Good evening ladies!
I've been having a very, very large and scary existential crisis lately, in which I almost convinced myself to leave grad school and go get a job. To stop going into debt. Go find some entry-level, $28k/year job and just exist. To leave Charlottesville, move into my sister's basement till my fiance comes back, and just save save save.
But then I realized... that while yes, finances are tight and no, I'm probably not going to ever get a job in which my vast knowledge of literary tropes and cross-genre allusions will ever come into play, but you know what? That's okay. I'm just going to sit here and be impractical for another year and get my master's. It was damn tough to get into this school, and if I leave now, I'll never be able to use my accomplishment of getting accepted as a bragging right
But that whole issue ate up four days. I missed a couple of classes, slacked off on a lot of work that was supposed to be done, and generally sucked at eating. But I'm picking myself up. Tonight, instead of frozen french fries and chocolate, I made orange-glazed chicken and zucchini for dinner. It was excellent. Much better than chocolate, actually.
One of my procrastinatory projects is knitting scarves for Christmas. I don't have a lot to spare for the holidays, so I figure I can invest $20 in wool and some number of hours' labor and make a decent Christmas gift for a lot of people. Only downside: my neck hurts. It's a trade off--either I look down at my knitting and keep my arms at my sides, or I look straight ahead and raise my knitting to eye level, thus making my arms sore. It's a lose-lose situation. Oh well.
Anyway.
Daisy -- It takes some guts to post photos which are meant to show our, well, wobbly bits, when usually we do everything we can to hide them! Like I said on your blog, you'll be so happy to have those a year from now when you're strutting around in your bikini!
MarinesWife -- don't get me started on military doctors. Grumblegrumble... I grew up in the military medical system. My sister was bitten by a brown recluse spider (poisonous, by the way) and the doctor kept telling my mom that it was a bunch of flea bites. That's right, a bunch of fleas bit her on one spot on her leg. So when the thing got as big as a tennis ball and started to sink and turn black in the middle.... well..... the doctor finally believed that it wasn't flea bites. Use your best judgment and PUSH for what you want out of those guys!! They will eventually listen, I promise... Good luck with everything...
Hmm, I just thought of something...... has ValRock been around lately? I haven't seen her since she had that scary post about a tumor in her thyroid. Did she ever come back after that? I'm worried...
Fae -- I hope your 193 sticks, that's a great number to see! You're almost at the 180's! I'm jealous!

And feel better soon so you can get back to that novel-writing. Keep us posted on your progress.
Lizzie -- I was really weirded out when my fiance didn't want to get physical really quickly, too. It's just not what we come to expect anymore from guys. What does that say? :/ Anyway, I was frustrated and freaked out at the time, but in retrospect, it was really nice to get to know him without the physical side of things complicating matters. Hang in there
Dreamer -- woo voting! Yay exercising my democratic muscles! I got a sticker today and felt special. BAH! I just checked the election results... my man lost by a margin of 1.8%!! How frustrating is that?? And apparently the majority of Virginians support the anti-any civil union (not just marriage) between anyone other than a man and a woman constitutional ammendment. Well, I'm disappointed. But at least I did my job to try to turn things around. Another two years to go....
Wow, long post. Should be putting these energies into something academic, I'm sure. Oh well. Shoot, now I'm all disgruntled about the election results, but did I really expect anything to be different this time around? No. People don't change that much in two years...