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I feel like a misanthropic old man, settin' in his front porch and drinkin' gin.
Except the front porch is just the doorway to my room, which has a view down the stairwell, the rocking chair is me with one foot braced up against the wall of my closet to hold me in place in this new wheelie-chair that I picked up from the Take-It-If-You-Want-It bin on the other floor, and the gin is a single-serving box of Lucky Charms. ... And I'm a girl.

Today is yet another day on which I have "finished everything" and yet still have more to do. I handed in the Historical Linguistics take-home final which I had be consciously putting out of my mind while I stressed over the two papers that were left after I handed in the other paper. I figured I could do it in three days which I had coming, so I didn't worry about it, but then I ended up only having 2 days to devote to it and, no, it needed more than that. But it's submitted. I will do no more. My remaining task is one that I had un-consciously put out of my mind until yesterday: the write up for my Independent Study. That professor says to email him something Sunday night -- he understands real deadlines =)
" 'Senior grades close on May 5, or three days after the final, in all cases no later than by 10am on Monday May 12'. " He reads this on May 7th. "Ah, so what this really means is that on noon of the 12th someone from the registrar's office will give me a phone call reminding me to submit a grade if I haven't. ... On Tuesday at 5pm, the assistant registrar will come to my office and sit there until I write something down. ... Email me something by Sunday night; I will read it on the train ride over."
On the other hand, my Spanish professor refused to let a classmate stay 5 minutes past the end of the exam period in order to fill in the last question (ie. "Describe what you have learned in this class."). He also refused my final paper because midnight had passed. I don't know how I feel about that. In a way, it was great, because then I could say, "Ok no matter on the rest of this! I am going to bed," and know it was really the end. On the other hand he didn't take my paper. No-one ever has stuck to the rules like that on the first try before in any of my classes here. There's always some late-policy dealing. Not there! I'm kind of left feeling "Can he DO that?!?" (although of of course he can).

What always strikes me as absurd when I think about that professor and his sticklerness for deadlines is that his grading-syllabus is a mess! The 2nd to last day of class he had a discussion with us as to how to allocate the 20 marks that were supposed to be given to the "short compositions." I don't know exactly how many he had planned to assign, but we only ever did 2. And the first one was returned ungraded. So we decided how to re-allocate the 20 points, spreading them 10,5,5,0 among the other categories. OK, but then we never did the fourth of those remaining things (which was in-class oral presentations). It was pretty clear even on that penultimate day that we would not be getting to oral presentations. So there are still 20 points unaccounted for in everybody's grade.
So I can't even guess how I will be graded in that. I can't even guess. I want to be confident, but his track record is weird.

People are moving out of my dorm. Actually, there are lots of folks still about, -- folks and their folks (haha very punny) -- but they are not the people with whom I am friends. Those people are busily going back and forth, packing up, or they are already gone. I don't like the people who are still here because they go up and down the stair case, carrying boxes of stories to which I am not going to be privy, and gossip and talk loudly but never say "HI" to me. If they're not going to talk to me, I don't want them shouting they -- are not fun to eavesdrop on. The academic buildings and computer labs were very empty, though. The air is grey with mist, too, which softens noise.

Tonight my very good friend Ellen is arriving from NYC. I've arranged with the girl next door for Ellen to squat her room. But Ellen insists that we come meet her at the bus station. We were going to anyway, that was the plan, but now that I've suggested otherwise she's insisting that we all go to South Station for her and not meet at North Station which is where our commuter rail (but not her bus) goes. When we were going to have dinner in Chinatown (which is at South Station) that made sense, but I don't think any of us really want to at this point. Sigh.
I'll be excited tomorrow to have her, but right now I am feeling low-energy. Ellen insisting that at the least *I* have to meet her makes me annoyed to be the one who has keys for her. She has a point, but I don't want that to be the case. I don't see why meeting her in one station or the other increases her "wandering around looking for you" time, which of course I want to minimize.

Sometime I definitely want to back out of every social function because working it out is less appealing than I can stand. That is how I feel today. Grumbly old man.
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