Don't wanna forget, come daylight...

I decorated the christmas tree in the bookstore today. It's a hideous mess because there are two clashing sets of decorations and I put both of them on, just to be ornery. Mostly, I just started throwing stuff on the tree and couldn't stop.

That was the most exciting thing that happened today. Granted, the day isn't over, but so far the trend dictates that I'll be in bed by 11:00–a miracle of no short order.

Tim and I spent the week in Beaver's Bend, Oklahoma with his family, and thankfully didn't see a single beaver the entire time. I'm still convinced that the little bastards are pawns of the devil... beavers, that is. It's was great to go up there with everyone and just hike around and relax. Tim's family definately votes "yes" on relaxation: hiking, eating, and poker being the main events of the long weekend.

It was one of those rare and wonderful breaks where the days never seem to end and you can't believe you're still on vacation. It felt like class was canceled for a month, which is good because I needed to read "Middlemarch" (400 more pages under my considerable reading belt), and because my schedule this semester has been dastardly. I will never again wake up at 7:30 everyday. If that means creating my own job and never having children, that's fine with me. No obligation should begin before 10:00 a.m. and I should never be forced to go to bed before 2:00 a.m. If I was president, days would be 36 hours long and most of that time would be spent in leasure or personal persuits for the betterment of the world, starting with the self.

And eating.

Anyway, I've spent all day waxing philosophical about trees and influence and the meaning of life, and trying not to buy unnecessities on the internet. Our last newpaper meeting is tonight. Good riddance.

You're something like a phenomenon...

Alright... I've been composing an entry about those things for which I give thanks for a couple of weeks. It's largely stored in my head, but the thing is, there are so many things I'm thankful for: so many of them are obvious, and so many of them have much more meaning invested in them than is readily apparent.

There's no way to just write one of those exhausting (but by no means exhaustive) lists of "things I'm thankful for." It was a lot easier in elementary school when all anyone really expected was for everyone to say "mommy and daddy, my dog, my cat, my brother, and uncle stan," in some combination or another.

It's wierd, but it was an email from Marcus that made me start thinking about all this. Marcus edits the yearbook and he sent me an email with all these questions about what it's like to live off-campus. Hold that thought.

Now, in case you don't know, I'm HEAVILY prone to nostalgia. I LOVED highschool, and I think about how much freedom I had back them with a little bit (sometimes a lot) of feelings of... erosion... every now and then. All I did in highschool was paint, collect music, watch movies, write poems, act, staple things to my wall, draw, and run around in my panties with by two best friends. I didn't do my school work because it was so easy I didn't care. I ditched class every single day and passed with A's and B's. I somehow managed to balance my desire to be subversive (I was CONSTANTLY in detention or playing 'good cop/bad cop' in the pricipal's office with Trina–sorry Mr. Beard) with my need to feel like I was filling the world up with art and aquiring an other-worldly sort of knowledge. They couldn't hate me for ditching class and yelling at the teachers I thought were "ignorant" (sorry Mr. um... Interim Math Teacher?). I was in student government, I edited the Newspaper, I volunteered to tutor at the middle school, I went to every sporting event, I kept my boyfriend out of trouble.

In short, my highschool was the perfect environment for me because it gave me the time and the reason (however small and insignificant) to get passionate.

So this email from Marcus got me started thinking. Some mornings I wake up in my house and feel this remarkable feeling that this is the LAST place on earth that I belong. I haven't writen a poem since I was in France... I draw only when my headaches are too bad to do anything else. I never paint. BUT... BUT.

But people give me money to read books all day, to live in a house with great friends, to have dinner parties and sleep until noon if I want to. If I ever feel opressed by the amount of responsibility I have, I chose all that myself. And that choice is a luxury.

All the luxury of choice is what I'm thankful for. I had the choice to move into this beautiful house that overlooks my college, where I can learn whatever I want, where I am even free to disagree with what I'm told as long as I can produce evidence. I eat ramen only as an afterthought. If I run out money to pay my (luxurious cell phone and cable) bills, there are more loans available to me.

I may not have a car, but if I have an emergency, Tim won't be fired for leaving his job to take care of me. The hardest decision I make everyday is which t-shirt out of my collection of hundreds to wear. Oh. Oh the pain.

So if I don't have time to paint, draw, or lay around and think about the existencial crisis that much, it's my choice to be that way. I trade that for good grades and taking the time to learn the things my professors try to force-feed us everyday, despite our resistance.

And I live with Tim in a house with lots of windows, where people stop by everyday, and the porch swing is sometimes in the sun. That is a luxury, if anything.

Yesssssssir.

In case you're tired of looking at spore samples from pieworks.



and if that doesn't work, click on this link.

GO TO PIEWORKS ON PIERREMONT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Look. Some people don't feel like it's worth it to drive all the way down line avenue to support the Pieworks on Pierremont and all of the Centenary people who work there (including my roommate and my boyfriend, and Jason, Mikey, David, Amy Burt, Shelly, etc...), especially when there's one right there on King's highway. Here's scientific proof that the Pieworks on King's Highway needs to clean their shit every once in a while.

My Biology partners and I took swabs of the inside door handles of eight restaurants and bars on King's highway. The Pieworks sample exploded with bacterial and fungal growth. In case you know how shady Li'l Joe's is, I put that up there as a comparison. Yup. One little spot.

That Pieworks sample is the most disgusting thing I've ever smelled in my whole life. Now, even though I can tell you that the bacteria we collected with a dry swab there are benign, I can also tell you that Tim got a staph infection while he worked there.

I'd be willing to bet money that the Pieworks on Pierremont is cleaner and a lot less scary. Maybe I'll take a swab and get back to you. But until then... it's prettier, and it's worth the drive to support our friends, you lazy, silly people. (It you already know that the Pieworks on Pierremont is better, ignore this admonition and have a nice day.)

Oh yeah, and as for the other restaurants we tested, The Cub and Murrel's were the next worst. George's sample grew a tiny brain, but was the best of the restaurants and Sharpie's grew nothing, which I'm convinced is a fluke. Gross.

I don't even want to know what my own kitchen's bacterial content looks like.