Ok, you win.

Need to get of my couches, folks, so if you know someone who needs or wants them in the Boise area, let me know. (They are fabulous couches, by the way.) Vaccuum cleaner for sale too. I'll let you know about anything else I need to get rid of. Why, you ask? Cuz I got myself a new house to move into and most things are fully furnished by my fabulous and amazing boyfriend, Josh.

I just practiced an extreme amount of self-restraint...

...at the grocery store. Albertson's now carries Peet's Holiday Blend Coffee for a whopping $10.00/lb. I literally stopped dead in my tracks when I saw it and didn't buy any. I think that may have to be my Christmas present to myself...

Good morning...

I have 'coons

Yup. I came home from class tonight to 3 raccoons sitting on my front steps. I don't really know what to do about this. They ran away pretty quickly when I walked up, but I have these odd visions about the 'coons coming and attacking me when I'm walking up the steps. Yikes.

On another note, my plumbing got fixed.

plumbing, in the most literal sense.

Last week, with no warning, my bathtub stopped draining. I supposed it didn't STOP stop, but it began to drain very, very, VERY slowly. So much that, by the end of my 10 minute shower, the tub was completely filled and took 20 minutes to drain.

I bought Drain-O.

After 2 doses, it still wouldn't drain.

I e-mailed my landlord and said I could live with it for a few days, but would really like someone to come check it out next week. She scheduled a plumber to come on Wednesday. I figured I could live with that, as long as I could muster up some energy to clean up my apartment so the plumber didn't have to deal with that mess too.

Saturday morning I got up and started my deep-clean of the kitchen, living room, and bathroom. I cleaned the toilet, flushed, and watched the remnants of previous uses come right back up and flood onto my floor. DAMMIT.

I bought a plunger (and some Sparks to make the rest of the process less horrible). I plunged until I could not plunge anymore. Still, nothing. Every time that stupid toilet flushed (OK, all 3 times), it flooded water onto my floor.

With that, I e-mailed my landlord (the only number I have is her office line, which is right next door and they are gone until Tuesday) in hopes that she would get the message that I cannot stay at my apartment until the plumbing is fixed and requested that someone come to fix it earlier than Wednesday. I don't think she's going to get the message until Tuesday, which just plain sucks.

So now, not only does my bathtub fail to drain, my toilet will not flush. Thankfully I have a place to stay (thanks Josh) until someone with expertise can come save my apartment.

video games...

...have never been more forte. I'm terrible at them, to tell the truth. Last night was the exception. When I should have been reading, writing, or researching for class, I sat around with Sam and Malia, Josh, Jodi, and Justin playing Guitar Hero. I am now forcing Josh to buy it so I can continue to win at something. FYI, this is a source of frustration for me because Josh is freaking good at everything and I never win, so for once, I am better at something than him and I want to keep it that way. Of course, this means that I will need to hide the video game when I'm not at his house so he can't practice when I'm not there....

I can see the end....

....and it looks good.

I am a little less frustrated with the undergrad papers, mostly because I found out that several of them have plagiarized and I get to give the I talked about previously an "F." Whew.

I'm still not quite seeing the end of this semester, but it looks better than it once did, so I like that. Papers to grade, project to finish, quizzes to take, 2 papers to write, and much more reading to do before Dec. 6 or something crazy like that, but I am much more optimistic right now than I have been at this time during previous semesters.

On top of that, I just registered for my last semester of actual course work. I am obviously very excited about only having 2 actual classes to take, but on top of that, the grad coordinator is letting people use an elective class as a seminar, so I get to take some sort of "alternative courts" course instead of "punishment and corrections." Hip hip hooray! But yikes, I really need to get cracking on a project topic...

P.S. I bought skis on Saturday at the ski swap! They are old rentals and aren't the greatest in the world, but they will allow me to ski all season, so that makes me happy!

paper grading

For my juvenile justice class, my classmates and I have been given some undergraduate papers to grade. I'm not going to complain about the assignment because, frankly, it's the assignment and that's something I just need to deal with. I will, however, complain about the fact that the students' papers I've been assigned are pretty much terrible. The grammar is horrible and 4 of the 6 papers have no thesis. The two that do have thesis statements have no supporting paragraphs. I know that I wrote some pretty horrible papers in college, but these are beyond terrible. Ugh. The dilemma that exists herein is that I feel bad giving one of the girls a failing grade. I even tried to change my scoring rubric so that she wouldn't get such a bad grade, but everything I did made the grade stay in the same bracket. I'm not even sure that she read the book--who writes a book review without giving any actual details about the book?! Gah!

pants

You might remember the post where I talked about the fact that I joined Weight Watchers. I've been hesitant about writing blog posting my successes or failures, mostly because I wasn't sure how well it would work for me. Whatever. I've thrown that out the window because I've been really proud of myself and I think you should know it. In the past 10 weeks, I've dropped 2 pant sizes. I've been on a shopping binge because none of my old clothes fit. Even the clothes that I had when I lost some weight in Indiana are too big (like the cargos I'm wearing right now). For some strange reason, I found some dresses in my closet from 10 years ago (oh my god, who keeps stuff like that?!) and THEY FIT, which means that I am now the size that I was in high school, if not smaller. (FYI, I threw out the dresses.) This is such a huge accomplishment for me and I wanted to share it with you. Unfortunately, there are two things that suck about this situation: 1) Buying new, cute clothes costs a lot of money and 2) my boobs are shrinking. Dammit!