Things on My Desk as I Start a Paper Due Tomorrow

Peanut butter M&Ms (the best kind)

Pepperidge Farm Chessmen (because I like butter cookies, not chess)

Empty pickle jar on the cutest photo coaster

Can of Diet Coke

Snack-size mango-peach applesauce

Licorice (necessary paper-writing tool)

Grape tomatoes

String cheese

The usual paper-writing instruments—pens, pencils, journal-published papers, APA style book

It's going to be a long night.

Happy National Punctuation Day!

That's right, National Punctuation Day. It's been an otherwise crappy (sometimes that's the only right word) day here in sunny L.A., but someone out there should be celebrating the semicolon. And the em dash. And the others. And yes that pumpkin was carved with love with a friend (post-Halloween). Also, the founder of the day wears a superhero cape!

Why a Programmable Coffeemaker Is Key to My Future

Because otherwise my children will be the ones with the mustard and peanut butter sandwiches.

כתיבה וחתימה טובה

Rosh Hashana is a hard holiday (I was just listening to a shiur on how it's a tempered yom tov—it's a chag, but it's also yom ha'din, and our enthusiasm for the chag is dampened by the fact that we need to focus on, y'know, asking for forgiveness and a good next year and all), and, as usual, I feel wholly unprepared.

This is not helped by the fact that I am feeling sort of guilty for blowing up at my roommate (who kinda sorta deserved it, which means I'm also feeling guilty over not feeling guilty enough).

This past year has been a hard one. A lot of really great things happened (I got into a fantastic grad school; good friends got married; I lived in a fantastic place with fantastic friends nearby; I had amazing friends to lean on; I successfully walked up and down a steep hill in 4.5-inch heels; I'm sure there are plenty of others) and a lot of not-so-great things happened (I moved to L.A., for one), and I am still sort of stuck in a "living on the other coast isn't nearly as much fun and I miss the people I care about and I hate driving and school is hard" sort of rut.

But here's to hoping this new year is a good one for me, for my family, and for my friends. Here's to good things. (Now go daven for them for the next two days.)

My General State of Being

I have four-to-five pages to write for tomorrow morning and a statistics lab to finish plus a reaction paper that needs to be done by tomorrow at 5 but which I will have no time to do between now and then. And, well, I don't even have time to stress bake. Boxed brownies (Ghirardelli!) are in the toaster oven. And by tomorrow at 9:30, I will have what to hand in. Hopefully.

'Books Constitute Capital'

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library." —Jorge Luis Borges

My bookshelves. I'm already out of space on them.

Silly Similes (I Hate Myself for Writing That)

Overheard in the classroom. See if you can guess the connections:

Foucault's Discipline and Punish is like Lay's potato chips

Rhetoric is like breast augmentation

And Do You Want Fries With That?

Me: I wanted to know if you have any recommendations for the limits I should choose for my car insurance.
AAA Rep: Well, you want to have enough coverage to protect your assets and your future earnings.
Me: Um, I don't have much by way of assets, and I just started a Ph.D. program so my future earning potential is pretty much non-existent.

[I got good coverage anyway, not to worry.]

An Open Letter to My Roommates (Who Don't Read This Blog)

Dear Roommates,

Please do not use the new dishtowels I bought to mop the floor.

Also, please do not leave the front door wide open every time you come in to the apartment, especially when you go to a different room.

Please do wash your dishes. When you use them, not three days later. And while I might understand if you fell asleep after a long night of studying and left the dirty dishes from your last meal (even if I don't like it), if the dairy and meat sinks are both full of dishes, well, that's more than one meal.

Also, if you are tasked with delivering the rent check, please do not leave it outside on top of all the mailboxes.

Please close some of the kitchen cabinets some of the time. The "Did you grow up on a subway, where the doors close by themselves?" tack, seems like not the best option, especially for people who did not grow up in New York, but it doesn't take too much effort and prevents banged heads.

Please, please turn out the lights you are not using. If every time I walk into the kitchen, the lights are on and no one is there, we are both destroying the planet and running up our electric bill.

Please remove your old mattress that you are using as a couch in the living room. It is not a substitute for a couch, which we desperately need, and certainly doesn't make the apartment more home-like.

You reserve the right to ask me to be quieter when I am on the phone and you are studying in a different room. But you then lose the right to come into the room in which I am studying and have your own phone conversation.

And have a nice day.

Love, Eli7