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As far as I can remember, for the first time ever, just now, I lamented the fact that I do not own decaffeinated tea.

I walked into the kitchen to get something to drink and felt a chill. I thought of how nice it would be to have a warm beverage on hand to defrost my entrails. Unfortunately, all I own in the warm beverage department is coffee and tea, both of the caffeinated varieties. Until just now, I hadn’t seen the point of owning decaffeinated tea (or coffee, for that matter). Seemed a little like buying alcohol-free whiskey or something. I’m not drinking it for the taste, people. I’m drinking it for the effect. Actually, I guess I don’t drink whiskey at all, but I stand behind my analogy. If you prefer, we could go with something like low-fiber Metamucil.

I lamented my lack of decaffeinated tea. I contemplated the usefulness of tea-free reallyHotWater in warming my belly. I considered looking up a recipe for warm milk on the Internet before remembering that I don’t own any milk (or at least milk stamped with a date occurring in this month) anyways, and that was probably one of the primary ingredients. I wondered what wine would taste like at twice room temperature and whether simply drinking twice as much wine at room temperature would have the same effect.

And then I remembered that Dana had gotten me, among other things, a tin of Hot Chocolate (or Cocoa, or something otherwise brown and yummy and distantly related to crack) for Christmas, and that I hadn’t even opened it yet.

Unfortunately, by that time, I’d wandered back into the office and the kitchen was a really long ways away. Ah well. Crisis inadvertently averted.

Oh, Celebrity Jeopardy. How did people fathom the depths of human existence without you?

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Please note that my graduation date is May 5th, 2006, not May 6th as I’d early supposed. This gives you one fewer shopping days until I become a real boy.

Our local Target has been going through some sort of an identity crisis, and looks to be coming out the other side a sleeker, swankier beat. Dont think I haven’t noticed, you sexy thing.

The store has been going through several changes over the last year and a half or so. The first big change I noticed was when they moved whole sections of the store around, which confused the bejesus out of me for a long while. I’m a creature of habit, and when you move the light bulbs on me, it can take me weeks to recover. For example, they moved the food from the front of the store where it’d previously been located to the far left wall. The reason? Product placement, would be my guess. Now any time you want to pick up a gallon of orange juice on your way home, you’re obligated to walk past the children’s clothing (aww… the widdle baby shirtses!), personal hygiene (do I have enough shampoo? Is there really such a thing as too much?), electronics (OJ + iPod = True Love), and new DVD releases (Johnny Knoxville as a mentally challenged person? Wow, he’s really growing as an actor) before you get to the good stuff. As such, my orange juice is costing an average of $20 per gallon more than it used to.

More recently, however, they’ve started reorganizing within the sections. The biggest change I noticed was in the men’s clothing section. Considering my primary purpose for being in the store in the first place last trip was to buy a new belt, this is hardly a scientific study. However, there had been big changes since I’d last been there. First off, the quantity of clothing had, as far as I could tell, decreased significantly. The result? More space between the racks. Any technical communicator or designer worth his/her salt knows the power of white space, and Target seems to have recently figured it out as well. More space around the racks means more convenience for the customers, but also a better visual representation of the product. Products deserving of their own oasis of space must be good.

They’ve also started carrying different types of clothing. Now, I’ve been shopping at Target for most of my life, and at the Ames Target for the last seven years, and I can safely say that this is the first trip where I’ve ever seen suits on display. Real, honest-to-god suits, in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. Had I an extra $100 or so to spend, I would have bought one, too. They looked pretty decent. The suits weren’t the biggest change, though. What I immediately noticed (well, after the use of white space) were the colors available. Ooo. I’m going through a faze right now wherein I cannot resist purchasing bright, beautiful colors slapped on most any product assuming they’re not produced for a different species or gender, and Target caught me.

All told, my trip to buy orange juice and a belt ended up costing me close to $70. I ended up with a new brilliant orangered t-shirt and a bluegreen bath mat. I have no need for a new shirt (other than the fact that I’ve recently decided my wardrobe is too dun), and I have absolutely no use for a second bath mat. I didn’t need them, but when I saw them, I ~wanted~ them. This is the first time I’ve ever been so aware of product placement and store organization working as it’s supposed to.

I’m really starting to look forward to when I graduate and get a full-time job. You know, so I can relax.

There was a time when getting a 9-5 sounded scary. Eight hours a day, five days a week? The repetition alone was enough to make me cringe. However, once I stop and actually take my current schedule into consideration, 40 hours a week is starting to sound like a fantastic way to wind down for the next 40 years.

For the last month, according to my very rough calculations on a sleep-deprived mind, I’ve been averaging something more like fourteen hour days, six days a week, or right around 80 hours every week. The last two weeks have been even worse than the average. I get up between 7am and 8am, do homework until it’s time for work or meetings, spend the next six or seven hours on campus working, and then come home and work until between 2am and 3am. Sure, I take breaks in there. I eat one to four times a day. I go to the bathroom to expel the exhausted caffeine. I pull the cat out of the sink or off of my laptop. I think I might even have a girlfriend around here somewhere. But I figure I’d probably take breaks working a 9-5, too. What a sweet deal.

And the weekends aren’t any better, either. Last Sunday, for example, I decided I was going to sleep in. I stayed up extra late, until 3am or so, just to make sure I was good and exhausted, and then headed to bed. My mind had me back awake by 8:30am. So, I got up and started working. There’s just no winning sometimes.

The good and bad news, of course, is that I’m almost done. I’ve something like eight weeks to go until I’m graduated. Some weeks will be worse than this one. I don’t plan to sleep between March 18 and March 22, for instance, as I’ll be planning a major conference presentation while simultaneously working on my creative component, developing a technical communication teaching unit, and working for the grad college. I might have a freelance gig in there too. However, sometime in mid-April, I fully intend to exhale. My creative component will be done, and I’ll still have a 30ish page annotated bibliography to turn in for my class, but that doesn’t sound as scary as the rest.

Of course, that’s when Dana will be getting ~really~ stressed. So maybe I’ll wait to celebrate until May. Graduation is May 6, I think, by the by.

If I ever meet the guy who invented mornings, I am going to kick him directly in the groin. Unless mornings were invented by a woman. Because then, while she may still have a groin, kicking her in it wouldn’t do much for her and would do even less for me.

So it’s morning. Today, as most of my days are these days, is shaping up to be generally long and stressful. I’ll do at least six hours of homework on at least two different projects, attend at least one meeting for which I’m not entirely prepared, go to work for at least four hours, and go to one and only one class. It’s sad that class has become my touchstone of normalcy.

Before all that begins, I’m hoping to do one important and particularly scary thing: leave my résumé (including cover letter and sample materials) with a company I’d really like to work for.

See, two months ago, whenever I mentioned that I was almost done with grad school, people would always ask, “what are you doing for your thesis?” To which I’d say I’m doing a creative component, not a thesis (I prefer the practical experience), and that I didn’t know. Because at that time, I didn’t. Now I know exactly what I’m doing for my creative component. Only problem is, people have largely quit asking me that question. Now when I mention that I’m almost done with school, people always ask, “what are you doing when you graduate?” or “do you have a job lined up?” And the answer to that question, my little pickles, is a resounding “*Shrug* Umm…*Avert Eyes* Well… No. That Is, Not Yet.”

I’ve been putting most all my energy this last month or so into my creative component. If it doesn’t get done, I don’t graduate, and therefore it wins out on far more prioritization battles than I’d care to admit to anyone including myself. The most glaring problem with this is I am somehow supposed to be putting an equal amount of energy into finding a job. I’m already sleeping less than six hours a night. Where do people find the energy? Or even the time? I think I’m starting to remember why I’ve avoided graduating with any finality in the past.

So last night I worked on my creative component from 6:30pm - 10:30pm, then took a bit of laundry over to Dana’s and wrote a cover letter from 11pm - 1am instead of doing what I’d originally planned, which was either work on my creative component report or start working on my class assignment due Thursday. Both of those have been shoved off until tonight. Unfortunately, since I’m busy until 7pm, I probably won’t have time to get a lot done on both. The creative component will again win the priority battle, because I have a meeting with my major professor at noon (immediately after an ISUComm meeting and a few hours prior to a Habitat meeting), and I need to be able to show him that I’ve produced text this week. So far this week I’ve written two and a half pages. Not quite the ten I was hoping for. In my defense, however, the web design portion of my creative component is coming along swimmingly. I should be able to do a usability test by next week, just as I’d hoped. Now my hope is that my major professor will agree.

I recently purchased three new domain names. One will eventually probably replace rootarcana as the home of my blog. The other two are meant to replace my “services” and “portfolio” links. Rootarcana.com will eventually be replaced with robglazebrook.com. That one was a toughy to come up with, believe you me. ;) The other domains are for my new web design business: Corkscrew Labs. Why corkscrew? Good question. That one really ~was~ a toughy. I’ve been bouncing names off of people (primarily Quinn and Eric) for the last two months, and this is the only one that hasn’t gotten shot down. You see, corkscrew is a metaphor for what I believe good web design should be. And if you want a better explanation than that, you can visit the temporary page at corkscrewlabs.com. I’ll redesign the site in mid-April, probably (once my CC is done). Until then, that’ll probably have to suffice.

I’ve been working on my creative component all this afternoon and evening. That is to say, I’ve spent a lot of time sitting in front of my laptop, reading notes, sipping beer (I’m out of orange juice), and eating unhealthy foods. Occasionally I’ll get inspired and type in a flurry for a minute or two before I have to pause and resurvey the landscape of my prose. Or grab another sugar cookie.

An hour or so ago, during one of my more inspired moments, I was distracted from my work (gasp!) by an odd noise. It was quiet (to my ears, most everything is), but close. Whisp-whisp, it went, whisp-whisp, like a straw broom brushing vigorously against a wood floor. I looked around, a bit confused, and was a little deflated to see nobody sweeping my floor, as it could really use some TLC. Instead, I found Smaug. He was sitting on my computer desk, in front of my brand new 19″ LCD screen, trying like mad to claw the screen saver to death.

Cute, right? The cat was trying to attack a ball of plasma! Yeah, I thought it was pretty damn funny for about fifty milliseconds, which is about how long it took for me to realize that my cat’s claws shredding the front of my $300 monitor was Not Cute. Smaug found himself unceremoniously dumped onto the floor and slid across it (benefit/detriment of a dusty floor) with the toe of my fuzzy slipper faster than you could say manufacturer’s limited warranty.

The screen is still usable, I suppose. Just to the right of center there’s a series of vertical scratches that, when I’m looking just at them, tend to shimmer red and green. I probably wouldn’t ever notice them except for the fact I know they’re there. And you know, were it not for the fact that I spend far too much of my time within a couple of inches of the thing, staring intently at subtle gradients and pixel-width colors.