Some Happy Thoughts

Anyone reading this blog lately would think that all I do is watch movies and eat taco seasoning. While it is true that I have been doing quite a bit of both of those things lately, I have also been doing some schoolwork. I did a presentation today in my Confessional Poetry class. It went much better than I expected (and much longer than I expected). Presentations are one of my favourite things about grad school. As you may already know, I've decided not to do my PhD. This decision extends definitely through next year, and I was kind of thinking that it would extend for the rest of my life. I was excited at the idea of liberation and the work world and learning different things and having money. What I find, though, is that presentations make me want to do my PhD. It's so much fun to exchange ideas, and sometimes I wonder if I'm just evading my destiny by avoiding teaching. Teaching in various forms seems to run in my family. However, essays (and my thesis) remind me of why I don't want to do my PhD. I've just begun to find them so tiresome and pointless. I can't imagine a life based on academic writing, or at least right now I can't. Maybe after a break from it I'll feel differently.

Today I bought myself some blood oranges. This was a totally frivolous thing to do, because blood oranges are expensive, but they are so darn tasty. I went through a blood orange phase a couple of years ago one summer when I was working at DriverCheck. There is a fruit market just around the corner from the office, and I used to go a couple of times a week and pig out on blood oranges while they were in season in August. At that time I was working full time and thus could afford to indulge in exotic fruit. However, I ate one of the blood oranges for dessert tonight, and I decided that frivolous or not, it was darn delicious. If you have never tried blood oranges before, I highly recommend splurging on one. And don't be put off by the name. They aren't dipped in blood or anything weird. They are just reddish on the inside. Depending on the one you grab, the red could look like little veins inside, or the fruit could be burgundy. As I recall, they seem to taste different according to amount of redness inside, but I don't really know if that's true.

Andrew will be here for a visit in less than 2 weeks! This also means that it is less than 2 weeks until Reading Week - definitely a happy thought. The only cloud is that I have 20 thesis pages due on the Friday of Reading Week. I haven't gotten as much work done on them as I'd have liked to, so it looks like I'll have to sacrifice some Andrew time for thesis time. It just doesn't seem like a fair trade, somehow.

Another happy thought: I paid my bills tonight and am doing better financially than I thought. This means that I can keep on eating and that I can maybe even get a haircut. Yay!!! Plus, I handed in my OSAP forms at the post office today, so sometime soonish I can expect money to magically appear in my account. That's always fun.

That's all the happy thoughts I have for right now. I still have a Middle English romance to finish for Thursday (although this one seems to be going a lot faster than Ywain and Gawain. Perhaps I'm all practiced up now) and a stack of essays to mark, and my thesis pages to work on, so you'll know where to find me for the next little while - next to the grindstone. At least I'll have yummy snacks.