To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive

And a good long weekend was had by all! There were mountains, touristy things and shopping things and large hunks of fudge in Gatlinburg, scones, and a bookstore. oh, and lots of movies and TV. Hooray! Pictures soon. Pezzers, you should put yours up the internets so I can steal them.

Time for some flopping, I think, and some B5. I got the Thidspace movie in the mail the other day, and must investigate.

At this point in the year at this location, it is light enough outside to read at NINE PM. And yet, in the afternoons, we often get thunderstorms that make it so dark, I have to turn on lights in my apartment to see what I'm doing.

Summer, you are strange.

So, pine trees. Any time you would like to knock it off with the pollen would be fine with me. My car is a mess. (Representative photos I found on the internet, 'cause I'm too lazy to go out and take a picture of my car.) I feel fairly certain that if I stood out there for a few minutes, I'd be covered in yellow-green fuzz.

Hello, spring. Well, what there is of it. It's still insanely hot for April, and apparently we've gone from "increased fire weather threat" to "increased fire danger threat" across the area today as well. Oy.

Last week, I was all, "Oooh, tulips! Oooh, dogwood blossoms! I love spring!" Deadlines apparently make me cranky. Stupid papers.

Today:
1.) The weather was sunny and warm and beautiful.
2.) I got to go out and about in the sunny and beautiful afternoon, because my Victorian lit class was canceled.
3.) I turned in my Joyce paper two weeks early (after meeting with my prof yesterday and getting some great suggestions about my intro which I was able to incorporate last night; it is now even more awesome than it was before).
4. ) I ran into my thesis committee director like four times either in the English building or going between the tower and the library. He's a very cheerful person, and he makes me cheerful whenever I see him. (He's very reminiscent of Jesse, for those to whom that name means something.)

And now...I must finish my pedagogy paper. Way to bring the awesome crashing down. *sigh* I'm going to try to hold on to my good mood, though. We'll see if I manage.

Wait. So it's going to be 81F today, but snowing (well, at the higher elevations) and 33F by Tuesday night?

Are there some pills we should get Mother Nature on? Because she's obviously evincing multiple personalities.

Dear Body,

Over the years, you've come up with more and more things to be allergic to. Don't most people work the opposite way, with allergies in childhood lessening as they grow? First it was ragweed and other pollens, then bananas and canteloupe, then cats, then essentially every scent ever that could be used in soap, and now perhaps the most unusual one, bandage adhesive. Bandaids? Seriously? Come on. It's bad enough that I have a cut on my heel; now I have a rectangle of hives all around it after wearing a bandaid for much of the day. How is this increasingly overwrought immune response useful for anything?

Itchily yours,
Me

*

I have far too many articles on Victorian lit to slog through tonight. Boooo.

1. Today I got caught in Noah's own rainstorm on my way to Wal-Mart. Forget raining cats and dogs; this was more like elephants and hippos. If I hadn't been less than a mile from my exit on the interstate when it really started coming down, I seriously think I would've had to pull off on the shoulder and wait it out. My windshield wipers were not touching this thing.

2. I've started occasionally listening to NPR while driving--it's the closest mainstream radio comes to my musical tastes, which can pretty much be summed up with "obscure"--and I've noticed something. Despite the fact that it broadcasts from the UT campus, the only place in town where I get static on the station is...on the UT campus. I don't understand this at all.

3. Driving home today, I was listening to All Things Considered, and in addition to hearing all the doom and gloom about the worsening economy, I learned that now is apparently the best time ever to buy real estate in California. Now I wanna go out west and buy a house and be a beach bum or something. (I do realize those last two things are not particuarly compatible, but this is fantasyland. Work with me. Hey, if it's my fantasy, then I won't even get sunburnt during my first five minutes on said beach!)

There have been big, fat flakes of snow falling since I got up at nine o'clock this morning, and not a one of them has stuck to the ground. On the one hand, I don't care for snow, so this is not a bad thing. On the other, it feels very...unfinished.

Also, if this means that the wet ground is going to freeze into a sheet of ice tonight and still be around tomorrow morning when I have to drive to campus, I will be pissed.

*

I have to write a paper by Friday. This paper, which is a five-pager, does not need to use any critical sources, according to my professor. Small problem: I haven't written a paper without secondary sources since I was a junior in high school. I have forgotten how to write a paper without critical backup. Even when I was writing BS, it was always well-cited BS!

Hmm. Well, I suppose she won't mind if I do include some quotations or whatnot, but my other problem is that no one has written about the aspect of Mary Barton I plan to discuss. Perhaps this is because I will have trouble ekeing five pages out of it, much less a journal article, but still. (I know, I know, this is an opportunity, not a problem, but still.)

Oof. Need to write now.

Ooookay, correction to my last post: now I do have ice on the inside of my windows. Hmmm. Of course, it is 12F outside right now.

The ice does prevent the condensation from dripping down my walls, though, so that's...good?

ETA: ( Photo evidence )

Ellen, are you and I trading back injuries? Because yesterday I did the same thing you did, except my incident was getting off the couch. And then I did it again last night turning over in bed (I'm surprised my parents didn't hear me screaming), and ended up at the doctor today because OMG OW. Being unable to stand up because of lower back pain is a bad thing. (And then once I could stand up, I couldn't bend over, so my mother had to tie my shoes for me. *fail*)

Apparently it's three strained muscles. Wonderful. They gave me a shot of ibuprofen which has so far had zero effect, but I'm getting a prescription filled for a muscle relaxer, so good times ahead? Or at least sleepy times, since I didn't get any last night because of PAIN PAIN PAIN NO MATTER THE POSITION?