It’s Friday, and This Week Has Been Exhausting-Awesome

Remember when I used to do this?  It’s been a while.

• In a word, this week has been exhausting.  It has also been awesome, though the exhaustion sometimes got in the way a bit of the awesome.  Just to go on a bit about the exhaustion (because it’s fascinating), I feel like I reached a new level this week.  I have been more tired than this before, but never this tired over so many days and with no hope of making it better.  By the time I get off work, it’s already too late to get a full night’s sleep before I have to get up the next morning. Going to school full time, while working one full time job and another part time job hasn’t done a number on my head like I partly expected it to, but it feels like a real test of my limits.

• On to the awesome! Sunday, I started NaNoWriMo.  It was a strong start, but I am definitely struggling now.  The only time I have to write is my last three hours at work when I’m at the Circulation Desk.  That works well, but I’ve run into some difficulties with my story.  Mainly, I don’t feel capable of telling the story I want to.  It’s from four different POVs, which is surprisingly hard.  The difficult part is just getting into four different character’s minds in such a deep way.  I’m struggling on, though!  I hope to catch up a bit this weekend.  How’s everyone else doing?

• On Monday, I had an encounter with Adorable Boy.  We lost another of his books.  That doesn’t speak too well for the library, but it was really nice to talk to him again.  It put me in such a good mood for dealing with library patrons who are not nearly as adorable or nice as he is.

• On Tuesday, my class went to visit a Buddhist temple.  We had a vegetarian Chinese lunch and then got to tour the temple and its grounds with this amazing nun.  The most awesome thing about it was the structure itself.  I’d love to go back.

• I walked into class Wednesday morning feeling half dead and with a great deal of doubt about whether my group was going to pull off our presentation.  My friend even said to me, “Did you just wake up?”  That tells you a little bit about how awesome I looked.  When I left class three hours later, my group had done an awesome job, the TA had told me that he heard from someone else that I am a genius in the kind of theology we study, and I had my midterm paper back with an A+ as a grade.  I was shocked at all three.  I was sure the TA was thinking of someone else, but I am the only Ashley in the program.  As for the crazy grade, this is my most difficult class.  It’s the one that would sound like gibberish to an outsider.  I couldn’t believe it, but it felt really good for my first real grade as PhD student to be a freaking A+.  I’ve never even heard of such a thing.

• On Thursday, I took a prospective student to lunch.  As Lisa said, “taking someone to lunch sounds so adult.”  One on one conversation with a stranger isn’t a strength of mind, so I didn’t know what to expect.  I kept thinking that I was a bad person for this, because I don’t feel representative of the program.  Then I realized that representative of the majority would be a married guy in his late 20s, so maybe it was no accident that they asked me to talk to a 23 year old single girl.

• Is anyone else watching Modern Family?  I mean, is everyone else watching Modern Family?  This show is so hilarious and it’s good every week.  If you’re not watching it and you’re in the U.S., get yourself to Hulu right now.  If you’re not in the U.S., then watch it by any means necessary.  It’s that good.  I hope you’re watching Community too.

• I’m having a lot of fun with the School Year blogs.  I fee like they are more for me than anything else I’ve written.  I wanted to write down what I remembered now for fear that I might not always remember.  It’s a way of writing the history of my life as I remember it.  A lot of people comment saying they don’t remember that much from those early years, but I swear once you remember one thing, then others come back to you.  And it’s crazy the way that reading about someone else’s memories can spark your own.

• I am very close to purchasing my flight home for Christmas!!!

• After lunch at the temple, I got a fortune cookie with a fortune that said someone was concealing feelings for me.  Those things don’t lie!

I’m going to go catch up on my sleep and TV watching.  Have a great weekend!

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