Today started out as a crap day. Absolutely crap. I had a wonderful dream last night, lots of fun, quite lovely, so waking up from that and realizing it wasn’t true sucked ass, and then of course I stayed in bed longer than I ought to’ve and relished the lovely dream, tried to get back into it, and was consequently late getting out of the apartment. Nothing new there.

I was to proctor a four-hour test and teach a two-hour private lesson, almost back-to-back. Couldn’t find my proctoring bag, spent five minutes looking for it, figured it was in the car, found out it wasn’t, came back in, eventually found it under a pile of clean clothes (the new hampers are working well, yes, thanks), and so was even later. Exit gate for my apartment complex stuck shut (makes a person feel safe, doesn’t it?)—later. Some unknown hold-up getting my Chick-n-Minis—later still.

All told I was about forty minutes late getting on the freeway, but I managed to be only two minutes late to class by skipping a trip to the office I’d planned to make on the way there. Huge class (~15) of kids, could only get a couple of them to talk (though I did make them all get up and do a group stretch during the break, which I’m sure they LOVED). Couple parents showed up with questions and hey, this isn’t even my class, but sure, what can I help you with? (That part wasn’t actually crummy, it just added to the lateness a bit.)

Then to the office, for the trip I’d skipped earlier, a trip which I barely had time for and thus had to skip lunch for, a trip which turned out to be entirely unnecessary since my afternoon student hadn’t even sent his test in. Didn’t stop me from spending too much time looking for it, though. The internet directions to his house also mentioned a street that would be handy if it did exist but in fact does not and is apparently just wishful thinking on Google’s part. End result: fifteen minutes late to lesson. Oy.

BUT THEN.

The lesson itself went much better than I expected: friendly student, eager to learn, conscientious, prepared. Pomegranate frappuccino to celebrate. Heard some excellent (and yet ridiculous) news about another tutoring student. Dinner and chocolate cake and coffee and the hilariously multilingual Eddie Izzard* at friends’ house. Eddie on video, I mean. He wasn’t there in person. Heh.

On the way home, wonder of wonders, I saw a meteor, which (hello, astro dork here) totally made my fucking day.

So. Crap morning, fantastic late afternoon and evening. I’ll take it.

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* If you’ve never seen his stand-up, you really should. It’s both ridiculously funny and, avec sous-titres, a great way to learn how to curse in French. I know I’ve blogged about Eddie at least once before, but it’s been a while. Tonight we watched Dress to Kill, which I think is my favorite. Funniest. Transvestite. Ever.

P.S. No one’s interested in the “random paragraph” post? Fine. I understand. I love y’all anyway. It was a good video idea, methinks, but the text version wasn’t that exciting.

It’s amazing how utterly unproductive I can be. I won’t indulge myself by reveling in it here, so it will suffice to say that today blew absolute chunks, mostly because nothing happened.

On Thursday I have a midterm and a paper due, in different classes. I still have not cracked the textbook for the class the midterm is in (I got a 72 on the first test—class average 58), and I’m *almost positive* I have the book the paper is supposed to be about.

Needless to say, I won’t be spending much time at home tomorrow. After school I’m going to schlep myself over to some public place and crank out this paper. Let’s hope it goes at least as well as the last one.

True, the strangers at Starbucks or wherever I end up won’t get on my ass if I’m staring off into space or reading blogs instead of working, but they might notice if I sprawl out on the floor for a while or decide to take “just a quick nap,” so it’s an improvement over my apartment.

I’ve got a bitch of an afternoon ahead of me, but hey, it could be worse—I was scheduled to teach tomorrow evening, before my boss found someone else to take the class (I was only subbing for a while). Earning money is overrated, really.

I was persuaded to pick up a new LSAT class. It starts Wednesday. I just realized that with summer school, the class I’m teaching now, and the one about to start, I will have no free time at all for the next three days. In fact, I will have negative free time, because I’ll be out of the house all day both days, and even if I slept straight through from the moment I got home to the moment I had to leave, I *still* wouldn’t get enough sleep.

My brilliant solution is apparently to start off on the wrong foot by not getting enough sleep tonight—it’s 2:00 and I’m obviously not in bed. I AM SO SMART, PEOPLE.

More evidence for my intelligence: I broke my phone today. It was in my back pocket as I was filming a video at my elementary school, and I tried to swing from a soccer goalpost but fell flat on my clumsy ass, smashing the phone between said ass and the hard, hard ground.

It can still make and receive calls (the phone, not my butt), but the screen is completely busted. Now I can only call people if I’ve memorized either their phone numbers or the key combinations that look them up. I’ll try to set my alarms for tomorrow, but I’ll have to do that by memory, too. Menu, 7, 5, down, down, . . .

If the fall was hard enough to break my phone, you can only imagine what it did to my ass (I mean that literally—I’m not posting photos). I now have a huge, nasty butt-bruise to match the one on my leg. It hurts to sit. Seriously, my ass is swollen and hot to the touch—how sexy is that?*

Oh, and my car refused to start twice today**. Fun automotive fact: brake lights alone, if they randomly decide to stay lit even when the car is off and unoccupied, can drain a battery in about two hours. Oy.

So how was your day?

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* NOT AT ALL.

** Much love to AAA. Their phone-center CSRs are polite and efficient, and the contractors who showed up to jump my car were on time and even called from the road to let me know when to expect them. Quick, easy, and about as painless as a dead battery could possibly be. I think I will send them a pleasant email.

I saw on the PostSecret blog today that FOUND Magazine and PostSecret are coming to Houston in a couple weeks. Eeeee! I’m not sure what sorts of things they’d do at a live event, but whatever it is, I’m there—I adore both sites.

The crummy part is that they’re only here for one night, and of course it would have to be a night that I’m teaching. Frustration.

If I let my class out half an hour early (the class runs 3.5 hours, and this will be the last session, so it’s not inconceivable), I could probably make it across town in time to catch the 10:00 show. Hmmm.

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P.S. Zero fleas today!

…but there’s something about 3:00 in the morning that makes me want to go to bed.

I was planning to turn in at midnight tonight, thinking that maybe I would, I dunno, GO TO SCHOOL tomorrow or something crazy like that. I used to go to school all the time and rarely missed a class*, but that stellar record has slowly gone to shit over the last few weeks.

This past week has been particularly bad. Teaching LSAT stresses me out: (1) my students are all older than I am and expect more out of the class and their instructor than SAT students do, (2) this is only my third class, so the rules and methods don’t roll off my tongue yet, and I don’t have a ready answer for every question a student might ask, (3) they just changed the books on us, so some of the material I’m prepping is brand new. There’s a steep learning curve, basically, but I do it because I love it. The more I teach it, the easier and less stressful it will become. But right now it’s crazymonkey hard.

When I’m running late in the morning, I can easily convince myself that I *need* to skip school to prep my next LSAT class. Once I’ve made up my mind to stay home, however, I sit around in my pajamas and eat chocolate icing, waiting for the last possible minute before I start prepping, when I’ll be sure to do an inadequate job. So that’s been going well.

Anyway, planned to go to bed at midnight, but wasn’t tired, so innocently stumbled over to YouTube and lost myself in two or three solid hours’ worth of videos. Not long ones, either—most were about 2.5 minutes long, and you’d really really never guess what they were. Really. If you *did* guess, then we might as well get married tomorrow because you know me far too well.

No, it wasn’t porn, nor was it a TV show (though I did drown my sorrows in several episodes of America’s Next Top Model yesterday). I’ll share sometime, but it deserves its own post—I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this to anyone, except maybe in passing. Oooh, secrets.

But really, I should go to bed now. My only class tomorrow, at 11:30, is the one class I’m in danger of not making an A+** in. Serious danger, actually: I’m at a B+ right now, and I certainly don’t have enough prior knowledge of Women in the Ancient World to pass the final on instinct alone. Boo. Get your ass in gear, lazybutt.

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* Except Logic. No attendance grade, so I only show up for the tests. Hasn’t been a problem so far.

** Not that there is such a thing, as far as official grades go. I wish.

While procrastinating on preparing my LSAT class for tomorrow evening*, I was puttering around on YouTube and found this gem: Myspace – THE MOVIE!

It’s a movie. About Myspace. Made by some kids who are definitely younger AND far more talented than I am. I don’t “do” Myspace**, but I think I still got most of the jokes. I think the rule is, though, that if you have to *say* you got the jokes, you probably missed most of them. Whatever, I’m totally hip and you know it.

Best line: “You’re so good at eating pizza!” (in the Tom skit)

I visited the websites in the credits (this was an hour-long process—don’t click those links if you were about to go do chores or something), and it looks like these guys have been at this for a while. They’re kinda funny, and HELLA GOOD with the movie-making. I’m impressed.

Video-editing is one of those things I have a vague desire to be good at but will probably never*** get around to learning. Also included in this category are modern dance, photography, and playing the drums.

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* During which I’ll be teaching for THREE AND A HALF HOURS. Solid. Okay, with two five-minute breaks. But still. Leading a class by myself for two hundred minutes will be exhausting. Did I mention that the average age of the students in my class is probably thirty-something? Yeah. The grown-ups ask the hard questions, too. And they don’t want to get out early. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful to teach people who actually want to be there and care about what they’re learning, but being peppy and knowledgeable and in control from 6:00 to 9:30 is absolutely draining.

** The fact that 95% of the layouts people put up on their Myspace pages make me want to throw up tells me I’m too old. Or too classy. We’ll go with that—I’m too classy for Myspace. I mean, sure, I have an account, but all it does is point here. Because Prepoceros is all about class.

*** Which reminds me—you’re lucky I found that video when I did, because you were about to get a lovely post on death and life expectancy that I spent most of my 40-minute drive home composing. (My iPod didn’t actually come today—long boring story.)

Seriously, if I don’t find another obsession really fucking soon, I’m getting some sort of professional help for this fear-of-death thing. In case you were wondering, spending most of your energy banging your head against a problem that *cannot be solved* and plunging yourself into the depths of despair 15 or 20 times a day (I kept a tally on my hand today—yes, I’m a dork) really takes a lot of the fun out of life. I know that sounds dramatic, but…gah. I would rather be obsessed with Tom Cruise. Or Star Wars. Or foot fungus. Ok, maybe not foot fungus. Maybe. But I think death sucks more than foot fungus.

Oh look, you got like a fifth of that post anyway. You’re welcome, internet.

Today has been a day of extremes. Some good things happened, some bad things happened, and overall I think it was more or less a wash. At least it wasn’t boring.

GOOD: I found one of my favorite shirts this morning as I was digging through the piles of clothes carpeting the bedroom floor. Bonus: it was clean.

BAD: As I was getting into my car, I realized I’d left my watch on the nightstand. I didn’t go back to get it because Sammy would’ve thought I was coming home, and I hate to disappoint him like that. I felt naked all day.

BAD: The Chick-Fil-A on campus was having problems with their credit card machine. Today was probably the first day all year I haven’t had cash on me. The line at the ATM was long, too—people like them some chick’n.

BAD: Caught up in the drama of lunch-getting, I completely forgot about a meeting I was planning to go to on writing internships for next semester. There’s another one tomorrow, but I’ll have to miss an hour of class for it.

BAD: It rained today. I knew it would, so I smartly wore pants that reached the ground (where the mud and puddles are), chose shoes with no traction, and left my umbrella at home.

GOOD: Lucky for me, it only sprinkled while I was walking to and from class. The minute I got in my car and drove off campus, though, it POURED.

GOOD: At work today, my boss asked me if I’d like this man (not Stephen Colbert (I wish), but the CEO he “shadows” in the first part) to buy me lunch next week. He and another upper-level guy will be in town, and apparently they want to visit with a couple of the little people. She actually asked me and two other tutors more senior than I, but they were both busy, so I’m in. Normally lunch dates with strangers (not that I have many of them) make me nervous, but I’m actually looking forward to this one.

BAD: A construction project that has been snarling traffic for more than a year on a major highway near the office was finally completed last week, and the road has gone from four lanes back to eight or nine. Imagine my surprise, then, when on my way to class I found traffic worse than I’ve ever seen it. I travelled one mile in 16 minutes—it would literally have been faster to walk. The cause? A car with a flat tire in the right lane. Seriously.

GOOD: Despite my getting there ten minutes late (see above) and spending the ten minutes after that sorting out issues with students who had not been shipped books and/or had been given misinformation about which classes they were supposed to attend, the class I taught tonight went wonderfully. If I count correctly, this is the tenth time I’ve taught this class (or some earlier version of it), and it gets better every time. Have I mentioned that I love teaching? Love it. It makes me feel all warm and giggly inside.

GOOD: Halfway home and hungry, I remembered, to my great delight, that I’d stashed a Chocolate Raspberry Explosion* in the fridge last night. This is perhaps the one benefit of being absent-minded—it’s easy to surprise myself.

BAD: It’s nearly 2:30 in the morning, and I’m not in bed. Self, I know it sucks that you get home late every night, but you need to quit doing this. Sleep is good. So is being able to wake up on time.

See? Up and down. My mood, on the other hand, has been surprisingly stable. Aside from a weekly-ish panic attack over the re-realization that I will someday die, I haven’t been feeling very emotional lately. Am I stressed? Of course, very much so. But I don’t feel overwhelmingly happy or overwhelmingly sad as often. I think a large part of this is that I’m so busy that I just don’t have time to sit around and mope. There’s always someplace I have to be, some work I need to be doing, something I should think through.

I hope once I finally finish moving (my move-out date at the old place is tomorrow) and get settled in here, things will calm down and I’ll have time for a few mindless pursuits again. It’s nice that my life is full and exciting, but all this “living in the real world” and “getting shit done” is wearing me out.

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* Chocolate mousse with raspberries in it and raspberry sauce on top. It cost a few cents more than my dinner, but I think I’m okay with that. You would be too if you tasted one of these—they’re phenomenal.

A week past Spring Break, and I already need a vacation. Work and school and life are all happening at once, and there hasn’t been a moment in the last four or five days when I could sit still, clear my mind, and think. Not be rushing off somewhere, not be teaching, not be worrying about anything, just thinking.

I used to sit around and think all the time, which is how I’ve kept up my *amazing* habit of superproductivity, but now…it’s like I’ve forgotten how to let it all go and just think. To lose myself in something, anything. Television, even, I don’t care. I’ve gotten maybe 15 hours of sleep over the last three nights, and not for lack of trying.

I’m about 80% sure I have an ulcer. I’ve always had a healthy stomach, but for the last day or so it’s hurt like a mofo, in pretty much the exact way I would expect an ulcer to hurt. It feels as though someone has shot a hot arrow right through the center of my rib cage, then slingshot me in the same spot with a pebble. I need to go do some deep breathing or something.

This morning I proctored the first practice test for one of my new classes, starting at the kick-ass hour of 9:00 in the morning*. The superawesome surprise was that whoever called my students to remind them about their class sent half of them to the wrong hotel and told one girl not to bring her calculator. At about 9:15 my boss called to say that my other class (which had a substitute proctor, since my two classes were meeting at the same time) was locked out of their building**. I’m glad I wasn’t there, at least.

In my class there was a bit of chaos as the second half of the students started trickling in around 9:30 or 9:45, well after we’d started the test. I actually handled it pretty well, I think—everyone got to take the test (though for the late students, their sections had to be out of order), I explained to the student without a calculator her options for making up the test, and I talked to a parent in a totally responsible and not-scared way. (I’m usually pretty cowardly and tense when it comes to parent interaction.)

If this had been my first class, I know I would have flipped out. Not in a dramatic way—I would have been timid and nonconfrontational—but I would not have been able to deal with the situation with any confidence. *These* are the skills I’ve learned in my year as a teacher—it’s such a good feeling to know that there’s something practical in life I *can* handle and even do well.

Ok. This is not helping with the whole “I need to breathe” thing. I just got in from moving most of the non-furniture things from my old apartment. I’d meant to sort through it all and only move the stuff I wanted to keep, but shit happened, and I never got around to it. This place is a sea of clothes-and-crap-stuffed trash bags. I need to eat, prep new material for *another* new class I’m teaching, deal with some other things, and maybe go to bed at a reasonable hour so I can get up in time for an 8:00 lesson tomorrow morning. I scheduled that one on purpose—am I retarded or what?

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* You’d think I’d have trouble waking up that early, especially since the class is an hour from my apartment, but I was wide awake at 5:30 this morning for no good reason. Wtf?

** SAT pointer of the day: The pronouns in the sentence don’t agree. Do you see why? I refuse to change it because I think the grammatically correct version sounds silly.

I think Samson is sick again. I’ve cleaned poo off the kitchen floor three times in the past 48 hours. No blood this time, fortunately, but still disgusting (I’ll spare you the details). He seems to be feeling fine otherwise, but we’re going to the vet anyway on Saturday to have a growth on the side of his mouth checked out, so I’ll ask about it then.

Thank goodness he always does his business on the linoleum in the kitchen or the laundry room. What a good doggy I have. I’m trying to take him out for walks more often now that I know he’s having poo problems, but it’s hard when I’m gone for eight or nine or ten hours at a time during the day.

Speaking of which, my LSAT class meets for the last time tomorrow night. Praise Jebus. Like I’ve said before, I like teaching the class, but I also need some evening time for myself. Like tonight—look how productive I’ve been tonight. Why, I’ve watched Project Runway, eaten dinner, written this post, and…never mind.

UPDATE (8:49am) — FOUR times in 48 hours. This is not something I’d like to be really good at.

As much as I moan and complain about the piddly aggravations in my relatively cushy life, I have to say that 2005 has been pretty damn good to me. Compared to the mess that was 2004, 2005 kicked serious annual ass.

In my last “Year in Review,” I christened 2005 “A Year of Transition and Transformation,” which turned out to be more or less spot-on. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that in the space of twelve months I’ve become “a whole new person” or some crap like that, but it has certainly been the most changing-est year of my short life**.

Since I spent most of the time “on leave” from Mudd and/or half-ass enrolled at HBU, there hasn’t been much book-learning. Life-lessons, on the other hand, have been coming hard and fast, the most important such revelation being that *there is a world outside of Harvey Mudd College*. There’s even a world outside of math and physics, believe it or not—a world in which people work and eat and shop and travel and do things besides homework. A world in which stress and sleep dep are not badges of honor, but rather reasons to seek medical help. A world in which I want to shove hot pokers through my eyes fewer days than not.

I want to make very clear that I’m not dissing Mudd, or math, or Mudders, or physicists, or sleep-deprived people. You know I love you guys, and I have tons of respect for Mudd and everyone who sticks it out. It’s just not the life for me—a fact which I was at best unsure of and at worst completely oblivious to at the end of 2004. I used to be terrified of the real world, but now…eh, it’s not so bad.

This year has been all about work, friends, teaching, blogging, puppies, living on my own, and frappuccinos. Oh god, the frappuccinos. Every time I start to get sick of all the frozen calories, they come out with a new flavor. Sneaky bastards.

So, for your digestive* pleasure, I will now proceed to recite the major events of the past year (in historical present tense, for added intensity!) in list form.

January: I have recently taken a leave of absence from Mudd and am living with my parents. Before I start looking for a part-time job to supplement my tutoring, I call the tutoring folks to see if they have any work for me. Lo and behold, there’s an open part-time position in the office. Huzzah! I begin work on MLK Day (one year ago today). I attend my first wedding as a grown-up. I discover the yumminess that is Project Runway. I sign a lease on an apartment in town, five minutes from the office (instead of over an hour with traffic). I begin teaching my first SAT class, though I was never trained as a teacher.

February: I move into my apartment. TVMax doesn’t hook up my internet connection for five. long. weeks. I still love my new job to bits. My brother is accepted to Vanderbilt.

March: I meet Wendy—what’s this now? A real-life, honest-to-goodness classicist? Be still my heart. My washing machine floods the kitchen. I try to cook things.

April: I try out for Jeopardy! but don’t make the cut. Sigh. Wait for me, Alex…I’ll make it to Culver City someday. I file a tax return for the first time. I register for fall semester at Mudd. I see Andre Agassi play in person. The “spring test season” makes it hella busy at work. Millie, the Jack Russell Terrier whose perkiness knows no bounds, spends her first weekend at Camp Natalie.

May: Coworkers discover my blog and create their own blog ‘rating’ it. Theirs goes dead after two weeks. Turns out blogging is harder than it looks. *smirk* Also, could I be any busier? Still loving it, though. When my car dies as I’m leaving to teach a class, I borrow Toni’s truck and immediately drive it into a pole. Expensive, but comedy gold. My brother graduates from high school.

June: I lose my cell phone for a couple days, and it is INCONVENIENT. I take my first vacation from work, during which I accompany my brother’s Quiz Bowl team to the national championship in Chicago as a pseudo-adviser, then visit my cousin at his hotel internship in Minneapolis. This is my first ever trip to the Midwest; I cross four more states (IL, WI, MN, and IA) off the to-visit list. I unplug my television. It’s been 200 days since then, and I’ve never once regretted it. I start taking Zoloft***.

July: I purchase my very own domain (yes, this one right here), but don’t do much with it for a while. I turn 21. Half-Blood Prince. Mood swings like whoa, especially as I consider whether or not to return to Mudd in the fall.

August: I make up my mind to stay in Houston, though not without a metric shit-ton of angst. I spend a lot of time lying on the floor, trying to block out the world. I add a little Wellbutrin to the mix. I take on yet another part-time job as a question writer. My brother goes off to college. Katrina sends a good portion of New Orleans our way.

September: Prepoceros is officially up and running. I enroll as a transient student at HBU just for the heck of it. That 8am Modern China class? Kicking my ass. Rita comes roaring in to an anticlimax, with the threat of wind causing more damage (snarled traffic, stranded motorists, gas shortages, looting) than the wind itself. Made for some damn fun blogging, though.

October: The mood swings are still going strong. I still suck at school. I can’t stand the Wellbutrin, so I stop taking it*^. I begin teaching LSAT, again with no real training. As a result, my first class sucks balls^.

November: My first attempt at NaNoWriMo tanks almost immediately. Prop 2: marriage now unquestionably exclusive; Texas 1, homos 0. A bummer, but not unexpected. I realize that the thought of going back to California in the spring upsets me, so I apply to UH. As a Classics major. GRE.

December: Puppy! Samson comes home and does a superb job of being adorable and cuddly. I am accepted to UH and officially transfer out of Mudd—this should be shocking and disconcerting, as it goes against any plan I’ve ever had for my life, but I’m surprisingly ok with it, which leads me to believe I made the right decision. Time will tell. Sam gets sick, then better again. Sam meets Fez: instant BFFs. New Year’s Eve at the beach.

So there you have it: transition, transformation, the whole shebang. I’m happy with where I am right now. I’m glad to be in Houston, I like my job, I love my friends, I can’t get enough of my puppy, and I’m satisfied with the direction my life is heading. Things don’t look nearly as dismal as they did twelve months ago.

It’s a little odd, though, that both last year and the year before I’ve made Major Life Changes™ near the end of the year. It’s probably just coincidence, but who knows where I’ll find myself in November 2006? A convent? Jail? Canada?

As for the coming year, I haven’t made any specific resolutions yet, but I feel the theme should be something along the lines of 2006: Settling In and Taking Control. This is a different life than I’ve been accustomed to: living in Houston as a full-time student with a part-time job, majoring in humanities, for chrissakes. I’ve had a while to play around and experiment with things in 2005 when most of my life was in flux, but now that I’m heading in a solid direction, it’s time for me to grab this new life of mine by the horns and make it truly my own. Focus. Commitment. Courage.

Okay, maybe ‘courage’ is a bit over-the-top, but you get the idea. My life. Mine mine mine. Time to start getting things done around here.

Bring it, ’06.

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* As in Reader’s Digest, silly. Don’t eat Prepoceros.

** This does not include 1984 (or 1983, depending on how you count it), in which I went from not-existing to existing. Hard to beat that.

*** Did I mention that I’d been mopey, disconnected, anxious, and unmotivated for the better part of the year, and that I’d been in therapy for several weeks at this point? I don’t remember exactly when I started going, and I’m too lazy to look it up. I’ve quit now—both the therapy and the medication—but I don’t remember when that happened, either. October, I guess.

*^ I neglected to inform my psychiatrist of this fact, however, so now I have lots of extra pills. It would be so wasteful to throw them all away…. Kidding. Sort of.

^ I’m teaching my second LSAT class right now, and it’s actually going rather well. Phew! Still feel bad about the first one, though. [Edit: I should not blame this on my lack of training---it makes it sound like work doesn't give two shits about me or their students. It was mostly my inexperience and lack of familiarity with the lesson book, and I did agree to teach the class, after all.]