potentialities

* (still more) cough syrup
* benzocaine lozenges for my sore throat
* Excedrin for my raging fever and my sore everything else
* chamomile tea
* comfort audiobooks (Anne of Green Gables)

Two more hours, two more hours, two more hours ....

1. I have new pajama pants! My brother isn't here anymore to provide me with a fresh supply of clothing to steal, so I had to go to the men's department and pick them out myself after my mother despaired of persuading me to select something fluffy and pink instead. They have pockets! I never want to take them off.
   
   
2. Genius 324. Kaoru-chan. Enough said.
   
   
3. I bought Christmas presents for my brother, Sam and Stan which I'm fairly certain they will all love. I'm so excited about giving people presents this year and I wouldn't even care if no one got me anything. I'm afraid that this means that I'm a grown-up or something.
   
   
4. My hair is awesome. Actually, my hair has been awesome a lot lately, and I was wondering if I had sold my soul to the devil while I wasn't really paying attention or something, and then I found out that the new shampoo my mother picked out for me costs $15 per bottle. Which is too bad, really, because I wasn't using my soul, and I really could have done with an eternity of good hair days.

Just ... just don't even ask how hard I'm failing at NaNoWriMo this year. Or about my yuletide story, which presently consists of scrawlings on an envelope along the lines of "[Character] and [character] [do something]?"

I have packed my clothing, or what passes for it, and am now attempting to decide on books, which are much more important, especially for a trip that involves an estimated 24-hours round trip driving time, not to mention the dubious charms of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

The key here is to balance physical and metaphorical weight. Hardcovers tend to weigh too much and have fussy dustcovers to worry about, although some of my paperbacks, being largely used, are too fragile to travel with either. Books that will take me approximately fifteen minutes to read/reread are obviously not worth the space they take up, so, for example, my BSC collection is right out. On the other hand, books that I'm just not in the mood to read so I never make it past the first five pages won't do me any favors either, so it's safer to stick to books that appear to me to be the sort of thing I generally like to read. Rereading is tempting, and takes care of the guaranteed appeal, but also tends to tip the selection towards being too lightweight to be worth bringing along, especially when I have so many shiny unread books on my shelves making me feel guilty.

And then of course there are the books that I need to reread because of the porn I want to write. *eyes The Once and Future King speculatively*

So far, this is what I have stacked on my bed to bring, in no particular order:

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Fluke and Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore
Genius by James Gleick
Little, Big by John Crowley
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Welcome to the Ark by Stephanie Tolan
Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Grand Complication by Allen Kurzweil
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

If anyone knows of any reason why I should definitely not bring any of these books with me by any means, now would probably be a good time to mention it. You could also, of course, make actual positive suggestions, but these would probably be of limited utility as you have no way of knowing what I have on my shelves.

• Wrestled extensively with the idiocy of NYU, and won, more or less
  
• Took finals
  
• Turned in papers
  
• Got myself on Fandom Wank, in the good way, with people proposing to have my babies
  
• Bid farewell to my adorable Pre-K classes, who were very sad to see me go
  
• Made one last trip to the Cloisters with vagabond_sal
  
• Made one last trip to Strand with vagabond_sal
  
• Ate most of vagabond_sal's remaining food
  
• Said goodbye to my beloved TV and my beloved speakers and posted them
  
• Packed everything I owned in a few suitcases and lugged them to the airport
  
• Discovered muscles in my elbows that I didn't know, or want to know, that I had
  
• Did not die in scary thunderstorm over Kansas City as we were landing
  
• Read more books on the airplane than I have otherwise in a month
  
• Revised my little brother's awful no good very bad paper on Tess of the d'Urbervilles, due the next day
  
• Visited my grandparents in South Dakota
  
• Played the Squirrel Game with my three-year-old second cousin, who cheats
  
• Made my extended family very jealous when my one-year-old second cousin liked me best and wanted to sit in my lap
  
• Planted flowers in my grandparents' backyard
  
• Discussed important questions with my grandfather, such as what is the greatest novel ever written and how long does it take to reserve a booking at the Old Course in St. Andrews
  
• Tried to read my flist on dialup through AOL
  
• Failed, miserably
  
• Ordered six imps from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab
  
• Returned home again and settled on swing on the back porch with the wireless internet

Congratulations to everyone who graduated, will graduate, otherwise made it through another semester, is too cool to be in school any more, et cetera. You are all awesome.