I should be washing out my spoon, but I can’t resist posting some odd sites that I ran across this morning. Check out the Martha Stewart Paparrazzi page. But you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually lived like that. And see your Cheese Rating. I’m Kadchgall. It’s a hard cheese from Afghanistan made with sheeps milk, or occasionally camels milk and clotted with yogurt. I’m also Friesekaas, a hard Dutch cheese, made from cows milk with a natural, waxed rind, and ripens in 3 to 12 months and flavoured with cumin and cloves. So I’m two cheeses (or is that too cheesy?). Go figure that one out.

Lemming? From all evidence, I’m probably one of them. Judging from the publicity that NaNoWriMo is getting, it looks like a fad. I don’t like fads. But when it has to do with writing, well then there’s no way I can resist. Blogging is also a fad and I suppose I’ve jumped on that bandwagon too although I’ve been keeping an online journal of sorts ever since I figured out how to code a webpage. Then again, in real life, people don’t give a crap about what I’m doing. They’ve never heard of writing a novel in one month. They don’t know what blogging is. I’m just one of those students people point out and say, “For the love of God, stay away from that one.” If they don’t say that, that’s because they’re too busy running away.

It rained.

I don’t get it. Why do I have to wear three layers of clothes in southern California? Why don’t the heaters work? Why are the staff, the paper-pushers, the cleaning ladies, the haughty office administrators who have nothing to do except build paper clip towers getting paid? Why the hell is it cold? I thought I would be subjected to that when I got home (where there is actually a winter) and not here.

And good God, I’ve noticed today that some people are so whiney they’re dangerously straying toward bitchy. Why can’t they just go away and leave me in peace?

Am I slow, or is this just a recent development? Yahoo! Clubs is going to merge with Yahoo! Groups. Now when did mergers within entities start happening? It’s merger-mania, I tell you. Next thing we’ll know, kidneys will start merging with bladders.

I was walking back home quickly, all scrunched up and huddled like an old woman. It’s cold and damp. And weird people in jogging shorts and kiddies on wheels squeal past me. My head aches. Too much lab. When is it ever going to end? And I hear the squawking. Looking up, I see a spiny tree with elongated gourds hanging downward like limp male genitals. And on top of the naked branches, there is this black shroud, shimmering. A flock of birds. Crows. Ravens. Arguing. A small microcosm of the world around me, people jeering at each other, not caring. God, the weather is so depressing.

It’s gotten way too cold, way too fast. I never want to get out of bed now because the room feels like it’s been refrigerated. Why oh why does housing refuse to turn on central heating? And I’ve got to go to lab tonight, midnight. Oh, my head’s going to be extremely sore tomorrow.

I just got my copy of the December Harper’s Magazine in the mail. Most of it is dedicated to the 9/11 stuff, but one article that struck me was about the beating of Dan Rather. I was amused because it was all first rate conspiracy theorizing that somehow made a weird kind of sense. I wish I could write a book on that.

So our house has a new guard dog: a five foot tall cactus with shades and a bandana. What will they come up with next, the replacement of security with an army of chia pets?

I have been writing all day and have pretty much avoided everyone. Doing this every day would not be a healthy life style.

Had another Thanksgiving dinner tonight, at a professor’s house no less. Actually, a bunch of students signed up for it and it was really great because we got to talk to the professor and listen to his stories about the ‘good old days’. And we talked about parking structures (how some profs are real egotistical about having their name painted on a reserved spot) and decreasing student health care plans and getting shafted by the administration in general. There was really good food–and talk that perhaps the professors should replace the incompetent cafeteria staff. But then again, nah. Some profs would make rather, er, complicated meals.