...and we're back

I can't bring myself to clean my room. It's not that I'm lazy. It's just that it hurts to think about, and I'm no fan of pain. Besides, most of the problem can be accredited to my rather imposing mountain of laundry. I hate laundry. Mind you, I didn't hate it this much before. I always hated it, though. Now, I hate it in ways that defy expression. Figure in the five floors of stairs to my apartment, and there you have all my reasons for hating it as much as I do. I'll do it, sure... but I won't like it.

I arrived in New York yesterday morning, not looking forward to being back. Who'd have thought it? Me, not wanting to be in New York? Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I didn't mind being back in New York. I just didn't want to leave John again, and Kyadden (he's...uh... spending a few weeks with his Dad... being a kid of separated parents can be rough), and so many friends, and a house that was nicer than ever, and a real bed (not that the Red Destiny isn't a marvelous futon), and an X-Box (the 360 is on my Christmas list, of course), etc. I wasn't ready to leave it all. Hell, if I could've gotten all of that to follow me to New York, I'd have been ducky. Anyway, yeah, I wasn't entirely happy to be back, even though it wasn't New York's fault.

Almost immediately after I'd gotten off the plane, everything was double-time. I ran to pick up my luggage, ran to a cab, ran up to my apartment (well, not ran, exactly... limped and dragged my enormous luggage up the stairs, more like), ran back downstairs, ran to campus for a meeting with a professor. When I got to my meeting, I wasn't entirely prepared, but I settled in pretty well once things got started. Then, it got ugly, but I took it well. She said some rather insulting things about qualitative method and its role in psychology, which stunned me quite a bit... that it couldn't tell you information over large populations, that it said nothing of individual differences, that it served virtually no purpose in developmental research psychology, that it can be nice for discovering areas of quantitative study, but not much else beyond that. My brain was boiling, but I sat there anayway, cool as an icy wet towel. What's done is done, and she's said her piece. Rather than let it fester and eat at me (as I have to admit it has), I'm taking it up with the heads of my department tomorrow. Important people may not agree with me, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. I mean, okay, people are entitled to their opinions, but at least let them be informed ones. There. I'm done. I'm sure I'll be venting more about this after I've talked to some people.

The meeting left me ruffled, not just because of the way the professor bashed my favored methodology, but also because she'd kept me a bit long, making me late to my class... which, funny enough, was Qualitative Methods. Adorable. The class raised my spirits a little, as it always does, but I was still in a nice little funk by the time I got up to my office to crank out a little bit of catch-up work after the week-long break. After a few hours of that, it was off to choir rehearsal, then home for a much needed rest. And to stare at the mountain of laundry that refuses to magically evaporate into clean, folded piles of pristene attire.

Today, I woke up late, around eleven, to the ringing of my phone. "Are you on the way yet?" Craig's voice on the other end shook me out of whatever sleep was still floating around in my head. I assured him I would be there in about two hours, then scrambled to throw myself together and stumble out of the apartment and toward the bus stop. About an hour and a half later, I was at the recording studio, accepting a cup of tea from Craig and chatting about our respective Thanksgivings. We laid down tracks for about five hours, completing three songs (that's a record for both of us, by the way) and feeling pretty good about the work. I headed home, stopping at an Applebee's for dinner before hopping on the Q train, encapsulating myself in my own little world with the aid of my brand new, beautiful-in-every-way iPod Nano (thank you, Chuck, for the gift that has changed my life and state of being... you are the greatest person to have ever been born in all of the world's history). If I was having any regrets about coming back to New York, they were gone now. If things keep up at this rate with the recording, I'll be able to pop out a CD by February, which would be nice. Then maybe I can make back some of the money it's taken to record the damn thing. But really, I don't care about the money... I just love doing this. Well, okay, I care about the money, too.

I'd best be off. The laundry pile is starting to talk, and it's calling me ugly names. That does it... I'm gonna kick its ass now.