What a crappy day. I do research on Friday mornings, and today one of my two very important instruments went haywire. It just decided it wasn't going to listen to me anymore, and started making lights flash all over the place and stuff. I tried to call the company, but finally I gave up and left. I'll deal with it on Monday. I have such a love-hate relationship with that thing...

Maybe the weather's having a subtle influence on my bad mood as well; it's all overcast. Hopefully that's not the case, given that half the places I'm considering for grad school tend to be more overcast than California.

Oh, and I stayed up too late last night, reading the online novel at My Boot. I stumbled upon one of the chapters while searching for "rain boots" on Google ("galoshes" only turned up Australian sites), and I couldn't stop reading. If you choose to read it, be forewarned; it stops just before the ending. The guy hasn't updated it in over a year :( But if you can deal with frustration, go ahead.

Maybe that's what I need--a nice pair of yellow rain boots with handles to help pull them on. I think I had a pair when I was a kid, but they don't make them in adult sizes, as far as I can tell. If I had those, it wouldn't matter if it rained; I'd be ecstatic! How come they sell these freaky boots in women's sizes, but not nice plain yellow ones? Blah...time to take a nap.

That picture above is of a cool old book I got from the library. It was published in 1911 or so, and it's all about how we need to save our girls from the evil men who would sell them into prostitution. Yeah, whatever, in a study done in the mid-1800's in New York City, only 14% of prostitutes said they were seduced into prostitution (Gilfoyle 64). Most of them were in it for profit and pleasure, but the silly religious and government officials who wrote the book above didn't want to believe it. Hmph!

Anyway, that was fun to look at; old books are amusing. I got it for a research paper I'm doing on Jewish immigrant involvment in prostitution (and other crime) at the turn of last century. Fun stuff!

I also got to go shopping for little girl clothes for this drive Mudd is supporting; basically, we're buying kids Christmas presents. I stupidly went to Gap Kids (they have such cozy looking things!) and spent more money than I'll probably spend on my own family members, but I don't feel too bad since it's for a cute little girl somewhere. I wish I were 11 again so I could wear all those fun clothes! When I was 11, I was clueless about clothes and appearance in general. That was pretty smart of my mom, keeping me in the dark; it saved her a lot of troubles (and money) during my pre-adolescent years. If I can find a scanner when I visit home, I'll post pictures of my painful unattractiveness from those years. Or maybe that's best kept within my family...

So Thanksgiving with Patrick's family was lots of fun. They had all the right food (cranberry sauce from a can is a Thanksgiving necessity, in my family tradition). I have too much work right now to put up pictures or anything, sorry.

That picture above is from yesterday. It rained a lot, and our dorm (Atwood) got a little flooded. Apparently, our courtyard drainage system failed. Oh well! It made me wish I had galoshes though...

I'm off to spend Thanksgiving with Patrick's family in the Bay Area. Be back in a few days!

Mmm...eating warm, toasty English muffins with melted butter while it rains outside. Life is good.

P.S. This is crazy! An Italian woman got pregnant twice!