Update.

Ugh. Since school started, I've sort of tapered off all internet activity except Facebook and deviantART. I just don't feel like I have time for everything. Even that comparatively little time wasted comes with no lean share of guilt for neglecting homework. It's not just that I've stopped posting, such as here, but I've even stopped my faithful reading of other's posts.

It's sad, but true, that I just don't have the time. Sometimes I'll think that I'll get caught up on the recent activity when the weekend comes around, but I never do.

But there is light in the darkness. One happy side effect is that instead of spending my spare time on the internet, getting lost in chains of links for hours, I've started reading like I once did. While this means that you're not hearing from me as much, it also means that I'm feeling like myself again. It has worried me for quite some time that I haven't been able to focus on books like I used to do. For months, possible a year or more, I've had to reread things, bogging down my reading experience and making it distasteful and drawn out. That seems to have mostly cured itself. It still occurs sporadically, but rarely. I think part of the antidote was my British lit. class. Instead of using an anthology, our teacher chose to focus on longer works. The novels we've been reading and the time constraints I've had on getting through them have refocused me and I now find myself getting through personal reading better. It definitely helps that I am thoroughly enjoying all of our assignments for class.

I have also worked through the anxiety of my Spanish major. I have decided to keep it, but to switch the track from linguistics to literature, a move that I think will be both less stressful and more enjoyable. I am also going to seriously look into doing a study abroad next summer. I'm going to schedule appointments with the appropriate people and fill out the appropriate paperwork. My desired destination is Leon, Spain, where, if all goes well, I will spend four weeks and take a literature class and a culture class. I prefer Spain over anywhere in Latin America because they use verb tenses and such that aren't commonly heard in this hemisphere. And besides, where better to learn Spanish than Spain?

I've also had some sort of nasty sore throat/head cold going on this weekend. It started about Wednesday with a sore throat, which worsened to the point of painful speech on Thursday. By Friday, the sore throat had slackened off, but the ailment had worked its way upward, resulting in a debilitating headache on Saturday and an annoyingly runny nose.

But I got my Kindle, so it's all good. All 14 of Baum's Oz books? 95 cents.

Listening to: Cardinal's game
Reading: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Reading for class: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell