-As much as I think it will be a struggle to make it to graduation with my sanity in tact, I'm thinking that next year might not be so bad academically. I'm in the process of choosing my modules/classes for all of next year now, and I recently realized that third-years at UEA take TWO modules per semester. That is half as many as I take now. That pure fact alone makes me want to dance, but in addition, at least one of the classes looks fabulous, and the other three look at least doable, at best, mildly stimulating. So maybe I won't be driven into the ground next year: I'll have about the same amount of free time (who's complaining, even if it can get a bit weird sometimes) with less on my plate, but also less friends. It's a tradeoff, but it's [just] one more year. That "just" is often removed and replaced with "LONG" between the words "more" and "year." And God knows what after that: I can't really imagine myself looking for a serious job a year from now. I feel like I need some recovery time from serious burn-out, and I'm no longer entirely sure that I'm going to be as adamant about staying in England as I once was. I think I'm going to start slow. I still have so much to figure out.

-I think I'm now officially 100% OK without Wafflestomper. I actually was limping and falling over much less than I thought I'd be, even in the first two days. What I didn't really expect or foresee was the amount of pain that accompanied just plain walking: I may have looked normal, but every muscle in my left leg and foot was screaming. At the end of the first three days, I felt like I had run an entire marathon on one leg alone. The muscle still feels flabby and gross, but it's not as painful as it was at the beginning. I do walk a lot slower than I used to, though.

-I'm going to be in Iceland in a week and a half. I don't really believe that statement. I still wish I was going with someone, and I still wish I had time to explore the Ring Road rather than just Reykjavik, but I can't complain. I just have so much to get through between now and then that it doesn't feel real. I also have a hard time imagining my time there, since it's all kind of free-form and brief.

-My two addictions of the moment are tea and Cadbury milk chocolate. I managed to really get into the whole tea thing, almost without trying. I mean, I said I was going to try to understand the English tea culture, so I bought a box of Twinning's Earl Grey, which was trying. But beyond that, I just kind of tried it twice (it was better the second time, once I got some milk), and since then, I've been having at least one cup a day. It's kind of automatic, I don't really think about it: I just make it and drink it and then realize how much I enjoy it as I'm drinking it. There's either an addictive drug in it, or there's some kind of English mind-control involved with drinking tea. The chocolate thing really isn't anything new, since I've blogged about it before, but it's interesting how I always need to have it around and I can't resist taking squares of it all day once the wrapper is open. I never used to be like this with stuff that isn't a salty snackfood before.

-I stayed up til 5:30AM on Sunday night to watch the Oscars. Damn the curvature of the Earth. I hadn't seen most of the films up for the major awards besides Avatar and Up in the Air, but I've heard and read so much about the others that I felt like I had. I also wasn't championing any specific film like I usually am, so it was a weird year for me, but I still enjoyed it massively. The Hurt Locker and The Blind Side are at the top of my list of movies to see once they come out on DVD. I loved that Kathryn Bigelow got Best Director: I don't really profess to be a bra-burning feminist in any sense, but I love chicks in film in the big jobs. It was also nice to shove it in James Cameron's face: even though I thought Avatar was good (though not really Oscar-good besides the technical aspects) and I have nothing against him, I'm glad it didn't sweep the awards (and his face sure looked like he thought it would whenever the camera was on him that night). I was hoping Gabourey Sidibe was going to get Best Actress, though, just because she was so cute in the interview I saw with her, she looks like she did an amazing job, and the only thing I like more than chicks getting the big wins is when absurdly young, underdog, first-timers get the big wins (Diablo Cody for Best Screenplay in 2008 will be my favorite Oscar for a long time). Watching the Oscars inevitably inspires me to want to start working on a screenplay again for about two weeks, when it gets pushed to the very-back-burner in place of real life. I'd still like to get into film and I still say that I'd love nothing more in life to win an Oscar, but it's not a "goal," it's kind of a wait-and-see-where-I-am-when-I-get-a-bit-older nice thought.

-This video/song is my recent obsession:

Jake Gyllenhaal kills me in this, and there's something about the whole style of the video that I love. I think it kind of loses something with the end and the fireball, but whatever. It also made me go back and listen to Contra, and I loved it this time. I always need two listenings to really get into an album, and they need to be spaced out by large amounts of time. As a result, I'm going to see Vampire Weekend in NYC in September, shortly before I return to England.

-This may be my first post in a while without a rant about academics. Believe me, it's all still very much at the forefront of my mind, but I don't think whining about it is getting me anywhere. Some days it feels doable, and other days I sit in front of a blank page in MS Word and wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life and how much time I've arguably wasted by going to university full-time. I've also been thinking a lot about my transfer and Dickinson vs. UEA in the past week, but I'm not going to get into it here, since it's still all fuzzy in my mind. I'm still going with the tact of "getting through this year any way I can" without expecting too much grade-wise, particularly from two classes. Maybe next year will be better academically and I can go out with a bit of my academic face saved. Or maybe not.