I'd be lying to you if I'd come to some epiphany involving useless cliches and candy-covered dog asses. Truth be told I worry and obssess over shit that seems important. What's improved over time is just how narrow my 'seems important' window is, that festive rectangular sort, greco-mediterranean and almost arrow-slitish. Very sheik. Or Greek. Something.

I feel as though I'm not enjoying the summer as much as I should. Undoubtedly there's something about this whole "working full-time at the lab but getting paid 1,000 bucks for the summer" deal that rankles me. For once I'd like to get paid what I'm worth. There's this strange mystique about professions like mine, this bourgeois eating-marachino-cherries-out-of-each others-asses-while-sipping-wine-and-sounding-terribly-important bullshit. Arguably, lawyers and doctors are paying out of the ass during professional school to get paid out the ass afterward. Artsy school people sorta have this going on, but they know it's a hit or miss job market for them.

Scientists, bar none, get the business end of the dick on this one.

[Bitching]

You might think, for instance, that I get paid a pretty healthy sum of cash. You know, having a college degree, having a good enough record to get into grad school, having 5 years of management-based and highly technical mental fuckery in my belt. Anyone might think I am eating truffles from the stomachs of nubile Japanese boys, speaking languidly to any one of several fascinating gay men and gorgeously intelligent women at opulent orgies.

This just in: reality crashed into the mid-Atlantic just seconds ago, creating a tsunami that will undoubtedly engulf all of Fantasy Island.

I make less than Wal-Mart checkout clerks who are women (since Wally World loves them that pay discrimination).

Chew on that for a sec.

So why is this? Well I can tell ya it isn't because I'm gonna be shitting Benjamins in 5 years. Ha ha. No. The average starting salary for an associate professor in my field is 35-40,000 American dollars. To some of you, this will sound like I'm complaining over champagne not coming out of my tap. To others: yes, wide eyes indeed. To everyone: a Ph.D. don't mean ya rich, well-off, or upper middle class.

So why go to school for so long just to make so little?

Because past the adminstrative bullshit, the bureaucratic horseshit, a lazy undergrad who can't be bothered to show up when she's supposed to (although the other one is spot-on fabulous), and having to deal with assumptions, cancellations, reading tea leaves by moonlight, and the feeling like I'm being scrutinized most of the time, I love my field. I love my work. You know you love your work when entering data at 11:00pm at night sounds like fun. You know you're ga-ga disgusting when working over the weekend doesn't bother you. And you know you're practically married when you get more excited over the results of an analysis than the prospect of sex.

I'm a dork; I never denied this.

[/bitching]

* * *

But I completely went off-track. I'd like to get more out of summer than what I have so far.

I have the option of taking off a week (or even two) if I wanted sometime before school starts.

Will I do this? Likely not a WHOLE week. Now, taking a friday and monday to head out and see Finch or X music festival--that is possible. My Buick needs the exercise or it starts giving me that look. Yes, I need to visit me some peoples, but damned if they aren't a dozen of hours away in most cases.

Let's see. More photography? Yeah. Need to stop in at Worst Buy and get more battery packs. I'm down to one and it lasts for 10 minutes after a full charging.

More writing? Been doing it periodically. Not short stories, not a novel, just being even more of a dork and working on that game project. Could have written a dozen short stories as the equivalent, but I enjoy this so fuck that noise.

More people? This is where I'm pretty firmly confident in the know. No. I prefer my mostly hermitish existence, occasionally communing with my great white shark animal totem, wondering why weird shit hasn't tried screwing with me lately, and wondering just how long I can wait until I get a hair cut. Well, hair buzz. The whole thing's gotta go. And considering the genetics I got, it's gonna stay buzzed kinda sorta until I'm dead. On the bright side, though, I'll probably look good with a bald head. I'd just need a pair of "I'm so fucking intelligent and artsy I can make you think I'm an asshole without saying a word" glasses. You know the type. I want those fuckers tinted and the bridge down near the end of my nose. Old school wizard meets vaguely modern me.

Oh, and the sort of hat old gay men or extremely strange people wear. Or maybe I'd go Dark City and actually wear one of my fedoras when it's cool outside. That'd be kinda neat. It'd also be kinda freaky, but hey, ain't like I'm turning mainstream heads.

So now that I feel as if I've been completely, drippingly self-indulgent and vain, I'm gonna go dress and eat something with meat in it. I have butternut squash ravioli, but the meat is upon the hills, and it calls.

Hope you're vaguely sane.

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