Finally, I have some news not befitting a LiveJournal or emo songbook. Let's roll.

A few weeks ago, back when everything was going especially terribly, I heard that the UGA chapter of the international literary society Sigma Tau Delta was accepting papers for its Ninth Annual Undergraduate Conference. I printed a copy of an 11-page essay I wrote in April 2003 entitled "The Entropic American Machine" and submitted it without much thought. Last Monday, the president of the society emailed me saying that the committee was "very impressed" by my paper and asking me if I would like to read it at the conference. Well, yes, I certainly would! I met with her on Thursday and found out that not only are just two other students presenting at the conference, but they even constructed the theme and title of the conference itself around my paper. That's a pretty damn good feeling. I'm a little nervous about reading the essay before a bunch if important faculty, and I need to trim out several pages of it for time restraints, but mainly I'm very excited about the experience. The conference is on March 30th, so I have plenty of time to prepare and help spread the word after Spring Break.

Speaking of Spring Break, it has now arrived. Matt and I are going up to Asheville for a few days to see my folks. My brother will also be there with his girlfriend, and I'm looking forward to that since I only see him every few years or so. This is the good of Spring Break-- the bad is that I currently have one motherfucker of a cold. Currently I am bundled in my robe, popping vitamins and sipping green tea and blowing out snot in all manner of colors and consistencies, hoping that I'll be well enough to enjoy the trip back home. Generally even my mild colds somehow escalate into throat infections that require a doctor visit and antibiotics to be remedied, but maybe I'll get lucky this time and my immune system will do its job. We'll know in a few days, regardless.

On an unrelated note, I've been driving without car insurance for several weeks now and have found it to be the most effective incentive to improve my driving. I'm driving the speed limit, I'm not running red lights, I'm not getting reckless or nasty... I am, ironically, a safer driver now than ever before. It's kind of exciting, too, because every time I get in the car it's like a little adventure, a little test of fate: if for any reason I'm in an accident or get pulled over I am totally and thoroughly fucked without recompense. This situation shouldn't last much longer-- only until I make the call to get my insurance reinstated-- but until then I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting some sort of perverse enjoyment out of this.