Running on Empty

I only got four hours of sleep last night, but I can't complain because it's my own fault. I put off writing my thesis pages for most of the week. There were just always so many other things to do! On Wednesday and Thursday I was busy working on a play report and at the restaurant during the afternoons and in rehearsal at night. On Friday I had to get my sister to help me film the dogs for that same play report, and then there was a lot of Guitar Hero to play. I don't remember what I did on Saturday, but I'm sure it was important. And then Sunday was the Super Bowl, which Debbie, Amanda, Claire, John, Richie and I used as an excuse to lounge around Debbie's living room drinking Shiner, eating my no-bake cookies and Debbie's queso, and talking our heads off. I think we watched a grand total of ten minutes of the game itself. We did watch and critique all the commercials, however, and argued about Prince's sex appeal and marveled at his androgyny, so, ya know, good enough.
So then yesterday rolled around and I'd only written two pages so far, which is why I ended up typing on the couch from 1o:30 when I got home from rehearsal until 4:30 AM, when I finally finished my goal for the week and went to bed. It would be a lie to say I was working on my thesis that whole time. I spent a good hour IMing and at least another hour reading articles on Salon and another half hour having a snack break.
But you know what? I have ten whole pages of my thesis completed now! And I gave them to my advisor today and the only changes I need to make are very minor and involve punctuation and particular word choices, and that's it! HaHA! I'm going to try to keep up a pace of at least 10-15 pages a week so I don't get stuck having to do something insane like write thirty pages in my last week.

I did take a break tonight, though. I had Class&Ren tonight and showed the video Chelsea and I made, which was surprisingly a hit with my classmates. See, we have to do these play reports with a performative element of some sort and this round my play report was on Aristophanes' The Wasps, which I actually really loved (I literally laughed out loud while reading the play). The play just happens to have a scene where a dog is put on trial for stealing a wheel of cheese, and so I couldn't resist using Cohen and Morty in my performance project and had Chelsea help me film a video in which Cohen was the plaintiff and Morty was the defendent and Chelsea and I did our best not to look like complete idiots but didn't succeed. Like I said, it surprised me by being such a success with everyone, but I can't take any credit for that. I think people mostly just liked seeing Morty in his new camo vest and Cohen in his striped sweater. Big dogs in clothes are pretty much always hilarious (little dogs in clothes, however, are just...little dogs in clothes).
After class a bunch of us went out for dinner and drinks but ended up being stuck with our least favorite guy in our cohort. You know how most every group has that strange outcast guy that nobody really likes and everybody thinks is odd but you don't have a specific, valid reason to dislike him other than he's just weird and so you can't blatantly say, "Sorry, you're not invited" like you would to an actual enemy? Well, that's this guy. I think John I. described him best with the simple phrase, "Tommy...what the fuck?!" and a baffled shake of the head. He's much older than the rest of us-probably in his sixties, which is old even by grad school standards-and he's just WEIRD. I can't give you the best examples of his strangeness, because it wouldn't be easy to explain them without a whole lot of background information, but...well, tonight, for instance, he referred to our main graduate advisor and the head of our program and our primary professor as "Dr. What's-Her-Name". Dr. What's-Her-Name?! He has been a student here now since August, and this is a woman that he sees and deals with on at least a weekly basis, if not more often than that. She's effectively his boss. And he doesn't know her name?! Amanda and I also realized over the course of dinner that he doesn't know our names, either, or the names of any of the girls in our group (which, come to think of it, probably says a lot about him since he does seem to know almost all of the guys' names). And maybe you don't think that's weird, but I sure do. I think it's weird because there are only about 15 graduate students in this department. and even if you're a looney outsider who likes to make strange outbursts about sex and the Japanese flag and other things not at all related to the class discussion, you can't learn the names of a mere 15 people that are presumably going to be your colleagues in some way for the rest of your career? Honestly?
Maybe something is really wrong with him. Maybe we shouldn't make fun of him and stand around awkwardly until he leaves the room and we can make weekend plans without him. Maybe I'll have a round of bad karma for cringing every time he opens his mouth to speak. But as another one of the grad students pointed out, "It's not very Christian of me to say this, I know, but I really don't want to go out with you all if he's going to be there. I'm going to have to take a raincheck." She probably had the right idea. Poor guy. But really.