This semester I have 4 major papers to write (as well as several shorter ones), two 10-minute presentations to give, and have to help organize and run a Take Back the Night Event.  I don’t even know what I’m going to write about in a couple of classes, but I’m supposed to choose on Thursday.

Right now I’d rather be training for the Olympics.

Speaking of, are you looking forward to them?  What are your favorite sports?  Which athletes will you be cheering on?

I don’t see me competing unless they have a snow-cone eating contest.  How about you?

I took an anonymous “Sexual History and Orientation Survey” for my Human Sexuality class.  It got very personal and, in my case, is probably not very anonymous.  I’m twice as old as my classmates and as far as I know, the only married woman in the class; my experiences will set me apart.

Believe me.

But I went ahead and answered the questions honestly anyway.  Only the professor will see my responses, and the overall results are for the benefit of the class and our discussions.  My professor was taught by Wardell Pomeroy, a colleague of Kinsey’s who helped with the (in)famous study; he knows his stuff.

This is going to be a fascinating, intriguing, and I suspect frequently amusing course.

School makes up the majority of my life during a semester, but I realize that can be boring.  I’ll try to blog about a variety of things, or not to dedicate an entire post to school all the time.  Still, there are things that might be of real interest in one of my classes.  You’ll probably hear about that.

For example, that holiday I couldn’t remember while composing my Important Dates to Remember post?  National Pistachio Day.

Now you know.

I lay there on the couch, an exhausted ball of pain after my last- and longest – day of school this week.  Randy came home, settled in, took a look at me and grinned.

“So, how do you like getting up before me in the morning?”

How to truly express my state of being?  How to make him understand?

“It’s like this: It’s a disturbance in The Force.  It’s as though Darth Vader won.”

Wow.  Whoever used this computer last must have been a leprechaun; this chair is low.  And the mouse pad is elevated above the keyboard.  Interesting.

You know what’s really interesting?  I never told you about the little calendar of events the school posts in each bathroom stall.  It’s called The Tinkle Time News and, according to TTTN, today is Happy Hugging Day.  I don’t know if it is wishing me a joyful day of hugging, or if it is a day specifically set aside for Happy vs. Unhappy hugging.  What is unhappy hugging anyway?  Is it like a forced display affection to a malodorous relative?  And when is it celebrated?  Points to ponder.

In case you are reading this late (and why is that I ask you? Don’t you hang on my every word?) and miss out on Happy Hugging Day, you can certainly join us on January 30th when we celebrate National Bubble Wrap Day.  I’m afraid this excludes my international friends and I think I’m a bit offended by this.  I hereby declare January 30th to be International Bubble Wrap Day, because that’s the kind of woman I am.

Be on the lookout next month for Happy Umbrella Day (which begs the question “When is Unhappy Umbrella Day?” See Happy Hugging Day reference above) and something else I can’t recall right now.  I’ll have to let you know what that is the next time I have to pee.

Because, despite what you might think, I am not blogging from a toilet.

My car is fixed and fully operational.  Hurrah!  I do miss the heated seats of the loaner – it felt so good on my back! – but would much rather drive my car than an unfamiliar one.

I leave to begin Day 2 of school in about an hour and won’t get home until around 10:30 tonight.  On tap for this evening: Human Sexuality followed by Victomology.  I think the combination of the two courses back-to-back could get interesting at times.  At any rate both classes hold lots of promise.

Thanks to yesterday’s debacle I didn’t get as much of the readings for tomorrow’s classes done as I otherwise would have so I need to turn my attention to that now.  The more I read before this evening, the less I’ll have to read when I get home tonight.

As we all know, 5 AM comes awfully early if you haven’t stayed up all night to greet it.  And right now, I’d rather not stay up to greet it.

Ignoring the fact that I had to get up at an ungodly hour to go to school, let’s skip ahead to the drive:

My brakes haven’t been great for awhile but I don’t have the money to fix them.  It started a month or two ago with a squealing sound when I tapped on them gently.  They worked fine other than the noise, though, so I ignored it.  They were getting worse however so Randy had a local mechanic check them out; he said they looked fine other than a little rust on some rotary thingy (or whatever it was).    Within a couple of days, though, they began to make a grinding sound.  As bad as that seems it was very faint.  It’s been steadily getting worse, as one might expect, and I knew it was just a matter of time.

My car is a VW Jetta and it has “Tiptronic” transmission which means that it’s automatic but I can slide it over into manual.  This is a good thing.  Driving into school today I wound up having to switch to manual in order to get the car to slow down with minimum brake usage.  Of course it was rainy and there was a lot of traffic; the drive in was nerve-wracking to say the least.  Realizing that I now have no choice I called the garage when I arrived at school.  The garage is on the way home and I wanted to know if I could bring it in and perhaps get a loaner if my car wasn’t going to be ready today.  To that end I pulled out my cell and promptly dropped it in the school parking lot; the back broke off.

Hurray.

Luckily it still worked and I was able to get an appointment.  My car made it in.  Turns out the rear brakes were down to metal on metal and some “boot” or other is torn and also needs to be replaced lest it rip completely and cost me several hundred dollars more.  Total as of this writing is $630.

Ugh.

In addition to all of this I haven’t been able to access my school email today, at least not here at school (odd!) or through my cell.  It worked fine this morning from home. 

And one of my textbooks still hasn’t come in.

I can’t tell you how irritating this day has been so far.

But hey!  My hair still looks good.