When I can't find my gloves and winter finally woke from it's drunken Pagan slumber and made up for lost time.

When Brian begins to tease me about studying too much and, in fairly subtle ways, gets me to take breaks on occasion and laugh our asses off at The Daily Show and Colbert Report.

When Mari keeps asking how the cold-hearted, whip-cracking bitch of a wife is.

It is...drumroll, you won't believe this one.

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Wait for it.

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Near final's week!

This is my 15th or so final's week while in some higher education place. It's my academic quinceanera. And here I am without a good pair of pumps.

I'm not exactly thrilled about studying 3 weeks in advance for 1 exam. I'm sure you'd like an end to the last update too. But let's face facts: a 3 hour, comprehensive cellular and molecular neuroscience essay exam is not to be taken lightly. Kinda wish I didn't have to take it at all, but I've stuck it out and come out as a vague equal of students who, uh, work with all of this shit.

As a slight afterthought is my neuroimaging talk in a few weeks. I snicker while writing this. You see, with almost no exception, the people who've given presentations on a paper of their choice have been...how to put it nicely, charmingly masterful in reading from their slides. It's pitiful, and we have some Ph.D's in the audience.

I don't have the time to properly know a lot about Oxytocin and brain activity, unfortunately. I'd like to show people what a good talk actually is. (Arrogance, by Daath. Sniff the whiff). But all things considered I should just try for competent.

So all of this studying and working on my project has left only time for food and small bits of CNN or Comedy Central. I like conversations. I likely like conversations with you. But we're talking 15-30 minute breaks here. And it'll be like that for the next few weeks.

But what happens after a few weeks?

Simple: my ass is going to California. From Dec 16th to January 4thish, I'll be in LA. Mom kinda sorta vaguely hinted with a sledgehammer that staying that long would be a good idea. I'm sure gran was holding the rest of that polearm shaft with her beaming grin. (read: she's in on making me have a vacation).

It'll consist of:

1) Initial settling in
2) Writing the equivalent of a novel for a game project I've ignored for awhile
3) Daniel and Acacia/Selene's wedding
4) Seeing...um...whomever I still know in LA? Maybe GE is still out there. That'd be neat. Damned if I can think of anyone else.
5) Going out to the first goth club I ever went to--just 'cause.
6) New Year's

I'm getting some Catholic-like guilt about the idea of not doing any work for 3 weeks. That's. I haven't done that in 3 years. I honestly don't think I'm capable of being on vacation without some work. Oh you might think I'm blowing smoke up your ass, but I've been programmed quite well. Maybe some stats analyses and data crunching. You know. Something fun. And geeky. Like that.

But back to bitching about classes. I'm dreading tomorrow. We have the english prof giving lectures again. He speaks fast, draws fast, and expects me to have about 4 classes worth of material that I don't have. I'm sure some people can casually understand what an 11-cis to all-trans protein structure shift means systemically. I am not some people.

So I've been getting 7-8 hours of sleep and not having caffeine in the morning, in the hope it'll help. It kinda does. Kinda doesn't.

But there's just 2 more weeks of this. I'm going out to celebrate Melissa's b-day party tomorrow. My excuse is that I want wine, they have wine, and I haven't been group-social in awhile.

This entry was brought to you by the letter Y.

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