My baby got a letter published in the Athens Banner-Herald (under a pseudonym) and I am very proud. It's an awesome letter, too.

Today is a snow day! I was up all night working on a massive midterm paper due today and didn't even have a chance to study for a midterm exam waiting for me in another class. The weather saved me from complete failure and the possibility of maybe learning my lesson about procrastination. Not that I'm complaining.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried, vol. 2

Now that the weather is getting warm and I won't need my skullie, the thought of having to fuck with my hair every morning seems silly. Rather than bother with that, I decided to shave my head again when I got home from campus today. I get home, I tug off my shirt, got out my trimmer, set it to a nice buzz-length and began to shear off my hair over the bathroom sink. I finish the top of my head and some of the left side and back when the battery begins to wind down. It is about 1:30 and I have to be at work at 5 tonight, so, hey, I have time. I plug it in to let it charge and go back to studying. Half an hour later I'm curious to see how much it had charged. I head back into the bathroom, unplug it and fire it up.

It doesn't fire up. I click it off and on again; nothing. Click... click. Click... click. Click click click click click click-- nothing. I open it up, clean it out, tighten everything, &c. &c. &c., and eventually exhaust all possible strategies before I determine that my razor has simply given up its life and passed on to the Great Electric Beyond. It is 2:30 and I have to be at work at 5. I look at myself in the mirror. The unshaved portion of my hair waves back at me like grass in a gentle breeze.

I bought this razor at Wal-Mart several months ago and no longer have the receipt, but I've been able to replace other things there without the receipt before. I tug on my skullie, gather up the razor and its accessories and zip to Wal-Mart. In the Customer Service department, I meet Melissa. I show Melissa the razor and tell her what happened. She looks at me, looks at the skullie, looks at me. I wait for it.

"Show it to me."

So off comes the skullie and Melissa starts, ducking her head sheepishly. I put it back on. "So basically you just want to replace it for another one?"

"Please," I beg.

"I can't give you the box or anything, just a replacement for what you gave us."

"That's fine, I don't care. I just gotta finish this before work tonight."

Melissa tells me to go get a replacement and she'll swap them out. I practically skip the whole 30,457 miles to the Beauty department and the huge wall of electric razors therein. Once there I see that my razor, and only mine, is sold out. I stand in the aisle for several minutes, simply staring at the place where, in a better world, my razor would be.

I retreat to Customer Service. When I tell Melissa it's sold out, she actually covers her mouth and says, "Oh, no." By now one of the other workers has gotten curious and asks what's going on. Melissa fills her in and the two of them take to the computer, searching through the inventory for some feasible plan. Melissa waves over another, older woman and soon there are three ladies huddled around the little monitor, glancing from my razor to the screen and talking in low voices. This goes on for several minutes before Melissa finally pulls away. "Here, lemme see." She comes around the counter, razor in hand, and I lead her back toward the Beauty department.

"I'm really sorry about all this," I say honestly.

"No no, it's okay. I wouldn't wanna go around looking like that either."

Back in the Beauty department she inspects the barcode on the display, her eyebrows furrowing and raising. Finally she takes it off the display and tells me to wait. I lean against the shelves in the Beauty department and wait.

Minutes and Wal-Mart shoppers pass and Melissa does not come back. I wait for half an hour before peeping back into Customer Service; she isn't there, so I return to the Beauty department and sit, staring at nothing. The longer I wait, the more anxious I get. I start to worry that Melissa suspects I'm a fraud. I imagine that Melissa has confiscated my razor as evidence, has called the police and is now hiding out until they show up to cuff me and take me away. I imagine my mug-shot with a half-shaven head going on government file for the rest of my life. It is now past 3:30 and I have to be at work at 5.

I return to Customer Sevice and sit and wait for Melissa, who arrives after a long while. I spring up to talk to her but she looks at me as though I've just smacked a baby. Melissa had been helping other customers and had forgotten about me entirely. When I ask about the razor she tells me, "The barcode wasn't for any razor like yours. That razor you got-- you say you got here, we don't carry it. So you must've gotten it from K-Mart or Target or something." So despite the fact that yes, I really, honestly did buy that razor at that Wal-Mart, Melissa thinks I'm trying to pull an elaborate scam on the Wal-Mart Corporation using a broken razor and a half-shaved head. She walks off and I stand there, amazed at the brilliancy of the strings of profanity my mind is lacing together. After a few moments, though, Melissa sees that I'm not leaving and comes over again, her tone apologetic. "Look, without a barcode I can't really do anything. Do you have any scissors?"

So I take my broken razor and leave Wal-Mart and drive home. I am now typing this up, and it is 4:30 and in a few minutes I have to leave for work.

As loathe as I am to post shit like online quizzes here, this one manages to be both fun to take and fun to read. (DGLD was my result.)

Also:

Matt passed along this excellent, level-headed article about the anti-terrorism frenzy, and I discovered that the scriptwritering team for one of my favorite movies ever is now chiseling out a script for one of my favorite books ever.

in a heart shape come around me / and then melt me slowly down

Now that most of the stress has passed (I completely bombed that test), I'm reading that previous entry and realizing how dreaming about a simple life doesn't make the dream itself simple. It's still far easier to become a successful powerbroker than it is to carve out some kind of idyllic, bohemian niche somewhere in this chaotic world. So, reading that last entry, I had to laugh a little at my own illusions.

Then I got kind of depressed.

Anyway, I will step out of my own head for a minute. Matt and I had a fantastically unproductive Valentine's Day. We had a nice lunch at Bissett's, took a nap amid the sound of the rain, saw The Triplets of Belleville (wtf?), took another nap, made dinner for ourselves and then half-dozed again, I think. It was a great day. I have also successfully fought off some kind of cold/infection thing without a trip to the doctor, no small victory considering my still-wonky WBC counts. I met the neighbors who own my favorite baby and found out my baby's name is Abby, of which I approve. I got my voting card in the mail and am looking forward to the primaries on the 2nd. Kerry is stronger than ever, but this is before the Republican backlash. So many things could change before November, though, so I will end this post with an ominous ellipse...

I am in the Student Learning Center killing 20 minutes before the bus home arrives, after which I will (I desperately hope) get out of work tonight so I can spend the entire night studying for an Art Hist exam tomorrow, among other things. It seems like the more stressed out I get, the more I keep daydreaming about this summer. I can't wait to work at FedEx again and get in shape, get out of debt and not have to juggle so many duties. Only a few years ago I thrived on obligations and stress and pressure-- as a freshman I did ten times the work I'm doing now and thought nothing of it. Sometimes I miss being that kind of person; right now I don't. Right now, I just want to get a nice little place on the Mediterranean with Matt and spend all my nights waiting tables making just enough money to get by and all my days writing a story that actually goes somewhere. The miracles I hope for are no longer complicated.

I am still not used to being so busy. I realized this today in Medieval Lit. We have a group presentation next week (yeah, the class is like summer camp for LOTR fans) and were trying to find some time this week to meet up. We finally settled on Thursday night because almost every other block of time in my schedule is filled, weekends included. How did this happen? I've become one of those people who, when asked if they're free for something, have to reply with "That's the day I have to ____ and then ____ and ___________ before ____." It makes me feel like I'm using my time well, and days pass quickly now, but it was kind of nice being able to spend a whole afternoon not looking at the clock or worrying about something. I've gone back to having To-Do List dreams.

Sick of Janet Jackson's breast as the Biggest New Threat to American Society. Nervous about the election and it's still nine months away. I keep oscillating between smug sureness that Bush will get the boot and fits of panic that he won't. There's plenty of evidence for both depending on which outcome you're in the mood to predict.

And I got rid of that gimpvirus without much hassle.

behold the power of geek

Apparently the reghack for an antivirus program I downloaded this afternoon was itself a virus. Such predictable irony! It's not just any virus, but a worm so poorly designed that it can't even replicate itself properly. How sad is it that my computer is so old and lame I can't even get infected with a cool virus-- I have to get the most gimpy one around. Now that I can't run Notepad, MSIE or Outlook Express I guess I'll find some time this weekend to do yet another system refresh.

In other news, Roommate is gone for the weekend and I will finally have some peace and quiet. Maybe I'll finally get around to doing all the chores-- ahahaha. Even typing that is silly.

Over the weekend one of my friends at work, Jen, invited me to her Super Bowl party. While a football game and a roomful of strangers would typically be my ideal formula for agony, I ended up having a great time and stayed until well past midnight. I knew something was clicking when halfway through the game we all got bored and ended up having long, cutthroat Duck Hunt and Dr. Mario tournaments on Jen's NES. They're all great students and yet still appreciate jokes about tentacle porn: these people are my people. I'm looking forward to hanging out with them again at Jen's next Bad Movie Night, apparently a tradition of considerable infamy.

Yesterday Matt and I went to a midday lecture by Dr. Joan Roughgarden for her new book Evolution's Rainbow. It was all about gender, mating and sexuality in animals and people, to uncreatively quote the book's tagline. Need to buy it when it's released.

The stopper in my toilet's been leaking for over a week and I still have yet to fix it. I'm an awful landlord.