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if i can get financial aid to cooperate, i would like to take a summer school course. all stress and madness aside, i had a great time. i feel like those mothers who are disposed to forget the nearly unbearable pain they had to endure only hours earlier because they're looking at the beautiful product of their labor and suddenly all is forgiven.

as much stress as i went through this week, i can't believe... i want to do it again. i want to wait in line to ride the tall, fast, scary ride one more time. really, i started celebrating thursday. there was an impossible 10-page research paper i had to turn in on western vs. eastern interpretations of 19th-century Japanese art. though i had done research ahead of time, assembling it all into some cogent form was as daunting a task as any... even for me. and i consider myself got writer.

aside from japanese history, the last two weeks have been all about mute math. mute math, mute math, mute math. no, not an esoteric form of algebra, the band that has fast become the musical equivalent of a "patron saint" for me. my pièce de résistance culminating this crazy week was a reworking of the cd packaging for their reset EP, released september 2004. even though trying to tighten up that research paper at the last minute made me nearly one hour late to present the piece in front of my peers, i still got an A on it. that made me happy. the timing couldn't have been better because they'll be coming to perform in los angeles at the viper rroom this wednesday and i will so be there. posted. as close to the front as i can possibly get. (as a matter of fact, i just came from scoping out the sunset strip in advance and canvassing it with mute math posters).

in other news, my graphic design course is highly unlikely not to garner me an ace. the lowest grade i got on any of the 3 projects was an A-. the website i presented in my web design class -- which will eventually go online -- i expect to get very high marks from. because i put my foot into that one, even though it didn't fully fit in (i expected to do more with concept than time allowed).

the sad story seems like it will be the two upper-division history courses that were set one day apart from each other all semester long. i studied like mad for the japanese art history final (which i did fairly well in all year long), but i feel like i made a terrible showing on the test. i considered my italian & spanish 16th-century art & architecture course (which floundered consistently from the first class session to the very last) a lost cause and didn't even look to it too much more than to go over some flash cards moments before the test. that one, i feel like i did surprisingly well in because i was tested mainly on things i knew.

still, i'm glad to be done with it all. i will miss the great friends i've made (hopefully they won't disappear off of the face of the earth as if we'd never met), and even the teachers who were nemeses to me for the whole semester. yesterday i came straight from my class into the cool of my room and danced with myself until i feel better. anytime i come to a denouement in a spring school semester, i tend to want to reach for the same playlist. songs that came out around the summer of 1990 when i was saying goodbye to elementary school friends like Troop's "Spread My Wings" or Janet Jackson's "Love Will Never Do (Without You)" or kitchiest of all, this uber-90's house mix of Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl" from her Shut Up And Dance album. Yeah, I'll have to tell my kids about the Paula Abdul/Janet Jackson/MC Hammer fascination one day and have them giggle and laugh at me.