RIP

Tomorrow marks the first day of the last 18 days of my life. All I am saying is that a bachelors degree better be worth all of this.

Until this time of tribulation and purgation for all my procrastinating wrongs is up, don't expect much in the way of blog posts.

(P.S. I graduated twice this weekend and yet the degree is still pending. Sigh)

(P.P.S. My house is now full of blogging roommates. Check out the side bar for my newest, brightest housemates, Amanda, Abigail and (well she's not new but she's cool anyways) Kathy.

Supercalafraga...

Tonight I spelt psychoanalytically correctly on the first try. I just thought you would all like to know that.

All Night Long

I am not a late night person. When I lived in the dorms I used to gage the quality of my life on whether or not I was in bed before KZLA announced its after midnight show on the bathroom radio. These days I find myself in bed before 1 and can usually rise without an alarm around 8:00. I like this schedule, and I like the moderation I show between being a night or morning person. How very Aristotlian of me.

Tonight I am involved in the second all nighter of my entire life. The first was the night I officially snagged my first boyfriend. We stayed up talking all night in the Sigma Chi lobby under the pretense of reading Agustine's City of God. That was over three years ago. Since then I don't think I've been up past three. Except for tonight. And though tonight I am not in the company of an enthralling new boy, and I instead get to stay up in the company of three 18th century novels, two post world war novels, and a half written senior thesis, I have rather enjoyed it.

The key I think is the diet coke consumption level combined with the right play lists. Bublé, Peterson, Alabama, and good old Kravitz have all had their run. I've been up since yesterday at 9, and I'm not even tired. This might be the soda and George Strait talking, but it is kind of thrilling to magically add 8 hours of work into your day.

It's 6:00am and I have a friend to wake up and some breakfast to cook. I hope you've rested well.

Magazines

There is little in life that gives you the same sense of identity as do your magazine subscriptions. Today as I was searching through boxes in the garage (boxes packed before moving to England and not unpacked sense), I unearthed some old Vogues and Cooks Illustrated. As I placed them with their fellow issues on their respective shelves (Cooks Illustrated goes in the kitchen and Vogue has a shelf all to itself in my bedroom), I realized how much I like my magazines.

Every time I get my Vogue in the mail I count the hours until I can put aside work for a while and delve into the dream world that it that publication (the latest issue I've had for two weeks in its original plastic wrap as the work has not yet subsided). How will I introduce my dear daughter to the designers without making her too snobby or spoiled before she is in high school? I do need to find a way to get my tailor to make perfect imitations of Ralph Lauren's (we just call him Ralph) latest jacket, but in a better fabric. I hate it when my plane gets waylayed in Milan when I expressly asked the pilot to only stop in Florence on my way to Sicily. Ahh, these issues are such a plague in my life...

Cooks is a similar fantasy land; one in which I can taste the differences between having four kinds of beef in a meatloaf instead of a mere, inadequate three, or have three hours in which to attempt the perfect pastry puff for a casual summer picnic. I've made four or five meals out of the magazine and everyone has been fantastically good and exorbitantly time consuming, requiring pots and spices I've never heard of much less own.

These magazines are representations of the finer things in life and as such are like mini vacations to me. When I eat Trader Joes frozen Thai bowls for breakfast and lunch in a single day or forget to wash my Gap t-shirt but wear it anyway I think back to these magazines and what I would like life to be like. Someday I hope to worry about the buttons on this season's best coat getting lost, or how much cumin should go into my stove-top concoction, but I have to worry about graduating and getting to work on time, so I guess for now I will merely read.

FYI

Update: It is now cream. We here at onlytrying are not thrilled with the color, but there is an exciting change coming that will make our color choices obsolete. That's called a teaser.

This blog is not intended to be purple. The background is a lovely shade of pale blue, not an uncomfortable periwinkle. If it is such a periwinke on your browser let me know, as that is unacceptable.

Signed,

The Management

Top Five Records

Should you find yourself wanting to hang yourself with the tied together pages of the latest installment in the ever-present flow of essays coming from your printer, I would like to suggest to you the salvific qualities of the angry pop playlist. Writing about the modern dilemma of the Midwestern novel when you would rather be sleeping or watching reruns of America's Next Top Model can be harrowing to even the strongest of homework warriors, but there is help. As is so often the case, music is the answer. As is almost never the case, the needed music is pop.

The more mind numbing the lyric and driving the base line, the more likely it is that a particular piece of music will give you the angry adrenaline needed to get through the hurdle. Whereas in the peace and calm of the Bodleian Library last semester I found such pieces as Benjamin Britten's Winterreise a helpful soundtrack to my work, things have, unfortunately, changed. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say. I present to you the soundtrack to my desperation. What's yours?

1. American Woman, Lenny Kravitz
2. Fighter, Christina Aguilera
3. Whole in My Head, The Dixie Chicks
4. Through With You (I like to think of my P.E. classes with this one), Maroon 5
5. What Was I Thinking, Dirks Bently (with a name like Dirks, it has to be good)