August 05, 2003~~2:08 p.m.
Yea, pretty much, I suck.

I have all the time in the freakin' world, but can't get myself motivated to write here and I don't know why. It's not that I feel I have nothing to say; it's more that I just don't really feel like making it happen. I need to find a way to change that. This is the longest I've ever kept any kind of record of my thoughts in my thirty-five years and I really don't want it to stop.

I'm not being lazy about other things. I've been to the club everyday for the last three weeks; I've read a ton of books this summer; I've even kept up my commitment to make the bed every morning. It's just pretty much everything else I don't feel like doing.

As an effort to combat the apathy, I renewed my gold membership. As things go, I tend to be somewhat obsessive about getting my "money's worth"; I'm hoping it will at least spur my productivity, if not my enthusiasm.

It's just three weeks until the start of the new school year for me. Three weeks and the vast emptiness that is summer vacation will be filled to over-flowing with responsibilities. I'm gearing up, starting to get excited. By that, I mean that I have purchased a mountain of school supplies.

I love this time of year when the retailers are so competitive that the cost of the "basics" drops to nearly nothing. I think I bought in the neighborhood of 60 two-pocket folders, 100 glue sticks, 3000 sheets of binder paper, 100 spiral notebooks, 10 new glue bottles, 25 new binders, and a bunch of new markers. I also got a new whiteboard for my office, abig one as the small one I tried using for *reminders* last year was just not adequate. It looks like a lot of stuff. Well, okay, it IS a lot of stuff, but it was CHEAP. REALLY cheap. We're talking hardly-worth-the-trouble-of-writing-off cheap (though I will).

Part of what makes the whole thing so silly is that my school would buy some of these things for me. I could thumb through the Office Dep0t catalog and pick out my things, tell the secretary, and she'd order them. And there IS a discount... but not like THIS. It drives me crazy to think about how much money is wasted every day because things are done the "easy way" rather than the most cost-effective way.

I'm serious. Put women who were stay-at-home-moms in charge of allocating spending for the state and we'd have the budget back in the black in no time. When a person is reduced to feeling like her contribution to the family is earned in cents-off coupons, she learns to be pretty good about finding bargains.

I started a class this morning. It's required and wasn't one I was particularly looking forward to, but as it turns out I think it's going to be really good. The teacher is fabulous, both knowledgeable and entertaining, and his approach to the subject-matter is fresh and open.

I hadn't been looking forward to the crammed pacing of a class that meets 36 hours over four days, but it's going to be okay. Good, even. And easy. Two little papers, that's it.

The husband was secretly (okay, not so secretly) hoping that it would be somewhat grueling and I'd have to let go of my perfect graduate GPA. Ha. No such luck, mister.

It's okay, though, because it's the competition that keeps me going, keeps me caring, keeps me feeling alive... and reminds me that I absolutely picked the right guy to spend my life with.

~Alice