Expect Me When You See Me

I am quick becoming the master at uping the number of articles I read each day. This weekend, panicking over the fact that I had a paper due this friday and a presentation on another paper this thursday, neither of which were written or even close to being fully researched, I took Thursday off for Thanksgiving, and early Friday for Black Friday shopping (which was really peaceful compared to how NJ gets), then put my nose to the grindstone and read a record breaking 21 articles on Saturday alone. Granted, they were short articles on evolutionary case studies, but I'll take what I can get. I read another 12 articles the next day so I read 33 articles sat and sun alone. All that effort and I still wasn't even close to finishing, when T. and I visited our professor to day to see if he'd take pity on us, and he was like, "Your paper is due the friday of the second week before the end of term." and we were like, "Well, your syllabus says it's due this week which is the third week before the end of term." So he said it was really due next friday which is good in that I mostly finished all my research for that paper (12-15 more articles to go), but I'm still about 20 articles behind on the other paper so I have to work on that so I can give my presentation on it on Thursday. It's made much harder in that some of my evidence is in Korean and Japanese which takes a lot longer to read (decipher in the case of Korean since my Korean is very 101), and I'd really like to track down the Korean author of the article I'm looking at who either thought dating was for the weak, or that it should be made really unobtrusive to anyone reading. I've been tempted to just track down someone who knows Korean because this article is really frustrating *sigh*

In other news, I'm officially scheduled to take the quals at the end of March. My cohort thinks I'm crazy. I'm planning on spending the holidays reading through articles and writing up answers to questions.

I had to put up plastic over the windows for the winter which I had only previously ever heard of in American Gods, so that was both strange to me and annoying since the damn tape doesn't stick. After hours of work, I got the plastic sealed to my living room windows, but my hours of work proved futile for sealing it to my bedroom windows which repel tape like two opposing magnets. I have this urge to never take the plastic down again now that it's up. This may actually be feasible too since I can't leave windows open during the summer because it aggravates my allergies, and what other reason would I have for taking the plastic down?

Had a really good bujinkan class on Weds because only three other people showed up who were mostly high level so instead of the basic, easy stuff Mike usually teaches, he went for more advanced stuff thus teaching a class that was closer to to the level I'm used to from Jack. Which isn't putting down Mike, it's just a difference in teaching style (Jack teaches at a level he wants to learn at which is quite advanced and the white belts who join are expected to tough it out whereas Mike teaches at a lower level with the occasional high level stuff thrown in near the end of a class so his students don't get too frustrated. It's more boring for me, but Mike's classes have a much lower level of aggression, I've noticed, and I have only had like, one bruise in the past three months which is very weird *L*). I was really glad I made the time to get there considering I won't have time to train this week.

We're having our discussion class on weds in a restaurant on capital square this week. That'll be a fun place to have discussions about the agency of objects and warfare with supernatural agents. *L*

Back to work now. Ja ne!

Training on Weds was onigadaki, my favourite technique, but I didn't have as much fun with it as normal because it turned out that I was the highest ranking person there (technically, there was another guy who matches my rank, though not my seniority, but he's not really that good...), which meant that Jack gave me the kind of attention he usually gives his ukes (minus being beat up), with harsh criticisms combined with showing me cool extra things. It was sort of terrifying. The weird thing is Jack was in a really good mood before training because he knows this female marine because he teaches where she works, and thinks it's hilarious that she called out Timberlake. Being given harsh criticism right after seeing him in such a good mood gave me whiplash. Not that he wasn't right (since onigadaki is one of my favourite moves I got complacent with it, and he called me out on it), but ouch. The being taught a few cool things no one else did was nice but I'd really rather he just didn't pay as much attention to me. Let the 9th and 10th dans be there to soak up his attention *L*

There's a seminar tomorrow, and I was considering going, but it's one of the extra expensive ones and I can't really afford it. Plus, he specifically warned to bring mouth guards, and I'm really not in the mood to be punched in the face repeatedly tomorrow, funnily enough (see? I do draw the line somewhere).

Thursday afternoon was the first time I had to recover from my Wisconsin trip. I got sort of screwed over at work when one person was out sick for my 8 1/2 hours shifts on Tuesday and Weds which left me without a minute of spare time on Tuesday (when I was exhausted from the trip), and only a bit of spare time on Weds when they actually called in a whole other group of people to answer phones because it was pretty much just me left in the actual help desk to take calls (even the Asst Sup. was out), and then I had to go to training and wait for my mother to get back from the airport which ate up my whole day. Thursday was more calm, but I ended up on a call helping someone for an hour and a half and the call wasn't even over when I had to hand it over to someone else at the end of my shift. Crazy.