help, i'm alive

things i miss about washington:

1. drive-through espresso stands. i don't mean coffee shops (which, i must admit, madison does admirably), but little rent-a-shack stands with silly, pun-y, espresso-themed names. these things are everywhere in washington. you could pull off on the most podunk fucking exit for some gas in the middle of the state and there will be a drive-through espresso stand. 
   
2. having more than 2 seasons. (i don't think this needs an explanation.)
   
3. evergreens.
   
4. mountains. it's kind of funny when my students mention going skiing or snowboarding, because, well, there are no mountains here. it's like being at virginia beach and seeing people trying to surf. ha. 
   
5. never being more than a day's drive away from the ocean. or portland. 
   
6. malls with movie theaters. seriously, it just makes sense. 
   
7. not having to file a stupid fucking state tax return. 
   
8. not having to check the weather just to make sure it's safe to go outside.
   
9. bars where dancing is acceptable.
   
10. lakes that you can actually swim in. 
    
11. rivers that are also for swimming. 
    
12. did i mention mountains?
    

things that make madison a comparable place to live:

1. um.......
   

(please note that i have deliberately not listed names of people on either list. if i did so, i would have to concede that i enjoy being in madison quite a lot.)

no rollercoasters here

as always, the time since my last post is too long. apparently i've found other things with which to procrastinate. but i've got a half an hour until i need to go out for a run, and there's nothing that enticing on the internets today, so what the hell. 

last night was ben's birthday. we went to capitol chophouse, and oh boy, that place is holy shit expensive. but it was really cool to feel like ballers for an evening (i felt even cooler paying with my nordstrom card), and to have a reason to dress up, since those are few and far between these days. it was nice to have a reason to buy expensive(ish) wine. i always forget how good good wine can be, since i can usually only afford/justify buying $10-$15 bottles. it was also nice not to have loads of food in front of me, and to leave a restaurant feeling both satisfied and comfortably full without having needed to exert any self-control. 

this weekend is going to be long. i have a presentation on tuesday in my medieval class, and there is a lot of reading that has to happen between now and when i write the thing. i also still have a decent handful of papers to comment on, in addition to catching up on reading for my minor class. i feel less and less motivated every day. i don't know if it's just burn-out or if i really am on the wrong path, but nothing about school feels exciting anymore. not that working all the time and getting paid nothing should feel exciting, but i used to at least get some level of satisfaction from reading and doing research. now all i can think of is how utterly pointless everything i'm doing seems to be. but i also have a problem with inertia, in addition to the somewhat scary reality that the regular workforce doesn't have a "path" (soul-sucking though it may be) in the way that academia does. in other words, i'd have to figure shit out for myself. which in many ways is something i've been doing since i was 14, but in other ways is something i haven't the first clue how to do. i'm also afraid of missing out on something that will ultimately make me happy. the problem is, i literally don't know whether leaving or staying is the bigger risk to my long-term happiness.  

new! the top ten secrets to weight loss that you've never heard before!

1. stop eating so much.

2. keep a log of what you eat, so you know when you're being a fat pig.

3. remember, liquid things have calories too (i know, right? who would've thought?). this includes soda, alcohol, lattés, juice--basically anything that's tasty is probably loaded with calories. 

4. exercise, duh.

5. exercise even when you're not exercising (i.e. take the stairs, park at the farthest end of the parking lot, walk around in circles, etc etc).

6. don't do things that keep you from exercising, like watching t.v. or just generally sitting on your ass.

7. stop eating so much. seriously.

8. if you must eat, don't eat shit that's unhealthy or fattening.

9. get a weight-loss buddy for accountability. just make sure it's someone who won't lose as much weight as you; weight-loss buddies are only good if you can use them to make yourself feel better. 

10. if all else fails, there's always meth. 

oh hai

so, running in the winter is not as bad as i've always envisioned it to be. it's even kind of good in a bitingly cold sort of way. as long as you wear the right shit (read: underarmour) you really don't get that cold. sometimes my lips go numb, but i could buy a face mask or something if it ever got too bad. i think i have found my limit, though, which hovers somewhere around zero degrees fahrenheit. with little to no wind. that's really the deal-breaker for me. which is unfortunate, of course, because madison seems to have a god-awful percentage of days that are windy as fuck. and it's always exponentially worse by the lakes, which is also unfortunate because it is almost impossible to make a good route that doesn't encounter a lake. you know, that whole isthmus thing. 

at least i'm no longer scared of tidal waves. i used to think that they could happen in any body of water, so when i was a kid i would always get super freaked out whenever we drove over the bridge that crosses the puget sound. 

in other not-exciting news, i finished grading portfolios last night, and for the most part it's been fairly easy. i basically flip through to see whether they either fucked up royally or did something surprisingly awesome, and then proceed to give them the grade that i knew they were going to get before i even opened the damn thing. 

except for this one kid. before the last portfolio, he was hovering somewhere between a and ab, so i had to read a little more carefully in hopes that he would wow me with his revisions. so his final draft of his final paper is okay; he could have done a bit more but he did make a lot of improvements from the first draft. as i'm thinking i could probably give him an a ('cause, whatever, i like this kid), i flip to the back where he has his 2 other papers (from earlier in the semester--papers i've already seen, commented on, and graded) and WTF MARGINS. his margins on these two papers is not even the stupid word default 1.25--they're like, at least 1.5 inch margins, and they're that big on all sides. okay, i know this must sound excessively trivial, but you have no idea how many times i told them how much i hate hate hate margins that are not 1 inch (not to mention that 1 inch margins are in the syllabus across the board for all english 100 classes). i've told them in class, on their paper drafts, in email, and in their portfolio comments. i would say that on average it came to their attention in one form or another at least every other week. i even went so far as to compromise my image as a fair, objective grader in order to tell them that when i sit down to grade a paper, and the first thing i see is fucked up formatting and fucked up margins, i get grumpy. and when i'm grumpy before i even start reading the thing, i am much more nitpicky and much more inclined to grade low. maybe it is stupid and ocd of me to care about formatting so much, but goddamnit this was, like, the only thing i was ever a hard-ass about (aside from citations. i told them that if they didn't have a works cited that actually works in their final paper i would give them a straight up zero.), and for fuck's sake it takes like 2 seconds to change your margins. and, for an extra second, you can even make it your default setting, so they stay 1 inch FOREVER. 

so seriously, was he trying to piss me off right before i turn in final grades? probably not. but the thing that irritates me the most is that i really wanted to be able to have an excuse to give him an a, because if i'm really honest with myself, he probably deserves an ab, margins aside. but he's always been great in class, he's really creative, and his papers are actually not boring. but compared to other students, even those who got ab's no question, he just didn't put much time into revision. to top it all off, i'm pretty sure he's the kind of kid for whom an a is almost indistinguishable from an ab, so now i'm even more irritated that i've spent so much thought-energy on his grade when in reality he's probably going to be just as happy either way. 

oh, and i have 15 pages left to write in the next 48 hours (not to mention shopping and packing for the trip down south). fuuuuuuuuuuck.