Birthday, Birfday, Barfday

It was my birthday this past weekend. And it was pretty outstanding. In a weird echo of my 21st birthday, JR and I and some of friends went out to a hibachi restaurant and got stupidly full. Lucky for me, AK got waaay too much sushi, so I poached some of that--and stuffed myself with hibachi food to boot.

After dinner, we went bowling at what might be one of the best bowling alleys I've seen. Though it was a bit pricey--especially compared to the cheap, cheap college nights back at the bowling alley in DE--the place was almost empty (for a Friday night) and had a pretty decent bar. I was pretty pleased with my bowling skillz but the high point was coming up with the most apt nickname for KJ ever: Sarcastasaurus. That's a keeper.

And then we went to the Ring. Which was the perfect cap to the evening. Not only did I get to eat some of my favorite food for dinner and get stupidly drunk but--here's the kicker--I got to partake of two of my favorite propelling-shit-at-other-shit games (bowling and pool).

Oh, and I got schwasted. Like, drunker than I've been in years. The kind of slow, cumulative drunk that happens when I liberally pepper in a variety of shots with some methodical consumption of beer and mixed drinks. Somehow, BB and JR decided that I should drink one of every "major liquor" to fill out my celebration. That was not limited to: tequila, whiskey, Jagermeister, rum, vodka, liqueur (in the form of a Dirty Girl Scout with MW), and, last but not least, Goldschlager. BB set that last one in front of me at about 1:30 a.m. and I just knocked it back. Oops.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I woke up with possibly the worst hangover I've ever had. Like, hands-down. The kind of hangover where I only got out of bed in order to refill my water glass and linger about the bathroom wondering if the trigger was going to get pulled (it didn't). I managed to watch most of the content on adultswim.com and then about ten episodes of Arrested Development. I pulled myself together around 5:30 and managed to eke out a relatively short evening at Gretchen's fancy-pants party. (I did, in fact, wear my fancy pants.) Otherwise, Saturday was just Bad News Bear (as JR has me saying these days).

JR made a delicious, delicious cake on Sunday, which included a central layer comprised of crushed-up Mint Oreos and vanilla frosting.

I also have to throw out that RT got me a print of, quite possibly, one of the best MTTS cartoons ever made--this guy:


Alright. It's Friday. I need to go pretend to do some work.

Reflections On My Career Choice

I'm aborting the whole summer-summary thing I had going in the last post. Just too effing daunting, especially for my fragile mental state right now.

Why fragile? Because I'm grading again. And grading amps me up in a way that I can't really describe. I'm usually OK once I get going with it, but there are frequent periods of hyperventilation before I begin and much gnashing of the teeth as I read the first few students essays. Part of this can probably be chalked up to the fact that I'm still very unconvinced of my authority to evaluate anybody's work. And part of this can also be attributed to the fact that, despite having graded close to 300 student papers in the past year--thank you intro-level teaching assignments--I'm still slow as hell in my grading.

That last bit is mostly because I type up comments for all my students' papers. Like, right now, I'm typing close to a page of single-spaced comments for a two-page assignment. The conscious part of my brain screams, "No no no no stop spending so long you douchenozzle," but unfortunately for me, I grade with my hindbrain. And so I end up writing more than the students submitted to begin with. And that's just plain fucked up.

I set my timer and everything, but I just can't stop myself. It's infuriating. I got a good response from a few of my students last semester, but by and large I think my comments go largely unappreciated. So that's my personal goal for the semester: trimming down my grading time. Significantly.

I'm also freaking out right now because James just left this morning, and all the work that Mr. Fun-Pants-O'Leary made me forget about in a drunken haze is now hurtling towards me with the force of those tiny particles being swung around the Large Hadron Collider. And, similar to that contraption, there's a chance a black hole might spontaneously appear and suck me into oblivion. God, that would be fucking sweet.