Ok, so I have senioritis. It's true. I didn't think this was possible anymore. I had it in high school. I had it at the end of my undergraduate degree. Now I have it in the last semester of my Master's degree program. I've already defended my thesis, and I'm thinking, "Oh man, I am so done." I'm having difficulties focusing on Walt Whitman's ra-ra-sis-boom-ba, go America, and I would like to think that Walt himself might be a bit chagrined at his cheerleading of America and the idea of democracy if he'd have guessed that someone like George W. Bush would someday not only be born and SURVIVE to middle age, but actually become the freaking PRESIDENT of the United States. Walt, I'm sorry, I'm just not feelin you, buddy.

Yes, I'm talking to Walt Whitman in the present tense, and if you've ever read "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", you'd know why.

I'm also taking a course on class warfare and issues in America. It's all done in a virtual classroom, as a sort of experiment, with graduate students here on campus as well as with graduate students in programs in other universities all over the United States. It's interesting, but I'm not feeling it either. I mean, I am, but I'm not feeling like doing much WORK.

That's not true either. I feel like doing work, but not work for courses any longer. I'm much more inclined to be writing my own stories right now, and this last semester isn't really involved with that.

Also, one of the classes I'm teaching is filled with some REAL, um, challenging people. Read that sentence with gritted teeth.

So, yeah, I'm complaining. Sigh. I'm sure I'll want to be back in school again once I leave it and enter the "real world", as my father likes to tell me, and work at a "real" job again for a couple of years. And hey, that's ok, right? I think I'd actually like making a nest for myself in academia, if I have to. There are worse places to be. And the university has always been a place where I felt more comfortable to be myself. Why not build a life in a place that makes you feel like that. If you've noticed, this is a dialogue with myself really, an argument between where I come from and who I am, and where I come from is so deep seated that, even if I don't let it win out over my own desires, it still gets its two cents in on everything. Someday I hope they'll invent a surgery to remove things like that.

By the way, Susan Marie's expedition to the sale at Express was in synch with my own shopping spree at Structure, the guy's side of Express. You can't beat those redline sales, can you Susan? Too bad I got sucked into the regular OVERPRICED side of things like you did. Damn this capitalist prison state! (I got myself a pair of brown twill pants, and a darker brown v-neck sweater to go with them, though, very cool, slightly retro look.) You know brown is the new red, don't you? AHA-AHA-AHA-AHA. Just kidding.