1. So, because my life is just a series of awkward events that snowball, I can never have minor mental breakdowns in private. Nope. My friend and I–who have netted about seventeen hours in Starbucks over the last three days–actually lost it today in a public place. We started uncontrollably laughing and couldn’t stop. It’s either lack of sleep or the gargantuan quantities of coffee we’ve consumed in the last 36 hours. Welcome to the last three weeks of the semester. Hi hell, nice to know you look like essays and exams and absolutely no fucking spare time.
The cause of our breakdown can actually be attributed to a rather unfortunate sestina that our group wrote as part of our poetry presentation on Friday. The class that we’re taking I really like–it’s the highlight of my week–and the professor is hilarious. Well, our sestina ended up being about the class, specifically: our professor. Specifically: the oddities of the class. Mrphm. We went in to clear the sestina with him, originally intending to share it in class. We couldn’t tell if he was offended or hurt or exactly what he thought of it, and after we left, I, naturally, began to panic.
“WHAT IF WE HURT HIS FEELINGS. WAIT, WHAT IF HE’S REALLY OFFENDED, BUT HE DOESN’T WANT TO TELL US. WAIT. WHAT IF WE CROSSED THE LINE? WAIT. WHAT IF…”
And so on.
This continued for about forty-five minutes, with continued profession of what bad life choices we make.
“Did we do a bad thing?!?!?!!?”
This resulted in a panicked, overly apologetic, and concerned email from both us, concerning the bloody poem. He wrote back, saying he wasn’t offended, but in between, we broke down into the aforementioned hysterical laughter.
2. The fact that most of the baristas in Starbucks don’t even ask for my name anymore. If anyone needs to ever find me, a really, really, really good guess of where to find me would be in Starbucks.
3. It’s one of the best parts of winter. I like December. It’s a gifting month. It’s also my birthday month, so I’m already partial. One of my favorite parts of Christmas is shopping for Christmas gifts that I know people are going to like. I just like gifting in general–I love watching people’s faces when they open a gift. Especially when I know I’ve got it spot on. It’s even better when they’re not expecting it. For instance: one of my friends’ birthdays is today and I got him a coffee mug with multiple kinds of mustaches on it. The look on his face when he opened it was extremely gratifying. So was my roommate’s face when she opened her birthday gift, which happened to be fuzzy socks. (Every college student loves fuzzy socks. Let’s be real.)
4. I am also the proud possessor of a fleece Disney princess blanket, made for me by my suitemate’s mom. She made everyone in our suite one, with our respective Disney princess. I’m obsessed with it.
5. I plan to spend most of Christmas break starting Downton Abbey/catching up on the rest of my TV shows and reading books for FUN. (I know, what a concept.)
6. EVERYTHING IS DUE in the next three days. I accept the challenge. Three things are making this bearable: coffee, Michael Buble crooning Christmas music in my ear, and The Last Five Years soundtrack.
Time to get back to my essay revisions. Happy mid-week! 🙂
The Wanderer 
Oh THAT’S a sestina! A mate and I similarly (and uncharacteristically) had hysterics over a beer the other night, over some non-PC observations that we’d never have made in wider company.