McDonough, GA

...Well, I was gonna tell you about it, but the Chinese take-out just arrived. There are 2 dogs here. That's all for now.

The Caucus

Presidential primary politics is my favorite kind of politics. I know this is bad, and I know that it's bad because it's so fun. Obviously, the politics of people's personalities (where was this post during the P days of the Alphabet challenge?) is a bad place to start playing catch-up after a year of fairly hazy political awareness. But, my goodness. I don't have to tell you what a delightful year it is to be On Top of It. Last night a review of the G.O.P. set during a Hoosier-BFF reunion revealed that I may for once know more about a relevant group of political actors than I do about the members of Young Money.

And that has to count for something.

Bad News

My mom told me there might be a baby at Christmas this year. A baby! Just like Sam! There was some confusion as to whether this baby would be a real baby or more of a child along the lines of Mac. Either way, I was pretty excited to have a little guy running around at a McDonoughnan Christmas celebration that has historically featured Quinn as its youngest member.

Then today I found out, No! No baby! Not even a child! I'm LEGAL this year and still the second-babyest member of the brood. I guess since there's no baby to play with I'll be pulling the 21 card as much as possible. White russians on a white Christmas. It doesn't get much better than that.

Except with a baby.

The Homestead

I know I know I'm the worst.

But guess what? Today is the IU-Notre Dame game!
My grandfather has always hoped that Q would eventually be the Notre Dame quarterback. Things don't really look like they're going in that direction. But, our lives remain full of blessings.

Everyone, Everyone!

Great news. Inspired by the glorious athleticism of the Indiana Hoosiers in their stunning victory over Kentucky and by my role model Meriweather Lewis, I have once again climbed aboard the basement elliptical for a repeat of Friday's Adventures in Exercise. Not having eaten a liter of pasta lying down immediately before today's exertion, I don't even feel like throwing up!

Cleverly, I positioned several empty free pile containers on top of each other so I could watch episode 2 of "The O.C." during my delightful jog:





So, in summary: 5 pages of essay, 90 episodes of The O.C., and a lifetime of physical activity ahead of me! Things are really looking up.

Why I Do Not Exercise

Today was a bit tumultuous, truth be told. I worked on a research paper- different from the triumph eluded to below- while drinking a lot of coffee but only wrote a few paragraphs and felt like falling asleep. Then I felt emotional and ate a lot of buttered pasta lying down in my bed. Then I ran on the elliptical downstairs- probably marking the 9th or 10th time I have exercised in college.

Then? Do you know what I did then? Can you guess what it was? I'll give you some hints! I once did it in a rental car with J.W.! It's unpleasant and makes your throat hurt!

It stars with v and ends with omit!

I'm not going to tell you the extent of my ellipticality because it's an embarrassment. It was not very much. Another thing about exercise that I don't like is you have to feel embarrassed about doing in and then once you do it, you have to feel embarrassed about that also.

In conclusion, Exercise: totally bogus activity.

The Moment

I don't mean to be melodramatic about the mundane- though I claim it as a tendency- but I just totally figured out how my essay will work after days of deliberation. And four pages. Which are probably now useless. But oh man! This feels so great! I'm gonna write about representational labor of non-white bodies in terms of animals, jobs and moms. Doesn't that sound good? It's absolutely going to work.

Oh man! You're probably wondering how I did this. It all started about an hour ago when I started rewriting my thesis paragraph based on notes from office hours. Man, was that a rough hour. No idea where I was going. Then I got to the last few words and it all became totally clear.

This is wonderful. As Elaine, pictured, would probably articulate in a moment like this one, Hooray for Me.

On Snow

I keep thinking I'll wake up to some. But the the weather's been uncommonly nice, here. It snowed on "Parks and Recreation" this week, not as a major plot point but just as part of the setting. This isn't really a blog about something that happened today, but someone did just run backwards down the hill next to the stadium outside my window. One of those backwards running track exercises. You know.

Kate Turabian

That last post was way too negative. Did you know that after I wrote that post, I got to eat a slice of cake AND format my footnotes in Chicago Style, which added almost a page to my paper?

And, Bill Hader still exists?