The trees have gone all beautiful over the last week. Squirrels are looking plump: the pregnant ones even plumper than the others, of course. Starlings are appearing again, which they seem to do approximately three weeks after each equinox (or "the Twilight of the Year," as I call it. You may use it as long as you credit me!)

Construction is still occurring in my street beginning at about 7am every day, which makes me not want to go outside for my jog. The workers haven't even been rude or anything, it's just that I absolutely hate them at this point, through no fault of their own. After approximately seven months of this constant SKREEeeeeeeEEEEEEeeeekkkk..... BEEP--BEEP--BEEP ....kaCHOONkaCHOONkaCHOONka.... BEEP--BEEP--BEEP ..... SKREEE--EEeeeeEEEeeekk ... THUDD! .... THUDD! ... THUDD! (months during which I rewrote my entire thesis three times, mind you), I have been pretty thoroughly conditioned to passionately hate them. After all, these kinds of conditions even make lab animals infertile.

I ended up avoiding going outside a lot more than usual, which is too bad, because I feel like I got no summer this year. My house was constantly invaded by thick filth floating in through the windows on a daily basis. And then there have been the times when I awoke to absolutely no water for several days, sometimes with warning, sometimes not. And guests had to park a block away, which shouldn't be a big deal except that we invariably have to make a few trips in order to carry all my piles of books and articles upstairs. (Or away.) And the streets and sidewalks have been torn up and/or blocked of by barriers or giant mountains of one type of dirt or another, so that walking to anywhere while dragging my cart full of books was like a curse of some kind.

So there I was all summer, (doubly) covered in filth, all my materials and equipment similarly covered in filth, unable to make tea or have a shower, listening to the above noises for hours on end beginning by 7am, trying to re-re-re-write my thesis. During 94-degree weather.

No wonder I hate them!

However, I am hopeful that they may be done just in time for winter, as they laid the new curb (or kerb, or bordstein, depending whence you're reading this) in the past couple of days.

Have been running hither and yon trying to get my committee to sign off on the miniscule revisions I needed to make. Have to turn it in to the grad school by the 15th in order to apply for graduation this December. Unfortunately, a committee member today decided that the changes they had mutually decided on (and executed by me) are a) not enough and/or b)not done to satisfaction, so he (today) came up with another list of things for me to change.

Today! He decided this today.

Three days before the turn-in date.

My defense was--what, three weeks ago? Wherein they all mutually, together, as approved by my advisor, decided on what I should change then. And now there's more. With this kind of turnaround time I'll be lucky to graduate next June.

I've had so much to do lately what with new clients and community outreach groups in the offing, teaching a new class, trying to do internship applications, trying to get a handhold on beginning my dissertation, proposing a paper for AWP, and so on. Yesterday as we were discussing how to get my dissertation study approved by the end of December, my advisor shook her head and said, "You are going to be busy this fall."

As opposed to what? The way in which I've been slacking off so much of late?! Sheez.

I have been wondering why I have been so tired all the time lately... Huh.