Meh

I was up late last night, reading this blog. I was supposed to be working on my paper, and I did a little. But then I made the mistake of checking out some of my friends' blogs and found a link to that and I was hooked. Then, I forced myself to get back to the paper, thought I was doing pretty good, discovered I wasn't and went to bed.

So now I have no paper, am ridiculously late, actually, with that paper, and I'm tired.

Apparently, when I'm tired, I crave cookies.

Which made me think of this:

I Am a Bad Student

It is currently 11pm, and my paper for my summer class is nearly a week overdue. If I get it to my professor tomorrow (early) he can grade it in time to turn in my grade to the school. If not, I get an incomplete for the class and he grades it when he can, and I don't know when that will be.

I have no excuses. I loved this class - summer class in Romance Fiction? Come on. It doesn't get much better than that. I like the book I'm writing on - Julia Quinn's "The Viscount Who Loved Me," but I am just not that inspired to write. I feel like everything I'm saying right now (in my paper) is trite and basically at a sub-par undergraduate level. I'm supposed to know stuff now. I'm supposed to be able to come up with a theory and find evidence in the text and it just isn't happening.

But I'm running out of time and I have to get it done. I was doing so well and then, I made the mistake of reformatting.

See, I write my papers single-spaced and in the default font. Then, when I'm done (or stuck and think I have enough for the minimum page requirement) I reformat, slap on a concluding paragraph to tie everything up in a nice bow and call it a day. I didn't think this paper was "done" but I did think it was long enough. Um... No. I'm barely halfway to the minimum length and I ALREADY feel like I'm repeating myself.

So, it's back to my secondary sources to see if there is some more stuff I can throw in this paper.

I'm so disappointed in myself.

I Have Great Timing

I'm going to Atlanta on the 10th of August to meet my new nephew. I planned the trip so that I hit both my younger brother and my mom's birthdays. My parents are throwing a party that weekend, which they have deemed 60/60/20 - they both turned 60 this year and are celebrating their 20th anniversary. So, it was good timing.

Except that we have tickets to the Sox game on the 11th.


And it's Elvis night.

And the first meeting of my new book club is Saturday afternoon.


And Super Diamond is playing the House of Blues on the 12th.


Dammitt! I love the Sox, and we only had tickets to four games this season (one of which is tonight, yay!). So, that's a bummer because I love baseball games, and I hate to miss out. I have loved Elvis since... I can't actually remember when my love began, but I love him. I went to Graceland a few years ago, and the best Valentine's Day gift I ever got was a Vermont Teddy Bear dressed like Elvis. Super Diamond, if you don't know, is a Neil Diamond cover band. Don't laugh. They're AWESOME. It was one of the first concerts that Boyfriend and I went to together, and it has sort of become an annual event - we even went to see them when our Vegas vacation coincided with Super Diamond's schedule. I swear, that one wasn't intentional. I was really excited about my new book club, which was inspired by the recent class I took in popular romance fiction. It has been a long time since I was in a book club and, being in school, I rarely get to read for fun. I'll still read the book, of course, but I was really looking forward to talking about it.

Meeting my nephew is worth missing these things but... I really wish I do all of these things.

Liar!

That billboard from the last post? It's a fake. Apparently, there is also one in LA and NYC. "Emily" has a blog connected to the New York billboard, complete with a video of "Steven" and Emily's former best friend "Laura" making out and checking into a hotel. According to the (really poorly written) blog, she's going to torture him for 14 days, so we'll see what this is an ad for then. One person speculated that it was for a show on Court TV, another for a chick-lit novel. Personally, I think it's a bad choice for just about anything. Her blog is poorly written, which doesn't bode well for some forthcoming novel, and her tactics are over the top and annoying - something only acceptable in characters we've already come to love. From an anonymous "Emily," they're just annoying.

I'm sorry that I pointed this trash out. Luckily, I only have one regular reader (Hi Mavis!), so I didn't help too much in the spreading of the crap.

Best Billboard Ever

I was walking back to work today, after a lovely lunch at the awesome McDonald's on 600 N Clark in Chicago. As you head west down Ontario, there is the best billboard ever up on the south side of the street on the side of the Ontourage building, across from Gino's East.

In case the picture is too small, it reads:

Hi Steven,
Do I have your attention now?
I know all about her, you dirty, sneaky, immoral, unfaithful, poorly-endowed slimeball.
Everything's caught on tape.
Your (soon-to-be-ex) Wife,
Emily
p.s. I paid for this billboard from OUR join bank account

Now, I don't know if this is real or not. If so, I'm hoping Oprah calls this woman and puts her on her show, because I think this is awesome. There is no logo or anything to identify it as being an ad - though ads have been sneaky before. I can't possibly imagine what this would be an ad for, though, so I think it's for real.