What a great day! I don't think I've ever enjoyed spending so much time in my kitchen (injunction against all anti-feminist jokes starts now...) actually, I guess it all started last night when I got home from doing homework and stayed up for an hour and a half grating mozarella cheese. I didn't really feel like going to bed, but I flipped on the tv, and sex & the city was on. And then Firends. And then Will & Grace. So I just sat there, watching the regular gamut of sitcoms and...you know...making cheese dust. I guess I didn't anticipate doing any of this...but, well... we have one cheese grater that's probably 1''x 6'', and I had maybe a 2 pound block of cheese. Mmmm...

But the suffering was worth it! I got up early this morning and made my very first lasagna all by myself! And boy howdy, let me tell you...that lasagna was GOOD. Mmmm...

More importantly, however, I didn't have to eat my good lasagna all by myself...because my cohort came over!! Or, well, most of it anyway...and we all brought food and had a huge feast on my living room floor and then we baked cookies for a bunch of people in the department and... well, I feel all warm and fuzzy now. There's billions of cookies wrapped up in my fridge with bows and tissue paper and everything just waiting to be delivered on Monday morning. I think it was a great way to get the holidays off to a good start.

Plus, I don't think I'll have to eat anything for the next 2 or 3 weeks...because holy crap we had lots of food. I think I've eaten more chocolate today than the last quarter combined. And that's saying something. I'll either be on such a sugar rush that I can't go to bed until tomorrow, or I'll crash so hard from sugar lethargy that I don't wake up until Tuesday morning...mmmm

Oh yes!

And one thing that's been irking me: this new cafe that I've been going to. I keep trying to promise myself that I won't go there for just one night...or maybe even two in a row. It's weird...it has definite advantages. It's in walking distance from my apartment. There's always a table free. The coffee isn't too expensive, and it's not too bad, either. It has a huge selection of deserts which, alothough I almost never buy, are really fun to look at. (Haha, and other cafe goers like to people watch...I sit there like "hmm....wow, yeah...if I were hungry at all, or had an absurdly high metabolism, I would totally eat that one. And then the one next to it would be for breakfast tomorrow...oh, yeah...)

but!

It's just not...homey. At Au Coquelet, they knew me. I'd get a nice "how's it going?" every once in a while from the girl with dreadlocks behind the counter. And the other customers were interesting (sometimes...*too* interesting...and sometimes...they completely belonged in Berkeley and nowhere else...) But here, even though I go there 5-6 times a week, they don't seem to ever recognize me- one guy yesterday, who takes my order most of the time, told me, in all seriousness, where the milk and sugar counter was as he handed me my cup. Or, what's worse, if they do, I feel like they're being judgemental. You know, "oooh, it's that dorky girl again with her...books and her...blazer...here to get her drink and sit in the corner like every other night because she has no friends to hang out with. That's probably not even real work that she's doing, she probably just has no other way to have contact with other humans because she's so, so nerdy. Eww." Seriously, where IS the nerd love?

And I *totally* have friends!
And it IS real work!

And I AM nerdy...that's just...not as...cool here...:::sigh:::

Oh MY God. It's been one of those days. The worst part is, I can't even REMEMBER anything that I did before noon this morning. I feel vaguely as if I rolled out of bed at 8:30. And I think I had some nebulous plans to do some stuff or something. But that's all I got. Fortunately for me, at least, I did end up in the right classroom at noon for my Romanticist class, showered and (I think) even fed.

And I have a little secret here...for the past week or so, I was under the distinct impression that I was, as they say, the shit. I finished the first draft of my 20 page paper for that Romanticism class on Saturday, and was like "Party on, Kat. You now have two weeks to spiffy up this paper a little and churn out another 10 pager for Post-colonialism. But, as is plain, you are the guru of time management. You planned ahead. How thoughtful of you. Good thing for me that I'm you, because if I wasn't I'd *totally* want to be like you. Serious."

(okay, and it should be noted...as sort of a public advisory...that if you spend too much time in Starbucks, as I have lately, the daily repetition of the SAME holiday music in the SAME order will get to you, stealthily. You will feel like Bill Murray in Ground Hog day. Only you will realize that this is real life, and not a movie, and any claims you have ever had to self-actuated personhood will be slowly worn away as you develop the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is making you run through the same daily loop. And you will start to observe. And then you will start to observe yourself observing. And then you will get very, very bitter. And then you will drink your Peppermint Mocha.)

But all of that is besides the point. Because the real point is that after my class today I began once more to gaze into the existential abyss of self-doubt. (Which, all told, happens at least once during every paper writing cycle. For previous work on this topic, I'll reference you to...well, probably any blog I've ever written here in the first half of December or the later half of May. They're all the same.) But it's the same old story. All at once it hits you: "I. Suck. I have a draft, but it's CRAP. My idea isn't even that GOOD. None of it means ANYTHING. Oh my GOD. Why didn't I ever take up that man's advice and just move with him to his commune to eat carrots and grow pot? Or join a nunnery? Nuns don't have to write papers, if they don't want to."

So, no...considering everything, all of this isn't that bad. I'll probably wake up tomorrow with renewed enthusiasm and a conviction that whatever my paper is about, is just fine. And I'll also realize that it's not always advisable to create a life plan based on what homeless people in Berkeley tell you to do. And nuns well...they still don't have to write papers. Hmm.

But if I wake up tomorrow to "I Got You Babe" playing on my clock radio, all bets are off. And I will not be held accountable for my own actions.