You know what happens when you're a good little girl and you actually drag yourself out of bed even though you feel like garbage and actually go to class because you have a program due that day??? Class gets cancelled!!! Bastards... Yep, yesterday my Artificial Intelligence class got cancelled. But what cracked me up is the professor who shared the news assured us that our AI prof would feel better by 2pm, in time to teach the Databases class that most of my classmates are in. Bwahaha.

I have just a few more weeks of work. Less than two, to be precise. It's sad, really. I've been working there over a year now, and I really love my job. It's what's prompted me to go into libraries for my career if I possibly can. And I've done so much for them -- writing letters, making inventories for the manuscript collections we have, filing Ms. Cook's MANY letters, xeroxing the entirety of the inventories already used as finding aids to make duplicate inventories, filling in the database of when we obtained collections and additions to the collections... and even boxing up the uncatalogued rare books for the move in a few weeks. That's why I won't have a job there anymore -- our library is getting renovated, and for the past year or two they've been building an addition that will someday house Special Collections. But they have to renovate the rest of the library, and so Special Collections is getting moved out to a neighboring town in a few weeks to take up residence till the library is ready, I think in 2003. I have made some really good friends there, most notably a younger lady named Gina who is new to the department this semester. Plus I just ADORE my job, except when I fill 19 boxes of rare books in one afternoon... :o) I love the people, I love the work I do, I love the responsibility they give me. I'll be really sad to see them all go...

Christmas is in the air!!! It's such an exciting time of year for me, even with exams and papers looming round the corner. Of course, being as much of a procrastinator as I am, I have yet to start the program due next Friday that a woman in my class has already submitted to be graded. Blah. But somehow I can't recapture the whole Christmas feeling I had my freshman year. That year, we had our room lit only by white strings of Christmas lights bought at Big Lots, Glade bayberry candles burning whenever one of us was in the room, and a nip in the room from the open window... Everything just felt so Christmassy -- or maybe I've grown up a little more and I don't feel it like I did when I was a kid. I miss feeling the atmosphere... if it weren't for FT playing Christmas carols off her playlist, I probably wouldn't realize that Christmas is so close, that we have already said goodbye to Thanksgiving and that tomorrow is the first of December.

But I like winter. Winter is good. Winter is when my boyfriend and I got together last year -- it'll be a year this coming January that we'll have been together. Winter sometimes brings snow -- like the snow that fell last year and covered the campus, cancelling classes for a few days and prompting students to "borrow" trays from the dining facilities to use as sleds (the dining people even had to post a notice on the walls to ask for the trays back, that no questions would be asked if they were returned... hee hee). Winter means Christmas, and spending time with your family or friends or both, waking up on Christmas Day, giddy with the excitement of giving your presents to people and wondering how they'll react when they see the gifts you've bought or made for them. That little nip in the air is always present, and sometimes, if you're lucky, you can smell leaves burning -- that unique scent that means it's cold out today. You can see your breath and pretend like you're smoking a cigarette, like you used to do when you were a kid. :o) (Or maybe that was just me, and I was just lame... who knows??) Winter means GOOD FOOD!! Stew, and chili, and pot roast, and then on Christmas Day a whole other Thanksgiving with turkey and stuffing and gravy. AND EGGNOG!!! Drink of the gods... Hot tea is a must, along with mocha cappucinos from Starbucks. Winter is one of my favourite times...