I can read again! For pleasure! Anything I want! :::_insert manical cackle here_:::

Books I've read today:
Quantum Leap: Independence ~ John Peel. It took me about two hours to go through it. I hate to say it, but I suppose it had to happen sometime...this was not the best story in the world. Still, it did give me a Dr. Sam Beckett fix.

Also started:
The Inferno ~ Dante and re-reading Frida: A biography of Frida Kahlo ~ Hayden Herrera

Website(s) of the day:     Bush declares himself god Read it and be afraid...be very afraid. What is going in in this guy's mind???

Newest addiction:    Three Way Action Get your mind out of the gutter...o.k...on second thought...

Random thought of the day:    You know, one of the few things I don't like about this time of year is the insanely dry, itchy skin that I can't get rid of. Too bad someone hasn't invented something like rock tumblers for humans. Nothing like a fine grit to polish a person right up.

I looked out the front door just now, after I heard yet another batch of cat food cans that were waiting to be recycled tumble down the front steps. I saw a young opossum, head buried in a can nearly up to his(?) ears. When he got finished, the can left a thin ring of cat food gravy around his head, about an inch or so above his eyes.

He looked like a little furry mime.

I think that word has definitely gotten out about this place. There's several regulars now ~ three or four opossum(-s? -ii?) and at least one raccoon. The older opossum don't even run anymore, they just wait a moment to make sure that I'm not some insane serial opossum killer and go back to munching cat food. The younger ones, however, haven't gotten so complacent (if one can say that about a opossum.) One or two head for the tree next to the porch. They go to the absolute top of the tree and cling for dear life. They haven't figured out that they could simply step right onto the roof, thus avoiding death by heart failure. The others just make a mad dash off the porch as if the insane serial opossum killer they are sure I am is hot on their tail.

Well, today was the first day of freedom. I passed everything yesterday ~ somehow I even managed to pull a B out of intermediate algebra (I would have leaped for joy for a C.) The critiques for painting and drawing went well, even though I didn't get my final painting finished. The instructor did say that she would like to see it finished and that it was very promising.

All this came after the panic I had so studiously nurtured the night before. The painting wouldn't come together, I wasn't sure that I had the required eight drawings (I ended up with eleven) and the review sheets I had for algebra looked less decipherable than an ancient akkadian text. I mean, I knew that we covered this stuff in class but I had no clue how to do it.

I was screwed. Majorly screwed. Everytime I looked at those review sheets and tried to work the problems, the panic got honed a little more. By the time midnight rolled around, my little mind was wiped clean by fear. There was nothing else I could do and I was in no way prepared for the tests to come the next day. Of course, by then my mind was telling me that my entire future - indeed, my entire life - depended on the outcome of these tests. It was do or die. I didn't know what else to do so I did the only thing that did come to mind. I went to bed.

As I walked to that first exam - algebra - I felt as if I were walking to my doom. I felt that all that work, all that faith put into me by the folks who decided that I deserved the art scholarship, was for naught. Each step was bringing me closer to the guillotine and academic death, all because I couldn't remember how to calculate the speed of a boat in still water or how to simplify (81x⁴y^3/4z¹⁶)^1/2

I had failed and it was only 7:45 in the morning.

Maybe it was because of the panic I had so carefully crafted the night before or maybe it was the sense of disappointment I had in myself for not getting things done the way I wanted but the entire day felt so anticlimatic and unresolved. In previous semesters, the last day of finals had something of a party air about it even though there was some sadness because there were people there that we'd most likely never see again, due to graduation or transfer to another school. Like I said, this time it just felt unfinished. Then again, that's pretty much how I feel about several things in my life lately. Unfinished and unresolved.

Adding to feeling: I learned today that FOX has cancelled Firefly. Tonight's episode was especially good, too. So there's probably only two, three, maybe four episodes left. Damn it ~ why does every show I get interested in get cancelled?