I demand Good Juju for the President of the Finer Things Club.

I order each and everyone who reads this blog to send good happy positive vibes to the Bela Monster. He has a big old freaky lump on his back near his right shoulder blade and he went to the vet today to get it biopsied. We'll find out what it is next week. The vet's initial thought was that it could be a vaccine-associated sarcoma, considering the location and Bela's age (a very distinguished almost-twelve). The good news is he is in absolute good spirits otherwise. Still eats his wet food breakfast like a demon in the morning - complete with copious head butts if I deign to fix myself a cup of coffee before he gets his morning feast - and seems in perfect health other than his back lump. We will hope for the best.

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I am freaking out!! Poor Belanator!!

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Maybe he has evolved into such an advanced species that he is growing a second head? Yes, that's it. Two-headed Bela! BB better watch out.

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Anyway, so think good thoughts please. I'd post this on Facebook, but sometimes Ye Olde FB gets annoying with all the emo-this and emo-that.


In other news, this past week of being a doctoral school has been tiring. See that? I can normally come up with a better word than "tiring," but for now, that's all I've got. I'm tired. The good part is that the majority of the reason I am so tired is because I foolishly* volunteered to give the first  required special topic presentations in my musicology seminar, which is taught by an older-ish female professor who has the reputation of being very demanding and extra-scrutinous (Real word? Meh.) of female students and who - in the 2 months I've been in the class - I haven't been able to get a good read on whether she likes me or not. (<--- That is not a properly formatted nor elegantly written sentence, but I don't care.) So, let's just say I was feeling a lot of pressure. Because I really really really want her to like me. And my brain. So then I proceeded to work my ass off for 6 days (because I volunteered a week before the presentation was supposed to be given...idiot!) to prepare a 30-minute presentation (that ended up being about 90-minutes instead...when you're talking about nineteenth-century glorification of Beethoven and his symphonies, there's a lot to say!) after which aforementioned scary and intimidating professor told me my presentation was "fascinating" and that I did a "good job."

Hooray! Huzzah! Hearts and butterflies flying out of every orifice!

So, in any case, I am tired, but I am satisfied. And now I get to sleep a little bit and then get to work on preparing a presentation in my jazz theory seminar on a chapter from the book "Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analysis." Wheeeee! Grad school!!!


* Only kind of "foolishly" because, even though I was hating my life last week, now that it's done, I get to look at the course schedule for the rest of the semester and all the rest of the students listed who still have to worry about doing their presentations and I get to say, "Hahaha! I'm done, suckas!" Which was my strategy all along. See? I is smart.