"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
---Thomas Jefferson

I wish that I had something interesting and creative and witty to say...but I don't.  I'm on a pathetically short vacay from school, and I've done nothing intelligent or even mildly entertaining for a few days.

On Monday, after I finished my People of the Worlds exam in, like, ten minutes (seriously), I went out to dinner with Jill and Tiffany, our new roomate, and gorged on lobster ravioli and profiteroles.  Twas fun; Tiffany is really cool, much cooler than Keli, and she's clean.  I think we're going out tomorrow night...hopefully somewhere around the vicinity of Downtown Disney, so I don't have to drive all the way back to UCF.

(And Keli fulfilled my expectations of her when she moved out: she left dozens of empty boxes in our living room, plus some incredibly huge chemistry books that the campus bookstore wouldn't buy back.  I'm going to send all of the empty boxes to her house in Melbourne.  Mwhaha.)

I went to the mall yesterday and tried to find a Mother's Day present for, well, my mother.  Why does every store stock basically the same Mother's Day presents?  The only things out there for moms are cookbooks and baking supplies.  It's like, "Here, Mom, you've done so me.  I want you to really enjoy your day...by making me a cake."

I'm very proud of myself for working out today.  I'm not so proud of myself for making a massive batch of brownies and watching a marathon of Kathy Griffin's reality show while eating batter.  Please don't watch her show; it's hilarious, but I get most of my jokes from her, and if everyone watches it they'll know I'm a thief and won't think I'm hilarious.

As of yesterday morning, when I sent my Adv. Nonfiction prof. my final manuscript, I am officially done with postgraduate writing workshops.  Forever!

On the one hand, I'm sad, because I made a few really good friends in workshop classes and had some really good discussions with people and, except for last semester's Fiction Workshop (boohissboo), I liked and respected all of my teachers.  But, on the other hand, I'm incredibly happy that I will never have to read a craptastic, written-2-hours-before-it-was-due, punctuation-free manuscript by some asshat who "only writes for themselves and doesn't care what anyone else thinks" (or if anyone else can even understand their sentences).  So yay.  

After my People of the World exam (easy) on Monday afternoon, I will have two weeks of break.  Then, 12 weeks of sociology, Spanish, slavery and wine, and then I graduate.  Weeeee!

***

I think my cats are trying to kill each other.  

***

I'm apparently going to Miami over Memorial Day weekend....?

...which I bet no one else watched.  Huh?  You didn't, did you?  I thought not.  It's not your fault: it wasn't publicized, and only MSNBC broadcast it nationally (I flicked around, and CNN had, as usual, some old guy blathering, while FauxNews had...get ready...a high speed chase.  Hurray for democracy!).  So I'll summarize:

*Mike Gravel.  I have no idea who this guy is, or what he stands for, but I hope he stays in the race.  Why?  Because he yells.  A lot.  He's like your old grandfather who starts railing against the Japanese and Hitler when you ask him to pass the salt.  

*John Edwards should always have $400 haircuts.  I'll pay for them.  It's about time we had a president whose cheeks we could pinch and say, "Awwwwwwww!"

*Obama ba-rocks my world.  

*Kucinich somehow escaped from his busy schedule of baking cookies in his magical tree and made some good points.  Too bad he's doomed, and probably won't even become a vice presidential candidate.

And that's about all that I got from the debate.

Edit: The movie meme that's going around, stolen from Sheems....

So, I was rooting around in the massive box of pictures that my parents have yet to organize, and I found some amazing vintage pictures, like these...

My great-grandmother, Mildred DeSantis nee Turkula.  What an awesome fur coat.

I'm exhausted right now, even though I slept for 10 hours last night.

I'm in the midst of experiencing both jet lag and culture lag (as in, I was strolling down the Seine two days ago and today I'm listening to everyone talk about how wasted they got in Daytona), so I'm also little glum.  It doesn't help that it's gross and gray outside.  Damnit, Florida, why can you give me no sunshine when I need it?!?

I'm too tired to recount my trip (besides, I have class in a half hour and still haven't finished my reading about yam trading...seriously), and especially the panic and ridiculousness that was the past two days.  Briefly: because the Eurostar tracks caught on fire (!!!) outside Clapham, all of the Eurostar services were suspended indefinetely...as I was trying to leave Paris.  So I had to get a flight from Charles de Gaulle, easily the worst airport ever designed, to England.  But, of course, there were no flights from CDG to any of the London airports for the entire day; they were all booked.  So I had to fly to Edinburgh with my parents and catch a flight from there to Gatwick.  It was the worst day of my life.  Then I spent all of yesterday on a flight home, sitting in the midst of a family of 12, who kept disrupting my movie watching to switch seats.  It's one thing to disrupt me, but when you disrupt me and Daniel Craig, you've fucked with the wrong ugly American.

Oh, and I'm also incredibly sick.  Luckily, I only came down with it on Saturday, when I was supposed to leave Paris, so my trip wasn't ruined.  Unfortch, the only thing worse than spending 48 hours travelling is spending 48 hours travelling while you're sick. 

Also: wtf is it about Virgin flights and me meeting long lost acquaintances?  I met one of Jill's friends whom I vaguely know at Gatwick airport while I checked Facebook on an airport computer.  He saw her picture on the screen and was like, "You know Jill?  I know Jill!"  So that was cool.  

But my trip was amazing, and I'll write more about it later.  After I finish reading about yam trading.

PS: I drank absinthe with my father.  That's how we roll.