I started my countdown-to-graduation journal right after Thanksgiving. (And had another countdown-to-SYMBOLIC-graduation last April/May) It was a good motivator to write, among other things.

It’s also a good way to force myself to get things done before the new year, because then I can write about it. Do you know Microsoft word marks “new year” as a grammatical error if you don’t capitalize it? I don’t think ‘new year’ needs to be capitalized unless you’re referring specifically to the holiday. But I digress.

Anyway. In 34 days it will be 2006. I will have survived my first year in The Real World and be more than half way through the experimental “time off.” My only goals are to finish the three applications that are due in December, and to not have a horrible New Years Eve. The latter will probably be accomplished by actually going to bed at 10 PM, as I should have done last year, instead of carousing through the city with HeWhoShallNotBeNamed. I mean, that was technically New Year’s Eve-Eve, and it was a really fun night, but obviously god agreed with…well all my friends who told me not to go, because that evening ended disastrously. Sebastian, the only one of my friends who is religious, must have made some kind of deal. But I digress.

I am currently at work, having just finished a project, and am tooling around until I get more work. I am worrying about a variety of things; my nails are bitten down to nothing. NaNo-ing has simply not happened as much as I would have liked this year. I meant to go to more meet-up things (and I miss the Capital District chats that Emily was always setting up last year) but grad school stuff, and other busyness got in the way. I actually have over 45,000 words of essaying and could easily make it to 50,000 if I threw myself into writing these next few nights, but it’s certainly not a novel, and it’s certainly not anything that’s near a finished product. The essay I really want to write is still not happening, but HTLAR has been progressing swimmingly. Regardless, I’m going to attend the TGIO gathering on Thursday. I suppose I could say once again that I digress, but then I would have to have had a point from which to digress.

I’m going to go back to crafting the perfect Chicago SOP. I should automatically be granted admission, because I think the reading group I was in Spring 2004 was kind of Straussian. Plus, it’s very U Chicago to spend a weekend night (and the weekend did indeed start on Thursday at Skidmore. It was Rule #1 according to my Comp. Politics professor) discussing bio-ethics, and freshman curriculum, and Genesis. Especially when it’s done over beer.