ONE. Study for the GRE: Week 2 was far less productive than Study for the GRE: Week 1, owing mostly to the fact that I had Thursday and Friday off of work, and decided to spend both days camped out in front of the telly in my pj’s watching crap movies and surfing the interwebz, instead of studying dilligently as I said I would. I’m not too terribly upset with myself, as I most definitely deserved wanted a break. A few days of doing absolutely nothing was much needed, in order to prepare for the 18 (possibly 24) hours of overtime I will be putting in this week. Six (maybe even seven) straight days of work… I’ll be dead before I know it. Out of beez-ness, as Nadia would say. Silver lining, though - my paycheck is gonna be awesome. That is, until Uncle Sam takes his cut. Greedy bastard.

TWO. Holly decided she needed someone to take care of, so, instead of having a baby like most normal people do when they are feeling particularly unloved, she bought a Chihuahua. Say hello to Reese.

  She’s kinda cute, I suppose. In a rat-like kind of way. She also happens to hold the distinction for “World’s Neediest Dog,” as she refuses to be by herself for more than 30 seconds at a time and ends up whining like mad whenever anyone leaves the room.

I totally wanted to name her Taco. Taco Belle. Holly vetoed it straight away. Go figure.

THREE. I have recently decided that life would be far more tolerable if it was experienced while under the influence of Xanax. Anxiety is kicking my ass right now, with all this grad school stuff, plus the general choas at work, and the crap in my personal life… maybe I need drugs. Well, I probably don’t need drugs, but it’d be nice, yeah? Perhaps I shall visit with a psychiatrist regarding just such a possibilty. Then again, maybe I should just deal with shit as it is, and not rely on a little pill to get me through the day.

I’m totally mental, methinks. But then again, aren’t we all?

Week 1 of studying for the GRE has proved successful. My vocabulary has expanded by 50 words in a matter of only two days, and I now find myself slipping stuff like “truculent” and “excoriate” into normal, everyday conversation, resulting in pissy glares from most people, as they have no idea what I’m saying. In addition to even more vocabulary (almost 400 new words to learn in 7 weeks!), I will next tackle the all-important “Quantitative Review,” which basically means that I will re-learn all of the math that I was supposed to have learned in the first 18 years of my education. Joy.

Visited with Radha last Monday, and she was very helpful in regards to where to go, what to study, etc. She put me in touch with a professor at Indiana University, in hopes that he will take me under his wing and get me a teaching assistantship within my first year of study. The plan is to attend Indiana’s Summer Language Workshop next June to brush up on my Russian, then continue in the Master’s program in Slavic Linguistics that fall, and to eventually get my Ph.D. and become a professor. That equals roughly 5-6 more years of school. After discussing it with Radha, I am far less worried, as she has allayed some of the fears that I had regarding not being able to finish and/or making the wrong choice. According to her, it is far better to wait a few years post-Bachelor’s degree to go to grad school, as you are usually far more motivated to study and less likely to dick around.

Speaking of dicking around, Abby and I went to the Hole last night to watch the football game on Pay-Per-View and relax with some drinks and wings. It ended up being one super-crazy night, as we were selected to help judge a Dance-Off between a Food Science major with one hell of a Texas accent and her amusingly clueless professor who just deboarded a plane from Germany. Most entertaining, to say the least. The Texan had more rythym, but the German used props - and I totally give props for using props. In the end we decided it was a tie, but not before we also decided to meet up next weekend for Round 2 of the Global Dance-Off 2006.

Three days of work this week, then a four-day weekend. Word.

Having recently felt pressured into forging some sort of long-term professional goal for myself, I weighed all the options and decided last weekend that I am going to go back to school. Unfortunately for my lazy ass, graduate school is a shit-ton of work, even before you get there - studying for the GRE, sitting the GRE, collecting references, writing statements of intent, gathering writing samples, and on and on and on… it’s a bit exhausting really. I think grad schools intentionally make the application process this diffcult, as as way to weed out the slackers: if you can’t make it through, you’ll never survive in school.

I, unfortunately, haven’t even completed Phase 1, which is “Finding a School and a Program of Study.” I know that I want to study Russian, and I’d love to lecture at university to the younger kids (freshman/sophomore age)… but part of me also wants to focus on a historical/cultural aspect, as opposed to straight linguistics, and maybe do an area studies program. I think my problem is that I have no objective. I need to know what I actually want to do before I attempt to do it. I can’t write a statement of purpose without a purpose. I think I’ll go talk to one of my old Russian profs tomorrow, and attempt to sort out the objective, as well as the program of study and the school to study at. Plus, I can collect references while I’m there. Kill five birds with one stone kinda thing.

Today (and every other night this week), I will be dilligently studying for the GRE. I plan to take it in December, as I have to have all application materials in to prospective schools by the end of December/early January to be eligible for fellowships and assistantships. That gives me approximately 11 weeks to study, take the test, write my essays, get my references, and fill out applications and submit them to schools. Oh, and then I have to find a way to pay for it. Because $60,000 is quite a chunk of cash.

It appears I will also need to spend the next few weeks looking for my resolve, too, as it seems to have momentarily slipped upon seeing all those zeros. o_O

Got a call from Amy last Monday night, informing me that The Red Elvises were playing Knickerbockers on Friday and proposing that we go for a night of beer-fueled frivolity. I, being one to never turn down an offer of vodka and crazy Russian-tinged rockabilly, agreed to go, regardless of the fact that I had to wake up at 4:30am the next morning to go to work. And I was very glad that I did, because the night proved to be quite enjoyable. I haven’t danced that much - nor drank that much - in quite a while. And, I apparently made quite an impression on the drummer, Adam, who took a moment while onstage to thank me for reattaching a Band-Aid that had been haphazardly dangling from his elbow while he was deep in conversation with some half-naked fangirls that had attacked him during the break between sets. (I blame it on the OCD.)

Arrived home a little after 1am, and took a short nap. Woke up and went to work, but quickly realized that three hours of sleep is not near enough to function normally, and especially not at work. My mind felt clouded and my eyes didn’t want to stay open, but I pulled through (barely). Left work with the intention of taking another nap, but ended up at Abby’s instead, where I watched The New World, which proved incredibly difficult to follow. (I blame it on the lack of sleep. And Christian Bale’s distractingly beautiful face.)

Abby, Jessica, and I attempted to watch the football game on TV that night, but we realized that Dirty Dancing was on ABC Family (!) and ended up watching Patrick Swayze shake his ass for the majority of evening, instead. That was followed by a couple hours of Diego Luna shaking his hot, sweaty, gorgeous, Latino ass in Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, which was followed by me going straight to bed in hopes of capturing those images in my mind in the form of lewd dreams. (I blame it on mass media for constantly forcing images of sex and lust down my throat, thereby making me feel like I need to be having sex every minute of every day - which also includes all the minutes I am asleep.)

Spent today practically camped out in front of the TV, watching random movies and doing absolutely nothing, as it was my only day off this week. I have a feeling it’s going to be this way (working Saturdays) for a while, so I have to relax while I can, yeah?

Yeah. *sigh*