No end in sight!

I have dug myself a nicely sized hole. Copies of my fiction draft are due tomorrow (uhh, today technically); there is an approximate ten-page minimum and I have almost eight written already but the story itself is nowhere near complete and I am already nodding off.

I'm almost considering writing in a meteor crash to end it in the next page.

Down a rabbit hole

Halloween weekend was totally bizarre, and I blame my choice of costume. While dressed like Alice in Wonderland, I must've fallen down a rabbit hole into some crazy parallel universe . . . a recap:

Halloween itself just turned into a series of unfortunate events. End of story there. Nothing went according to plan and a crummy situation got exacerbated by a lot of bad timing.

So Saturday I volunteered at the haunted house for the last time; there was a cast party afterwards and we took turns trying out this crazy rope swing that you clung onto after jumping off a giant pile of baled hay and went flying across the giant barn. It was terrifying but fantastic. Anyways, one of the actors was taking pictures and after he snapped one of me on the rope swing, he hurried over to me. "Meg," he said, "look at this picture, how weird is that?" For whatever reason, the picture had fogged up. None of the others he took had done so, so I privately started freaking out as my mind began jumping to every horror movie where death is preceded by a warped photograph of the person slated to go. I left shortly after and while I was pulling out of the long, dark, winding driveway, this light flashed through my rearview window out of nowhere at almost the same moment that the pumpkins I'd forgotten about in the trunk slammed against the backseat like a dead body. I drove home down unlit abandoned roads, passing lonely cornfields while continually relocking my doors and scaring myself half to death.

When I woke up Sunday morning and reached for my tear-a-day calendar, the word of the day was scarily indicative of the events that would later pass that day . . . which was creepy. Perhaps the weirdest thing to happen, though, came on Sunday afternoon while Katy and I were sitting in Starbucks doing work. These older ladies were sitting at a table right next to us talking, and after a while I couldn't do anything but listen to them because their conversation basically mirrored my entire life. They talked about a girl named Meghan and threw around the names of my boyfriend, father, and an estranged friend while making comments that were scarily accurate to current situations. Katy and I just eavesdropped, staring at each other wide-eyed until it just got too strange to handle.

I am happy to say, though, that things have come around, normalcy has been restored, and I have never been gladder to wake up and go to class. The moral of the story, boys and girls? Watch where you step. Don't fall down a rabbit hole. Wonderland is a little too weird a place to find yourself.

Our deluxe apartment in the sky

Since signing a lease with my roommate for an apartment next year, it's been increasingly difficult for the both of us to feel content in our box of a room on campus. Every time we sit cross-legged on the floor to eat lunch picnic-style or wash out our coffee mugs in the bathroom sink, all Katy and I can do is just remind each other about the glowing paradise of a two-bedroom place on Main Street just waiting to envelop us. The latest reminder of why being on campus can be lame arrived just before 1 AM this morning when the fire alarm went off. I had fallen asleep about an hour earlier after taking a shower so my hair was still wet and I was totally disoriented and quite angry . . . we waited outside and froze for fifteen minutes while University Police tried to reset the fire alarm that was triggered after some idiot (upon whose head I now have a bounty) used a fire extinguisher for kicks.

Did I mention that there was snow on the ground when I woke up yesterday morning?

Anyways, this isn't meant to be a total bash of on-campus living because there are some good things . . . namely, the magical robots in the basement otherwise known as washers and dryers. They are brand spankin' new and connect to this website, which you can check to see if machines are open or, if in use, how much longer each cycle will take. I used it this morning after class when I did two weeks' worth of laundry; domesticity has never been more fabulous.

So yeah, I get it, there are pros and cons to everything . . . but my daydreams of late always seem to end with a whistling tea kettle and a kitchen table. Patience, patience.

Hilarious yet hopefully not prophetic:

Darcy stood me up

So earlier tonight (well, technically yesterday) I attended an English country dance as part of the Jane Austen class I'm auditing this semester. My professor brought a professional caller in from Rochester along with a violinist and bassist to play little ditties for us to dance to in the college ballroom. With the exception of a few complicated steps resulting in minor collisions and major giggling fits, it really was just like the movies (minus Colin Firth, unfortunately). Some of the dances we learned were pretty sexy; a few steps required holding your gaze with your partner for quite a while and most involved flirtations with men or women other than the person you were paired with. It was far more intriguing than anything we young whippersnappers are shakin' to these days, I'll tell you that. Ninety percent of the class wore everyday clothes, but two of my friends borrowed dresses from Elizabeth Bennett's closet and looked completely fabulous. I didn't have time to get anything together beforehand so instead I took the route of an English country gent for the evening and went to the dance with a lovely lady on each arm. I don't recall Mr. Darcy ever arriving with two dates . . . hah!