carrot colored dragons

So comes the time of year where everything is in review. The news, the paper, even me: life in review. I get so caught up about what got done, what didn't. I pull out writings from this time last year to compare progress, the pull out tarot cards to predict. It's all very scientific, I promise. And all while in a major sugar coma left over from the holiday.
I am religious about New Year resolutions. I must make them. This year I have found inspiration in a new friend J and plan to vow to watch life more closely. J calls it patience, it is his mantra. He drones it over and over whenever I get flustered over nothing, and sometimes when I'm flustered over something, but it does seem to help. "Just be patient," he says. Coming from him the word is green and smells like tea with honey.
For me, though, I feel it will be something different. Life has been changing for me at an alarming rate, and I feel as If I ma have lost something vital in the rush. So, I plan to slow the pace [not the production, mind you, no room for that] but I hope to gain some control over the pace of input. Let time move as a function of perception rather than the other way around. I just feel strongly as if something I once had is missing, and if I watch for it, I can find it again.
When I do, I will determine the name for it, and it will smell like pepermint and earth, and will taste salty. And I will never loose it again.

At last I am in the finals streach of Final's Week. One more test and I'm done with the formal semester and can go back to working with mutable deadlines.

Best overheard quote: "It takes a long time for genius to get down on paper." D. Thoman

The up side of finals week is end of the semester parties. Rather than post pics. here, they are available upon request, including the hottly debated 'mostly naked kelly with paper up his nose'.

This spot should pick up again as soon as my brain un-cramps. After all, I'm going to need some outlet as soon as it hits me that my to do list is shorter than my arm.

Anyone suggests a good book?

Recent shortages have brought the issue of time to the forefront of my mind. Specifically, the feeling as it passes. Sometimes fast like sticking your head out the window of a moving car, and sometimes imperceptible.
I am increasingly drawn to situation where no clock is in view so that although time doesn’t stop, I’m less aware of it passing. I have a long time tendency of feeling particularly attached to the minutes in my life, so that when I’m in the presence of some sort of marker, clock etc., I feel the loss of each minute as time ticks by as if it were being pulled physically from me.
It is the way of things, always has and always will but somehow each day I fight the battle anew.
How do you deal with time, dearest readers? With a whip or a whisper?

An article in the New York Times today seems to be saying what young women are just starting to notice: Femminism has been patted on the head for being cute and sent to bed.

It's Still a Man's World on the Idiot Box
By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/opinion/02dowd.html?oref=login&th


Women are increasingly allowing ourselves to be underestimated and overlooked. Did the last fifty years never happen? How is it that strength is considered to dilute beauty? Although I did watch a team of pretty blonds whip the asses off two buff man male teams on fear factor the other night. Since they won so well I'll forgive them their lipliner and belly shirts... but only this once.

Graduate Life Part One
side effects of graduate life may include:

1.Lethargy
2.Caffiene addiction
3.Insomnia
4.Sedative addiction

I've been cycling through the first three for the entire semester. Two nights ago I couldn't sleep until after 3am, this morning I was up and at-em at 5am, dark and early.
Sick. Sick. Sick.
Good news is: my apetite came back; bad news: it brought its friends Ben and Jerry.
Thank the juggly-thigh gods it comes in low fat versions.

I recently submitted this blog to a site that lists Ph. D. blogs, and was imediatly struck with a very familiar feeling: evaluation anxiety. Will my blog be academic enough to qualify? An I academic enough to be listed as an academic blogger. Am I enough of a blogger to call myself a blogger? Isn't it enough that I am a graduate student? Or, do the topics of my posts have to be about my research?

Maybe once I start teaching again next semester, maybe I will have interesting quips about teaching life and the funny things my students do, but until then will stories about my cat [Betty] do? Really, I just want a way to get my name out somewhere. There's little point of this if I'm the only one who reads it. Soon enough I'll pass on the link to my family and maybe my mother will post a comment so that I look like less of a loner.

I can talk about my research, but only vaguely unitl it gets published, and I'm sure it's not a good idea to talk about my participants. IRB demonds would take me in my sleep.

So what? I'm not going to talk about my personal life. I decided that from the start. God forbid you-can-guess-who [parents, advisor, current odject of obsession?] read this, so, I'm left what is cleverly [strangely?] enough the perfect question for a social psychologist:

Am I more than my realtionships?

And there you have it. A perfect academic topic. Life really is better than fiction.