books and midterms

i know - you're shocked. so am i. this is the first consecutive post in many weeks. i'm at work, and have some time in between calls, and really want to continue reading "one hundred years of solitude," but need to get my internet putzing done first. "one hundred years of solitude" is quickly becoming one of my favorite books, and i'm only sixty pages in. i'd be super surprised if jonathan safran foer (author of the marvelous "everything is illuminated" - the only book i've read twice - and "extremely loud and incredibly close") hadn't taken a lot of inspiration from gabriel garcia marquez, because marquez's style is very similar to foer's, only marquez did it forty years ago. wow, that was a really pretentious little tangent.

ok, i like the book. it's allowing my brain some rest from the craziness that is the rest of my life. that's how i operate. i must cram my brain full of craziness, and then allow myself to take a break, or else i explode. i was reading the onion before i fell into bed last night, and dan said, "whoa, i'm never prepared enough for a midterm to read a newspaper the night before i take it." he did not say this because he was in awe of how calm and collected i was. he was trying to shame me into studying neurotransmitters for several more hours. what he does not understand, however, is that it is far more detrimental for me to stay up all night before a test scrambling to pour information into my head than it is for me to steadily pack it away into my cranium for the days leading up to the exam, so that i can relax and take deep breaths as it looms closer. i can't retain information i "learn" right before tests, and looking at lecture notes super fast immediately before midterms only serves to make me feel less confident about what i know. now you all know how i study, which is something really important, i'm sure.

friday, i'm going to dinner with my mom's entire family to celebrate my great-grandma's 94th birthday. i'm seriously giddy at the thought of seeing them, because i adore them. dinner is going to kickstart a really intense weekend, full of work (saturday morning and 8:15 am to 5 pm on sunday), museums, and some more hardcore studying for the anthro midterm i have at 8 am on monday morning. mad once told me her sister thought of college as the process of constantly putting out fires, and that is quite possibly the best way to describe it. unfortunately, i guess life's kinda like that too, so i'll still be crazed after i graduate.

time to read "one hundred years" and try not to think about my midterm.