So, I am about a month into "grad" school, and I'm not dead yet. Although I have the sneaking suspicion that out of protest my body is trying to kill me.

I have the plague.

AGAIN.

All who know me know that I have an unnatural way of contracting some kind of illness every couple months without fail. But this time I think I know what's really going on. I don't care what those so called "doctors" say, I think this is my body's natural reaction to the offensive amounts of math I have been subjected to over that past month. Because believe me people, it can't be healthy. Actually, this stuff is pretty elementary, not for myself, but for most people in the program, which makes it pretty intimidating. And I'm sure my classes will get much worse as time progresses. The fact that you're reading this at all indicates I actually have time to type. Free time. Many higher year grad students have suggested much to that point- one told me that the fact that I still have paint on my toenails indicates that classes really haven't kicked into full gear yet. Greeeaaaat.

So I am sick, which really isn't a problem- I'm used to it by now- but weird quirks about the building in which I live do not assist much in the healing process. Like when last night a trolley car drove down my hallway. OK . . . not really a trolley car . . . but it might as well have been. Let me set the scene . . .

I was all set in bed, trying to be a good girl and go to bed early (11pm), when I heard a LOUD ringing sound, like someone struck a large bell, or for all you San Franciscianianians (what are you called??) exactly like a trolley car ringing RIGHT next to your bed. This yanked me back from the brinks of slumber, only to stop ringing as soon as it had started. I chalked it up to weird neighbors (don't know- haven't met them yet- they get no benefit of the doubt), and went back to sleep. Five minutes later, same thing. This time I leapt out of my tissue-laden bed and ran over to my little peep hole to see what the by now assuredly crazy neighbors were up to right outside my doorway . . . only to see an empty hallway. Confused (and slightly doped up on NyQuil and sleeping pills and decongestants) I went back to bed.

However, the powers that be weren't about to let me get any sleep that night. No, they had bigger, grander, and slightly louder plans. The- for the lack of a louder and more annoying sounding word- "bell" kept ringing like this for the next hour. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much in this time. Only after an hour did it finally seem to gain momentum and start ringing at a normal fire alarm rate- at a rate that, you know, might actually disturb people's lives enough to get them to do something about it, rather than have them ignore the thing while they burned to the ground. (While some other of them imagined disconnected trolley cars coasting down hallways in fits of feverish delirium.) This got me out of bed and wandering around in my hallway to see if anyone else was hearing the bell or if this time I truly had gone crazy. Luckily for my sanity, other people too had wandered out of their respective abodes and were now wandering around in the hallways, everyone looking disjointed with their pajamas and slippers and hair plastered on the sides of their heads. We were all ushered out front where we would await a fire truck for over an hour, (thank God it hadn't been a real fire) until we were all assured that our building was not, in fact, on fire, and were allowed to re-enter.

Thus I am still sick. However, I am sick with the knowledge that our fire alarm does work, which will prove to be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on my how my cooking skills fare during the remainder of my time here.

Now I am off to bed, and hopefully, off to sleep. Goodnight. Gootennacht. Kali Nichta. And many a trolley-car-free night to you all.