After waffling over going to a school social last night for several hours, and not eating enough dinner as a result (a banana?), I finally got off my ass, put on a kicky skirt and made it out the door. Unfortunately I only had access to one-half of the food table so ate far too little (two chicken wings?) but I felt surprisingly not hungry. I had only had one drink so at the end of the night I ended up driving a couple people home and heading to Lee, Wozzle and Meaghan's place, where we sat up till nearly 4am drinking beer and talking about school, exams, sex and hair colour. Then I fell asleep on their couch and woke up at 8:30am with a dry, beerish mouth and just enough guilt about leaving my cats home alone. It was fun and I'm glad I got off my anti-social ass and talked to some profs and fellow students...especially my doctoral compadres who are in the same circle of candidacy-exam hell as I.

Now I'm craving poutine and gatorade. Good times.

Ugh. I woke up yesterday and I could feel the beginnings of a cold sore in the same bloody spot I always get them -- bottom lip, lower right. I managed to get some meds on it so it didn't sprout into a full-on fever blister. My lip is only a wee bit swollen, and I think it will go away by the weekend, but it's still gross and sore. I hate these physical manifestations of stress. Damn virus.

Got a rejection note from the conference panel I sent my latest proposal to, but I'm not deterred. I'll give the thing a quick revision and send it off again. There are at least a few conferences it could fit into. I'd really like to have an excuse to put in for some travel funding. I also need to get something published, and I need the feedback. I think I'll present it at the Victorian Studies group as well if I can.

I really shouldn't be on the computer right now; I really should be reading Edith Sitwell.

This pic is the lovely Ms. Salma Hayek. Wow. I love this picture for some reason. I never thought she could be such a chameleon.

Now that Mike and I are both in school life is getting back to a proper workweek-then-weekend rhythm, which also means Mondays feel like Mondays again. In some ways it's not so bad, as weekends can involve very little work and much less guilt, but it also means there are all the stupid Monday associations for Monday. Like getting up early, answering emails, actually getting things done during the day, etc. Today I got up at 7:25 am for no good reason; I just woke up and couldn't get back to sleep within a few minutes so I got up. It's nearly 10:00 am now and I'm still feeling a bit bleary-eyed but I think it's because it's grey and cool out. I like a bit of sun in my mornings. They're cheerier that way.

Good news of the week: I recieved my contract from the Fiddlehead on Friday. I've signed it and now I have to attach some biographical information and send it off to them. In a few months I'll be a published poet. And I'm actually getting paid. They are publishing four of my Picchu poems, so now I have no reason not to send more Picchu poems for publication. Besides sheer laziness, of course. If anyone cares to check out the venerable Fiddlehead site, here's the link: The Fiddlehead. Soon my name will be somewhere on that page!

Now I must put on my academic head and begin the workday.

I sent off another conference proposal tonight, and I have a couple to work on tomorrow. The confernce proposal is such a strange genre, and it doesn't help that lately I feel as thought chunks of my vocabulary are missing. I think it's because I've been thinking so much about poetry lately and the same words keep coming up, especially anything to do with modern, modernism, modernity.... All words that mean different things. Then there's all the poetic jargon I use when annotating -- suggests, recalls, illustrates, references -- including all the specialized terms of prosody. The same words, over and over again -- they really kill the brain after a while. But I'm on the home stretch now, and the next reading list is much more familiar to me.

We are broke again, eagerly awaiting student loans, scholarships and a paycheque for Mike. Luckily we are pretty well-stocked in the kitchen, and we've paid rent, bought gas and we have enough left for cat food. When the day arrives (if it ever does) when we have a regular paycheque coming in it will be an odd feeling indeed. I'm actually getting used to living in bouts of having and having-not over not just months but years. Of course, my most recent angry breakdown wasn't even a month ago, so maybe I'm just feeling temporarily rejuvenated. Or maybe I'm delirious because it's 1am and I've been thinking about multiPopword for the last hour. Either way, some semblance of tranquility is a good thing.

I am a horrible blogger. I always have good intentions but they all do down the toilet when I actually sit down to write. I think it's my academic lifestyle; I've become hyper-conscious of every thing I write. Is it smart enough? Succint enough? Am I talking out of my ass and if so, how many pages can I fill up before someone figures that out?

But this is the kind of thing I should be writing about because it's the kind of shit I need to vent. Luckily I've never been one of those people who revises e-mails to make sure they're perfect before hitting the send button, but that's not to say I don't feel mildy paranoid when I do. E-mail still strikes me as being obnoxious or arrogant. You miss out on all the subtleties of communication you get in person or even on the phone. I have had decent e-mail communication with only a few people, and one of them was Mike, the husband. Flirtatious wit and academic tension -- that was good times.

Right now I'm writing this because I'm avoiding the poetry of W.B. Yeats. I'm just not feeling the Yeats love. But I keep telling myself I'm on the homestretch of study for my first comp, and after Yeats I'm rewarding myself with some Wilfred Owen. Now that's some good writing.