I Prefer Solid-State Midterms

Well, I think I just finished the take-home midterm for my archaeology class. But you never can tell. That midterm was like a gas -- it just kept expanding to fill every last minute of time I had available, and I couldn't figure out how to keep it contained and put a time limit on it. I guess I'm really bad at budgeting time for papers, which is probably why I really don't like take-home midterms. I wrote this one in a very odd manner as well, jumping back and forth between the three questions every twenty minutes or so rather than answering them one at a time in a logical fashion. It was very strange, but that's apparently the way my brain has been working the last couple of days, so that's the way it went. I ended up about 200 words over the word limit (hey, I hit the grad student word limit - I think they actually have it easier!), and he says he's really strict about that, so I'll probably try to shave it a bit more tomorrow, but I don't see how I can take much more out and still have it mean anything; 1000 words for three hefty questions isn't much!

I'm going to have a nice break from all this schoolwork tomorrow afternoon; I'm taking my friend Diana to see the Corpse Bride for her birthday (which was last week), and then we'll go to dinner and catch up on all sorts of gossip. I'm supposed to go to a Halloween party on Saturday, but it's all the way out in far-away Southeast Portland, very hard to get to by bus, and I'd rather not trust anybody else to get me home, so I'm not sure how that's going to work. Plus, I don't have a costume! I did pick up some fabulous horns at the pumpkin patch on Monday - twisted pumpkin stems that had broken off and dried on the ground - but I don't have a costume to go with them. Any suggestions out there?

Other than that, I'll be hitting the books most of the weekend, preparing for my two midterms on Tuesday (fortunately both in-class, with definite time limits). But right now I have to give Alice a good brush and play with her for a while, since she's been neglected all day in favor of my midterm, and she's been yowling at me and tugging on her string toy for the last half-hour.