Slice of Life: Enya

It is an irrefutable fact that when I wake up at 5:00 a.m. and haven't gone to bed until after midnight the night before, I will be loopy for the rest of the day. This week is slowly killing me like...well, some kind of poison that will kill you slowly. (Don't try to Google it. I'm pretty sure, based on the links I discovered, the only other people Googling "poison that kills slowly" are murderers of some sort.) Anyway, my point is that this week is going to drive me crazy with all of the papers, tests, projects, reading, presentations, and grading that needs to get done.

In trying not to drown myself in the prospect that I might not come out in one piece at the end of this week, I decided to engage in one of my favorite pastimes at lunch today. You can call me creepy if you want, but I absolutely love to people watch. And the best place on campus to do that is the collection of brown, covered benches adjacent to the bookstore and facing the library. It's totally prime real estate, with quirky individuals constantly crossing back and forth. So I grabbed my lunch, headed over to the benches, and popped in my headphones as Enya sang floating Irish cadences over a slow synthesized percussion. Enya is the one person I can trust to push all care out of my mind and provide me with a little corner of sanity in my ever-busy life. :)

On a side note, my roommate (H) and I are in the beginning stages of starting up a blog. It's been so much fun coming up with our concept and pseudonyms, but the real beast of this process is coming up with a Blogger web address that isn't already taken. So earlier this morning I engaged in another one of my favorite pastimes: typing in possible URLs straight into the address bar. It actually becomes more of a game for me instead of just searching for the undiscovered URLs. So, just in case you were wondering... picadillycircus.blogspot.com, camerashy.blogspot.com, rainbowsandunicorns.blogspot.com, zipadeedooda.blogspot.com, ilovespongebob.blogspot.com, and canigetawhatwhat.blogspot.com are all taken. I can almost hear the collective sigh of disappointment, because I suspect those are the exact addresses you all hoped to put to use one day. The most frustrating thing is that when you finally think you've come up with the perfect name, you type it into the address bar and you get one of two things. Either it is completely untouched as no one even bothered to post one thing under it or the most recent post occurs anywhere from 2002-2004. Well... let the search continue.

So as I continue on with my day, the mad rush to complete all of my tasks and the mad search for available blog URLs, I will certainly be putting Enya to work, as she does what she does best.

Slice of Life: Valentine

Do you ever have those days where it feels like 30 different days in one? Today was one of those days for me. It went by quickly, yet felt like months had passed. Was it only this morning that I woke up in a nervous frenzy, making sure that I was looking professional for my first teaching interview ever? Oddly, yes. Nerves were definitely the first order of business for the day.

After the interview, I came home to some lovely Valentines posted on our apartment door. There's just something nostalgic about getting a paper Toy Story Valentine with Nerds taped to it, especially when they are anonymous (my roommates and I are still trying to figure out who would have left them). After downing the Nerds, it was reading, lunch, and off to campus.

I jammed out on my walk to campus (thanks iTunes), sat through my 4 hour block of classes and headed home again. Still on the run, I immediately took a friend of mine to the library and we picked up some needed reading fodder. Meeting up with my roommate there, I looked around a little more, grabbed our materials, and continued on the run.

I came home and changed into some casual clothes and started making Valentine's cookies. With just enough time to get the cookies out of the oven, it was time to change my clothes yet again to go out to dinner with my roommates. A Smashburger chocolate shake was my Valentine tonight and that worked perfectly for me!

Now is the first time all day I've been able to calm down my racing mind. Perhaps it was all the outfit changes, but I just felt like I just lived many and many days wrapped up in one. Hopefully tomorrow is a simple and normal day, but with my luck I'll hit the ground running again in the morning.