The more fool I

I just finished my term paper! The latest draft, anyways. This draft actually has a conclusion, however, so it feels like I'm finished it. Tomorrow I have to fix it up and write up all the work cited stuff and then I'm done. (I'd better be, it's due!) Hooray! I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Anne and Rem both kindly edited it for me and made suggestions but I'm not sure I did very well in fulfilling those suggestions. Still, I'm feeling less hopeless about it than I was last week. Now, I think there's a slim chance the prof won't think it's crap and flunk me. Yes, I'm worrying about this. I have really hated the pass/fail system of my course thus far because I have no idea exactly how well I've passed on the previous components. Was I well above the flunk level or only just? Given how poorly I felt I understood several of our readings, I do wonder.

And I wonder at myself for being so dependent on grades for my own self esteem. This is just foolish.

900 Words!

Not that you're likely to care, but I have reached the fantabulous milestone of 900 words in my 2500 word paper. I just have to tell someone. Gah, I hate living alone! The food sucks, there's no one to poke, and I've started talking to myself. I know, I'm overreacting. It's been all of 6 days of peace and quiet. I should be enjoying this. I'm not. I miss my husband.

I have re-learned, however, that the best way for me to write papers is

1) Know exactly what I want to say before I sit down. This does not mean writing outlines or whatnot, but just somehow knowing.

2) Have a scary, sanction-full deadline looming. No deadline = no work. The paper's not actually due until the 24th, so I'm trying to construct an artificial deadline on Rem and Clare's return. It's helping somewhat.

Okay, 1600 more words....

**Edit: It's Saturday afternoon and I'm up to 1541 words. Hurrah! Of course, I've changed my mind about my thesis three times in the last 24 hours, but hey, you can't have everything.**
**Edit 2: Monday afternoon, 2:15pm: after two days off from writing (Rem's back! yay!), I'm up to 1697 words. 800 more to go...**

Research is scary

I'm writing my term paper on the paradigm shift that is gay marriage. As probably all of you know, I'm firmly on the "for" side. As such, I've been having a hard time writing about the "agin" side with any kind of accuracy. I thought maybe I could remedy this with more research, so back I went to the internet to try to find more info. Mostly I found vituperative hatred that just made me angry and sad. One site, put up by a Christian Church, astounded me with just its illuminating address: godhatesfags.com! So much for love they neighbour. Fortunately, I also found an excellent site: www.religioustolerance.org, which I think does a pretty good job of summarizing and contrasting conservative and liberal Christian views on same-sex marriage and homosexuality (and lots of other stuff, too, though I didn't read all 2500 essays) without making me scream. I still think the "agin" side is very very wrong, but then, that's what paradigms are all about: my facts and their facts are opposite.

Nontheless, at least I finally found a reading of the Bible which doesn't continually offend me. This is progress.

Starkers & mustard

Rem and his dad departed early this morning for Croatia. They're going kayaking for a week. I am not. This is to be a bit of a bonding trip for them, the practical considerations of my (lack of) kayaking experience and looming term paper aside. So I hope they have a wonderful time, and I'm glad to have some solitude to concentrate on my work.

That said... I must admit that they've been gone only a little over 12 hours and I'm already going a little stir-crazy. I'm supposed to be just working on my paper and other class stuff this week until I get it all done. This is a self-imposed duty but I am now reminded that I'm going to have to seek out some company soon. I learned in university that I go nuts if left alone for even an entire weekend... but it's been so long since I've done so that I'd forgotten. Oh well. At least it's the weekend and I can catch people back in Canada.

In other solo travelling news, I'm going to Dijon in May! Amie and Steve, two of my old roommates, are going to be in Europe in May and are going to drop in on Mathilde, another of our old roommates who helpfully lives in France. So I'm crashing the party and we'll have ourselves a mini-reunion. The timing is somewhat unfortunate on this - I'm going from May 15-19, which is right in the middle of Rem's mom's visit. This does give Rem some bonding time iwth his mom, too, though, so I think it all works out. I'm quite looking forward to the trip- so far in our travels we've mostly seen cities and only glimpsed the countryside on our bike rides in the Netherlands. Mathilde's family lives in a rural area, though, and we're staying with them. French countryside! Cool, eh?

Oh, my supper bell just went. Rem left me enough lasagna and spaghetti sauce to get me through to the middle of the week... after that, it might be frites for me!