The Eleventh Hour

Well, it is the eleventh hour, as it were, here in Charleston. The time has finally come that my paper has to be done, so there is no putting it off until tomorrow anymore. For the last few nights, and I can imagine that is how it will be tonight, I have been on the 5:2 sleep schedule. I sleep five hours at night, then two hours in the afternoon. The problem is that I don't always have time for the 2 hours in the afternoon. But, after I turn in tomorrow's paper I'll only have one more research paper to finish (and a whole bunch of other stuff, but I won't think about that right now), so hopefully everything will fall into place all right. Like they say, if it weren't for the last minute, a lot of stuff would never get done.

This morning I had my very last class of the semester! We'll still have finals next week, but classes have officially ended for us. I have loved Dr. Small's historic preservation class. Speaking of Dr. Small, she and Mr. Riccio (they are married, but she still goes by her maiden name because that's how everyone in the world of academia knows her) have rescued some horses from a mean guy here in Charleston. I guess that the guy would beat his horses, and they were pretty much starving, so the police seized all of his animals and tried to find good homes for them. The Small/Riccio house has a barn, so they fixed it up and have adopted two horsies. The poor horsies are quite traumatized, but they're working with them to help them get used to people--nice people--and are nursing them back to health. They said that the horsies are really skittish and timid around people--understandably so, so they have commissioned me as the "horse whisperer" to come over on Sunday afternoon and talk to the cute horses. I'm totally excited! Some of the other girls want to go with me so we can shower the horses with love, affection, and carrots, and hopefully make them feel happy. The mean guy who abused these horses should be put in the stocks on town square and left out in the cold (I think that the stocks should be reinstituted as a form of public humiliation, or humility as Dr. Hardeman's students would call it).

Speaking of Dr. Hardeman, I worked with him for a few hours this afternoon, but we didn't get much done because he spent the whole time telling me stories. When I got there, he told me to kick up my heels, take a seat, grab a mint julep, and relax, and then I made the mistake of asking him if he'd ever had a mint julep (because I've heard they're really quite gross). This launched him into a whole slew of stories, most of which were about these Ukrainian girls he knew in college who had hollow legs so they could drink and drink and drink alcohol without it ever affecting them. :-) We also had to read some judicial affairs documents to prepare him for some cases he has to oversee tomorrow to decide if the dumb students (and in this case they really can be called dumb because they do some really stupid things) should be kicked out of school. I won't elaborate, since I was sworn to secrecy, but there are some messed up students here. Then Dr. Reid came upstairs to eat some candy with us, and we had a good time chatting. She's big into politics, and so she brought up Mitt Romney's speech today about religion. Even though she and Dr. Hardeman are very emphatic Democrats, they both agree that it's kind of lame that Mitt has been given such a hard time about his religion. Dr. Reid said what I've been saying all along: "If someone's religion keeps them from being voted as President, then America really isn't as free as we all claim it is." Amen. Well, unfortunately my procrastination has gone far enough and I must be off to finish the paper!