Yesterday was long. Really long. I didn&#039t get to sleep until 1:30-ish in the morning only to wake up several times, the worst being the hour before the alarm went off when Kitty decided she needed to make my crumpled form into a mountain-climbing experience. Then after some yowling an inch from my ear when I let her crawl between me and the husband, she was too much in the way for me to reach the alarm (somewhat like this morning) only to have her get in the way again when I got out of bed, got in the shower, got out of the shower, and when I was getting ready to leave. Kitty sure loves me.

At work I was busy all morning with e-mails about the planner, typing up events for the planner, and helping Heather get our mass mailing out so that other departments will send us their information to add to the planner so I can spend more time editing/updating it. Lunch was spent with the LLL bunch for an hour and a half, and if there&#039s one thing that will wear me down quickly, it&#039s a social event, even a pleasurable one. I enjoyed hanging out with the other linguistics students and profs, but I can handle social interaction for only so long before my mask of &#034I&#039m normal&#034 begins to wear thin. Back to the office, I made phone calls for an hour and a half to students who hadn&#039t registered for fall classes yet, asking them why they hadn&#039t and reminding them to do so before the freshmen mobs took up the rest of the class seats. One girl I talked to insisted she had a schedule, that she had it in hand but that she hadn&#039t used a PIN to get it. Here at ISU, you have to have a PIN to schedule, so I checked in our advisor&#039s program for her and no, she didn&#039t have a schedule. After calling her back to tell her, it took her ten minutes to realize that I had said (three times) that I was calling from ISU, but she had transfered to IUPUI. <Sigh> I called Tony at three to remind him to get his ass outta bed so we could meet this afternoon, and the rest of my work day was spent hand-sewing a little drawstring bag to put all my pens, markers, and pencils in.

After work, I dragged Buster and my gear up to Root Hall where Tony&#039s office is to find him checking his e-mail and in high spirits because he had just woken up two hours prior. I set Buster up with every intention of telling him about the G-mail account I had set up for us to use with our comics project, but he was busy with e-mail until he decided to launch us into a discussion about my thesis. So we worked on what I had done so far on my thesis as well as what I still needed to do when Lisa Calvin walked in. She just got tenure as a Spanish professor here. She had something for Tony to look at, and somehow the conversation wandered off to 70&#039s music, then movies, then to Mel Gibson, then to the fact that Tony won&#039t watch Mel Gibson stuff because of his questionable grasp on Catholicism, then onto what Catholics were, then onto Chrisitanity in general, then onto books that Tony wants Lisa to read as well as arguing over books Lisa wants Tony to read, which required that I look up a whole lot of titles in Amazon thus destroying the &#034Recommended Reading&#034 lists on my account so that now I&#039ll be bombarded with Jesus books for a long time when I log on. There was some two-stepping (not me) and some bad singing (not me) included in there, but the debate about open-mindedness, what &#034progressive&#034 means, and the goal of Christians to spread their word despite the wishes of others to be left alone all took several hours. I was only peripherally in the conversation, letting the two friends go at it (which they do from time to time, apparently), though I did pipe up from time to time to point out that they were assuming that the entire nation is religious, which it isn&#039t, and that if they wanted true tolerance and openness that they&#039d have to stop forgetting the Atheists. I brought up the court trial where a woman was held in contempt of court and thrown in jail (meaning her record is tarnished forever as is her reputation) because she was an Atheist who refused to swear on the Bible &#034so help me god&#034 when called for jury duty. Lisa, in true Christian &#034I can&#039t imagine anything outside of my perspective because that would be questioning the faith and that&#039s bad&#034 fashion, said that &#034God looks in people&#039s hearts and knows when people swear on the Bible if they mean it or not or if they&#039re lying or not. It doesn&#039t matter if they swear on the Bible or not.&#034 Essentially it boiled down to &#034They should just do it because it doesn&#039t mean anything to them as Atheists because god will know if they&#039re moral or not.&#034 She didn&#039t care about the fact that by swearing on a bible to a god that it would undermine the principles, honor, and truthfulness of the Atheist. By swearing on the bible, I would be lying thus negating my honor and credibility, reneging on my principles. I was fairly offended but didn&#039t get a chance to get back to it because Tony was doing plenty of talking for me. Still, I&#039m annoyed.

After Lisa finally left without much resolution at all, Tony and I worked more studiously on my thesis until Keri Berg whisked by (the other French professor at ISU), and she stopped in to tell us what she&#039d been doing all evening as well as who she accidentally offended at a meeting. We tried finding a picture of this person on the ISU&#039s webpage, but didn&#039t. Then I teased Tony for not having his picture on the LLL page, and he asked if my picture were up anywhere, and so we went looking for me. Somehow we got onto geneologies which are on-line, and after showing him the Ringwalds, we went looking for Macheaks because he knows of no Macheaks in the States who isn&#039t a relative he knows and is closely related to. Great, more distractions. By this point, the husband logged on and was asking after me (Tony got to the IM first and was messing with Ian&#039s head before I got the computer back), and I realized that it was after nine. Finally, Tony and I got back to the thesis as well as another more personal project we&#039re working on (namely that of ways to keep me sane while I work on my thesis) before we finally left his office at 10:10. Phew!

When I got home, rather than go through my entire day with Ian right away, he asked that we go eat, so I went through my day while sipping a shake at Steak and Shake. By the time we got home, I was more than exhausted. I figured that the insomnia would just have to wait tonight because I was too tired from the day to lie in bed thinking about it for two hours. I was right. I was out like a light not too long after getting into bed. I hope today&#039s much more calm.