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Day’s Verse:
All a man’s labor is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not satisfied.
Ecclesiastes 6:7
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Back in Worcester. Oh, yes. No snow has fallen; but though few leaves have turned, they fall in green abundance. No blaze of fall colors yet, just a steady decline from pleasantly cool to nippy to downright cold weather. I walked to school today behind a cloud of my own breath, hurrying to buy my books for the term ($171 for three classes; the fourth required no text). Even as my body grew too hot, my ears and neck informed me of my chilliness, and when I breathlessly swooshed into the Campus Center, I felt that distinctive too-hot feeling that assails us all during winter. The conundrum, of course, is what temperature to maintain inside in relation to outside: in sub-freezing weather, adventurous people bundle heavily to retain their extremities. But those same people arriving inside a toasty room immediately must shed their six layers in order to avoid heatstroke. Ideally, you would have a transition room, in which the subject stood and experienced progressively warmer temperatures that allowed them to shed their layers at a reasonable rate without immediately breaking out in a sweat when they came inside.

I, unfortunately, had no such room. I bought my books, mailed my letters, and obtained my NaNoWriMo shirts from the mailroom — all sweaty-faced. Then I plunged back outside and established at the Registrar’s office that I had to overload one more class either C or D term in order to have the 15 units required to graduate. At this time my transcript boasts 14 ²/₃ units, and that includes overloading this term. Most vexing to come up one single, measly class short. I think System Dynamics during C Term will fill the gap… But if only there was no gap to fill! Argh.

Back into the cold again – this time with my jacket unzipped, showing my snazzy NaNoWriMo shirt and cooling me off considerably – to meet with Prof. Looft, Prof. Sunar, and my buddy-in-crime Lawrence Scharpf. We began establishing an agenda for the ECE tech writing job, which will necessitate my and Lawrence’s swift familiarization with Atwater Kent (AK) as well as the various activities of ECE professors. After that meeting (bear in mind: all this scuttling around took place in less than two hours!) I betook myself to Higgins Lab 116, where I sat for three hours having voluntarily subjected myself to CDC suggestions. If I were less convinced that I will fail utterly to find a job, I probably would not have gone. But seeing as how I expect to remain unemployed, with my fine education withering away to meaninglessness in a few short years, I figured I could use all the help I could get to avoid that fate. Hence three hours under painful CDC tutelage, along with half a dozen other people (two of whom escaped during the break halfway through).

Three long hours later, I emerged dim-eyed and desolate, only to drag myself over to AK to meet Lawrence. We scheduled appointments with Professors Brown and Clancy, after which I made my slow escape back to Lancaster Street. The rest, as they say, is history. I expect I will begin each day of the next seven weeks utterly exhausted and swamped – but, thank goodness, I have no MQP hanging over my head.

Snow is coming – a blizzard of flakes and papers, work piling parallel with the frozen water. I hope I can weather it.