Don't feel too sorry for me, though. My classes are great, every one of them. (And while I am thinking about it, here's an important announcement. Our literary magazine is sadly short on art and photography submissions, black and white preferable. If you're interested, send me something within the next 48 hours, and I'll get it submitted.)

So, my classes. The only one I haven't talked about yet is Urban Scrawl. One reader specifically asked me to talk about this one, believe it or not. I hardly believe it myself; I had been envisioning my readers drooling on their keyboards with boredom when I started talking about my classes.

So, Urban Scrawl. It's a class about Manhattan from 1850-1900. (Incidentally, two of my favorite movies are set in that place and time: Hello, Dolly! and The Age of Innocence.) The introductory lecture was amazing. Just glancing over my notes, I can provide you with some interesting teasers.

There was a theory that women had to be active participants in copulation in order to become pregnant. On the upside, sex manuals started paying attention to the pleasure of the woman. On the downside, if a woman was raped and became pregnant, the argument was used that she couldn't have been raped, because she obviously enjoyed it enough to get pregnant.

The idea of the "Wild West" had its origin in Manhattan dime novels of this period, which aimed for sensational, melodramatic stories. In other words, the concept of the Wild West was invented by hack writers, not based on factual accounts.

The first guidebooks began to appear at this time. They not only instructed New Yorkers about what to see, but also how to see it, and what to think of it.

Department stores sprang up for the first time. They sold products by taking them out of their context and putting them in a votive setting. (For instance, taking a bowl of Tupperware and displaying it as art.) Obviously, this is still how stores sell products to us.

Certain types of art were elevated to an "elite" status. The opulently wealthy would become the dictators and arbiters of culture, and only they would know how to relate to it. (This persists today: do you think the average person feels comfortable at an art auction?)

Okay, you get the idea. I could go on and on. He lectured for an hour, and threw out about a hundred tidbits just like this. It's just enough to whet the appetite, turn on the mind, and prime me for the semester.

I could just about pee my pants, I'm so excited!

I got scheduled to work every single day this week that I'm not going to school. Which is nice for my bank account, but not so nice for my schedule.

Work is still frustrating. It's filled with people who aren't fully trained. I have no patience with people who don't learn quickly enough for me. It's a terrible trait, and I try to compensate for it by being extra nice on the outside, at least until I can't take it anymore. It wasn't so long ago that I was messing up orders right and left, and I wasn't sure how many pumps of chocolate were in a mocha. Suddenly, I'm miss know-it-all, lecturing everyone on the minutiae of their jobs. It's not real attractive, but I'm trying to get the information across in a constructive way. So far, nobody seems to hate me.

On the plus side, I worked with our new assistant manager for the first time today, and boy, is he a cutie. He's the first cute guy I've worked with at the Antichrist Company. And he's nice as hell, too. There's only a couple of problems. One, we have absolutely nothing in common. (His favorite movie is Gone in 60 Seconds. He loves cars. He snowboards twice a week.) And two, he has a girlfriend. Oh well, c'est la vie. I like working with him, anyway.

The other day at work, I was bending down to pick up a milk crate, and I realized that I have lost a lot of flexibility. Perhaps it's my advancing age (almost 26!) but more likely, it's because I stopped working out. You know how it is when you're in a new relationship. Who wants to work out when you can go home and bask in the glow of love? Feh. That'll teach me.

So I called the gym, and discovered that their classes don't fit into my schedule very well. Undaunted, I went and got a couple of workout videos: one is yoga, and one is kickboxing. I've decided to work out every day (new Escapade: work out every day for 45 days). I can do kickboxing when I have more energy, and yoga if I'm feeling wiped out.

Today is Day Three of this little plan. I did yoga the first day, and I sucked. I did kickboxing the second day, and sucked so bad that I was embarrassed about the parakeets watching me. (They tilted their little heads at me and chirped with concern, like, "Why are you flailing around like that? Are you having a convulsion of some kind?")

I can't even do a decent back kick anymore. What's happened to me? But today, I was practicing my combo at work. Punch, punch, punch, uppercut, front kick, back kick. Yeah. Kickboxing is fun. It kicks my ass, but it's fun.

Yoga is good, too. This was only the second time I've done the yoga tape, but I already feel myself improving. That's pretty rapid progress, if you ask me. It's a long workout, and it's harder than you might imagine, but it's also relaxing after a long day at work. I look forward to next month, when it all should be coming much easier, and I should be able to do roundhouse kicks without dislocating my hip.

The only thing I feel that I'm missing is strength training. I suppose I can always add that in later, though. No point doing too much all at once.

Finally, I wanted to update you on Dad's condition. He went to the doctor, and they diagnosed him with something called, according to my mother, Vegas Nerve. ("I don't understand it. He's never even been to Vegas!") I'm not sure if it's Vegas or Vega's. I can't find any information about it online.

It's not treatable, as far as I know. It's just a condition that some people have. It causes people to have a reaction if they see blood, for instance, or if they're in a stressful situation. This has happened to my dad before when he's seen bad wounds, and the day that he landed in the hospital in Holland, he was extremely stressed out. So it makes sense.

It's a huge relief to know what is concretely wrong with him. It's a bummer that he can't treat it; I guess the only thing he can really do is try to avoid stress. But as far as I know, it's not life threatening in any way.

I'm more worried these days about Laurie's sister. Laurie is my best friend at school. Her sister lives back in Texas. She's a diabetic who has had her legs amputated, so it's obviously a severe case. Now, they've found some sort of growth on her heart. They decided not to do surgery, because they felt she might not recover from it. Now, they're basically waiting for her to have a stroke, or for something else to go wrong. And she's nauseous and miserable, like, all the time. She's in and out of the hospital, and Laurie is dealing with guilt and dread, and all those other horrible emotions.

I really hope everything turns out okay, and her sister makes it through this. On the extremely selfish side, I would hate to lose Laurie. She's one of my favorite things about the program. Obviously, if something goes really wrong, she might end up going back to Texas. And on the unselfish side, I care about her a lot, and I hate to see her unhappy. Especially considering all that she's been through recently... which is a whole other story, and not mine to tell.

"1:16 p.m. I clock back in just in time. I collapse on my chair. I bring the straw to my lips, but the stress of the ride home has caused me to consume the entirety of my Jamba Juice away."