To My Credit

I did not, after all my waffling, end up attending the grad student mixer yesterday afternoon. I didn't actually leave the house at all, despite my best intentions to do so.

Once I'd made my decision, I didn't tell anyone that I wouldn't be going, though I didn't deliberately plan it that way or anything -- I was still burnt-out after my exceedingly long Thursday of classes and teaching, and didn't even wake up until around 1PM or so. In the afternoon, before the storms rolled in, I got dressed enough to mow the grass one final time this summer, which also had the added benefit of allowing me to completely run the last of the gas out of the mower, as the former girlfriend requested I do before she picks it up sometime within the next few weeks.

I do, of course, eventually have to purchase a new lawnmower. Believe me, it's on my list of "big things I need to buy," which also still includes a decent vacuum and a proper block of steak/prep knives, amongst other things.

I also have to renew my Playboy subscription, as that is even more important now that I'm a single man, but that's beside the point.

I later received a text message from Rae telling me that the grad student mixer had now limited alcohol consumption to but two beers per person, so I was glad I hadn't gone and wasted time/gas money to get but two free beers. That, I think, will be the death rattle for any future mixers or other festivities held at the museum if they decide to keep that new policy -- nobody's going to waste their time for two beers; they'll just not show up. I know graduate students; I am one. I don't know who actually ended up going, but Rae and her officemate-in-poetry, Kay (because that's just the easiest codename for her I can think of) were the only ones who asked where I was, so I apparently wasn't missed that much -- either that, or no one else bothered to show up.

The rest of last night I spent working on various tasks around the house, as is customary for me to do on any weekend, really; I cooked up some steaks for dinner, did the dishes for the week, did all of the laundry that had slowly piled up to overflowing in my large hamper, and ended the night by talking with an old, dear friend back home for a few hours until we both needed sleep. So yeah, that was my Friday. I didn't get much accomplished in the way of schoolwork, I was incredibly fatigued for most of it, and I basically blew off even the concept of leaving the house.

This morning, to my credit, I awoke with vigor and a game plan in place. So that I could devote all of the rest of my weekend to schoolwork, starting this afternoon, the morning hours would be spent running the errands I would normally otherwise run on Monday. This included going to the post office -- where I finally mailed out the volley of four thank-you packages that I'd been meaning to mail out for a good week or so now -- as well as putting gas in the car, air in my sagging tire, and making a trip to Walmart to pick up the essentials.

This week, one of the "essentials" was the X-Men: First Class special edition DVD. As I said on Facebook earlier today, one at a time, ladies. One at a time.

That's becoming one of my new favorite phrases, by the way, simply for the irony involved when I say it.

This afternoon, over the span of about two hours, I vaulted through all of my students' rough drafts of their first papers that they'd provided me on Thursday, giving all of them constructive and helpful criticism individually via email. I did it quickly (but thoroughly), as I knew if I didn't, they wouldn't receive my feedback with enough time to properly rewrite/revise their papers, and because I wanted to get it taken care of -- usually reviewing rough drafts takes a long, long time. However, today I was smart -- I created a numbered list in a simple text document that served as a form letter of sorts, which covered the most important and/or pressing issues I knew I'd see in these rough drafts -- namely formatting/citation errors, as well as typos. After this was done, once I read through a student's paper, I was able to cut-and-paste parts of, or the entirety of, that list into my email reply to them, thus saving me hours of typing time.

All of you who collect rough drafts from your students and email them your comments? I highly recommend creating some sort of form letter like this. It was a brief stroke of genius on my part.

Normally I don't collect rough drafts, and if I do it's on a purely voluntary basis, usually because the student wants me to look it over and offer pointers on his/her paper over the weekend before it's due. However, in the Science Writing class, time for it was written into the schedule by my supervisor, and as we have vigorous class discussions anyhow, it can only serve to help them outside of class -- so I kept it on there. For the most part, I have some truly remarkable writers in my classes, but that's to be expected as they're all generally Engineering scholarship students. I can't wait to see the interesting topics they'll be writing about later in the semester. They fill me with hope.

I'm not sure I mentioned it here, though I did mention it on Twitter a few days ago, that I ordered a $30 twin-size airbed from Amazon for "guest use," as well as for a place to stretch out and read, or nap, that's upstairs -- taking a nap on the couch is just cramped and painful for my joints, and I'd rather be able to lay flat on something up here than go downstairs, make the huge bed, and more than likely end up sleeping a lot longer than originally planned due to my near-constant fatigue. I figured an airbed would serve the dual purpose of creating a napping spot as well as giving any visitors (or me) a place to sleep. When it arrived on Thursday, before I went to bed Thursday night, I placed it in the former girlfriend's old office (now the spare room/extra storage room), inflated it, and put a set of sheets on it.

After I finished my critiques, I went in there this afternoon with Evelina, the next book I have to read for my Graduate Studies in Fiction course, laid down on the airbed, and read about 40 pages of it before completely passing out, again. That should give you some indication of how boring that book can be to a contemporary reader such as myself, because the airbed certainly isn't that comfortable to sleep on.

I was awakened three hours later by screaming children chasing a dog around the neighborhood. Apparently the dog's name was Lola, and even more apparently it was being a pain in the ass to all involved. No wonder it was trying to get away; I'd be running from a bunch of fucking annoying, screaming kids too.

It was only at that point, however, that I looked at the wall clock I'd put on the wall in that room specifically for that purpose, and saw that three hours had passed. I looked at the book again. I looked at the clock again. I realized that I had basically wasted three hours of the day that I needed to get work done because I'd been so fatigued that I couldn't stay awake. In three hours I could've read through the vast majority of that book, more than likely. It's not a hard read, it's just ponderous and large; very wordy, needs to get to the point, etc. This is, of course, typical of most 18th century "literature." Oh, how I long to read an actual novel that's been written in the past 50 years or so, one that is interesting and doesn't move at the pace of a snail's orgasm.

I plan to finish the book tonight and tomorrow, as I sort of have to -- I need to start another book for my Asian/Middle Eastern Lit class, and must still do my reading/critiques for poetry workshop as well as create a lesson plan for next week's classes I'll be teaching...amongst numerous other little school-related things that, when combined, suck away almost all of my free time. And people wonder why I rarely leave the house.

In other news, I filled out an application for a Capital One card and mailed it off. I don't really want a credit card (I've never owned one, even now, and I'll be 29 this year), but in the case that something major happens to the car and I have to get it fixed immediately, such as a blown tire or radiator, transmission, starter/alternator, etc. -- being able to put it on a credit card means I won't have to bankrupt my bank account to get it fixed. Same goes for any other emergency as well, or something that I may need to pay off in installments, such as if my computer blows up. In the meantime (if they accept my application, that is) I'll be able to use it every other week or so to get gas or small foodstuffs with, pay it off every month, and slowly build a credit report -- because I have zero credit history on record. Believe me, I checked.

I also found that's part of the reason that my car insurance is so high on the Monte Carlo -- because I didn't have a credit history they could check it against, or any previous insurance record fully in my name. They basically gave me the sports car rate, the new driver rate, and the no credit rate all bundled into one. This is why it costs me more per year to insure that car than it did to purchase, title, license, and register it. I wish I were making that up, by the way. I think they should wrap them all together and call it the bullshit rate, but that's just me. Maybe it'll eventually go down in cost, but I doubt that'll happen for a while.

The rest of my weekend, as per the usual, will be spent doing my normal weekend work for my classes (as mentioned previously), with the added bonus of not needing to leave the house again until I teach class on Tuesday morning. In that time I should be able to get most, if not all, of my tasks completed. Yes, as I've said before, it's a lonely, boring life, but I get shit done.