Hi there! How are you? Alive? Good, me too.

Well, in the most technical manner of speaking. You know, if you’re going to be scientific about it with the whole breathing bit and heart pumping and internal organs functioning. You know, the whole kit ‘n kaboodle. (Side note: I love that phrase. It used to be used so often. What happened? It’s fun and it has alliteration. What more could a girl ask for? Please bring it back. Also? I used to have one of those kit ‘n kaboodle pink plastic jewelry boxes. Do you remember those things? AWESOME.) Especially if you count brain functioning, then I’m definitely alive and kicking, and punching and dancing and anything else you could possibly ponder up. Oh, yes. Whole lotta brain functionin’ goin’ on over here. And I mean a lot, like 44 hours a lot and still going. I’m not entirely sure if my motivation at this point is to do well, to surpass the 50-hour studying mark for the heck of it or just to prevent myself from completely and utterly crashing, and thus missing my exam, failing, having to drop out of school and then being forced to write English papers for people over the internet in the exchange of money in order to support my milk addiction.

I have one more final left, which makes me happy because that means that I can then leave here and go back home, which is happy because everyone and their brother have already finished their finals and left long ago, leaving me here where I get to study and think about how they’re all already home having great fun attending Christmas parties and prancing through vast fields of tall, pretty flowers singing “So Long, Farewell.” That’s ok, though, because tomorrow evening? Totally going to be prancing through the halls of deserted college buildings singing “So Long, Farewell.” Then on Thursday I’ll get to prance through traffic and tall buildings singing it while on my way to the airport, provided I don’t get arrested from spinning around prancing and singing in public.

Anyway, I’ve been getting hyped up about leaving, especially because it’s finally hitting me that, 1) I’m almost done. 2) I’m going to make it, and 3) I actually get to leave. So, I woke up today and decided that my already massive productivity levels were not good enough and that today I had to go bigger! better! more, more, more! I went to the bank (And now I’m carrying around $50 in my pants pocket which – I know, you don’t have to tell me – is absolutely the most brilliant idea ever), went to my doctor’s appointment to find out that with my work ethic I could really make it big and it’s a shame that my heart lies in writing, then went to fill out a form to be a math grader for next semester so that large numbers of people will curse my existence, then to the dining hall to eat, and then off to the library to read and study for my LAST. FINAL. TOMORROW!

I went and looked at the pretty books. Then I held the pretty books and smelled them. They smelled good. Then everything went wrong; very, very wrong. My world came crashing down around me. Well, not so much around me as on top of me like a hammer. The really old books from the 1700s were in terrible condition. The binding had detached and instead of fixing the spine they had been stapled! STAPLED. I briefly thought for a moment who I should contact to take up my cause. MADD? NAACP? No, they wouldn’t be interested. Then! Then I thought of contacting the President, except I remembered that he wasn’t exactly the poster child for reading. I thought about some literacy programme or something, but I couldn’t readily think of any. And I was sad because, books! Inhumane treatment of those musty, beautiful inky antiques (this would be the perverse desecration, not finals, though now that I think about it…). But then I remembered I was supposed to be reading and that being around all the pretty books and all the broken, shattered shells of books was actually a huge distraction (Am I the only person who finds more distractions at the library than in my own room? And, well, every other place for that matter?), and I made myself go down to the basement of the library. It’s a cold, dark, empty place. It only has hard wood tables and hard wood chairs. It’s a very uncomfortable place and has no distractions of any kind, unless you consider back pain from the chair a distraction. So I read and I studied for about 4 hours. I kept wanting to stop and leave because it was a pretty awful 4 hours, but I’m a slave driver and wouldn’t let myself leave until I finished. I don’t like being the boss of me. I’m mean. I need a new boss, and a new place to study that doesn’t distract me or make me draw comparisons to a modern dungeon.

Edit: There was a huge difference in the messages on the ice cream cake! “Happy Birthday Lindsay!” is entirely different than “Happy Birthday, Lindsay!” The first one is a noun, the second one is an interjection. Although it was true that I was a happy birthday Lindsay, that was not what the cake was supposed to convey. …Don’t judge me.