Great way to wake up in the morning.

I should have pretended I was still asleep.

At 5:45 this morning, I'm wakened from a dead sleep by wildernessguru swearing and slamming down the phone. He's up at 4:15 in the morning.

Blinking sleepily, I make the mistake of asking what's going on... and get the benefit of a 10-minute verbal blitzkrieg that eventually yields two gems of information: he picked up a voicemail from our insurance agent and, said insurance agent is worming out of contacting the lady who rear-ended us.

My conclusions:

1) Do not wake up just to be dumped on by angry boyfriends. That extra half hour of sleep should give him enough time to cool off.

2) Insurance should not be mandatory. It's making the insurance companies lazy about taking care of their customers because they're going to collect anyway.

3) There's no point in getting anything more than basic liability.

Looking for a cheery distraction as he snarled and chewed the floor, I picked up my email. Someone who'd had questions about the How To Write A Battle Scene sent me an unsolicited battle scene he wrote.

Never send unsolicited work. Especially after the person you're sending it to was just dragged out of a dead sleep by an angry boyfriend. Wait, you had no way of knowing that? That's right! That's why you ask first -- do you mind if I send you blah-blah-blah? Most people will say yes (I would) but then when they're having a crap morning they know exactly what they're opening. Only the really inexperienced writers do this.

After reading his piece, I'm feeling like my essays are useless. Nothing in my essay could help him because he was still working on basics like setting and characterization. The article was written with slash writers in mind; people who knew how to build a story, who already had characters and sensory detail, but needed to go that extra step to create a convincing and complex battle sequence.

*pounds head on table* I was so pleased he'd read it, too. Now I feel like a doctor writing illegal scripts.

Mornings like these I wish I drank coffee.

I love my classes!

Well, there goes the unreliable mood swing. After two pleasant hours in class I was happy as a clam.

I love my classes. I have a plan to keep up in Sanskrit: study! (Aha, isn't that a clever idea.)

With my current schedule I could go home at noon three days a week, but I know once I'm within miles of my computer I will not study. So I stay. In the library. And I finish the chapter, reciting, writing, and taking little notes.

Ethnomusicology has to be the coolest class ever. Studying Asian cultures through their music with a patient, humble, and charismatic professor? And it's all about listening. The music is so cool. We listened to a Chinese Gu Ch'in yesterday (sort of like a gentle, very subtle guitar).

The creative writing prof rescinded his offer of including NaNoWriMo as part of the creative writing class, but I'm not unhappy about it. The truth is, I think I'd be hampered if I knew I had to give him that rough draft. So the next goal is to finish the two short stories for the class before Oct. 31, so I'm freed up to use that time for NaNo.

All of my teachers are just so ... gentle and kind and humble this quarter. It's really something special.


P.S. Good news on the insurance front: wildernessguru didn't just complain to me this morning, he called our agent (he's the only person I know who pays his car insurance in person and is on a first name basis with his agent).

She contacted the "worming out of it" guy, who called back immediately with a much nicer message, including the name and phone number of the woman's insurance company and clear directions on what we do next. Well done, WG.