  Happy, happy, HAPPY!! Feliz navidad n’ shit. I’m done, I’m done, I’m done with school (sung in three-part harmony, please)! I finished my paper in three hours of focused work. It’s all printed out and sitting on my immaculate coffee table in my immaculate condo all ready to be escorted to the sixth floor of Craven Hall, 6242, to Ms Stoddard-Holmes tomorrow morning! hooRAY!
To reward myself? Well, a health kick is one way to repay myself for the achievements. Seriously, I feel better than I can remember feeling. Not high-as-a-kite good. But a steady, placid-smile kind of good. I did 45 on the bike, then got up to stretch and walked over to the elliptical for a hard 30 minutes.
Yes, this on my off day. I’m proud, especially the added pat on the back of being there before the staff had shown up yet. I spent two hours there, and I was still the only one in the entire gym. I spoiled myself with a Mr. Taco burrito on the way home, eating so fast I finished it within the one mile trek home. No time for hot sauce. Just crammed it down my throat.
I earned it. Carrot juice and tea and gallons of my favourite, iced coffee, to keep the energy level up. And to satisfy my behavioural habit of having a drink in my hand. I kept up on the medication schedule, a bit of a task having to take pills four times a day. And the finale?! My HUGE celebration ritual for successfully finishing a semester?!
I went out to Barnes and Noble to hunt down some of the texts for next semester so I can get a head start!! Oh lord, do I ever enjoy possessing new books. Crisp, clean lines and the unbroken spines. Books… delivery systems for escape. I lay them out on my bed, long looks for each one as I run my hands over those glossy covers. It’s a seduction, a desire to possess much like the sexual drive for union.
I love books. And I need another bookshelf. What did I get? 1. Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway 2. Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse 3.
Virginia Woolf – Orlando 4. Virginia Woolf – The Waves 5. Cunningham – The Hours 6. Said – Orientalism 7. Freud – Civilization and Its Discontents 8. Nietzsche – Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo 9.
Lyotard – The Postmodern Condition (I bought another copy for the hell of it) 10. Foucault – Madness and Civilization And for fun: David Sedaris – Barrel Fever ( I have others of him, and I just die at his humour) Those are maybe a third of my books for the next term. Can you tell I’m taking a author studies course on Woolf? Radical. So much QUEER studies in one term! I can’t wait for the queer studies course.
Anyone want a fun class that’s on Friday afternoons? Enroll in QUEER STUDIES!! It’s LTWR 336… 3 units. Promises to be a hoot if nothing else. Man, I feel good. I’m free.
I’m healthy. I have encouragement that things will only get better. See you at the Field House gym tomorrow, 7am. It’s weights day. 
