Awards

Can I start every day by winning $100? I woke up this morning to an email saying that I'd won some award for a history paper I wrote last fall. I didn't even know I was nominated for this award.
I gotta say though, it's nice to start the day with more money than when you went to bed the night before

Paper

What is it about having things on paper that make them seem more real? I can deal with things more easily when they're just up on the computer screen looking at me through a hazy glow and be fine, but the second it's on real paper it seems like more.

I think it's a tangible thing, something about having a physical form that I can put my hand on rather than something I can click on and have disappear when I don't want to think about it.

I printed off what I'm going to submit to my thesis advisor a few minutes ago and now my stomach feels like it's spinning in circles--tilt-a-whirl style. I want to be done with this more than anyone could possibly know. Am at the point where I think I'd be okay with never writing anything about Joyce again. I don't think I could tolerate not reading Ulysses again, or Finnegans Wake is that bizarre? Probably. I really am an English major through and through, aren't I?

Maybe I'll just drive up to class now and drop it off, out of sight out of mind. My class isn't until 1:00, but I know my thesis advisor is there at 10:00. I'm sure I can find something to work on for two to three hours. My next paper perhaps.

I have this extraordinary feeling that this is never going to end for me. But there's really nothing that I'd rather be doing. sigh

A Sea of Books

I am wading in a sea of books. As I type, two books press against my left arm and another tome grazes my right. Below the three books nearest me there are other volumes. Those not in piles have arranged themselves in a U around my legs stretching from my reclining position to the farthest reaches beyond my feet. As a surprise to no one I'm sure, these volumes all bear a certain name on them either as author or subject, and that would be James Joyce.
Beyond my sea of literature, stretching onto the floor dwell many more tomes resembling the effects of a nuclear bomb on a library. The volumes littered across the floor are largely those that have fallen from the couch and have proven to either not be necessary for the remainder of my paper or simply too far away to reach. I prefer to think that they are unnecessary to my research because I'm not going back through them to look. Several of the floor volumes have found themselves opened to random pages or lying splayed at odd angles. I suppose if there were a nuclear blast there'd be loose pages floating around, but fortunately I haven't been reduced to shreading any texts yet.
I used to have more respect for books. As a child I was raised to respect books, to put them on their proper shelves, never to throw them, and certainly never to write in them. What happened to that? Some of my volumes have an equal number of printed lines and notes scribbled in the margins. I ask again, what happened to my respect for books? I would like to think that studying literature this much would make me treat books with infinitely more respect, but not so much. I look all across my room and see volumes here and there, some sitting under glasses, others lying on chairs, some piled horizontally against a vertically aligned bookshelf. I have far too many books I dare say. But then I ask, is that a possibility? Can I have too many books? Too many for anyone or too many for me? I don't know I don't know I don't know.

From here to there

Okay, I went to the library this morning and my internet connection on my laptop worked. The little bubble popped up to say that there was a wireless network in the library that I could connect to if I wanted. I didn't. I take my laptop home and there is no connection at all. No wireless, no wired for that matter. The rest of my house has internet. I can connect from other computers but not my own. Why?!? Apparently in the journey from the library to the house, a whopping seven or eight minute trek the drivers for internet vanished. Where'd they go? How'd they go?
I'm blaming _Finnegans Wake_. It has decided that I'm crazy and therefore unworthy of internet. Or perhaps I'm unworthy of _Finnegans Wake_, who knows.
Okay, I'm hostile, I'm bitter, what you gonna do about it?
Will somebody go to this dinner tomorrow night for me. I really really don't want to go sit there and listen to somebody talk about nothing for several hours. Not what I have in mind for a Wednesday evening that could otherwise be spent I don't know, doing homework, sitting on my rear end, reading _Special Topics in Calamity Physics_ I don't know. Bollocks!