Oy. I have no clue what I am doing. Spent three hours at the dinner table talking to one of my favourite aunts(not by blood, she's my mom's old friend) from New Jersey last evening instead of studying any number of things I really should. I'm hapless when it comes to time management, you see. I suppose I may shift the blame to the fact that we were having steamboat - arguably a long-drawn process. She bought me a pair of comfy shorts from the Gap so that I may partake of hopeless American consumerism, and I thanked her for it - I will make a task out of finding a top to match these aqua bottoms. We talked about foreign countries while sitting on my enormous new couch as she sipped her champagne (or shaum-pah-nee-uh, as she pronounced it) and hiccuped. It was rather excellent.

Incidentally another aunt present at the dinner table yesterday is getting remarried, much to my enthusiasm - I think I may actually like weddings more than I realize. Also, my actual, blood-relation aunt from New Jersey (I have a lot of ties with the Garden State, so it seems. Hey I want to watch the movie of the same name, by the way.) is arriving to stay with us on Friday for two weeks or so. I shall see how well I fare with studying when I am now distracted not only by my iBook, Marquez, my huge lumbering dog and 2 cousins under the age of 10, and a pool. I am afraid the coming weeks will not bode well for me.

I fear I may regress into reading Sexton and Plath and acquiring some Lowell to feed my narcissism and moody, angsty tendencies in this period. Perhaps it will ignite my literary passion, and prompt me to write poetry, which I haven't done since the dawn of what is known as Junior College, a.k.a academic hell. Well school isn't as bad as I sometimes make it out to be, but I can attest to the fact that my stress levels now know no bounds. I shall take this as my ultimate test, and take heed of Bukowski : "what matters most is how well you walk through the fire".

Morituri te salutant.