The Lost Weekend

I suppose this weekend is payback for my Thursday Of Doing Nothing this week. Bah. I spent about ten hours reading and preparing for a presentation yesterday, and it looks to be much the same with the reading today. I keep a To Do list on a whiteboard that hangs on my refrigerator, and it's saaaad today. Very full of marker. But at least of the nine things on it, four are crossed off, and a fifth ("do laundry") will be in a few minutes. But yes, Frankenstein (due next Monday) and The Last of the Mohicans (due Nov. 12th, but 400 freakin' pages) snuck right up on me. Gah.

I just realized this week that we have two days of classes after Thanksgiving (why?), and because that Monday is December 1st, my 20 to 25-page paper due on the 5th is...going to have to be done before Thanksgiving. Kee-rap. At least I'm using one of my Exeter papers as the basis for this one--just changing, oh, 3/4ths of it and then adding ten or fifteen pages. Um, at least I have half my thesis already?

(We aren't even talking about the papers I have due in my two other classes, and the two final exams for them. My British Romantics class as a whole is plotting to talk our professor out of either the paper or the exam, because the paper was a last-minute addition she wasn't sure about adding anyway. I don't care which at this point--the paper would be interesting to write, but exams require less time--I just want something off my plate.)

I was also idly thinking about my 102 class next year--we get to choose the entire theme and all the content of the course, it's great--and I'm pretty sure I've decided on "Inquiry into Science Fiction" as a theme. (I was leaning towards "Inquiry into Ireland" [yes, they have to be "Inquiry into..."] and possibly fantasy before.) The Martian Chronicles will probably feature havily, and I think I might use the Margaret Cavendish piece I was talking about back in September--excerpts, maybe, though. I'll need a couple of novels, and maybe a movie or two (or episodes of TV...oooh! BSG!), and perhaps some more short stories. I think the focus will be space travel, but perhaps we could drag in the X-Files too--perhaps an abductee episode...

(BTW, I discovered last week that the library has back issues for not none, not one, but three scholarly journals on SF. I officially love having access to a Div. I research library. :D)

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In addition to being Lost, this weekend is also one of Animal Life Where It Isn't Supposed To Be. To start with, there was a FREAKING HUGE ROACH in my hallway last night. Not as huge as the tree roach that got in back in August, but roughly an inch long, and horrifyingly fast. Cue me flailing with the flyswatter (I eventually got it, although I had to follow it into one of my closets to do so) and then flinging boric acid everywhere. Well, around the doors, anyway. And possibly in all the closets, around the radiators, under all the windows...

And this morning, when I was going to get groceries, a DEER wandered onto I-40. Thankfully it didn't come anywhere near me, and no one hit while I could see it (it eventually got up against the inside barrier, heading west), but I hate to think what might happen to the poor thing. I didn't see any evidence of a deer carcass on the way back home, so I choose to think it made it back to the grass on the side.

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No relevance to any of the above: Fish ladder Wikipedia article. I did not know such things existed. There are fish elevators too! I had figured salmon and such were just out of luck when a river was dammed...