The holidays are coming!

It's Christmas time at my apartment!! Fully aware of the fact that it is only November 19th, I put up Christmas decorations today anyway. I was thinking about it and realized that since I'm going to be in El Paso until November 28th and then in Fort Worth December 15th through the 18th and then back to El Paso for Christmas that I really won't have much time to actually enjoy the holiday season here. Only a couple of weeks, really. And I also realize that the week after Thanksgiving is probably going to be my most difficult school week so far so I doubt I'll have time to actually sleep much that week, much less hang lights on my patio. So I did it today. Now my apartment is all cute and Christmas-y (inside, anyway. Even though I already hung the outdoor lights I don't think I'll actually use them until after Thanksgiving because I don't think it's really fair to subject my neighbors to my own personal holiday festivities six whole weeks before Christmas). Anyway, my favorite part of the whole thing is my little Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It's a live tree but, well, I got it at Target. And it's only a foot tall. And now it's COVERED in lights and silver and red ornaments that completely overwhelm the poor little tree. And yet I sorta love it.

What else has been going on around here, you ask? Not much. We have a show going on at school this week so I've been dressing up and managing the box office every night since Tuesday. Tomorrow is the last day of the run and then my job is over for the rest of the semester, other than figuring out grades for all of my workers, which should be really easy. I think I have the easiest assistantship by far, even when people get trapped in the elevator after the show and Allyssa the house manager and I have to stand in the box office pretending that we're figuring out who to call for emergency help but secretly trying not to laugh too hard about the whole thing. And even when grumpy old men glare at me through the box office window and demand that I fix things that I a) didn't mess up in the first place and b) have no idea how to fix since they aren't actually my job. I'm nothing if not a problem solver.

I had a fun weekend. I once again have managed to completely avoid actually doing any meaningul work on my second research paper. Oh, but on the bright side I rocked-I mean seriously ROCKED-my first research paper. I got a 95 on my first draft, which shocked the hell out of me. And then when I presented my paper on Thursday the professor described my presentation as "polished" and my paper as "conference-ready", which is thrilling since I totally didn't practice my presentation at all and I still can't fathom that I wrote something that other scholars might actually find interesting. Hello, tangent. So, back on track. Major paper number 2. Paper number 2 doesn't exist yet, but that's what tomorrow is for. I plan to at least do the bulk of the research tomorrow. Seriously. Because all I've done so far this weekend is sleep a lot, go out for sushi and watch the new Harry Potter movie with my siblings, and hit the River Pub for post-show drinks with Allyssa and Jay. Which is all fine and good, but that's a whole lot of "social" for me and I really do need to get some work done tomorrow or I'm not going to be able to relax and enjoy Thanksgiving. And I really, really want to be able to do that.