This is parents' weekend at Ohio University. I don't know if something like that ever happened at OSU, but it would have passed unnoticed. Since Athens is so contained and densely populated, there was an infestation of middle-aged white people up and down Court Street.

It was like that park scene in 101 Dalmatians, matching up parents with their kids. Orange-cheeked sorority girls with their acrylic-nailed moms. Dweeby dads in too-white sneakers with their gawky sons in rumpled clothes. Moms with long gray braids and colorful glasses frames with daughters with nose rings and beaded necklaces.

I sat in the student union doing work and overhearing parental conversations. "So, kiddo, what do you want for Christmas?" "She's very sweet! Is she your girlfriend? Well, why not?" "Are you getting enough to eat?"

Made me miss my folks. I found a CD of pictures from 2003-2004. My dad grew a beard for a couple months after he retired from the Air Force. Here's one of the images from the time capsule.

(Richie Tenenbaum grows tired of his girlfriend being perpetually behind the camera lens.)

Yeah, grad school is tough, but it's doable. Most of the mental anguish is borne out of me feeling sorry for myself for all the work I have to do. I map out in my notebook a homework itinerary for each night, for each weekend day, and call it a success if I accomplish one-tenth of those things before nodding off in front of West Wing DVDs.

With a week and a half left of this quarter, things are piling up like mad and I set aside all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday to kick ass. By about 3 pm on Friday, I was still in my pajamas, waiting for the pot of coffee I drank to start working, tentatively flipping through a textbook.

So I called Nick and talked him into driving down to see me. I'd already killed the better part of the day, productivity-wise, right? Right?

We have a shared Google calendar, which is convenient, and admittedly sort of "married" of us, but I think Nick may start to regret it soon. It means I can say "Hey, come see me, the Internet says you don't have anything better to do."

I can't even really have conversations with people about the election because I inevitably say something like "I want to have babies in Obama's America" or "I want to make out with this country". Which, as it turns out, makes casual acquaintances uncomfortable. Yep.

So, thanks Sjannie, for also being a giant weirdo.

Blue state!

I was high on the election results all day long. As I was washing my hands in a bathroom on campus, I saw a flash of myself in the mirror as I turned to the paper towel dispenser. I was grinning like mad and I didn't even know. Relaxing my face, my cheeks ached. It seemed likely that I'd been subconsciously smiling for hours.

And even the daunting task of getting 50 random strangers on campus to take a long, dry survey for my research methods class only slightly dampened my spirit.

Seriously, though, if ever you are feeling like a hot shot, approach someone while holding a clipboard. They will look at you like your face is covered in cockroaches. It doesn't matter how low cut your shirt is.

I'm just drunk enough to be weepy, and just moved enough to be, for once in my life, speechless.

I stood in line for an hour to vote today. Some guy was walking around giving out piping hot slices of pizza to all us pour souls stuck in line and I got some studying done. Doin' my civic duty, no biggie fries.

As I was inking in the bubble for president, I got the kind of goosebumps that spike your arm hairs and go all the way up the back of your neck. I'm a sap like that.

Fingers, toes, eyes, whatever. Consider all crossable body parts hereby crossed.

I haven't been able to register for winter classes because two different holds were placed on my account.

The first one is that I never had my final transcripts forwarded from Ohio State, something I should have done at some point this summer. All quarter I've been attending classes in a good faith standing that I managed to not fail out of college after applying to grad school. It's a reasonable thing to check up on, considering I did not even give one damn last spring about my grades. I was much too busy waking up on Ana's couch on Monday mornings, still drunk from karaoke the night before, to fret about whether I'd get to wear a cap and gown come June. And for all the shit I'm wont to talk about Ohio State, I put in a request for my transcripts to be sent last night at 11 pm and got a text message this morning at 9 am that said they'd been processed. So, congratulations, Ohio State, you did one thing efficiently one time.

The second is that somehow I am registered as a male. I tried to correct it when I scheduled classes for fall, but OU told me that I had to "provide medical documentation of my sex reassignment surgery". Really? Really. So I let it go, because how much could it matter?

Well, as an adult able-bodied American "male", I have to be registered with the selective service, our national conscription service so that we can whip up an army in a jiffy should Russia invade Alaska or whatever. Because I'm not, OU threatened to take away my funding and put a hold on my account until I signed up with Uncle Sam.

Today, I signed a couple forms at the registrar and from now on, I should be a lady in the eyes of the university. And I expect to be treated like one. I'm talkin' jackets over puddles, doors opened, maybe picking up the check for "graduate student fees" every once in a while.