*$s

dear diary,

today i drank my very first hot caffeinated beverage of the academic year: a tall caramel macchiato.

i just wanted to say how ridiculous i think that is.

because today is may 23.

and school began on september 5 of last year.

this means i drank no coffee all year. what kind of english grad student am i!?

(admittedly, maybe it's not quite that ridiculous, because coffee costs $3 a cup at starbucks, so it's just as well. and coffee tends to make me jumpy and give me stomach cramps, so it's really just as well. and also, *cough*, i've been drinking red bull, instead...)

I Can Crack PJ's Too

in gchat conversation with a true-blue PJ-lover, showing i can hold my own, even when discussing such mundane topics as the food on trips to everest base camp with guides named U.P.:

him: our guide UP has been awesome, whisking up chutneys every day to make the food tastier
me: can i ask if your guide changed his name to DOWN when you started the trek back?

(i am so proud of myself. in fact, i'm chuckling as i type this. pahahahahahahahaha.)

The Unthinkable

i'm no longer the kind of kid who's all anti-microsoft (being 25 means i don't have time for soapbox tirades -- and, cough, i now have a mac). but i was willing to give the free office substitute program a go, because it's, well, free.

but after neo-office shut down on me for the nth time, and i realized that my never-ending paper of doom (currently at 33 pages, without the 5 pages of images i need to stick in there) was going to be even longer and the formatting get all messed up when emily opened it with ms office, i decided it was time to succumb.

so: office 2008.

i never realized just how comfortable i am with word (as opposed to neo-office "writer"), even though it's the 2008 edition and i've hardly ever used it before. i also hadn't realized how much prettier it is than the no-frills, weird-buttons neo app.

*sigh of relaxation*

yes, dear readers, before you freak out, yes. yes. i sold my soul to the devil, and i'm ok with that. at least my headers (first page different) and my footnotes (all 40 of them, in times new roman 10 with superscript numbering and one space instead of one tab space between number and note) don't need to be individually formatted anymore.

WTF

when did it get to be 11:23 on the night before my piers plowman paper is due?

Good Thing I Like Apartment-Hunting

(and craigslist)

funny how life is.

moral of the story from this past 48 hours: no-one's really ever your friend for life. roommates? even less so. i suppose in a strange way it's my own fault.