Sleep and Life Plans

Spring semester: day ten

I hate being awake, generally speaking.

This isn't one of those statements like "oh, I hate soccer" or "oh, I hate guacamole," but I'm being serious when I say this. I hate being awake. I can never get enough sleep, and when I do tend to sleep for long stretches of time, there are always consequences (such as not being able to go back to sleep when I would need to...which is usually something like 2 or 3PM). Plus, all of those pesky responsibilities I have must be taken care of when I'm awake. When I'm asleep, they no longer exist. At least not until I wake up again, anyway.

I had a long conversation with Andrea this afternoon that really put my life into perspective. Andrea is good for conversations like this, but today's was one of the most soul-baring ones I've had in a long time. She's the only person I can really talk to about any of my interpersonal or psychological issues; even my closest friends out here in Kansas don't have time for my bullshit, nor do they particularly care. In general, I don't burden other people with my problems -- whatever said problems may be -- because of two reasons:

1.) I can usually take care of most psychological issues myself (over time, of course), and

2.) I have come across very, very few people in my life who actively, genuinely care about my mental health or general well-being and are willing to burn calories over it. There have been many over the years who've said they cared, but for almost all of them that care/concern has only gone so far, and they gave up after a while.

Again, I don't expect anyone to take care of me, or even want to. Most of the time I don't need it.

There are a few lines in one of my poems that sums up my world view rather succinctly:

When the clock passes 1AM she turns to me and says,
“I have one too many unfixable parts,” before finishing her beer.
"I've never been made," I reply.

Those lines are from a poem I wrote last year called "Her Idea," and to date (as well as for the foreseeable future) they're the only snippet of my poetry I have, or will ever put here on my blog. Ironically, while most of the poetry I write is in some way about my life or my past, this one was purely fictional -- but I think the message in these three lines is totally applicable to my life.

The talk with Andrea was mainly about how things are going, really. When I say how things are going, I mean about how I feel about my life and where it's headed. During our discussion I told her how I've come to the conclusion that, basically, there's no real reason for me to...well, be truly optimistic anymore. Yes, I realize how horrible that sounds, but let me explain.

Andrea, to put it mildly, has had a rough past...oh, eight months or so, give or take. She and her (now former) fiance had a horrible breakup around the same time the former girlfriend and I broke up, and since then her life has been a series of "if it can go wrong, it WILL go wrong" sorts of situations. I love the girl more than probably any other friend I have on this planet; she is truly like a sister to me, and despite all of her own problems, if I've been in a bind or needed help of any sort, she has always been the first to rush to my aid -- she's saved my ass more times than I can count at this point. For example, she's sent me Walmart gift cards when I've been too poor to eat, and has refilled my phone minutes when I was in danger of being completely out of them and desperately needed access to my phone. She's never asked for anything in return or repayment and never would, though regardless of that I always do everything I can to make it up to her when I can do so -- usually in the form of gift cards or my tie-dyed shirts, which she loves. My point is that Andrea is genuinely a wonderful person, and she perseveres even though life has taken a big shit on her as of late.

"I live alone," I told her, "I'm single, with three cats, in a house. I have a car that runs, and (most of the time) I don't have to worry too much about money. I'm independent, I'm getting a higher degree, and I'm happy enough for the moment with where my life is and where it is going. Have I closed myself off a bit from a lot of people? Perhaps, but I'm relatively content."

I told her this because after her own breakup, she's in much the same situation I am now -- though there are a few differences. For one, she's allergic to cats (she has a dog), owns a nicer car than I do, and has a high-paying job. She, like me, lives alone, has few friends in town, and is bored/miserable/lonely a lot of the time. Her financial situation may be a bit better than mine, but we're relatively in the same boat, so to speak.

"Now," I continued, "I do live a solitary sort of life. You know this. There's a balance that I keep in my life, a balance of living it on my own terms without having to worry about interference or problems created by anyone else. Now that I've been single and alone for some time, I am afraid that a relationship with another woman would either disrupt or completely destroy that balance."

I'm relatively paraphrasing myself, of course. I can't remember exactly what it was that I said, but that's what it boiled down to, really.

I do remember saying that I do not expect to, nor can I picture, falling in love again any time in the foreseeable future. With anyone. What may have sounded implied here was that the last one was problematic enough, but that isn't what I intended by saying it -- it's just that I cannot picture myself in a relationship again any time soon, and, more than that, cannot fathom anyone wanting to be in a relationship with me. At all.

It's not that I don't think I'm attractive or that I have an attractive personality -- believe me, I do think those things. I know I'm decently good-looking, at least a 6 or 7 on the classic 1-10 scale. My self-esteem is so high that it flirts with, and sometimes surpasses, the realm of narcissism (ask anyone I know, especially my former girlfriend). It's just that I'm so far removed now (mentally, of course) from a typical "boyfriend/girlfriend" situation that if a woman told me she was attracted to me, my first response would be something along the lines of who, me? Why? You DO know me, right? You really want...this? Seriously? Really, there are better guys out there, you know, guys who aren't in $25k of student loan debt, guys who have their collective shit together. I'd be endlessly intrigued. I'd ask too many questions. I'd examine her attraction to me under a figurative microscope to figure out what the hell was wrong with her.

Please note that this statement will probably make me sound like I'm severely depressed. I'm not. Seriously. In fact, I feel absolutely awesome most of the time. I'm just trying to examine my thoughts and emotions from a purely scientific perspective, because it intrigues me.

I'm not looking for anyone or anything right now in the relationship world. I'm realistic; I'm focusing on myself. It may sound really, really self-serving and egotistical, but I'm looking to take care of all of the important things in my life, and as you already know, romantic entanglements, infatuations, or other things of that ilk generally tend to keep me from taking care of those things. Or at least I think so, anyway.

Andrea told me that it sounds like I'm taking the easy way out, that these things are just what I'm telling myself so that it doesn't hurt as much to be alone. Maybe she's right, and deep down in my subconscious or unconscious, there's just a little boy who wants to be loved. She said, however, that while I can be realistic about a lot of things, I should have hopes. I should have optimism, especially about love. It's apparently the one thing I should have very high hopes about.

"My hopes revolve around me actually graduating from this program and quickly finding a job somewhere so that I don't end up starving, homeless, and/or living out of my car with $25k of student loan debt," I said.

Those are my hopes. Those are my worries. Compared to those things, not having a woman in my life isn't important to me, nor is it a problem. I have goals, and those goals are not to end up on the street after spending three years getting a degree. I don't begrudge anyone else for wanting to be happy, for wanting to be in a relationship with a loving partner -- least of all Andrea, who deserves such happiness more than anyone I know -- but it's so absolutely not on my list of priorities or must-haves. The most I can hope for is survival and a bit of luck that when I finish my degree, I land somewhere in a job which will allow me to support myself and begin paying those loans back.

Through all of this, of course, I see friends roughly my age who are more or less "growing up"; one of my friends told me this week that she's secretly eleven weeks pregnant, and has been waiting (and will still wait) to announce it for a while. Several more friends have gotten engaged in the past few months, as well. Another friend just bought a new car, and two more friends just bought a house. All of these people are successful and have had their life plans work out in their favor. While I'm not competing with any of them in any way, it would be nice if my own life plans could work out in my favor as well -- so I'm doing everything I can to ensure that will happen. I do have optimism; it's just not the sort of optimism one might expect me to have. If this means I focus on some things more than others, and deem some things more important than others, oh well. It's not like I live a joyless life, just a mostly solitary one.

For the record, it's not like I'd be opposed to a relationship, as I've said before here on the blog numerous times -- it's just that I don't see one happening, am not looking for one, and I'm just, well, apathetic to the concept for the moment. Why this blows so many people's minds is beyond me. It's almost like I'm some sort of asexual alien if I'm not continuously on the prowl. Especially at my age.

I swear, people. I swear.

Night Booms

It's 3:30 AM. The trains running through Newton are very loud tonight; not with their whistles, mind you, but with their coupling/uncoupling of cars. When they do this (frequently, of course, as Newton for some reason is still a major train hub for BNSF railways), it creates a rolling, thunder-like booming noise that echoes across the plains and is very audible within my home about two miles from the train station.

The whistles are omnipresent and annoying as well, of course, but I must remember that living here is much better than when I lived in the former girlfriend's old parents' place, which was not only twenty feet from the train tracks but about 50 yards from an intersection with the road. If you don't live in an area with trains, this probably doesn't sound like a big deal to you until you realize that, by law, a train must blow its whistle every time it crosses through an intersection with a road, day or night, regardless of time or weather.

One doesn't realize how loud a train is, or the vibrations one creates, when one passes by a house every hour or so. When I was living there (for only a short month or two, before we moved to Kansas for school) I had it timed to almost an exact set amount of minutes -- usually 47 to 55 -- between trains. 24 hours a day. It was maddening. As much as I loved that little town, I would never, ever choose to live there (or anywhere else that close to train tracks) again.

Newton, where I live, has the only Amtrak passenger station that I know of between here and Kansas City. There's not one in Wichita, and if there's one in the larger cities to the north like Topeka, Lawrence, or Manhattan, I don't know about it. It's amusing that they'd keep it here, in a town of less than 20,000 people, in the middle of nowhere. Newton is the smallest actual city I've ever lived in, and most people wouldn't even call it a city. Yes, there's a downtown area with a main street, post office, and lots of shops, but it really is a small town with a small-town mentality about it. I'm surprised the newspaper still publishes six days a week (it does) because nothing of importance really happens here. Most of the stories published in it when I worked there were reprints of stories from the Associated Press. Oh, they were new stories, to be sure, but so little happens here that the paper was filled with them on a daily basis.

The point of my writing about the town and about the trains here is because for a lot of us in the department/program who either don't have a really reliable car and/or don't want to drive their car cross-country for incredibly long distances, the train station is their easiest and/or cheapest option for travel. The very notion of traveling by train in 2012 is rather quaint and old-fashioned to me, personally. I would much rather drive or fly. I mean, as I said, it is 2012. If my Monte Carlo were reliable enough to do so (it's really, really not), I'd drive back and forth to visit my parents three or four times a year, as the money factor (read: gasoline) would be about the same cost. However, many of us in the department apparently aren't huge fans of driving long distances, so they take trains to different destinations. At least a handful of them do, anyway.

The AWP conference is a month from today, or at least that's when it starts. For anyone in the writing world, this is (as they say) a big deal. The AWP, or Association of Writers & Writing Programs, is probably the biggest literary organization in the country not just for established authors, but as they say in the name, writing programs. As in, what all of us are a part of at Flat State University. I've never been to it, but it is my goal to attend it next year as a way to put something interesting on my CV and celebrate what may very well be the last year of my college education ever, depending on whether or not I decide to go on to a PhD program. This year, it's being held in Chicago, which is close enough to entice a large number of my fellow graduate students to go (not that they wouldn't have gone anyhow). The route most of them have chosen to get there is by train.

See where this post is headed now? Good.

I have volunteered (or, more appropriately, I have been volunteered) to be the shuttle for what may amount to seven or eight friends in the department to get to the train station here in Newton. How this will work isn't exactly clear as of yet, especially since every single Amtrak train makes its stop in Newton at three in the morning. I'm not kidding when I say that, either -- you want to travel by train? You've gotta take the red eye. Always. As all of us teach or attend classes (at least we will on the day/night they leave, the 28th), this makes the situation interesting. The 28th is a Tuesday, which not only starts my week but is the longest day of it. I now have the responsibility of figuring out how a group of my friends can get up to Newton and on a train to Chicago at 3AM, when I would normally be waking up two hours later to start my Wednesday.

"Can we park our cars at your house?" one of them asked me.

"Well, yes," I said, "but there'll only be enough room for about two of them, max. On-street parking."

This is true; while I have a wide driveway and only one car, it is shared with the neighbors on the other side of my house (it's a duplex) and they have two cars that they park in a staggered fashion because both of them work odd hours and need to be able to get in/out. The street in front of my mailbox (acceptable enough for friends to park in) is only wide/long enough for about two vehicles, maybe three if they're all tiny compact cars and they park with their bumpers almost touching and tires rubbing the curb. Obviously, friends can't park in my driveway or I would be unable to get in/out of it myself.

"Hm, that may be a problem then," he replied.

Like I said, there's a large number of them going, traveling together, etc. I can't do much about that, really. It's not like I can magically create more street parking space, or invade the space of my neighbors on the street.

"Are there any good bars in Newton?" was the next question.

Haha, no. Not anymore, anyway. I must remind you these are graduate students, and -- especially when traveling and/or on vacation -- they tend to drink copious amounts of beer and liquor. Apparently when traveling by train, as well, you can take as much alcohol as you want with you. It's not like an airplane. So I'm assuming that by 3AM when the train leaves, all of my friends will be quite drunk or definitely "on their way there," as the saying goes.

I am aware of but two bars in Newton; both are "cowboy bars," which is a nicer way of saying they're total hole-in-the-wall dive joints that cater to rednecks and white-trash clientèle. One of them is about a mile from my house, give or take, and the other is on main street. The one really nice bar in town, the blandly/succinctly-named Sports Bar and Grill, went out of business and closed down almost a year ago. This, really, is too bad, as they made some of the best bar food I've had in years.

Yeah, like I've said before, this is a boring town in which nothing ever happens and there's nothing to do.

"How far is the train station from your house?" was the next question.

"About two miles or so," I replied, "give or take."

This is true; the train station is in the dead center of town, and the train tracks therefore bisect our town into two sections. There are seven tracks, all laid together, that run southwest to northeast. Crossing said tracks also lets me know just how badly I need new tires and shocks.

"Shit, we could walk that if we had to."

This may be true as well, but everyone is forgetting that the conference isn't for another month, and we've had a very, very warm and nice winter thus far by Kansas standards, with the temperature reaching almost 70 degrees half the time. That's bound to change. It would not surprise me if the weather took a 180 and we got an absolutely hellacious snowstorm around the time of the conference -- February is not usually the kindest month when it comes to what mother nature can dish out here in the great plains. I will remind you that it was last February when we got a freak snowstorm which, over the course of about three days, dropped a foot of snow on the area, canceled classes at the university for two days in a row, and made the temperature fall to around -5, with -25 to -30 wind chills. Anything can happen in a month. Kansas weather can turn on a dime, folks.

Again, I will remind you that my car desperately needs new tires, and isn't prepared to drive in a foot of snow, even around Newton.

I'm really not sure what the "game plan" for this trip thing will be yet; what will more than likely happen is that I'll end up ferrying two or three people up here in the Monte Carlo (for, even though the car is a land boat, it has a tiny backseat) after class that night and will drop them at the train station (or downtown, so they can drink) when necessary, and the others will probably carpool in a vehicle or two and park on my street for the duration of the trip, then come back and pick up their cars when done, etc. But who knows, really; it's a month away. I'm happy to help, of course, even if it ends up inconveniencing me -- I know they'd do the same for me. The department may be a dysfunctional family at times, but we're still a family -- we help each other out.

Perfectly fitting to end this post, of course, I hear a train whistle in the distance. It's 5AM, and I'm exhausted. It's time for bed. More soon, when I have more to update.

Interesting Things, Good and Bad

Spring semester: day nine

I have been incredibly busy (shocking, I know, as I hadn't expected to be) and very, very sleep-deprived all week. I have come to the conclusion that the only days I can sleep normally and get any real rest -- probably until May -- will be on the weekends and on any other days I may get off during the semester. On weeknights I average anywhere from 2-4 hours of sleep, work through my days like a zombie, and barely remember anything I've said or done by the time I've finished with my day.

This is, of course, problematic on several levels. Unfortunately, I don't have much of a choice in the matter right now. By the way it looks, it'll take me not just one or two but several weeks before my body gets used to going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up at 5AM again. As it stands, it's already been incredibly hard to function even with copious amounts of coffee.

I was reminded this afternoon that hey, my car still needs work when, out of the blue, it took me several tries to get her started, which in the summer (when it was really hot) wasn't a rare occurrence, but hasn't happened in a while. I'd gone out to get gas and to go to the discount grocery store, and after filling the tank she didn't want to start for a minute or two. This also reminds me that I desperately need to do my taxes soon -- which I've inadvertently been putting off -- so that I can have money to fix her up. She also only has ten miles to go before her scheduled oil change, according to the sticker on the inside of the windshield -- but over the last eight months I've owned the car I've put no less than four quarts of new oil into it when needed (and have two quarts as spares in my garage, ready to go), so I'm guessing I can put that off a little longer if I have to -- though I don't really want to.

This week I learned that one of my many poetry submissions has (finally) been accepted into a rather high-end, fairly reputable literary journal. I'm not going to name the journal or the poem here, because nothing has been finalized yet, but that certainly lifted my spirits a little. It made me feel like I've accomplished at least one little thing in my career as a creative writer. It will be the first and only piece of my creative work that I've ever had published anyplace. Yes, I wrote scores of articles for the newspaper when I was a reporter, and had dozens of bylines and credits, but none of that was my creative work; I was just doing my job, and my job was a newspaper reporter. Having one of my poems published carries a lot more gravity for me. In a way, it sort of validates me as a writer.

And then I realize that thousands of writers get their works published every day, and it knocks me down a peg. It's nice, I'm stunned/humbled/etc., but aside from telling a few friends in the department about it (as well as our esteemed poetry professor), I haven't really spread it around much. I don't want to be "that guy," which I also told our professor. I can be smug and brag about it when I get thirty or forty poems published in different magazines or journals -- but for now, it's really not a big deal. We have a lot of talent in our department; most of these folks have been published in lit mags a lot more prestigious than the one I'll be in. As a writer, believe me, I realize that I still have a long way to go before I can be proud of myself.

In other news, life around the house has been fairly quiet, aside from the dishwasher. The dishwasher is new(ish); my landlord installed it last summer when the old one began leaking all over the floor. Now, apparently the new one's drain line is clogged or something; it will wash just fine for about 20 minutes, then when it hits the rinse cycle (presumably) it will go into auto-drain, or "error mode" and turn itself off, because its sensor realizes there's too much water in the bottom of it, and it takes forever for all of the water (water that's pooled in the bottom of the dishwasher about an inch deep, mind you) to flow down the drain. No leaking or anything, just, well, it doesn't want to wash a full cycle anymore.

No, I don't know how to unclog a dishwasher's drain, or its drainage pipe, and I'm guessing that pouring Drano down the bottom of it would be a bad idea. So it looks like I'm going to do a little troubleshooting online and see if I can figure out what to do with it, and if I can't, I'll have to call the landlord to see if he can get a repairman out here to work on it one day that I'm home. Unless it starts working normally again, of course. What I do know is that if it is a clog, it's between the dishwasher and the sink, because all of the other drains/sinks/toilets in the house are working perfectly fine and draining normally. So, really, it's just strange. Oh well. I don't cook enough to worry about desperately needing the dishwasher on a daily or weekly basis, even; as a single guy in school, it's not like I'm ever home to cook anymore, and even when I am I rarely have the energy or desire to do it.

I've also found that I don't know how to clean the interior of a coffee pot anymore. At least not the one I have. Y'see, I have a Hamilton Beach BrewStation -- you can see it here -- and I've been the proud owner of it for about, oh, four years now. I love it. It's the best (and, as you can see, most expensive) coffeemaker I've ever owned. The coffee is super-hot, and I can push my cup against the button and fill it up at any time during the brewing process. It also has an automatic shut-off after a few hours, so that if I forget to turn it off, it'll turn itself off. In short, it's been pretty effing perfect for me for the past several years.

However.

Over the past few months, no matter how often I clean it, the dispenser nozzle keeps getting clogged. It's the little port at the bottom of the inside of the pot that the liquid coffee exits through that's the problem. It's a little mesh dome (like a miniature filter that keeps any stray grounds out of your brew) that the coffee flows through. And it gets clogged with lots and lots of what can only be described as coffee remnants. Have you ever left a pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove too long and the bottom of the pot gets caked-on, burnt-on sauce stuck to it that needs to be soaked off in the sink for hours? It's like that, but with coffee.

And it's nearly impossible to scrub clean or scrub off, no matter what I do. Usually I'll run it through the dishwasher a few times (the pot comes apart so you can do this) but with the dishwasher being on the fritz right now as well, that's not really an option. So, for the moment, I've let it soak in the sink in scalding hot water and a ton of Ajax dish soap, to see if I can scrub it off later.

Even if I can, it's sort of a moot point at this juncture -- it'll work for another week or so before it becomes clogged up again, and there's not much I can do about that. It sucks so much that I've considered just donating it to Goodwill and getting another coffee pot from Walmart or someplace. I do have an $8 backup coffee pot that I keep in the kitchen on the counter (oh yes, I am so addicted to caffeine that this is a single-man, two-coffee-pot household), but there's something about the way my trusty BrewStation makes coffee -- it's just, well, tastier.

Yes, again, I know -- first world problems.

Anyway.

Because I've made several trips to the discount grocery store here in town over the past few weeks and have bought many, many Powerbars and other energy/protein bars to take to the office and hide in my desk drawer, I've become known as the department's "Powerbar dealer." Like a drug dealer, only less cool (and a lot less profitable). Rae has started a Powerbar fund, which basically means I supply the goods and dollars get put into an envelope in the same drawer as the Powerbars. It's nothing short of hilarious, and sounds like the plot of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Anytime someone wants to come to my office and give me a dollar for five bars (which is how much I pay for them in the store), they can do so -- whether I'm there or not -- and put a dollar in the envelope. It's a trust-based system; the only people who eat 'em for free are me, my officemate, and occasionally Suri if she wants one or two of them (which tends to be a rare occasion, as she eats super-healthily and brings home-cooked meals to school).

Not surprisingly, as they tend to vanish quickly, I keep a stash of my own special favorites/flavors hidden in the office where nobody else knows they exist.

I had a poem up for workshop this week, as I mentioned here before, and our group tore it apart. Which, of course, I was expecting -- it needed a lot of work if it was going to be properly workshopped, and if I'd had the choice, I wouldn't have workshopped it at all. I'm never nervous for workshop or anything like that -- if I didn't want a piece of mine to be considered for workshop, I wouldn't put it in the packet -- and, really, I immensely enjoy being thrust into the spotlight for an hour or so in the class. Workshop, with our group and with our professor, is the biggest reason I'm a member of this program, hands-down. It's my favorite part of the graduate school experience.

After I got home from workshop that night, I received a text message from Jay. It read, and I quote, "Liked the poem tonight. Don't let those vultures ruin it for you."

Which, of course, I found hilarious, but also humbling.

The next day, our esteemed professor pulled me aside and said "Really, I kind of liked the poem," with a sort of baffled, apologetic tone in his voice. Apparently everyone thought I'd gotten completely shot down and raked over the coals except for me. Maybe I did and didn't really notice it; knowing what that workshop is like, I've had a lot less productive/more vitriolic ones over the years I've been here. I think it's the new room we're in, which allows for a lot more of an intimate discussion than we've had previously.

Either way, the poem in question needs a rewrite and edits anyhow if I ever want to do anything with it; it was one of those poems I wrote just to have something to put in the packet. Maybe if I were more invested in it, I would've been offended. Somehow, though, I doubt it.

The former girlfriend, by the way, is "sitting in" on the workshop with us, as it's her last semester as a student here. This isn't a problem, or anything; in fact, of everyone I've ever had workshop with, she tends to give some of the best criticism on not only my own work, but everyone else's. Enough time has also passed since our breakup for everyone else in the program to realize that hey, the two of us are still friends, still social, and it's not awkward. Which, truth be told, was something a lot of our mutual friends were probably quietly worried about.

The rest of this weekend will be focused on trying to relax and catch up on sleep somewhat, as well as taking care of a few odds-and-ends errands (I have to pay the rent, etc). Remarkably, I don't have any homework this week for my editing class, and have very little to do for my students, so the plan is mostly to decompress for the next three days and to watch a movie or two. I purchased Kevin Smith's newest film, Red State, on Blu-ray last week, and I haven't had the chance to watch it yet -- so that's probably on the docket. If I'm bored enough (or actually remember to do so) I may draft out my taxes before formally doing them. Shouldn't take too long, really. Other than that? Normal stuff like laundry, dishes, and cleaning awaits me.

Hopes and Dreams

Spring semester: day six

Longtime readers of this blog know that I always suffer from insomnia, sometimes worse than others, on Monday nights during the semester. This is because, as you know, I have Mondays off -- it's like another little "weekend day" for me. I've never taught on a Monday, and haven't had a Monday class since my very first semester as a graduate student eighteen months ago. Therefore, it's very hard for me to sleep on Monday nights because, really, I'm required to get up on Tuesday morning at 5AM regardless of when I go to bed. If I've slept until noon on a Monday (as I did today), it's rather difficult for me to go to sleep ten or eleven hours later most of the time. My body tends to function on a "sleep ten hours, stay awake for 24 or more" sort of pattern if left to its own devices, something that graduate school throws a huge wrench into. Graduate school and my responsibilities within it makes my sleep schedule really erratic -- sometimes it's more along the lines of "stay awake for 36 hours, sleep for five or six, repeat" sort of erratic.

I can't really complain, though; I am on campus only three days a week, which is really two-and-a-half days most of the time, as on most Thursdays I can leave and come home shortly after noon when I'm done teaching. This semester I've found that it's imperative that I get to campus ASAP in the mornings, as for some reason parking on campus as well as interstate traffic has been worse on a day-to-day basis than I've ever seen it. This means I'm out the door by around 6:30 every morning now when I would normally leave 20 or 25 minutes later.

I have, however, worked my schedule around most of this; yes, I may be tired in the mornings, but I can force myself to trudge upstairs, make coffee, shower (if I didn't the night before) and wake up before my drive. The time spent in my office between about 7:15 and 9:10 with another pot of coffee also allows me to continue becoming super-alert, and powers me through my teaching that follows thereafter.

Theoretically, if I wanted to, I could stay up all night tonight and all day tomorrow, but by the time I got home a little after 7PM I would be a total zombie, running on 30-32 hours straight of being awake, and an incredibly large amount of coffee. If I can't force myself to sleep tonight, that may be the only solution. After all, I can always crash when I get home and sleep until 5AM the next morning if I need to. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be a problem, really. The problem is actually staying awake that long and being functional while teaching/taking my own classes without becoming delirious.

Today was spent answering a few student emails and making a shopping trip to Walmart for the week. I've lost two more students who I had last week, and gained one more, in the past 24 hours. Yeah, it looks like the next week or so is going to be really sort of shaky before my roster settles down. I now have 18 students in one class and 22 in the other, and hope the proverbial smoke settles soon before we really get into the hardcore lessons and readings later this week.

The trip to Walmart was fruitful, at least, without being incredibly expensive. I got a few extraneous items (more shirts to dye, a Blu-ray copy of V for Vendetta to replace the one the former girlfriend took with her when she moved out), but mainly I got the essentials for around-the-house cooking, cleaning, and cat care.

I'm up first for workshop tomorrow night in our poetry class. The poem in the packet that we'll be workshopping isn't one that I'm particularly proud of, or even one that I was really planning to eventually workshop; it was, really, just one that I threw together (albeit a new one) to have something to provide in the packet. Because of the way our professor's workshop functions, we generally get to pick any poem we've submitted over the course of the semester when it's our turn, and he goes in alphabetical order down the roster to pick who's "up" for the week. This time, he decided to do it in reverse alphabetical order, and I'm the last one on the list alphabetically...so, of course, I go first. As we've only submitted one poem thus far this semester -- last week's poem on the first day of class -- that's the one that I'm getting workshopped.

The one I'm bringing in tomorrow is actually a poem I'm quite proud of, written about the murder-suicide death of a close friend's fiance (no, I'm not kidding). It's actually a poem that I would want to workshop, but alas. I may do it the next time around, but maybe not. It depends on whether I can write some more worthwhile work this semester in the meantime.

I've become rather lax about my actual writing work; I've been so uninspired as of late. I haven't sent out any new submissions to magazines or journals since November (I checked), and the only time I've been writing anything new since around that time has been for the workshop class itself -- so, really, it's not been much. I can't seem to hit a stride or catch a proverbial foothold upon which I can anchor myself and write some really good work. I wouldn't call it writer's block; I'd call it a general mindset of blah, what's the point sort of feelings.

There have been times where I've briefly questioned, internally, why I'm in the program. Not in a good lord, your work sucks, why are you here sort of sense, but in more of a what are you accomplishing with your life sort of sense. I've mentioned before that being in the creative writing program at Flat State University is a very insular environment, and I must keep reminding myself that my education is not real life, it's not anything close to real life -- it's school, it's a community of like-minded individuals who are killing time and burning money just like I am, a community of people who may or may not "make it" in the real world after all of us graduate, despite our best hopes, dreams, and plans. Rae got me thinking about this subject tonight after reading one of her own blog posts, but let's face facts, people -- five years from now, when all of us are done with our MA and MFA degrees, all forty or so of us in the department, mind you...maybe ten of us, if that, will actually be working in any sort of field that we enjoy, or that we even went through the program for in the first place. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that there are many more MA, MFA, and even PhD graduates out there than there are jobs in their fields to employ them.

This reminds me of a conversation I had about six years ago with one of my regular customers when I was working at the grocery store back in West Virginia. I told her that I had a Bachelor's in English, but I was working in a grocery store for very little money (about $6k a year at the time, $5.40 an hour, not kidding) because I'd applied for over 500 jobs -- yes, I kept count -- for everything from clerical/secretarial work to laboratory work (I had experience in both), and couldn't get more than four interviews, all of which rejected me.

"Look at me," she said, holding up her EBT card, "I have two MBAs, and I'm on foodstamps."

This conversation has stuck with me for many years not because it's heartbreaking (though it is), but because it taught me a valuable lesson: sometimes there's just not a place out there for YOU as a person to be able to survive, no matter what hopes, dreams, education, or degrees you have. I'm sure that very, very nice lady had hopes and dreams too, just like the rest of us -- but she couldn't make them come to fruition, and was instead forced to stay living in West Virginia, stuck there, needing desperately to be on foodstamps just to be able to eat.

I've never had a job that's paid over $9 per hour, and never expect to find one that pays that well ever again, regardless of the fact that in a little more than a year, I'll be graduating with my MFA. The closest I ever got to my "dream job" was when I was a reporter/webmaster for the local newspaper. I got to live my Clark Kent fantasy for a little over a year, minus the alter ego. Still, I have friends who have graduated from much better schools than I have who are making a fair amount of money in the newspaper business even now. They'll be the first ones I call when I graduate if I can't find any work.

The rest of us? I'm sure several of us will find work adjuncting for either our own school or some others, or going into junior/community colleges to teach classes. Some others will go into the publishing business, some into editing, and a few will probably find a job that is somewhat close to what they wanted to do with their lives in some respects. Some of us may even be able to make a real living by becoming full-fledged-and-semi-famous popular, published authors. Being realistic, however, most of us will be down and out, looking for work anywhere we can get it, and if we can't get it, moving onward to work towards a PhD (provided a school accepts us and/or we have the money to do so). That's just the facts. That's what writers have to deal with in their chosen profession, and it's something a lot of people who aren't writers will never understand -- we either "make it" or we don't. If we don't, we either go back to working in retail or some other equally awful job in order to pay back our student loans, or we rack up more and become "professional students," moving forward with a PhD or even post-doctoral work in a school someplace else, living a year at a time and hoping something will change and/or fall into our collective laps.

I make no bones about it -- as much as I would absolutely hate to do it and want to kill myself every night after I got home from work, I am fully prepared to go into working in retail or in a grocery store again if it's that or being homeless/starving. I have bills to pay, I have cats to feed, and I own a car that needs gasoline in it if I ever want to be able to leave the house. My point is that in a program like ours, which is so incredibly insular, I think a lot of us are living on false hopes and dreams and are not going to be prepared in the least to enter the real world after graduation. It's sad to say that, but I really do think it's true. Most of these kids are just that -- kids. Most of them have never been out of school for any length of time or forced to live in a real world environment. These are kids who have gone straight from high school into undergrad, and then straight from undergrad into graduate school, all on the assumptions that once they finish their Master's degree of whatever they're studying, the world will be throwing jobs at them like they're Bon Jovi and jobs are panties. Let me tell you, this does not happen.

There are only a few of us in the program who are my age or older. All of us of that age are in the program because we want to be, yes, but because we also know that at the time we joined it, it was probably the last, best option for us to actually further our collective educations and find a way to pay the bills by teaching at the same time. Of those of us who are older, all of us have spent time in and worked in the real world in some fashion or another and know what it's like.

As Ray said in Ghostbusters, "I've worked in the private sector. They expect results."

I've worked a plethora of jobs over the years. I've been a cashier, stocker, or both for four different grocery store chains. I've worked as both a laboratory assistant (mostly clerical work and cleaning) and as a laboratory technician (mixing formulas, making mediums, and doing other technical/mechanical stuff to keep a fully-staffed microbiology laboratory running). I've been a newspaper reporter for two different newspapers, as well as a webmaster/layout designer for the last one. Since 2005 I've also been running several online businesses printing/selling t-shirts with designs and art on them. Now I'm an English instructor and graduate student -- and a damned good one -- but being able to say that, or anything else about what I've done over the years doesn't guarantee me any degree of success after I graduate. There are no guarantees of anything, and there's a much greater possibility that some of us, regardless of age or experience, may have no hope whatsoever after graduate school, especially in this state and with the economy as bad as it is.

These are all frightening thoughts, to be sure, but for now all of them are out of my hands as well as everyone else's hands. This is why I live in the moment. This is why I'm able to remain calm and laid back about most situations -- I don't worry about things I can't control, and likewise I don't try to control those things either. I deal with problems as they come up, and deal with them in the most efficient, all-encompassing ways possible. Why plan ahead? Why worry about the future? The stress will give you high blood pressure and/or a heart attack, and you'll die an early death all miserable and alone.

I've always followed some version of this life perspective since I was a child, and even more so now that I've been single for almost six months. I focus on the present, on the day-to-day. Am I able to plan ahead for some things? Yes, of course. But in the vast majority of my daily life, I just tend to wing it. You can't plan everything. I know I can't. If you try to plan too much, or think too far ahead, you'll go insane. Is anyone's life stable enough to plan a year ahead anymore? Even six months? I know mine's not. And I bet yours isn't either. So live in the moment. Are things good for you right now? Do you have a home, a car that runs, a job to go to and someone (in my case, three little furry someones) who is happy to see you when you come home? Today, do you have enough food to eat, running water, and electricity? If you answered "yes" to all of these questions, then don't worry about what's going to happen a year from now, or five years from now, or what-have-you. Focus on your life now, because it could be much worse. Focus on the people in your life who care about you. Follow your dreams, yes, but take care of the important stuff too. Realize that the "big picture" is not set, and, in fact, is ever-changing. But most importantly, realize that things may not work out the way you want them to, and if they don't, oh well -- that's down the road, and out of your control until you get there. Trust me, living life on your own terms, taking things as they come day by day is a lot less crazy and hectic than planning for every little eventual detail.

On that note, I'm going to attempt to sleep for a few hours before I start my day at 5AM. Hopefully this post, however, helps you deal with your life a little better than you did before you read it.

Smoke and Fire

Spring semester: day five

There are few things I appreciate more than having Mondays and Fridays off, especially in the winter. When it's nice outside I don't really appreciate it as much, but when it's cold/windy/rainy (as it was for most of the day yesterday) I really do. I haven't driven in torrential rains or snow for a while, but let me tell you (in case you don't do it yourself very often) it's not exactly the most pleasant experience in the world. Especially in a car which needs new tires.

No, I've not yet replaced the tires. It's on my to-do list, though, along with the oil change. I have to do some "shopping around" first though, especially for tire prices. It's not going to be cheap; as I've mentioned numerous times here in the blog, the Monte Carlo is a land boat. It's a fast land boat, but it's huge, and likewise it has huge tires and rims. It also may still have the same tires on it from the factory when it rolled off the assembly line sixteen years ago, which isn't a good thing for a car that's driven 150 miles every week as we head into Kansas winter.

I've been putting the gas for it on my Amazon credit card, as gas purchases award me extra rewards points for use on the site, and it prevents me from having to pay for gas little by little every week. Because of this, however, I can't put new tires on said card until I pay it off at the beginning of next month. And this time, now that I have some money again, it will be paid off completely. It's really all I've used the card for since my loan money dropped. It took over 11 gallons of gas yesterday, and tends to be averaging about 15-18 miles per gallon. This gives me between 165 and 198 miles before I have to fill it again, though I always fill it up around the 150-155 mile mark (I use the trip meter; it's incredibly useful for these calculations).

The weekend was spent much as expected -- taking care of schoolwork and running errands. I've had three more students join my classes in as many days, one of whom dropped last semester and is retaking it with me (which is good, because he knows the drill already at this point). There are still a few things I have to do today before I go back in and teach tomorrow, but the majority of my work is done and has been for a day or two.

I found out from Rae last night (and then shortly thereafter via email from other editors) that the department journal's launch party -- a journal for which I am one of the five big editors -- was Saturday night from 6-8. Of course, I found this out at approximately 5:40PM that night, when I was in the middle of baking my second of four batches of cookies for poetry workshop tomorrow afternoon. I wouldn't have known at all had I not texted Rae to tell her I'd found a present for her and the other two lovely ladies in her office while I was out shopping, and she replied asking me if I were going to be there.

Well, I'm sure I would've found out eventually, but I wasn't around my computer to check my email until later. I had some sort of vague idea about the release party going on, I just didn't know/remember exactly when it was. Our first staff meeting of the semester is on Thursday afternoon, which means I'll be sticking around a few extra hours to attend it. While I happily do all the work I need to do as an editor, it's equally important to at least attempt to keep up appearances within the journal's hierarchy as well.

As I said before, my mind's been pretty scattered recently, running in a million different directions and trying to figure out when/how I can get everything done without forgetting anything. There's really not a ton to do, but my mind tricks me into trying to take care of all of it at once, at least for the moment. I'm not completely sure my brain is completely wired into the spring semester yet; it may need another week or two to really fall into the groove of it.

Tonight, I decided to take care of that by baking the last two batches of cookies for my fellow students in poetry workshop. I'm in charge of the treats this week, and my standby has always been 2-liter sodas and Little Debbies/pretzels/chips, etc. I just wanted to get out of that groove this time around, so I decided to do something different. When I went back to the discount grocery store this weekend to load up on more Powerbars for my desk drawer at work, I saw all sorts of cookie mixes and decided to do that instead -- it would also let me use the oven for some actual baking again, something I've barely done since the former girlfriend and I broke up. So, I made the first two batches (oatmeal and oatmeal chocolate chunk) on Saturday night, and finished it up with two batches of peanut butter cookies tonight.

However, it would not be a Brandon baking experience without problems.

Before I go onward, I want to mention that the oven here in the house has had a history of going on the fritz from time to time. It's not an old oven, but it's not exactly new either. I'd say it's probably about ten to fifteen years old, and is in relatively good condition...but occasionally it will, well, overheat. I'm not sure how to describe it other than that, but what it does is get way hotter than the set temperature is supposed to be, and ends up burning whatever's inside it within the timeframe of a few minutes. It's done this two or three times in the three years I've lived here, which is a pretty good track record for an oven that sees daily use (or at least the stovetop does, anyway).

So, tonight, I'm halfway through my first batch of peanut butter cookies and am mixing up the second when, after being in the oven for only five minutes of the fifteen required to bake the cookies, I smell smoke. Strongly. The oven beeps at me and flashes some sort of error code on the LCD screen (which, upon researching later, I found just means that the oven's temperature is too high), and my peanut butter cookies are glowing -- they're literally seconds from bursting into flame inside the oven.

I throw open the door, the kitchen fills with the smoke of burnt cookies, cookies that should have had ten more minutes of baking time, and I empty the cookie sheet into the sink, running cold water over them to put out the fire. WTF, oven? WTF.

I turned the oven off, opened the window and turned on the fans, and vented the smoke out. After waiting about fifteen minutes for it to cool down, I baked another pan of cookies and the same thing happened again.

Okay, seriously, I thought, it's 11:30 at night, I'm tired, I don't want to have to reset the fucking circuit breaker for the entire kitchen just to bake a pan of cookies.

I've found that when this happens, turning off the kitchen breaker and then turning it back on -- giving the oven a "hard reset," so to speak -- usually fixes the problem.

Instead, I waited another half hour to let the oven cool down completely, door open, and then cautiously baked another pan of cookies, watching it the whole time. It worked fine. I was able to finish my batches of cookies, safely seal them away inside a big pot with lid to take to school tomorrow, and turned off the damned thing.

I swear.

Anyway, at least the cookies are baked, so that's another one of those errands taken care of.

In the morning, I must get up at a decent hour and go to Walmart for some groceries, coffee, and cigarettes. I didn't go yesterday because I figured a Monday morning or early afternoon would be one of the quietest weekday times to do shopping at Walmart, really. If I weren't so exhausted (and if I didn't have to go to bed soon to stay on a relatively normal sleeping schedule) I would go now, in the overnight hours, as I like to do. Really, though, I'd rather just sleep.

The First Week

Spring semester: day four

As hinted at previously, I discovered at least two important things during the first week of classes that I wasn't expecting:


1.) I will have considerably more work in my classes this semester than I thought I would, and

2.) After being at school all day/afternoon/evening -- whether I'm teaching, writing, in class, or what-have-you -- I can come home and have no desire whatsoever to use the internet for anything, or even touch my computer (unless I absolutely have to).


The increased workload isn't exactly a problem, really -- it's all stuff I can easily do, but it will take more time to do it (obviously). For example, I'm doing a little more research and writing for my poetry workshop than I did before, and the editing class requires a lot of memorization and will involve a 15-page retrospective paper at the end of the semester. I am lucky I have the free time to take care of the work, of course, but I can see some of it getting fairly hectic near the end of the semester when I'm reading/grading a lot of student papers as well. Still, it's a lot better than the workload I had last semester, so that's a plus.

This weekend will be spent starting a lot of that work; I already have some grading to do, and I've gotten more students than I had before, so I need to update my rosters and the like. I also need to prepare the first unit's timeline and revise the dates to make up for the one-day-later start because of the MLK holiday. On the plus side, while I have responsibilities again, at least I'm doing something productive with my time.

To "center myself," as they say, I have taken to making a few tie-dyes here and there again. Most of them are being made for gifts to friends and family, but I'll wear a few of them. I'm using new techniques/patterns and a new type of (much less expensive) dye, so I'll see what happens. The new dye is a little more messy if I'm not careful, but it also doesn't tend to fade or bleed as easily as the old stuff, either. I see this as a good thing.

It has been insanely cold this week, as I mentioned before. It's not unusual for Kansas in January, of course, to be cold. But when we were having temperatures nearing 70 in December, and in the 50s/flirting with 60 last week? Yeah, this cold snap is no fun. The temperature virtually hasn't changed all day/night today; it's been around 25-27 since I woke up this morning, and it's supposed to be really cold tonight, down around 10-15 or so. I'm not looking forward to that...but at least it's better than all of the snow my friends and family back home are getting. Andrea described Morgantown as a war zone, or something akin to that, because of the snow. Yeah, apparently they got a snowstorm. I didn't know much about it, to be honest -- It's rare that I check the weather back home. My mother told me there was a bunch of snow at the house, but then again, the house is on top of a mountain, so that's nothing new for them.

There are a lot of extracurricular engagements going on in Wichita this weekend; tonight, our poetry professor released a new book (actually, it's been available since Tuesday, and I bought my copy on Wednesday) and did a reading at one of the city's most popular indie bookstores. I could have gone to the reading/release party, but knew if I had, I wouldn't have been able to find parking, it was cold, I already owned the book, etc etc. The event wasn't publicized very much around the department except for a flyer that was placed in our mailboxes announcing the book's release/reading date long before the end of last semester -- and our professor certainly wasn't going to talk about it. Self-promotion, especially when it involves readings or book releases, seems to be two of the few things he's very humble about, and things he never mentions.

There's also supposed to be some sort of release party for our department/school literary journal as well, which releases its new e-issue sometime this week. I don't know exactly when; I've heard conflicting dates, as well as conflicting dates for the "party." Some people have said tomorrow, others have said Monday night, etc etc. I checked my email, but I must have deleted the one about the party. Oh well. Even though I'm one of the editors, I do have a fair amount of work to do this weekend anyway.

Yesterday's classes were entertaining and easy, at least. I'm not getting into the real discussions and/or assignments until next week -- their first reading assignment will be given to them on Tuesday, and their first "paper" (I use the term loosely, as it's only worth 20 points) will be assigned on Thursday. At least that's what I'm planning, anyhow. I'd like to get the little stuff out of the way so we can get into class discussion and the readings ASAP, so they can begin writing and taking care of the work in the actual course. The students seem interested enough to be there, at least, though I can tell they're bored by the administrative "let's go over the syllabus," "don't plagiarize or you'll fail," and "these are my office hours/this is what and where the Writing Center is" bullshit that I'm sure they've all heard before from countless other professors.

Still, my students look promising. I've got a lot more international and/or ESL students this semester than I had before, spread between both classes, and they're usually some of my best writers -- if quietly so. The exact opposite would normally be true for a standard English 101/102 class, but since I teach the Science/Engineering writing version, well...there's a reason they're enrolled in my class instead of a normal composition class, generally speaking.

I've been asked to attend the normal 102 practicum, which everyone else who teaches 102 (any type of 102) will attend. My arm wasn't twisted or anything like that, but I was sort of coerced/volunteered to attend it by the director of the 102 program as well as by the office's administrators. I certainly don't mind it, really; I'm on campus on the scheduled day (Wednesday) and doing nothing during the time it's going on (2-3, I believe), so it's not a problem. It'll give me something interesting to do for an hour before I go to my mid-afternoon/evening class, so that's a plus. I'm always up for learning new techniques and the like. I've been told that we'll be watching a (really expensive) series of video lectures on teaching composition for at least part of the semester, which I'm sure none of us will be too thrilled with in the long run, but still, again, it's something new.

I've said before that I love teaching, and it's true -- it's the best part about being a graduate student, and an opportunity that I find extremely valuable and rewarding. Teaching and writing (or, conversely, teaching writing) may be my ultimate calling in life, and if it is, that's okay with me. It's more than okay, really. In conversation with one of my friends this week (one who reads the blog, actually), we discussed how teaching a multitude of different classes will better our chances after graduation of being able to get a gig at a community college, small independent college, or a private high school.

My love of teaching only goes so far, however -- unless I were down to my last fifty cents in my bank account and had been living out of my car for several weeks, I never want to have to teach public high school. Ever. Everever.

Anyway.

In other news, I haven't even thought about any sort of romantic interludes yet this spring -- it has been, until I realized Valentine's Day (or, as I'll call it, Black Tuesday) is in about three weeks -- the very last thing on my mind. I'm more concerned about paying my bills and taking care of my schoolwork. Will it suck being single on Valentine's Day for the first time since 2005? Sure. Does it really bother me, since it's basically a bullshit forced-love sort of holiday that I've always despised anyway? Nope.

Yes, it'll still suck, despite the fact that I hate it. Figure out the logic on that one, folks. I'll wait.

I'm also the guy who just ordered a single, solitary pizza from Papa John's at 11:10PM. This is my Friday night, folks. Yep.

The rest of my weekend will be spent running errands (shopping, gas in the car, etc) and finishing up the homework/housework I have left to do. I'd also like to finish the second season of Community if possible as well -- I'm about 1/3 of the way through it now. Other than that, it's business as usual, folks.

Only fifteen more weeks of "business as usual" to go....

The Countdown Begins

Spring semester: day two

Due to my cunning and quick mind, I am actually home at 11:30AM when realistically, I shouldn't be and never will be again on a Wednesday during the semester unless something catastrophic happens.

Y'see, I'm supposed to have office hours from 9 to 11 on Wednesday mornings, and then work in the campus Writing Center from 12-1. As the Writing Center doesn't open until Monday, and it's the second day of classes, I told my students yesterday morning that office hours won't officially start until next week -- therefore giving me a ton of free time today, and I'll only have to be on campus for my 4:30-6:50 Editing class. Tomorrow I teach and then immediately come home to start my weekend.

Pretty sweet, right? It'll be a short, relatively painless first week.

My classes are full of lively characters; again, this time around they're mostly guys (though I do have about three or four women in each class, which is different from last semester) and they seem to be fairly interested in the subject matter or at least enthused enough by it to remain in the class. As my copies of their syllabus and diagnostic exams weren't finished before class started, the first session of each class was spent giving a course overview, talking about the books they'll need, the papers they'll write, and how the class itself will operate and flow. I had several students absent from each class (according to my roster, anyway) and I'm not sure if those folks will ever show up, but at least with the students who were there, I seem to have a good rapport with them. I hope that continues once they get into the real work of the course.

In other news, I mentioned before that Suri had gotten me a Christmas/birthday present, but it hadn't arrived before the semester ended and she flew back home to Virginia for the holidays. Well, yesterday I got it, and it's a very cute Threadless t-shirt with silhouettes of birds on power lines and a cat trying to climb the lines to reach them. Very classy. I plan to wear it sometime next week, as I already have this week's outfits laid out. I thanked her graciously for it; she's a very good friend.

The rest of the day went fairly smoothly; the afternoon poetry workshop only has about ten of us in it this semester, as everyone else in the department has taken their required number of semesters of it already (and we didn't get any new students for the spring). Instead of the really obnoxious, awful classroom we were supposed to have it in, we relocated to a smaller, more intimate conference room for class discussion, and it is immensely better than even the normal room we've always used for the workshop (as well as most other classes the department offers). There's a little more work we'll be doing every week for the class this time around, but it's fun work, challenging work. I'm looking forward to it, especially because this is my fourth (and last) workshop class I'll have to take, and it is once more with one of the most esteemed and awarded living American poets. Yeah, I've been quite lucky in my education.

Most everyone is back on campus or at least back in town now; I've seen or talked to most of them in and around the department, as anyone who had to be there braved the extremely cold weather yesterday (temperatures in the teens, wind chills around zero) to come in and do their work as per the usual. I can't tell you how nice it was to get some face-to-face social interaction with people who, as I told several friends -- were not Walmart cashiers or my cats.

For those of you who arched an eyebrow upon inferring that my cats were people, well, screw off. They're the closest thing I've got most of the time.

After I was done for the day, I drove home in the dark and cold, picked up the second season of Community off my doorstep where it had been delivered, and watched the first three episodes of it after cooking dinner...after which I could no longer keep my eyes open and summarily passed out. I awoke at 12:30 or so, turned off the TV and got a blanket, and as that was the extent of the physical activity my body wanted to allow me, I curled up in the fetal position on the tiny couch and slept until 7:30 this morning. I must've slept about ten or eleven hours -- I wasn't keeping track. I somehow knew that if I'd been awake enough to go downstairs and try to sleep, I would've ended up wide-awake again, and would've been unable to sleep more. So there on the couch I stayed.

Today, as mentioned before, I have my afternoon/evening Editing class, and then I'll be coming back home to go to bed at a fairly reasonable hour after cooking dinner and watching more Community, more than likely. While I'll have some homework and the like to take care of, I'll worry about it over the weekend when I can focus on all of it at once -- and hopefully work on my taxes as well.

Also of note -- the visiting writer this semester (my third "class," which won't start meeting until he arrives) is coming earlier than usual...as in, two weeks from now earlier. Usually the visiting writer comes in for the month of April, but his coming in February means that those of us in the program who are meeting with him for class will be able to do it now and get it out of the way. Our poetry professor told us in class last night that this is more than likely the writer's own choice and that he probably has another engagement during the normal month we'd have him here. Anyway, all of us have our first meeting with him during the first week of February sometime. I can't remember the exact date right now, but I've written it down on my calendar at work.

So, that's really all that's going on right now. The semester has begun, and with it responsibility has returned to all of our lives. I'm looking forward to it; I'm hoping it's a great one filled with mystery and excitement, or some other BS like that.

The Final Day

Today is the final day of winter break.

I say this with a bit of regret, of course. There are a lot of things I wanted to get done over this break that I never had the chance to do, forgot about completely, or was otherwise too lazy to become motivated enough to do them. This is a little disheartening to be sure, but in the end I got exactly what I wanted out of break -- a month with as little responsibility as possible. And oh, it was very nice.

The first few weeks of the semester usually aren't that bad, and during that time I can catch up on some of those things I neglected over break. I really need to get back into the swing of my writing -- usually I can produce the best stuff during the winter and spring because the competition levels are still high, but my workload is usually fairly low.

When I say "competition levels," I mean that being around my friends and colleagues once more makes me strive to do my absolute best in my writing, to step up my game. It's not exactly a competition in the sense that I must do better than anyone else, because I know that's not going to happen, and that's not what the program is about anyhow. It's more about keeping me on my toes and forcing me to continually produce good work. This is a challenge, and I see it as such. I enjoy it.

I've (now completely) finalized my schedule, and it is as such:

MON: Off
TUE: Teaching 9:30/11, office hours 12:30-3:30, Poetry Workshop 4:30-6:50
WED: Office hours 9-11, Writing Center 12-1, Editing 4:30-6:50
THUR: Teaching 9:30/11
FRI: Off

In the gaps between teaching, classes, and office hours, I'll have to find an hour per week in April to visit with the visiting poet for the semester, but other than that, there's my schedule for you. As I mentioned before, my Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester have been flipped compared to last semester. In the fall, on Tuesday I used to be able to teach and go home. Now it's like that on Thursday, which makes me able to start my weekend that much sooner. Also note that, as I said before, I have no night classes this semester. I'll be off campus by 7PM every night. This is good on many levels; the most important is that I'll be able to get more sleep.

As you can see, however, I start my semester tomorrow morning, teaching two classes right off the bat. I think I've done this every semester I've been in the program thus far, and don't really mind it that much. So, starting tomorrow morning and every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning until mid-May, I'll be getting up at 5AM, taking a shower, making coffee and drinking it as quickly as possible, and then driving in to campus to spend my day there. The pattern seems oddly familiar to me...perhaps it's because even though I have a different, lighter semester this spring, my actual in-and-out of the day tends to stay about the same.

As for the schedules of my friends and colleagues, I haven't a clue what they are. The vast majority of my friends in the department are in the same two actual classes with me -- the poetry workshop and the editing course -- but outside of that? Jay's been teaching online courses, so he's never around anymore, and a fair amount of the other guys and gals...well, they have lives outside of the department. Getting any friend time with Suri may be difficult as well, as she's in her last semester and technically doesn't have to be on campus except to teach and for office hours -- and she's teaching Monday/Wednesday this semester. I may suddenly find myself with a lot more free time and alone time in the department than I've ever had before.

In other news, I have been unable, despite my tries, to get my sleep schedule back to normal for the spring semester. I woke up yesterday at 5:10 PM. Yes, PM. In a last-ditch effort to right myself and reset my body clock, my goal is to stay up as long as possible today into the evening without sleeping, and then crash sometime after dark. If I can do this, I will sleep all night and awaken in the morning when my alarm goes off -- refreshed and (hopefully) with a reset circadian rhythm. While it's easy to throw off my sleep patterns, when I worked night shift in a grocery store for three years I also trained my body to be able to reset them just as easily most of the time. Especially when I have to, when responsibility is involved.

In the overnight hours, I did productive things. Or, at least, interesting things. To stave off boredom (and because I'd been putting it off for a few days), at 3AM I finally made my big shopping trip to Walmart before the semester starts. My receipt is a full eighteen inches long, and the trip cost me almost as much as my six months' worth of car insurance did last month. However, I came home with a LOT of stuff I needed but had been putting off buying, such as shampoo and body wash, meat, cleaning supplies, new underwear, vegetables and other ingredients for healthy cooking, some long-sleeved thermal shirts for when it gets really cold over the winter, cat food/litter, and assorted other essentials. This means I shouldn't have to return to Walmart for anything but incidentals for the next few weeks, which is good -- the weather's bound to get bad soon enough, and I'm bound to get fairly busy in schoolwork as the weeks progress as well. It's nice to have a somewhat decent stockpile of some food and other necessities around the house in case I get snowed in or something along those lines, too.

No worries about that today, though -- right now it's 55 outside. It's barely supposed to be above freezing tomorrow, though. As I told Andrea this morning, of course it would wait until I have to go back out in it every day before the temperature drops like crazy and stays there. Typical, really.

Yes, I know, first world problems.

I have loaded my messenger bag with most of the things I'll need for this week; the rest will have to be brought in on Wednesday/Thursday. At the Dollar Tree I picked up a new calendar -- no, it's not Van Gogh art, as I had for 2011...I had to go back to my old standby of muscle cars, because it was either that, kittens, horses, or lighthouses. At least muscle cars won't necessarily have people in the department questioning my sexual orientation when they see them hanging on the wall above my desk. It's already questionable enough that I wear lots of tie-dye, live alone and own three cats, and meticulously style/condition my hair. No reason to give them any more rumor fodder.

The one thing that I really, really regret that I didn't do over break is my taxes. I have all the info for them, even -- I just haven't sat down with them to do the actual calculations and dry runs to make sure everything will even out and give me a good refund. That may be a Thursday afternoon thing once I get home from class. I want to get them done ASAP so that I can get my refund processed ASAP, as you probably already gathered.

In an hour or two I shall go to bed. I think I have everything taken care of for tomorrow. What isn't is beyond my control or otherwise out of my scope of thought. I've racked my brain trying to get every little thing finished and ready, but I'm sure there's something I'll forget as I am sleep-deprived right now and/or have been otherwise mentally scattered. So, here's to the new semester -- may it be less painful than the last.

The Hermit

Days of break remaining: two

Not that I'm exactly a social butterfly anyhow -- especially over the winter break -- but social interactions for me even online have hit an all time low these last four or five days as I try to get everything done both for my classes and around the house. I'm even letting some things I wanted to do for fun fall to the wayside -- for example, I have the newest volume of The Walking Dead, which is the only comic series I've followed religiously for the past two years or so, and I haven't even read it yet...even though I know it will take less than an hour to read through. I have two new issues of Playboy, and several other new issues of other magazines I subscribe to (Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated) which I haven't touched yet either.

However, I did make homemade Chinese for dinner tonight, all of the laundry is done, the cat room is clean, I finished the first season of Community (and ordered season two immediately thereafter -- yes, it's that good), washed all the dishes, packed up all of my books and papers for next week, readied a week's worth of half-dressy outfits with which to impress my students until I can dress normally again, took a shower, fed the cats, washed the dishes, set up my new Blu-ray player, and sent messages/the course syllabus to all of my new students.

...amongst other things I'm probably forgetting, I'm sure.

Oh, I did get to laugh at Tim Tebow losing his game tonight. That made me happy. Though I will admit that it was a bittersweet happy, as the Broncos were beaten by the Patriots, who I also can't stand.

I have been awake all day/night since last night's police incident across the street at 2AM. It's almost 1AM now. I think I've had a productive day. I'm trying to right my sleep schedule again, at least somewhat, by sleeping at night tonight and getting up in the morning hours. If I can do that, I can get on a pattern, and even though I may be worn out after a few short nights of sleep for the first week of classes or so, my body will once more regulate itself and learn how to survive on four-to-six hours a night and copious amounts of coffee in the mornings. To prepare for this certainty, I have a fresh can of coffee chambered and ready to go when I get back to work on Tuesday morning, as I really can't remember how much (if any) I have in the office.

In other news, as mentioned before, my Blu-ray player arrived and I set it up with ease, testing it out with the free copy of Watchmen I got over break. It's really nice. I boxed up my old, normal DVD player and put it in the closet, as I have a feeling it won't be used again until I get another TV at some point to put downstairs in the bedroom.

Incidentally, there are only a few films I would ever want on Blu-ray instead of normal DVD, the new Star Wars collection being a few of them, but as Blu-ray seems to be the wave of the future, it looks like I might as well jump on the bandwagon now. It's not like I'm going to upgrade my collection to Blu-ray or anything. Since I bought that LCD HDTV last year when the former girlfriend and I broke up, everything I watch on it is gorgeous, even the news. So really I don't notice much of a difference. Sound is better, details are a little sharper, but that's about it.

Winding down the last two days of break, I do still have a few things left on my "to do list." I have to finish two different letters, revise a poem I've been working on (yes, I've actually been writing again), and make sure there's nothing I've completely forgotten to do that would be rather important before the semester starts. Other than that? As mentioned before, I'm not planning to do much else for the rest of the weekend.

The Last Days of Relative Freedom

Days of break remaining: three

After going to bed early last night, I was awakened at 1:54 AM by my cats growling.

Yes, my cats growl, but only when something bad is happening and/or going on. Along with the growling, I heard the distinct barks of what could only be several German Shepherds, and very close to the house. As in, in my driveway close. There was also some very loud yelling in the street.

Yes, at 1:54AM.

The fact that I didn't wake up to the sounds of yelling or dogs barking, but instead to the cats growling, doesn't surprise me at all. I grew up in a house with dogs who barked or howled at everything that moved, and the house behind mine has several Jack Russell terriers who never shut the fuck up when they're outside. The yelling's about the same -- my neighbors up the street are really white-trash folk who tend to have screaming matches and fights a lot, though usually in the summer months, and the cops have been at their home more times than I can count.

This noise, however, did not sound like it was coming from their house. It sounded like it was coming from right outside mine. And it was.

I looked out the downstairs window to see not one, but three police vehicles -- two squad cars and one of their big SUVs -- parked right in front of my home. As in, in front of my mailbox. And saw what can only be described as a "violent altercation" taking place in the driveway of the house across the street.

The dogs' barking was coming from inside the SUV, by the way it sounded, and it was the closest vehicle to my window -- no wonder the cats were scared and growling. While they scattered to hide, I threw on my clothes and ran upstairs to get a better view of what was going on -- not once turning on any lights or doing anything that would let anyone outside know I was a spectator to the debacle.

By the time I got upstairs, I saw several cops -- weapons drawn, mind you -- throwing the guy who lives across the street to the ground on his driveway and restraining him, while he screamed obscenities and other things I couldn't make out the entire time. They held their lights on him, he was fighting with them, etc. I was hoping to see video cameras rolling for his appearance on COPS, but was disappointed. They basically threw him into the back of the squad car, did an outdoor sweep of the property with their flashlights, said a few words to his wife/live-in-lover/what-have-you, and then all of them left.

In retrospect, he may have been screaming because they'd tased him. Which, if they had, I wish I could have seen.

I will take an aside for a moment and say that I live in a very nice small town with some very nice, down-to-earth people. We don't really have crime here. I think there have been less than ten murders or violent crimes in Newton, or within the entire county, in the past twenty years. Part of that's just the area of the country I live in, and part of that is because Newton has a very strong, very vigilant police force who will pull you over for questioning if you even sneeze in their direction while driving, and who actively pursue criminals. Cops get a lot of flak, but the cops I've talked to in this town over the years, mostly when I was working at/for the newspaper, have been pretty cool.

That being said, the neighbor in question was a relatively new one -- he and his woman, along with one kid, have only been living there since October or so. I remember this because I remember when they moved in, with their big truck and all sorts of redneck friends there. I've never heard any yelling or fighting coming from that house, and they seemed to be pretty happy most of the time, if loud and redneck-y (they let the kid run around the street and scream in his Power Wheels truck, etc etc). They both drive cars older than and in poorer shape than my Monte Carlo, for example, and that's hard to do. Both of them work low-wage jobs in the service industry or retail; I know this because I see them coming and going in their "work uniforms" all the time, at all hours of the day and night.

I don't get out much. Therefore I tend to look out the window a lot.

Anyway.

The police there was amusing, but not extremely surprising. A few weeks ago the cops were there as well, questioning the guy in his driveway. Then they quietly left. Not tonight. Hoo boy, not tonight. I really wish I could've seen the whole thing go down, to be honest. That's not something that happens every day.

So, I thought I'd share that interesting tale with you.

Yesterday was fairly productive; I am in the last stretch now, the last few days of break, and the last weekend of it. Because of this, I've found that there are a lot of things I have left to do before classes start back up again on Tuesday, and I am once more a slave to academia for the better part of the next four months. Therefore, I finished my work on everything for my students, and moved to focus on getting the house in order (figuratively, of course). I put new gas in the car and filled the tires up with new air, after which she handled remarkably well and purred like a kitten. I also mailed out all of my packages to my friends, so they should be receiving them Tuesday or Wednesday.

One of the last things I did, however, was visit the local discount grocery store here in town. I used to go to this place a lot, but I'm not sure I've been there since the former girlfriend and I broke up. I go there primarily because they sell Powerbars and other energy/meal/granola bars for five for a dollar. Sometimes their selection is better than others, but most of the time I can spend a few bucks there and have myself some meals/snacks to put in my desk at work for a few weeks.

Yesterday, their selection was extravagant. I ended up getting sixty of the bars (grand total: $12). There are so many that they will fill my desk drawer at work and will give me meals and snacks from them for the entire semester, if not longer. I plan to go back next weekend and get more, just so that I can have some in the house as well.

I did get a few other things, but not much. I got some snack-packs of Corn Nuts (25 cents each), some flavors of Kool-Aid I'd run out of (10 cents each), cooking oil, noodle soup packets (for my chicken noodle soup, 60 cents each), etc. I forgot to go through their rack of bread, which they get from really good local bakeries -- it's about the closest thing I can get to the D'Annunzio's bread I like from West Virginia. I also got some good frozen food -- probably the best deals they have on anything in the store aside from the Powerbars.

Upon returning home, I took care of some internet stuff, made some food, and started the fourth disc of Community, and went to bed early around 6 or 7 (since I was tired).

Community is, by the way, one of the funniest television shows I've ever seen -- and this is coming from a guy who just watched all three seasons of Arrested Development and the second season of Archer over the course of the past few weeks. If you haven't seen it yet, I really, really recommend it. I can't get enough of it, and it's one of those shows where I see the DVD sets and I'm like "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY," etc etc. It very well may be the funniest show currently on television, as many have said.

I'll finish the first season today, with just enough time to receive my Blu-ray player in the mail.

Yes. In an uncharacteristic stroke of "let's spend money on something that doesn't involve keeping food in my stomach or the lights on," I went to Amazon and purchased a Blu-ray player for $55 or so. Something like that. Aside from the few items of clothing I've bought over the past several days, it's the only "splurge a little, just for me" sort of item I've purchased in many months, and the only such item I plan to purchase for the foreseeable future. This one's supposed to be a "quick loading" model. I didn't realize Blu-ray discs took forever to load, but okay. It was one of the less-expensive ones on Amazon, at least. For $55, it can work for a while and then blow up if it wants to.

Anyway, that'll arrive today via UPS. Hopefully.

Aside from taking care of around-the-house stuff and doing school prep stuff, not a whole lot is going on. The police incident across the street was about the most exciting thing that's happened in a while. I've enjoyed my break, and lived it to the fullest by sleeping a lot, watching a lot of TV and movies, and living frugally. The rest of my weekend will be spent cooking, cleaning and doing laundry, watching football, and having some responsibility-free video game and internet time. I have but three days before everything flips back around to academic mode, and to center myself this is what I do.

No More Poor Brandon

Days of break remaining: five

I have received my student loan money, deposited and fully paid into my bank account. This means many things, of course. First and foremost, it means I no longer have to worry about paying my bills, buying groceries, or putting gas in the car. It also means that I can enjoy the rest of my break, what little of it is left, by not constantly having to worry about money problems, and can go out and do something (weather permitting, of course). As I predicted back when the days were beautiful and 55 degrees or warmer, I knew that when I got my money the weather would turn nasty when I actually had the ability to leave the house and use some of it -- well, I was correct. We're under a wind advisory today, the temperatures are supposed to drop drastically, and we're supposed to get snow flurries and snow showers for the next two days.

Because of this (and a few other reasons, i.e. I don't want to), I've decided to forgo the whole "going into campus this week" thing. There's no reason for it, really; I can post my students' syllabus on Blackboard, and tell them if they have a chance over the weekend they can download and print their own. Otherwise, they're not going to get a paper copy until Thursday. Same goes for the diagnostic essays -- I'll do them Thursday as well. Tuesday will be an introductory day where I tell them what the class is like and what books they'll need, and we'll all introduce ourselves. Etc. There's just no reason to waste my own time and gas money going to campus when I can just wait and do everything next week when I actually have to be there. It'll be a little different than the beginning of last semester, but now that I know what to do and how/when to do it for my course, everything can be streamlined a little more.

I have 17 students in my first class, and 23 in the second. That's a little more than last semester, but not by much. I'm guessing my rosters won't be "finalized" for the next two weeks or so anyway -- people will add and drop, etc. They always do. However, that's probably pretty close to the total number of students I'll have overall for the semester. I'm looking forward to teaching the class again. It's fun, it's interesting, and I tend to have good students in it.

Other than some preparations for class and receiving my money (it was deposited on Sunday and cleared completely last night), not a whole lot is going on here. I've been sleeping a lot, for roughly 12-hour stretches at a time regardless of the time of day or night. As I knew I could afford it, I went out and did some shopping for essentials at Walmart late Monday night, getting some of the stuff I knew I'd need for the next week or so. I also, for the first time in a very, very long time, got myself a burger and fries in the Walmart's interior McDonald's. It's been well over a year since I last had McDonald's food. It's also the first time I've gone out to get anything, fast food or otherwise, since the former girlfriend and I split up. Some of my reasoning has been that I was busy and cash-strapped most of the semester, but the other part of it is that I really don't get out much, and that I've been trying to watch what I eat anyhow.

Of course, another big part of it is that I'd like to be able to get a Big Mac and fries at 6AM sometimes, but noooo, all they sell is breakfast stuff then. About the only time I would want an egg McMuffin is when I'm drunk, because that's the only time it would seem appetizing. I do, however, want a breakfast of burgers and fries. Because I'm that sort of guy.

Also, fast food places don't deliver. Which is another big reason I rarely get any.

Anyway.

With the last few days of break winding down and no more money troubles weighing heavily on my mind, I'm going to enjoy said days to the fullest as much as I can. This means I may go to the movies (alone, which is depressing, at least I'm getting out of the house), catch up on the TV series and movies I have on DVD (I started the first season of Community last night), and generally laze about. Today, if I can get motivated and/or caffeinated enough to do so within the next hour or two, I may go out to Alco for a little mini-retail-therapy trip before the weather gets really cold and nasty this afternoon. They have a lot of small items on sale this week, like tissues, soap, and shampoo. This morning, I also ordered a few books on Amazon (one of them for class) and a shirt.

This shirt. Which should be amusing for those of you who have seen Arrested Development. For the rest of you it probably means little to nothing. One of the funniest things I'll read all day was in the reviews for the shirt. It read "Never wear with cut off jean shorts." Which, again, is hilarious if you've seen the show.

Anyway. That's about all that's going on right now. I will update you, of course, when anything else happens. Fare thee well, my friends.

Work, Sleep, and Taxes

Days of break remaining: seven

So, folks, over the past two or three days I haven't done a whole hell of a lot.

This is probably not surprising to you in the least at this point.

Actually, I've done quite a bit, but nothing that really matters. For example, I went shopping (finally), and purchased some groceries. I went to the Dollar Tree, and purchased some essentials (mostly deodorant, razors, shaving cream, etc). I did all the laundry and dishes, washed my sheets and blankets, and cleaned the cat room. I took out the garbage and recycling. I paid all of my bills, including making the minimum payment of $25 on my first credit card bill (the rest of it I'll pay off once my student loan drops, don't worry). Everything is, as they say, in order. For now, anyhow.

It's been a really quiet weekend, despite my errands and little household tasks. This is the last week before classes start up again -- in fact, on Friday I'll more than likely have to go to campus and make copies of my students' syllabi and put my office in order again before I go back in to teach next Tuesday. I'd do it Monday, but, well, it's MLK day and I'm pretty sure the offices will be closed and everyone will be off.

In the meantime I have a lot to do in order to prep for the coming semester; it indeed will be a rather busy week for me. Not only do I have to finish my paperwork-like stuff for my students, but I also need to be watching for my aforementioned student loan money to clear, I have to air up my tires (again), check my oil, and put gas in the car, and I need to mail my friends' packages at the post office (because, after all, who knows when I'll get the chance to do so after the semester starts). Depending on when and how that money drops, I'd also like to make a trip to Hutchinson to the Target and Kmart there for winter clearance stuff, as well as some underwear and socks -- both stores are where I get the majority of both items. However, that may not happen for a few weeks, or if at all.

That's just the short list of stuff I need to do, of course. There's always more. Always.

Most of my friends and colleagues will be filtering back into Wichita, and into the department, this week. As I've said before, I'm really about ready for the break to end. It's a break that's been filled with a lack of things to do because I've been so strapped for cash, and a break that has seen me sit in front of my computer or TV much more than would be considered healthy for a man of my age. It makes me wonder if every "vacation" I have while working in academia will be so, well, boring and poor. It's ironic, of course, that I'm poor while I'm forced to sit at home and do nothing but think about it, instead of be at work/school, which would soak up all my time and would make the days between paychecks pass a lot faster.

That, I think, should be employed as some sort of first-world torture: take away someone's money and/or all of their access to it, and lock them in a house for six weeks with nothing but the bare minimum to survive on. Shit, that almost sounds like a reality show.

In other news, I did receive my W-2 forms in the mail yesterday, joining the Kansas state tax forms I received last week. This means that I now can do all of my taxes, both state and federal, and get them mailed out ASAP. I did one of them online last year, but I can't remember which one. I just remember that it was fast. I should have a nice refund again this year, which will really be nice. That's money that will go into groceries and getting the car fixed up, especially because I've got this sinking feeling that the weather's going to get bad pretty quickly over these next few weeks or so. It's also money I can use when I visit West Virginia over spring break.

My mother has not ordered the plane tickets yet; she still has to talk with her travel agent (no, she doesn't do anything online, at all, despite my pleas for her to leap into the 21st century). If all goes smoothly she should have them ordered this week. At least I would imagine, anyway.

Yesterday was really weird. I laid down for a nap around 5PM or so...and then finally got up around 8 this morning. For those of you counting, that's fifteen hours pretty much straight (I did get up once in the middle of the night to pee). I'm guessing I really needed the sleep. Couldn't tell you what made me sleep so long, to be honest. It's not like I do anything particularly strenuous, you know. I'm guessing Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds doesn't count as "strenuous." Neither does revising my lesson plans and syllabus for my Science/Engineering writing courses. I wish I could say that I tuckered myself out from writing new poetry, but that wasn't the case either. Apparently my body was just tired, and needed to shut down for a while. Okay, fair enough, I suppose. Sometimes it scares me how long I can sleep if I have nothing else to do. I really can't do that during the semester.

My schedule in the spring, however, will be light -- so I can at least get a little more sleep than I did last semester. At least some of the time, anyway.

On that note, it's probably time for me to cook something remotely resembling dinner and go to bed soon afterwards. I have a long week of takin' care of stuff ahead of me, and the countdown is on.