Guess what? You're not the boss of me; I'll blog when I damn well want to. Or whatever.

Okay, I am fully not dead at all. My new year's resolution was to be less susceptible to guilt, and therefore I decided to give myself a month (or so) off from blogging. Or I couldn't think of anything to write. And apparently my Toshiba had the same resolution, because it gave itself a month off from the internet, and I replaced it with a new Compaq. I shall call it Squishy and it shall be my Squishy.

Despite what I said about not being dead, the new semester has been a little bit of a struggle for reasons that remain entirely mysterious to me. Not an academic struggle (did I tell you my grades were good last semester? They totally were, mini-wave), so much as a struggle to...care. I can't decide if it's the weather or a general malaise or the creeping melancholies that are going through the department, but mostly I just want to curl in a ball and eat chocolate, which is weird because chocolate is not even my drug of choice.

Other than that, though, things are chugging right along. I have acquired three new calligraphy hands, although two of them are pretty boring and therefore useless to me. But let me tell you, using a dip pen to write is great, in that it's like crack to English grad students, because now we (the four of us in the class) feel like we are Jane Austen and/or whatever ye olde writer we prefer. Next week we are slated to learn how to make and write with quills, which is...awesome. We can feel like Chaucer or Cicero or something. It's like a dork-factor boost.

My Shakespeare class is cool, although it does not involve a dip pen, as they are rather awkward for taking notes. But we're reading all the plays nobody ever reads (a.k.a. "the bad plays"), which is interesting. Although I spend a lot of time going, yeah, there's a reason you never see this one. This week's selection is 2 Henry VI, which is a scintillating treatise on how Henry VI was Very Weak and his dukes were Always Scheming. But it does have a random scene of devil worship, so...yay?

Okay, I am tired of writing—I don't have my blogging legs back yet—and I still have two acts of Henry to Suffer Through. I will just give you a quick run-down of other stuff that I think you need to know:

1. See Nanny McPhee because it is awesome. I know, I was skeptical too, but...Emma Thompson! And more importantly, Colin Firth! And, most importantly of all, gay mortuary assistants!

2. I bought a teamaker, which is awesome. It's like a coffeemaker, except for tea, and now I can use loose tea without having to pick it out of the cup. Did you know they sold such things? Me neither, but they do, and sometimes they are even on discout, which, extra awesome. Mmm, Earl Grey.

3. Have you seen Horatio Hornblower? If not, you are totally missing out, and not just because Ioan Gruffudd is frickety hot. There are sea battles and Captain Pellew and scurvy and things on fire. My dad got them for Christmas and we watched them all, and then Sarah and I had to get out the one where Hornblower wears the straw hat because of the infernal heat and also, the Plague. Seriously? In Iran?

4. Lemon curd. It's the new condiment of choice.

5. Happy Valentine's Day. Go away, you bother me.