Caustic Cupcake's Creepy Cupboard

Last night Logic Professor and I went on a date. I put on the earrings he got me for Valentine's Day, and we went to the city to see the spine-tinglingly incredible Basia Bulat before we wound up at a diner-turned-nightclub eating Thursday night hipster food with the Thursday night hipsters, out with their messy hair and scowls and all. There was laughing, and kissing, and a parking ticket, and all was good.

This morning, though, LoPro called out for the first time since getting a job at Cupboardsburg Community College two years ago. By the time I got home from school he was feeling a little better and we had pizza, and now he looks a lot more chipper than he did this morning. He hadn't gotten much sleep; he'd been hacking and snuffling all night, and woke up fever-y and weak. The first thing my boyfriend said when he woke up, however, was "Hey... three hours until your statistics grade." Had I been bringing it up that much? Only totally all the time.

So... statistics. I couldn't make something like this up. We were no more than five minutes into Stat Prof's traditional 15-minute discourse on the highs and lows of the test scores, complete with information on variation, when the power went out. "If our goal was to maximize dispersion, we accomplished it," he was saying. "The grades ranged from 20 to 100." Almost as soon as he'd accomplished his goal of striking horror into our hearts, the lights abruptly cut out and the emergency exit lights snapped on. I fuck with you not. There are no windows in our classroom, and if it weren't for the dim emergency lights, we'd have been totally in the dark. So, without handing out our tests, Stat Prof left to go investigate. He LEFT WITHOUT GIVING ME MY F-ING TEST BACK. That's about when my eyes fell out of my head and my hair erupted in flames.

Oh. my. god.

Thankfully, the power interruption only lasted for about five minutes, and then Stat Prof was able to get back to describing, in excruciating detail, everything we never wanted to know about the results- that there was one 100, a handful of 90s, and no Bs- everyone else had, according to him, "reason to be ashamed." It's bad enough that we had to wait until today, but you can't say something like that and then go on dragging out the suspense for another ten minutes. Oh, but he did. And then, with no segue, he suddenly handed back this:
... which earned me this:


So I'm happy. School's been kind of intense this semester, and when it turns out all right, I don't regret the time or the work.

In Health and Wellness, we did nothing. Of course.

Lastly, in World Lit, I got a typed evaluation of my presentation, and it was wonderful. I got a hundred, and my presentation was called "innovative" (interpret that as you will). I haven't gotten my essay back (which, by the way, turned up with a respectable 8% plagiarism rating, having accumulated about fifteen individual less-that-1% hits for non-consequential things like citations). So that's my new thing to sweat over.

I PWNED TODAY.

Labels: Higher Education, Logic Professor, Statistics

The most depressing thing about last night was deciding to skip statistics this morning- skip getting my test back- and finish either writing my lit paper or sleeping. Just a few hours before I'd been announcing at somewhat regular intervals the amount of time remaining until I got the test back. The countdown started around 36 hours. When I got to seven hours and I was still fleshing out an outline on whether or not Penelope recognized Odysseus before he killed all the suitors I realized that overnight the priority of lit had miraculously overwhelmed that of statistics.

But I'm awake now, and I think I'm going. I just have to cough up a reasonable-sounding conclusion, add the Odyssey itself to my Works Cited list (HOW THE F- DID I FORGET THAT?), and run the whole thing through a subscription plagiarism filter. There is the nagging fear in the back of my mind that somehow it will turn up 50% plagiarized because of some long-forgotten paper by someone with precisely the same views on the matter as mine. "No, really: most people believe that the conversation takes place without Penelope recognizing her husband," the other paper will read. "Fuck that! It is clearly not the case. Clearly." And then there will be about fifty hyphens and semicolons. It's best to alternate.

When I got in bed last night, Logic Professor was burning up, his hair matted, his shirt stuck to him- he's coming down with something- so I pulled back the quilt to give him some air and curled up next to the ember that was my boyfriend. I believe he may have been faintly glowing. Then I was wide awake, cursing myself for it. I needed the sleep.

The whole point, by the way, is that I get done school at 2 and have to be at work by 2:30 to work until 2:30 in the morning, and then I have school at 11 the next morning. Not only does this essay have to be done, but all of Thursday's homework must be done as well, and I'd better be damned rested for the process. Let me tell you how much THAT didn't happen. I'm going to be throwing bottles at people tonight.

OH MY GOD, WHY DID I TAKE 16 CREDITS? WHY?!

Next up on the Academic To-Do List of Horrors: writing a couple lab reports for bio and studying for the first exam. YAY.

Labels: Higher Education, Insanity, Statistics

So. I finished the statistics test, which had been pushed back to today because of a snow day on Friday, with twenty minutes to spare. That's suspicious, and makes me wonder what the deal is. There could be any one of several explanations:

• The test was overly easy. The hell it would be.
  Approx. chance of this being the case: 0%
• The test was so hard- so beyond hard- that not only did I fail catastrophically, I didn't know failure was even happening.
  Approx. chance of this being the case: 25%
• I rocked out with my TI-83 out and utterly pwned the test.
  Approx. chance of this being the case: 25%
• Other forces are at work, such as the existence of a dream-universe in which I took a very hard statistics test and didn't think it was that hard but will be waking up any moment now.
  Approx. chance of this being the case: 50%

For the last twenty minutes, I had time to go back over my answers- the ones I'd done with a calculator, I re-worked by hand to make sure I'd done the right thing on the calculator originally, and vice versa. (My parents always told me that under no circumstances should I abandon a test early, even if the building is on fire, and I've stuck with that.) Then I got up and handed my exam to the professor, and that's when he said, and I fuck with you not, "I expect you to get the highest grade in the class. Don't disappoint me... don't disappoint me." BECAUSE THERE WASN'T ENOUGH PRESSURE. THERE CAN NEVER BE TOO MUCH PRESSURE, STATS PROF! Why did he stop there when he could have ramped it up by telling me that he'd entered into a test score pool with the other statistics professors and that he planned to use the money to finally get that kidney transplant? IT WOULD BE THE SAME.

But no, really, that's a huge compliment. It means a lot to me.

Then I went to Health and Wellness and nothing happened.

After that, I went and gave my presentation on Antigone. How did it go? So-so. I had prepared the fuck out of it (to quote LoPro); my handouts and charts were awesome, and I had tons of useful info. I was nervous, though, and talked so fast that I skipped over a lot of relevant shit that would have connected what I was talking about. The useful info I had compiled largely stayed on my outline, where it turned into a useless blur that I barely looked at when I was at the podium. I'm worried that I didn't make any sense. For instance, there was no point in talking about the curse of Laius without mentioning that it extended to his children and children's children, and that would include Antigone. People probably left that classroom thinking, "That was pretty cool about Laius raping his host's son and getting cursed for it and all, but what the fuck did that have to do with pages 56-93?" which were, truth be told, the pages I was supposed to have covered. Supposed to.

Still, I can't have done worse than the no-handout cell phone girl.

I'm off to write an essay- or several dozen of them- and study for all 924 of my classes. Oh, wait... I'm only taking five classes? Because it feels like more. SOMEONE JUST GIVE ME A DAMNED SCHOLARSHIP ALREADY SO I CAN STOP TRYING TO EXCEL ACADEMICALLY.

Labels: Higher Education, Statistics

In an hour and a half, I'll take my first Stat II test. It's worth 25% of my grade. I get more worked up about statistics tests than I reasonably should. That's because they're so damningly objective. When I do something wrong on a statistics test, my failure is explained, mathematically, in black and white for me to agonize over FOREVER. Because I'll totally be doing that years from now.

Then, an hour after that, I'll be giving an oral presentation on Antigone in World Lit. That is also worth a crazy percentage of my grade for being so early in the semester- 20%. I'm less nervous about that one because it's more of a subjective thing and really, I can't do any worse than the girl who forgot to bring the required handouts for the class and was then mortified when her own cell phone rang during her presentation.

I'm going to go play with my TI-83 for a while.

Labels: Higher Education, Statistics

Last night LoPro and I went to see JQ the Neph-ew at my parents' house. We read the fantastic Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus! which is so awesome that, really, I need a copy to read by myself at home. Each time the pigeon pleaded to be allowed to drive the bus, JQ played his part by responding with a firm little "No."


"I'll be your best friend," begged the pigeon in the book.
"No," said JQ.
"How 'bout I give you five bucks?" the pigeon offered.
"Yes," JQ said suddenly, startling us.
"But... JQ... the bus driver told us not to let the pigeon drive the bus!" I said.
"But I want the pigeon to drive the bus! The End!" JQ said, and snapped the book shut.

Later, LoPro was reading a book of nursery rhymes to JQ at bedtime, and when he'd reached the appropriate page, both of us started singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."
Two little hands shot out and covered both of our mouths.
"THAT'S IT," said JQ.

Labels: Dr. Thumbscre.ws

So Logic Professor and I might be postponing the move-in until next month. While he's already more or less living here, we're having a hard time getting our shit together as far as obtaining moving help, a storage unit, and boxes go.

This Thursday is our first major lab experiment in Biology, and then I've got a week of two- thankfully- to cough up a lab report... but there's also an exam next Thursday, and a freakin' research project due the next week. This Friday is my first Statistics test. Monday is my oral presentation in World Lit (worth 20% of my grade). There's also a test coming up in Health and Wellness, but really now, that doesn't mean anything.

Meanwhile, LoPro spent six hours grading last night, and he's still not finished. The man has eight classes.

So it's busy around here.

Labels: Better Living Through Uprooting, Higher Education

Monday night, I won a TI-83 on eBay; it was meant to replace the faithful calculator that I lost earlier this month, which, ironically, had probably already been sold on eBay by whatever soulless urchin found it laying around in my statistics classroom, driveway, or diner booth. Bought used, it was seventy bucks. In the summertime, when money falls out of the b4r industry's hazy sky, seventy bucks is more then expendable- it's forgettable. In February, forking out seventy bucks for a calculator is like having to buy a fucking liver. The resentment doesn't only spring from having to cough up that kind of money; it's fortified by the haunting fact that the replacement and the hardship it will entail are unnecessary because you already had a perfectly good liver before you went and fucked it up. Last month, I had a calculator, and like the analogous liver it was free to begin with because my parents provided it. This month I lost it, and with the First Super-Important Statistics Test looming this Friday, I had little choice but to get another one. Yesterday the new calculator shipped out, which should give me enough time to go back through everything we've (well, the rest of the class, anyway) learned since the abduction of TI-83 the Original and get familiar with the functions I'll need for the test.

Oh, coincidentally, I found my lost calculator this morning. It was in my bookbag, which I had been using not for books but for my drill, tape measure, screwdriver, and screws. It helps to have all those things in one place. I guess I tossed the calculator in the bag when I was bringing it into the house.

Logic Professor and I had been having the Co-hab Furniture Arrangement Conversation (Part 27), and I was looking for the tape measure (because oh dear graf if the desk won't fit next to the bed it'll have to go in the bathtub, and boy would that suck) when I found the calculator.
"My calculator!" I cried, literally. I turned it on, and there was the last thing I'd calculated: the square root of -36.52462645, which turned out to be an unhelpful 6.043560743i.
"Where was it?" Logic Professor asked.
"In my bookbag," I said, bewildered. This recalls the scene a week or two ago when I was trying to find the Pyrex measuring cup to no avail, and Logic Professor showed me that it was on the top shelf in the cupboard.
"What the fuck was it doing there?" I blurted.
"I put it there," he said. "I'm sorry. Where is it supposed to go?"
"On the top shelf in the cupboard," I murmured, embarassed that I'd been so surprised to find something of mine where it belonged.

So as soon as I get TI-83 the Replacement, it's going back on eBay.

* * * * *

On Valentine's Day, I wound up bringing a folder full of quizzes to Logic Professor's class because he'd forgotten them at home. I also brought a couple boxes of candy, and now I'm a hero.

Afterwards, we went out to dinner at the Thai restaurant where we had our first date. I was the best Valentine's Day I've had in years, if not ever.

* * * * *

Last night was the best Saturday night I've had in months. Cold weather kills b4r business, especially in the asshole-intensive tourism-heavy area where the Cool Punk Rock B4r is. The cool thing was that I didn't feel like I was selling that much alcohol or making that much money until I counted out; it hadn't been one of those harrowing nights where I'm aware both that I'm making a killing and that at any moment the mob could swarm over the b4r and trample me on their way to the liquor rack. Instead, it was an older crowd and they tipped well, coming at me steadily and patiently. At one point twenty or thirty people on a pub crawl walked in, all old enough to be singing along unironically with "Don't Stop Believing". I mixed together something fruity and vodka-y in an empty Belvedere bottle and climbed up on the b4r, shouting over the stupid, outdated music, "WHO WANTS FREE SHOTS?" They swarmed, and partway through pouring liquor down their gaping gullets I yelled "WHAT'S THE BEST B4R ON XXXX STREET?" The response was awesome, although I was a second away from following it up with "YOU'RE ALL WHORES" when I remembered my tip bucket and bit my tongue.

While I was up on the b4r, a customer I'd met for the first time last week walked in, and I shouted for him to come over and get a free shot. He had just moved here the day before from halfway across the country to work for a major pharmaceutical company researching new medicines for interesting yet profoundly disturbing mental problems. While part of his job involves dissecting rat brains, it's still super-cool and he's allowed to have dred locks. I suppose there's no reason to be choosy about the hairstyles of their talented, skilled, well-educated rat-cutters. I mean, researchers.

He and his incredibly gay friend hung out until the b4r closed. The old people had been displaced by an influx of regulars who played a lot of metal on the jukebox and shot pool with Dred-Locked Researcher while his friend hung out at the b4r with me and complained that he'd been waiting forever to hear "1999" by Prince. "I just want to hear one gay song," he said. After last call, Logic Professor arrived to pick me up, looking all cute in his grey hoodie, and I was still too busy to run over and hug him. I introduced the three of them, and as I washed the sea of dirty glasses that had piled up around me and then went to the office to figure out exactly how much I'd made (hint: a lot), they all hung out talking. Now Logic Professor and I totally have to trick them into being our friends. When I was done we tried to go to the diner, but it was closed, so LoPro and I drove them to their car.

Labels: Cool Punk Rock B4r, Higher Education, Logic Professor, Lovelife, Product Endorsements, Statistics

The side of my box of Girl Scout cookies says, under the ingredients: Contains wheat and soy ingredients. Warning: This product manufactured on equipment that processes products containing peanuts.

As I was chomping on my tenth Caramel DeLite and reading the nutritional information, I reflected that, perhaps, a better warning would be more along the lines of Warning: This product manufactured on equipment that processes Girl Scout cookies. Contains Girl Scout cookies.

Today, while Logic Professor made us some pad thai for lunch, I went outside to play. After a few days of warm and beautiful weather, it got cold and windy overnight (literally); why in the ever-loving hell was I down there in the garden with a rake and a shovel? I think that the nice weather faked out my ovaries, and the womanly side of me decided that it was spring and therefore time to start providing, through primitive horticulture, for the army of offspring I will begin producing any day now, if the aforementioned ovaries have anything to say about it.

"FUCK," I would have said when I stepped outside, had the cold wind not sucked the air out of my lungs.
"Shut up," said my ovaries. "If you start now, you'll be harvesting grain by sundown." But ovaries lie. They starting trying to convince me to reproduce when I was, what, fifteen? I know better. Nevertheless, consummating my love of dirt is a fairly safe way to appease the old girls without committing myself to decades of parenting. Yet.

So I went downstairs and raked up all the crackly dead plants from last summer, folded the tomato cages and took down the little wire fence that was around the petunias and columbine. There were stakes to pull up- dead branches and strips of wood I'd poached from elsewhere, because I am ever so tightfisted when it comes to gardening- and wire to untwist and save (see: tightfisted). I also collected all the stray beer cans that were stuck in the tangle of dead moonflower vines. Some had been rusting away there all winter because neighbors come and go but they're usually cretins and can't find a way to repair their wasted, broken lives, let alone a place to dispose of their empty beer cans. Others had just landed there today after the recycling bin blew over in the COLD, WINDY WIND.

The last thing I did before LoPro called me in for pad thai was dig up one side of the garden with a shovel and reunite with my pals, the earthworms. They were so cold and slow. I'd turn over a shovelful of dirt and there would be an earthworm, sitcking up. When it's warmer they'll squiggle back into the soil as fast as their leg will take them. This morning, they just kind of sagged over to one side, slowly, and I could almost hear them going "UUGGGH." LoPro and I postulated that they still had hangovers from the previous summer. "Dude, turn off that fucking sun," we imagined them saying.

I had just gotten that side finished when LoPro called down the steps that lunch was ready. I stuffed a moonflower pod in my pocket to show him, but forgot, what with the food and all. Finding that pod was such a good thing, because the seeds I bought this year didn't sprout. They're very hard and thick; I didn't nick them with a knife or soak them overnight, and instead of growing they rotted in their husks. Finding that pod was a good thing. I'm off to go plant it now.

Labels: The Garden

It seems like every time I have some minor mental collapse, it happens in my car- my face pressed against the cold driver's side window, my seatbelt still on, and tears of frustration threatening to fuck up my mascara. About 25% of those instances occur in the parking lot of the Cupboardsburg Acme, because there's something about an impending breakdown that makes me want to go stock up on peanut butter. I guess it's because when everything is going to shit and it's all my fault, it helps to feel as though I'm still doing a good job feeding myself, if nothing else. It's so primal.

Today, though, the view from the cold driver's side window was a rusting, wheel-less tractor trailer condemned to a field behind Cupboardsburg Community College. I'd parked next to it because there were no available spots in a real parking lot, and it is customary for the overflow to pile up in the fields, valleys, and swamps surrounding the college. I could have had a real spot if I'd gotten there on time, when classes were letting out and people were driving away. No, I got there ten minutes after the next round of classes started, when all interested parties were either inside learning, already home, or circling the parking facilities pointlessly, getting later for class by the second, wondering whether it would take longer to find a spot near the school or head straight for a swamp, abandon the SUV and run for it.

By the way, that last contingent was me.

When I finally wound up in parked next to the tractor trailer, the first hint of tears of frustration was starting to threaten my mascara, and I hadn't even banged my head on the window yet. I banged my head on the window. Half an hour late for class, I texted Logic Professor: This is me losing my shit in the parking lot.

See, I would have been on time, except that when I got out to my car, someone had parked behind it, and they wouldn't answer their door when I knocked and rang the bell. Well, I might not have been on time, per se, because I was already running a few minutes late, but I wouldn't have been so late that I couldn't walk into the classroom at all. But if I hadn't been running a couple minutes late to begin with, the blocked driveway business wouldn't have turned into a disaster. And you know, I wouldn't have been a few minutes late if I hadn't worked until 3 in the morning the night before and then dragged my feet around the apartment four hours later when I got up. Dude, I used to be thankful if I got so much sleep. When did I get so weak? And by "weak" I mean "human".

Other factors were involved in making me throw a fit besides being tired and missing a class. I got to thinking, well, here I am three weeks into the semester and I've already used up half of my allowed absences for Spanish class, and I was so far behind to begin with because I was out of the Spanish program for a year (but at least I won't know what Profe is saying when she scolds me for truantism) and now I'm further (farther?) behind, and I really should have gone today so I could have handed in the application for the foreign language honor society (HAAAA), because as of yet I don't have a single honor or activity to spruce up my transfer application, no, a fucking clump of algae would have more of a presence in the college community than I do, and if I can't fabricate an academic presence that's attractive enought to trick some four-year into paying me to go to their school all of this will have been for naught! Naught! Waking up early today to study for a class that I didn't even go to (which is just as well because I didn't get to study anyway because I was too busy foot-dragging) and realizing that actually, since I was going to miss the class anyway I could have gotten eight hours of sleep, yeah, that whole situation is a microcosm of the tremendous irony that will be if I spend three years dragging my bitter ass through community college and can't transfer in the end because the clump of algae has a better transcript and took all the scholarships. Also, my car loan isn't paid off yet. See, when I go through this routine of linking all the negativity in the universe inside my head, the car loan usually comes up* even if, at face value, it doesn't seem relevant. Trust me: if I think hard enough, it will be.

LoPro immediately called me, and I complained to him for a while, finally deciding to bid adieu to the Tractor Trailor of Despair and come home. I also noted that I wanted a donut but couldn't have one because I'm a fat fucking sea lion; I'm about to get my period, so yesterday at work I ate several restaurants near the Cool Punk Rock B4r. No, that wasn't a typo. I didn't eat at several restaurants. I ate several restaurants.

"But I want a donut," said Logic Professor.
"You liar," I accused. "You're trying to trick me into getting a donut for myself!" And it totally worked.

A few hours later, calmer and less certain of doom, I went back to the campus for Biology: The Class of No Return, and... it was actually pretty good. Even though we didn't get to use our microscopes today, we learned about exploding cells. I am now convinced that I should write textbooks. Science textbooks tend to lack character. My biology notes, on the other hand, are like a microscopic soap opera:

The evil hypotonic environment has caused an osmotic imbalance- oh, no!! Osmosiiiiis! The cell membrane can't withstand the pressure- it is flexible but not stretchy!
KABOOM.
The cell is dead.

Despite lacking detail and much of the necessary vocab, my biology textbook would be awesome. But I digress.

This was the third out of fifteen weeks I'll go straight to work after school on Wednesday, work until 2:30 or 3 AM, and then be in class at 11:00 AM the next morning to attempt to speak Spanish and stare through a microscope at exploding cells. If I don't do well, there is no point. I think what gets me about the pressure is that I did it to myself. I am so pissed at me.

I'm going grocery shopping.



* Hey, remember that time? That time that I took a semester off and was trying to save money for school by working nine days a week but then my car failed inspection because it was leaking gasoline, and I had to get it off the road in 48 hours, but I hadn't slept in three days so I thought seriously about driving into the river, but instead I went out and signed away five years of my life bought a new one the next day, thus blowing everything I'd saved? That has nothing to do with this post, but I like to bring it up from time to time. I will stop bringing it up when the loan is paid off.

I always call back when I get a call from work. They never leave a message- they're not stupid- so I have to personally call to hear them beg for me to cover a shift. And then I say no. It took me years to learn that trick.

That's it. It's not hard. It's the same as not calling back at all; I still don't have to cover the shift. The difference is that this way, I look like slightly less of an asshole.

When that coke-snorting, cash-stealing, all-around-trainwreck of a b4rtender got fired the other night, she left four shifts open. When the manager called me today to beg me to cover one, again, he was at the brink of a breakdown. And while I was napping, he left FOUR VOICEMAILS on my phone, getting increasingly agitated, until the last one said to call the owner.

He's not mad at me, because I picked up and said no. He's mad enough at everyone else who's been MIA over the past couple days, though, that he announced his intention to hire five new girls tomorrow, schedule an extra girl every night, and send home one when they all show up.

That's cool. As long as he's not mad at me.

"... they can't even pick up the fucking phone. What if it was an emergency?" he asked just a few minutes ago when we were on the phone. "I mean, what if the building had been on fire?!" I had the good sense not to ask, yeah, well, what if the building had been on fire? I didn't really see how that was a relevant example, but I got his point.

For the record, the other two parts of my Getting Along With Managers Policy are:
2. Never call out. If I'm legitimately too sick to work, I'll go to work, throw up on their shoes, and let them tell me to leave. (It's happened.)
3. Call if I'm late. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Thirty seconds. I usually always call if I'm going to be late, which is a lot.

Post-nap, I'm tireder than before. LoPro is off busting out the abductive arguments somewhere; I'm getting a cup of coffee and settling in with several textbooks.

Labels: Cool Punk Rock B4r

Sorting out the logistics of Logic Professor's relocation makes me happy. I get all flustery when I think about anything associated with his move into the apartment formerly known as mine. I'll imagine his pots and pans nestled all snug in the cupboard with mine, or I'll wonder whose name we're going to put on the internet bill (both! next to each other! on the same envelope!) and if you were to ask me anything right then, even as simple as "What's your name?", I would come up blank, my thinking ability temporarily reduced to that of a parsnip. The thought of Logic Professor living here is so awesome that the mundane details of the actual move make me stupid.

Tonight he's delivering pizza to supplement his phenomenal adjunct's salary- am I the only one who finds this ironic?- and I'm home eating pasta, skimming chapter 9 of my beloved statistics textbook* in preparation for tomorrow's lesson about matched pairs, and, most importantly, tossing shit in garbage bags to take to Goodwill. You'd think that after the Great Closet Purge of '07 things would be a little roomier around here, but no, my trash is taking up the same amount of space as before. It's simply less compacted. With a lot of work and a lot less blogging there will soon be room for a few of his things.

As I'm removing several tons of refuse from the apartment, I plan to do a little rearranging and cleaning. Furthermore, one of these days I'm going to order us some cable internet (having recently realized that d + p ≥ c, where d= the cost of DSL, p= the cost of the phone line, and c= the cost of cable, not to mention the fact that l ∝ s where l= Logic Professor's happiness and s= internet speed). When all's said and done, I'm going to implement what I expect will be the most satisfying part of Operation: Live In Sin, which is tacking up another surname on the mailbox so that it will read PSEUDONYM/PROFESSOR.

I could have worked this evening, but I've made something of a vow not to pick up extra shifts. Last night another b4rtender got fired for constant coke use and general shadiness in the vicinity of the cash register, and her shift had to be filled. The manager just stopped short of offering me his first-born child as he begged me to come in tonight- it's Super Bowl Sunday- but I declined on the grounds that I've got schoolwork (true). But I was really thinking about closet-cleaning and shelf-organizing.

The reason I am declining shifts as a rule is twofold: the move and my grades. I don't need money as much as I need to be home getting shit done.

And that's what I'm off to do now.


* A minor crisis has developed: I can't find my TI-83, I need it for statistics posthaste, and those bitches don't come cheap.

Labels: Better Living Through Uprooting, Flat Life, Higher Education, Logic Professor, Lovelife, Statistics

It's been a busy week.

Monday into Tuesday was a snarl of activities that all defeated each other- I got called into work Monday night and made $45, and then because I was working instead of studying for my Spanish quiz I had to study the next morning, which meant that I missed my dentist appointment (thereby incurring a $35 missed appointment fee), and then showed up for the quiz only to find that Bill Clinton had unexpectedly dropped by the college and shut down everything, so I saw him speak, and didn't have to take the quiz that I didn't have to study for during the appointment I didn't have to miss after the shift I didn't have to work because it didn't generate any money.

Tuesday night, the owner of the CPRB closed the b4r and picked up the employees (all decked out in our fancy clothes) in a 22-person limo WITH A SEPARATE VIP LOUNGE IN IT; this was our belated Christmas party. We hopped around town and ate dinner at an incredible restaurant, had drinks at a fancy hotel's lounge, stopped by a strip club (not mine), and wound up back on our street, where Logic Professor picked me up a few b4rs short of the end of our b4r-hopping streak (I missed him). One of the managers estimated that Owner spent over five grand, and now I feel appreciated. "The next time someone says your b4r's a shithole," he told us, "you say 'Oh yeah? Where'd your office go for your Christmas party?!'"

The next morning I had school, and Wednesday night I worked.

Thursday was further school and Lost at LoPro's friends' house.

Friday was even more school, a crummy hardcore show featuring a band made up almost entirely of CPRB regulars, and a stop by Logic Professor's apartment complex's office to ask about terminating his lease so he can move into the Creepy Cupboard.

This morning we had breakfast at my old bakery, chatted with the old boss and a few customers, got my W-2, and saw Jul, the baby, and my parents.

Hooray!