Breathing Time

So it’s been a little while since the last post. Things have just gotten so suddenly busy–well, at least they were, now they’re temporarily calming down a bit–all my down time was consumed. This all started last Sunday, when I realized I did not get enough research done to write my Faulkner and Mississippi paper. I’m a good B.S.er, don’t get me wrong, but B.S.ing research papers requires some kind of input of data which can then be digested and passed out as that A-grade B.S. In other words, I needed *something* to work with.

This leads me to Monday. After work and class (9.00am-8.30pm), I stopped by the library and checked out The Unvanquished, which several sources had suggested was a good place to start with Faulkner’s fictional Mississippi. It was also one of the shorter works, considering I only had a week to read it and write a ten page paper on it. I will say one thing about Faulkner, after wading through James Joyce’s Ulysses, he’s a piece of cake to read. It was actually almost enjoyable, perhaps only because every sentence wasn’t an allusion to something else.

After work on Wednesday, I went to the library and photocopied ~60-70 pages of reference material. It was a long and exhausting day. Then I returned and did some of the reading (but not much).

Thursday, I realized I was not going to be writing the paper before the weekend. I had been shooting to get it done by Friday because Andy and I were going home for Passover, but it just wasn’t going to happen. So I resolved myself to having to pull the paper together on Sunday morning, and left it at that. Packed up lightly that night, and on Friday, we went home.

*Quick Note about Friday: doggies are awesome, and key-lime pie is SUPER*

Saturday, my family and I went over to Andy’s house for a “wedding blessing ceremony.” It was small (just my family, his family, and his family’s pastor), and it went very smoothly and was very nice and quaint. I think it’s just what his mother wanted, and if it makes her forgive us for eloping, so much the better!

After the wedding blessing, my family headed home to start prepping for Passover. Yes, we know we’re not being 100% kosher by preparing the Passover meal on Sabbath, but we’re gentiles, so deal with it. ^_- Passover was fantastic, as it always is, just me, Andy, my parents, Emily, and her boyfriend Aaron. I think it’s safe to say that me and Andy both got pretty shnockered and had a blast, and I think my parents had a blast watching us be shnockered. (For the non-Jews like myself, Passover involves four full glasses of wine. Andy and I opted to use the regular sized glasses for the first two cups, but after that (yes, we’re lightweights) we switched to the smaller size that my mother was using (too much red wine can irritate her skin)). At any rate, long story short, I did manage to slide down a wardrobe and scrape up my back a little while in my giggly, inebriated state, so now I am officially one of those 75% or whatever at Albany who have injured themselves while drunk. I’m not going to say I’m proud of that, but it sure as heck was pretty funny.

Sunday morning, at 9.00 exactly (which wasn’t too bad, because the moment Aaron left to drive Andy home, I crashed in bed) I got up and started hammering away on that ten-pager. By 1.30pm, I was on the top of the 10th page. I just pulled off a ten-page paper in 3.5 hours of insanity. I didn’t eat, I didn’t take breaks, I just plowed through on a single train of thought. We’ll see how well it turns out when I get it back, graded. XD! Still, I read it through last night and it seemed pretty tolerable, considering I had never picked up anything by Faulkner before the beginning of this week. Strange, considering I’m an English major. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Finished that blasted paper, and then enjoyed just lounging around for the rest of the afternoon until abour 5.00pm when Andy called to remind me that I’d have to come pick him up, since he was a good drunk boy and left his car here, opting for a ride with someone sober. This is a bit of a challenge. There were two options: 1) I could drive over with my family’s Volvo or van and pick him up, drive back to my house, and from there we could head out, or 2) I could bite the bullet, grab my key, and drive that blasted stick-shift over to his place where we could leave from directly. My “green” side came out, and I opted for the more direct, but more nervewracking stick-shift voyage. Now, here’s the thing. I know how to drive stick-shift. I’m not particularly good at it, but I can get by without stalling. I still hate up-hill stops, and I still hate having any form of traffic behind me, but I can manage. And I need to get better at it, if not because I will be likely using this car to get to and from work out in Oregon, but also because I need to perfect my shifting 5k1llz just in case Andy and I ever actually get a Ducati like we’ve playfully dreamed about.

So I drove over to Andy’s, shifting pretty well. It got a little hairy now and then, but I didn’t stall (though I was glad at the Four Corners that the light was green and there was no oncoming traffic, which let me coast around without having to stop and potentially make a fool of myself with traffic behind me). I arrived in once piece (Andy was very proud of me, but my hands were still shaking–pathetic, I know), and after we got his stuff in the car, we headed out back to Albany, which is where I am now.

Last night I did go over the paper again, fleshing out the opening, smoothing out awkward transitions and whatnot, but it seemed like it was working pretty well. It ended up being around 12 pages, but I didn’t feel too bad about going over the ten pages because I used a lot of block-quotes; so there’s probably around 10 pages of my own writing in there, somewhere. ^_^

Today was a little weird–I just felt really incompetent at work, got called out on a mistake I’d made posting content to Amazon, and that just made me feel like crap for the rest of the day. Strange what little things can just get under your skin. I just wanted to go back to my apartment and chill out. Finally got off at 5, caught the bus back to campus, turned in my paper, and came back to veg on TV. It was a long day, plenty stressful. I’ve just been really antisocial today, too. Like my personal bubble has expanded. Like I said, it’s been an off day. But I did finally let my boss know that the 5th was my last day, not the 9th (I realized my first final is actually on the 8th, not the 10th, like I’d thought), so that was an achievement. And it was beautiful out today. I’m so glad spring has decided to come around at last. ^_^