I woke up this morning with one eye all bloody as if I was punched in the face. It seems that all of the recent hacking and coughing due to the cold I got a couple of months ago that just won�t go away caused me to burst a blood vessel in my left eye. I have been forced to wear my nerdy librarian glasses and put away the teeny-tiny print I�ve been slogging through for the dissertation this week. Plus I feel like a hideous freak.

It is making me cranky.

So is the weather. I am no longer amenable to hot humid weather when it is November. That�s why I live north. I may need to migrate to Wisconsin soon. Or Canada, perhaps.

Things will be looking up soon, though. In an uncharacteristic burst of spontaneity, I plopped down a bunch of cash on a very comfy sofa this weekend that will be delivered sometime tomorrow. Currently the room in our house we spend the most time in has almost no furniture. This has been good for our TV-viewing habits, but it leaves a lot to be desired in the areas of snuggling and late-afternoon naps. Fortunately the situation is about to change. I�m looking forward to some serious sloth in the next few days.

But for the moment, I have some ass-kicking to do. My advisor now has four of my dissertation chapters and I still have not received appreciable comments on any of them. He�s in Europe at the moment, so I�ll have to kick his ass metaphorically (which is probably just as well). But I need some criticism, dammit. I�m still remembering with horror the dissertation defense I attended where the defender�s advisor had blown her off and said everything was great without ever really reading it. Then he came into the defense and cut her to ribbons. It�s the only defense I�ve ever seen anyone not pass. She actually had to redefend. For those of you fortunate to be outside the world of academia (at least in the humanities � I have no idea how this works in the sciences), this just doesn�t happen. It was very, very ugly.

So I�ve got to put this crankiness to good work. Maybe I should cover up my ugly eye with an eye patch. I might not look prettier, but at least I�d look like a pirate. Then maybe I could make my advisor walk the plank.

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