Crap, I am so tired and have so much work to do that there is no logical reason for me to be online at all, let alone writing. And yet…ta-da! Here I am. I’ll keep it brief with a list of random thoughts/updates:

- Applying to grad school is kicking my ass–so much so that I just wrote “quicking” instead of “kicking.” Seriously, there are not enough hours in the day to plan and prepare for everything I need to do and take a full course load that is so reading-intensive. But! This weekend I took the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) after a month of erratic preparation, and I didn’t do as bad as I thought I would. I got a 580/800 on verbal, and a 570/800 on quantitative (not sure on my analytical writing score yet), so I think I’m somewhere between the 80-90th percentiles. My math score is seriously amazing, because 1) I haven’t taken math in 5 years, am bad at it to begin with, and only starting studying for it a week before the test, and 2) I guessed on like, every single question. I’m disappointed in my verbal score, but I blame it on this other girl in the testing center who was seriously pounding on every fucking keyboard key like she was playing goddamn Whack-a-Mole. I lost 5 minutes of time because I literally could not read the questions because she was so distracting and infuriating. But at least I’m done with it.

- So, yeah, grad school! I’m applying mostly to Sociology Ph.D. programs, mostly ones that specialize in Gender and Sexuality. My number one choice is UC Santa Barbara, but I’m also applying to UC Santa Cruz and University of Washington (for Fall 2010, so I can take a year off/establish residency in WA). My back-up is San Diego State’s Women’s Studies MA program.

- My classes this quarter: Social Roles and Interaction, Intro to Criminology, Women, Politics, and Social Movements, and my favorite, Queer Studies and Movements. My professor from that class is seriously awesome, and she graduated from and taught in the UCSB program I’m in love with. But all my classes have crazy heavy reading, and some long-ass papers to write that are all due the same week. So yikes about that.

- In 9 minutes it’s officially my birthday and I’m 22! Yay for old age.

- True Blood is seriously fucking awesome. Go watch it now. It’s my new favorite show, and really the only one I am super-excited to see every week, other than It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Office. Dexter, Fringe, HIMYM. . . all very “eh” so far. Even Project Runway has blown this season.

- Oh, but I am also freaking in love with Keith Olbermann and (especially) Rachel Maddow. And I go to sleep listening to Thom Hartmann’s radio show. I’m a total election/economy junkie. At any given moment I have like, a progressive/liberal news needle hanging out of my arm. I’m about thisclose from starting some Facebook drama by calling out the few Republican friends I have; I just want someone to tell me why they don’t like Obama without using the words “threaten,” “freedom,” “Muslim,” or “terrorist.” For reals.

- So much more to say, but I desperately need some sleep. If anyone is curious as to what I’m to up on a daily basis, I’ve been Plurking regularly, and it’d be nice to see more of my friends over there (and if you’re reading this, I consider you a friend!).

So I’m back in school. It looks like I’m taking 4 classes: Global Climate Change (booo), US History: Gender and Sexuality from 1630-1850 (yaaay), Spanish 3 (booo), and Intro to Russian Culture (yaaay).

I love my Russian professor. She actually taught my brother Russian, so it’s pretty cool to finally have a teacher in common with him. I am quickly falling in love with Russian culture, and here are two paraphrases from my professor that indicate why (please read with a heavy Russian accent for full enjoyment):

“Russians have very different sense of time. For them, history is very close to them still. They say, ‘Of course we’re behind all the other countries, we were under the Mongolian yoke for two centuries!’ That was in 1240, get over it already! Or do you know of any country that is still mad about Napoleon’s invasion? They see a man in the street with mismatched clothes who is very cold, and they say, ‘Ah, must be a Frenchman!’”

“In Russian Pravda [early set of Russian laws], the fine for severing a man’s arm is not that much more than it is for damaging his moustache. Russian men love their beards. Peter the Great wanted Russian men to look more like the French, so he demanded that they shaved their beards. Oh, the men wept. They were so sad, it was the worst thing for them. Afterward they would keep their beards with them so they could be buried with them. If they did not have their beards, they thought, how would they be recognized in Heaven?”

Today is the last day of winter quarter classes, and I couldn’t be happier. Unless, of course, if I didn’t have papers to write and finals to take.

My plans for spring break are simple but oh-so enticing: sleep, sculpting, and. . . well, that’s all I’ve thought of so far. But it’s a good plan thus far.

I wish I had more interesting things to say, but unfortunately I’ve been pretty boring. In my spare time I’ve been trying to finish up my bust sculpture. I’m waiting for my glue so I can attach the head to the body, then I’ll attach the hair, small clothing bits, bake, and paint. I’ll be happy when it’s done, it feels like I’ve been working on it forever. After that, I’m going to work on some small projects, like my food earrings, and experiment with some of the basic techniques I haven’t really tried yet, like caning and millefiori. I hope to get to a Christi Friesen-style vase started, since I’ve been going through the projects in her books.