Well, today was productive. I went to tax class, did a little ballroom dance, and then acted as a grader for my scanning-replacement’s scanning. Woot.

Got the first Kenshin manga today; it’s fun stuff! Viz seems to have done a nice job with everything but the cover itself.

This evening I disposed of an evil Maester of Yevon (though his buddies carried away his carcass before I could kick it, so I suspect he might make a dramatic reappearance in even-stronger form later) and am now wandering around in a desert. [Yes, I’m talking Final Fantasy X.] A desert where, thanks to a surprise attack by some fairly powerful enemies, I saw my first “Game Over” screen. Dammit.

As I rose to turn the bleeping bleeping game off, I noticed that my right knee is still sore/stiff/what-have-you. Dance class doesn’t seem to have done me any favors, this week.

Tomorrow I just go through some note-taking motions, and I can rejoice in a four-day weekend! Alas, I do have some papers to write and other things to attend to…so it won’t be all fun and games. It will definitely involve sleep, though. Lots of sleep.

I have become a big fan of sleep.

I’m glad I stayed up late one last night, last week, to hash out something vaguely approximating a rough draft of my number theory paper. It turns out that the draft was actually worth part of the paper grade (this was news to all of us—mostly unwelcome news, to the slackers I associate with). I wound up with a 12/15, which is a lot better than I would have walked away with had I just gone to sleep that night.

I just finished writing my last two basic tax letters, and am now looking ahead towards wrapping up the remaining tax-class assignments. I still have an OB paper analyzing my work environment, but I suspect that I’ll actually enjoy doing that—it’ll be my test of organizational behavior theory. Will it be able to explain why my office is falling apart? I actually suspect that it will, if I think about it…and I’d be sold, if it demonstrated some way to actually fix things. (I really do like my office, for all the griping I do about it, and it’d be nice to get things straightened out again.)

In other office news, Jackie has decided that our (i.e. Marin’s and my, since Jackie has her own work area) cubicle is too disorganized. She’s now—without asking—rearranged the stuff on the floor to fit payment batches in the cubicle, and has taken the liberty of adding two (2!) hanging file-doohickeys for the papers that people traditionally leave on our desk. It’s mildly annoying, and oddly hilarious.

Well, I got some errands run and sleep slept. Not enough sleep, but hey. I also put a few hours into Final Fantasy X, which is always an enjoyable (if not wise) use of my time.

It’s pretty quiet ’round here, actually.

I have a tremor that makes it difficult to do precise work with my hands; the more I try to concentrate on doing something carefully, the more my hands shake. The medical name for my condition seems to be “essential tremor” (as in part of my essence, as in they have no idea what causes it) or an “intention tremor” (i.e. it gets worse the more I concentrate on doing something carefully) or somesuch.

Anyway, supposedly a quick test if you have this type of tremor is to drink a beer—if the tremor is an essential tremor, it will disappear.

And, after all that setup, my thought: I bet I could be a damn fine surgeon, if I just drank beer.

While channel-surfing, I stumbled across the third Pokemon movie. It’s been a few years since I last watched Pokemon, so it was fun to see the characters (and a boatload of Pokemon that didn’t exist when I last watched) interact again.

Specifically, it was hilarious to see Jessie & James, of Team Rocket, again. The best line of the entire movie was delivered by James, after he and Jessie see a whole mass of strange glyphs spiraling about in the air: “I haven’t seen this many strange letters since the last time I placed a personal ad.”

Damn. I bet that one flew over at least half of the Pokemon demographic, and didn’t mean much to the other half.

After one helluva power study session with Ryan in the hour before class, I took my final midterm of the calendar year. I think it went OK, too.

Once I got home, I felt a tremendous weight lifted from my shoulders (assignments this term were front-loaded, so now I get a nice break); I would have been euphoric, if I had any energy left in my body at all. Instead, I collapsed into a thirty-day coma. Or, rather, I would have—had I been the hero of a popular anime series.

I therefore dedicate this weekend to my complete and total recuperation. It’s certainly felt like a long time in coming.

And, for the first time in two weeks, I can put my feet up and play some Final Fantasy X. It’s so nice to be able to waste my time away, again.

Only one thing now stands between me and the weekend: a number theory midterm.

Have I mentioned how I’m sick and tired of midterms? Thankfully, this is the last one for this term.

Next week is looking delightfully light, what with Thanksgiving eating up two days…all my classes were somehow front (and eighth-week) loaded, so I might really have time to breath between now and finals. I hope to heck I do, because I’m about as sleep-deprived as I can be without losing it completely.

Or else maybe I’m already gone, and that’s the only reason I think I haven’t lost it completely. Hmm. Either way, I haven’t started studying for this number theory midterm, and my brain’s already running on fumes.

And, while I try to study before collapsing for the night…if you can get this to work: what is up with that? I mean, seriously. Damn.

I’m only up until 2 am today. Better!

OB presentations today were all pretty predictable, save the last one: this crazy group actually used an audio tape as their presentation, with Spanish guitar music as transitions between sections. Visuals were provided by two members of the group who stood silently at the front of the room, one holding up a mass of white cards with stick figure drawings on them, and the other one throwing the front-most card on the floor as the audiotape moved on to the next topic. I can’t really begin to explain the effect—it was absolutely hilarious.

Ate lunch with Renee and Bryan at Domino’s pizza. The walk over was absolutely miserable, as it was damn cold out; while we were sitting inside Domino’s, thawing, we watched as the rain turned into some big snowflakes. Of course, that reverted to rain within half an hour—but it was that cold out. Brrrrrr.

Since I still have to perform my nightly routine, it appears that tonight will be another night where I witness the godawful hour of 4 AM. This time it’s courtesy of a number theory “hashing function” paper rough draft—thanks to the time I pumped into the OB paper, this “rough draft” is quite a bit more “uh…going to look at this” than actual work. Ugh.

Funny thing in dance today. Kristi came over and sat down next to me as I changed into my dance shoes. Once I finished we danced, and Kristi mentioned that she had seen my records pass through the graduation audit pile in the College of Science, where she works. Later in dance class, Mandy mentioned the same thing—only from the College of Business office. She was impressed by my dual major and Honors College status…dunno what she thought when I mentioned that the Honors bit was going to go away.

Ack. Must get to sleep, or I’m going to start killing things accidentally tomorrow.

“Whoops!”

Hmm. Now that I’ve taken a moment to reflect, I note that I don’t remember much of anything that’s happened the past few days. Probably has something to do with an already-poor memory under the duress of very little sleep.

I do, however, recall standing witness (along with Renee) to the world’s largest pillowfight last Friday. It was rather surreal, and quite entertaining; especially enjoyable were the north-side/south-side skirmishes that the Barometer makes reference to in its article. I have no idea why they mass divided like it did, but boy did it.

Haha. Kelly Engineering crater. Sometimes the Barometer impresses me; that description of the giant mid-campus hole-in-the-earth is especially apt. If I ever pull my digital camera out, on a not-rainy day, I’ll show y’all just how much of a crater it is.

And now we’ll do some indiscriminate linking. Interpretations of Matrix: Revolutions, anyone? (I sure as hell didn’t read that much into the series.) Well, then, how about some Bash.org? We have a sex machine, some speeding, one thing *I* didn’t learn in college, an example of powerful marketing, and something I could have used this last week. Oh, and in case you don’t think my site is fair and balanced (I can get away with saying that, so long as I don’t write it as “Fair and Balanced™”), one more for you.