The first two Austin Powers movies were on TV last week; I knew I shouldn't have watched them. Last night I had a nightmare that I was a spy--at the end, this man was trying to break into the house/lair (actually, my house in Middletown) that I shared with an older couple, also spies (though I was involved with the man--they were a sham, apparently). We were out on the lawn, and were shooting at him and his accomplice. The male spy threw a handgrenade at him, which left a big hole in the street outside but seemed to work. Then I saw him creeping up the driveway, so we all ran into the house, with me in the rear. I had just locked the door when he just walked right in as if it weren't locked--and I was still behind the door. He didn't see me, though, and headed downstairs. I think it was partly about me feeling ineffectual--while we were out on the lawn my machine gun ran out of bullets, and apparently I don't know how to lock a door. Either way, it woke me up completely, and I was very hot and my heart was racing. It was just this strange dream. What a way to wake up in the morning!

I was in the office by myself this morning--I actually managed to sneak in some reading for my opera class before my supervisor came. Then I came to campus and had choir. After that there was this issue...I had registered for this Hugo Wolf repertoire class in the fall, but never heard anything more about it. Once I got here, I noticed people carrying around Wolf books, but I didn't know why. Apparently the registration was messed up, and there was supposed to be a cap put on registration for the class but there wasn't. In any case, I'm on the system as being in the class, but I'm not. It's kind of good, because I'm so busy this semester, but it was kind of stressful when I didn't know what was going on. So now I'm going to audit the class--so I get to watch people sing for another two hours a week, basically. But such wonderful music! Oh, and then I had my voice lesson--a shortened one, where just had time to talk about new repertoire and my jury from last semester. I love learning new music. It's the fixing technique that is a bother...

I talked to Mark about my whole paper-writing anxiety thing. He thinks I should do that whole index card thing, which I've never done before--my method, even with the Honors Thesis, was to make photocopies and underline stuff, or take notes, and then highlight points in different colors to correspond with the section of the paper in which they belonged. It took a lot of paper-shuffling, but it seemed to work. But God, I'm getting agitato just thinking about it...that feeling of tired, woozy crankiness; the empty, slimy pint box of Ben & Jerry's on my desk; the weird BO from being up all night; the sore scalp from playing with my hair (a bad habit when I write papers); the stiff back from sitting in a chair for too many hours; the mononucleosis-like pain behind my eyes... I HATED feeling that way. That's all-nighters, I guess. I just never want to experience that again. And honestly, I really can't--I have to be at work at eight in the morning regardless, and I know I wouldn't make it through the entire day... Tomorrow starts with me, right? Just don't let it happen again, right? No procrastinating, right? Well, I'll try. But I'm still not jazzed about having to write two big papers in a semester all over again. Too many bad memories. At least I already have a topic for the one paper. (It's already due next week, so it's not like I'm all that ahead of the game anyway...)