A Picture of a Living Person You'd like to trade palces with for a day:

This is a photo of Kate Bornstein, who is, undeniably, the most inspiring person ever to live. Them's the facts. Check her blog here. Yea. I just bought her "Hello Cruel World" app on my ipad, and sometimes I fangirl her like mad.
This may be it today, internet. I have just come off of the most challenging school term of my life, and then a weekend of drinking and debauchery. I am exhausted. Literally, the rest of my plans for the day include drinking coffee and watching Glee. If you need me, you'll know where to find me.

Day 04 - A picture of your night

Do you see that, internet? That is a bottle of wine, and a wine glass. Yes it is, oh yes(!) Providing that i am ever happy with (erm, finished) the paper I am currently in the midst of (and that will be handed in later today), I will do exactly what this picture suggests: drink an entire bottle of wine. I did try to find a picture with two glasses, implying that I would share the wine, but apparantly people on the internet drink alone. A lot. This was also the only pouring wine picture I came across that didn't resemble urinating. Yay!
In other news: only several more hours until wine drinking and being social again! Yay!
(stay tuned, internet. I will likely blog again later, while drunk!)

Day 03 - A picture of the cast from your favorite show

Day 03 - A picture of the cast from your favorite show.
Sheldon Cooper is possibly my favourite fictional character. Ever. If he was real, I would marry him in thirty seconds. I like him so much that I tell people that my brother in law, who is a physicist, is exactly like him, even though my brother in law is more of a Leonard.
In other news, I am on my last day of paper-writing madness. I have one more eight page paper to hand in for this term before I surrender to the holiday break (and the mountain of PhD applications, though I've mostly got all of the parts for those and only need to put them together). I don't think I've been this burnt out before. All term I managed to adapt to the level of reading and work expected. I succeeded at this. And now, at the final push, I just really want to take a nap. Really. Yesterday I napped twice. I am having trouble putting coherent thoughts together that are not related to this paper, the small stack of marking I have left, or books I really want to read. Last night, when I should have been writing, I read the first fifty pages of Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, which I highly recommend.
So, internet, I will leave you with this point-form-thought for the day:
*I will get everything on my to-do list done. I just will. I always do.
*When I am done I will drink an entire bottle of wine and then pass out.
*Everyone should read books all the time.

Day 02

Day 02 - A picture of you and the person you have been closest with the longest
I do not have an Alaskan Mamalute. If I did, I would not be here. I would be playing with it. This picture represents me and my mom. As dorky as it is, my mom is the person I've been closest with for the longest. Most of this has to do with having moved away from home about six years ago, and starting over with friends for the most part.
I am now going to retreat back into my hole of essay writing and grading, but I hope you enjoyed the photo.

30 Day Challenge

In order to keep myself actively posting through the holidays, I am going to steal this facebook trend and use it as a blog motivator. A blogivator, if you will. Here's how it goes:
Day 01 - A picture of yourself with fifteen facts.


As you can probably tell, this is not me. I will not post pictures of the real me, not yet. Maybe, internet, if you all start being my friends and commenting, I will one day repeat this with more real (realer? Is it time for holiday brain yet?) pictures. I digress.
1.) If I were an anime character, this would be me. Scissors and all.
2.) Today I completed the longest paper I've ever written.
3.) Tomorrow I will start and complete a shorter paper.
4.) I am knitting a fashion-scarf.
5.) I am an excellent dancer.
6.) I haven't stretched in weeks because I've been tired and busy- must get back into it!!!!
7.) I have two rabbits. They are lovely.
8.) I have one husband. He is also lovely.
9.) Avacados are my favourite food.
10.) I drink too much coffee.
11.) red wine is probably my favourite beverage. I can drink an entire bottle myself. This will become a problem when we decide to have babies.
12.) I dream of having a whole room dedicated to books (instead of the half-room we currently have dedicated to books)
13.) I fell down the stairs last weekend- I did an entire summersault!
14.) I am very lucky I didn't break my neck!
15.) I don't have good enough words to talk about the Montreal Massacre. You should look it up and have a moment of silence for those brainy, brainy ladies.

It's that time of year again...

... Exam time is here again! And my mom!

Alright, so I don't actually have exams... but I do have a ton of essay writing and marking to do, and five application packets to get together for PhD programs, and am still in a state of constant exhaustion. Plus I am researching for someone, plus I am working two days at a diner. Except that, well, I'm not. I've taken my last three shifts (one and one half weeks!) off because of school/stress. There aren't enough hours in a week to accomplish everything I need to. There aren't enough hours in a week to spare the eleven that my current job is taking from me. Don't get me wrong, I love this job. However, when I was on the phone with my boss this morning, explaining that I had asked another girl to cover my shift for tomorrow because I just can't do it right now, I secretly hoped she would fire me. Yup, you read that right. I hope she would say "you're taking too much time off and you're being a huge pain. Please pick up your cheque and don't come back." In real life I really hope that when I leave this place I do so on excellent terms- they've been wonderful to me as friends, employers, and coworkers. I love the job, but I hate how tired I am all the time. Waking up and thinking "I don't want to go to work today" is especially terrible when what you reall mean is "I could really use that six hours for writing or researching."
On the plus side, the prof that I am currently working for has offered me another job helping with formatting on an anthology she and another academic are working on. We're waiting to see if she gets the grant she's applied for, and then how many hours she'll be able to pay me for. If it all works out, and I can get enough hours, I am going to consider leaving my other job. Maybe. I always feel bad quitting, even under the most terrible working conditions. Leaving a place that I love sooooo much will be even harder. I'll keep you updated.

Have any of you had to leave a place you loved working?

A tangled end-of-term rant.

There will be no paragraph divides in this post, because I feel like torturing you the way first year essays sometimes torture me. Not that I blame the students 100%, not even close. Right now, in a single class I've got several students that are writing pretty medium to well papers. They exist on a range of "pretty okay argument that you maybe should have thought about a bit longer so your ideas would be better organized" to "this is an excellent thesis, great work!" Their writing ranges from "I can understand what you are trying to say, and this excites me!" to "once you develop stylistically your writing will probably be pleasurable to read." It's great. Why, you ask, have I grouped this wide range of students together (I forgot to mention that I am only including a small portion of the class). Because they are all consistently telling me about "the kings hat" and how "three king's went to buy a hat." Do you see the problem? They all know that there is a rule here, and they are all messing it up consistently. This wouldn't be so bad, if the rule were not to end a sentence with a preposition. This rule sometimes makes writing more terrible. Yes. It can make writing terrible-r (my ipad actually won't let me do this without the dash). Example (courtesy of a lovely friend and lovelier conversation yesterday): "That is something up with which I will not put." Yeah. Because so many students are going to read something as convoluted as that and think "that's way easier and clearer than writing "that is something I will not put up with," thanks grammar handbook!" How will these students tell the difference between "students work" and "student's work?" Most important to this particular rant, how did a whole group of students coming into university at the same time learn this mistake so well? I am suspicious that they may have all had the same high school teacher, and this makes me sad. In other news, I am reaching the end of my term as well, and am hammering through seminars, papers, and research that I should not have put off so much earlier in the term. Lesson learned! I am also sliding into procrastination mode, but it is a very new kind of procrastination for me. Rather than cleaning the house instead of doing work, I have been rewarding myself for doing work by giving myself breaks with which to clean the house. Is this an effect of grad school, or simply a sign that I am getting old?