory class that I'm really looking forward to and an independent study to help me prep for generals--before the M.A. Holy crap!  ¶ 12:42 PM

  I do love me some Gorby I maintain that the guy was just a little too revolutionary for his own good.  ¶ 5:27 PM

  my brother... Is fucking awesome.

  ¶ 8:15 AM

  Category 4 hurricane heading for Bangladesh This could be really, really bad.  ¶ 4:34 PM

  assorted. Okay, first things first: I haven't had coffee in a week, people. A WEEK. After the first day or two, which pretty much totally sucked, I have definitely been waking up more easily and feeling more alert in general, but I've also been sleeping more, and daylight savings was thrown into the mix...sooo, it's still a little early to tell. I'll keep you posted. I definitely still massively crave the stuff...I walked by Starbucks today and they have switched into full-holiday mode, with the holiday cups and rolling out the "Christmas blend" and all that other cute, nasty and seasonally-appropriate capitalist bullshit, and I swear to sweet jebus I was seriously tempted by Starbucks. Starbucks is...for airports and foreign countries, and airports in foreign countries. If then. What have I become? This is why the bean and I had to take a little break. It was just getting too weird.

In other news, I'm getting a little intimidated by how much I have to do between now and January. Mostly, I have to write papers--a LOT of papers, and big ones, and slightly important ones, since at least one of them will be centrally under discussion when I take generals in, oh, six months or so. Oh, jebus, let's not talk about that, either. First I have to write this book chapter, and clear up the damn incompletes I'm still dragging around from the spring, and somehow survive this semester's course work, and figure out what the hell I'm doing and where I'm going this summer (Kotzebue? New Orleans? Siberia? All three?), and a whole hell of a lot of other crap. I have big goals for the long weekend--paper proposals to write, 2 short/medium papers to bang out, made-from-scratch spicy soup and pumpkin muffins, and a good long uninterrupted research block to work on the chapter and my other freakin' paper drafts. Oy. At least I'm also cat-sitting this week, and also have adorable sleepy piles of fuzz and love on my lap (or walking across my keyboard, depending on their whims). They're pretty awesome, and only slightly evil.  ¶ 12:06 PM