Halloween rules forever, the end.

B defended the shit out of his thesis today. Well done, man.

The highlight of the evening was the group of black guys who paraded past the bar with McCain-Palin banners, shouting "Keep the White House white!" When we clapped and cheered, one guy perfectly deadpanned, "you think this is a joke?", pausing before he betrayed himself with a grin. Brilliant.

I just can't seem to get on top of my work. I feel like I'm in shitty time-management quicksand, and every time I hoist myself up a couple of inches, I slip three more feet.

Today I resolved to shackle myself to a chair at the library and disappear behind my laptop and my textbooks until I got out of the woods. I decided to go via moped before it gets too cold to ride, but that wasn't in the cards. Laden with my enormous chain across my chest like a ten-pound Miss America sash and my bulging backpack, I couldn't get the thing to start. In an unfortunate metaphor for how ineffectual I've felt lately, I was just pedaling and pedaling trying to hear the growl of the engine turning over, but nothing. My eyes stung with tears. It was a huge blow to my motivation. I took off my helmet, wiped my sweaty forehead with my icicle fingers and sat down in the driveway. I felt eight years old.

People who ride vintage mopeds can hopefully back me up here - a bad moped moment can sour an entire day beyond salvage.

Is my memory broken or is it not usually this cold this early? I had to adopt the squinty just-smelled-a-bad-smell grimace this morning to combat the icy winds. I don't usually have to do that until at least January. And I wore mittens, MITTENS, today. You know when it's so cold that you can't step outside without muttering at last five swear words to yourself? No amount of self-delusion works. I'm on the beach in Salobreña. Brenda and I are drinking wine straight from the bottle. Sonofabitchgoddamnmotherfuck. Nope, still in Ohio.

The law office I walk past each day on my way to campus has a life-size ceramic bulldog on the ledge by the window. I mark my progress in quotidian oddities along my walk to school. Tuxedo kittens crowding around a cookie sheet of cat food. Ceramic bulldog. Chained-up red Puch Maxi. "Squash the state" stencil graffiti. Parking meter with smiling boner Sharpied on it. And I'm at school. Today, on my walk home, I saw the ceramic bulldog in its usual spot. Then, in the lap of the man who usually sits at the desk inside, was a real bulldog. Fat, panting, and being nuzzled by its owner. It slowed, if only for a moment, the steady stream of fuckshitmotherfuck in my head.

I'm gonna go crank the space heater to 11 and call it an early night.

Here, Empower paints "the wall" on campus to advertise the 5K a couple of weeks ago. In this picture, Sjanneke is just trying to hold up the cut-out, but she also inadvertently has her hand on Uganda.

She made me dinner tonight and I "interviewed" her for a silly feature I'm writing. It's convenient that the one go-to friend I have in Athens has a whole lot going on. Makes my homework easy.

Interviewing a close friend is worlds different than just regular, joke-y "status of your life" conversations. I guess I don't ask the right questions in everyday chatter. It would be awkward if I called her up and said, "What are your plans for the future of the non-profit organization you helped to create?"

But if I'd been asking her those kinds of questions, I'd know that while planning her own wedding for next summer, Sjan realized that American weddings have become outrageously costly affairs. And if you're gonna spend a zillion dollars to get married, why not have a portion of that zillion go to Ugandan orphans? And Empower: Weddings was born.

I'd also know that she is being made a board member of the Empower Campaign and will have the ability to travel to Uganda during the summers with the executive director of the organization. She'll get to meet the children being sponsored and work with the women's co-op that makes the jewelry.

At the end of the interview, I just looked up from my laptop and said, "You're so cool!"

This installation piece is either entitled "Xbox 360, Bowl, Foucault" or "B was here".

Moby!

B's best friend Crys is over a lot, often with her golden retriever. It's nice to have a big, panting, affectionate dog around, sweeping magazines off of the coffee table with his overzealous tail. Ever since my little dog went to pee on the Big Rug in the Sky in June, I've had a kind of hollow in my gut. Crys says that she works too much and that I'm always welcome to take Moby out for runs or car rides when she's not around. I really might take her up on it.

I had people from my cohort over to work on a project tonight and it reminded me that my friends, and my friends' friends, can't be generalized to represent society. I always forget that. The guy in my group was wide-eyed every time Moby came in the room and would loudly editorialize about how gross it is to have pets, and "why not just have birds and bears and raccoons in the house." I couldn't even be tactful about how absurd that was. Thinking the girl in my group would be similarly bewildered, I was shocked when she casually added that, "animal companionship sort of gives me the creeps."

Uncomfortable, I steered us back to our research project. But for the next hour or so, every time they talked, I'd just think, "Aliens."