The beginning of summer!

*sigh*  firefox ate my post. Here we go again.

i was saying that despite my whining a couple of weeks ago, this is the first end of semester since starting grad school that I haven't incurred an acidy, ulcerous stomach and bad sleep. also i *mostly* haven't been paranoid, cranky, or mean. mostly.

now is the time for me to start being active again. three weeks of sitting at the cpu writing and only taking (copious) snack breaks = stephanie gained weight. not too much, but enough to be annoying. i still have lots of work to do this summer, but hopefully i can do it at my own pace and do a good job.

want to clean up the basement some, as well as some other things. Anyone who still reads this interested in learning how to knit? my mother and i were discussing what to do with all the yarn that has accumulated in the basement, and i thought it would be great to sell at flea markets and stuff. if anyone is interested in some, i would be willing to give it to you for a bit of time helping to sort it out. also my mother will teach you how to knit. she is a super master knitter. I'll probably be sending out an email about it once I talk to my mom about a good date to hold it.

dad thinks that i am doing this just to avoid the other work i have to do. that's probably true... but I'll do the other work too.

i have been reading too many "grad school is dumb" articles, and i really need to stop doing that. LJ doesn't like the link I'm trying to post, but here's the perfectionist part:
 

Perfectionism - As Curci suggests, one common area of difficulty lies in the impossibility of meeting expectations and all too often these exaggerated expectations are inner demands rather than outer ones.

Perfectionism, can create an inability to start or finish major tasks. Perfectionists are their own worst critics. Nothing is ever good enough and this constant self-criticism leads to paralysis or avoidance which sabotages progress.

Perfectionism is always a defense. Individuals with perfectionistic expectations hope, (wish), need, to protect themselves from all failure or criticism. This criticism which is imagined to be emanating from others is usually coming from within. This can create a vicious circle of fear-driven effort which no amount of external evidence of success ever seems to correct... if only because the possibility of failure cannot ever be reduced to zero.

thankfully i don't think about jumping out of my window anymore (that was my first year), but that perfectionist thing really hits close to home. oddly enough i wouldn't have thought that those were the symptoms of a perfectionist. I guess the people you call perfectionists are the successful ones, but the rest of us are too scared to go all the way like that.

ok, well just to prove my father wrong, i will start working on the things i need to do for school. i really don't like having an incomplete on my grades, even if the class was set up that way from the beginning. he's going in for a double colonoscopy/endoscopy tomorrow, and he's been a bit nervous about it. they hope to find where he has been bleeding (it's slight, but enough together with the chemo that he can't produce enough blood to replace the loss) and close it up somehow. i think it'll be fine.

Cheers!