In Case You Aren't Yet Convinced That I am a Ridiculous Person...

...I offer you the following:

-For years I have done my laundry on Mondays. I think maybe the first semester of my freshman year of college I did laundry on Tuesdays, but other than that laundry day has always been Monday for as long as I have been doing my own laundry. So that's about six years of Laundry Mondays. Yes, I do laundry every single week on the same day. I clean my clothes from the week and my sheets and towels. It's just what I do. I like routines. But anyway, as I was doing my laundry this afternoon I realized that there is no way Monday can be laundry day this semester. I have to be on campus at 10:00 on Mondays which means I need to leave my apartment around 9:15. It takes me about two hours to do laundry. Needless to say, I will not be dragging my lazy butt out of bed at 7 in the morning to cart my laundry over to the laundry room. Not only is that way too damn early, in a few months it will also be really freakin' cold at 7:00 in the morning. I also won't be able to do laundry when I get home on Mondays because I probably won't get home until 7:00 at night and before too long it will be dark and, yes, COLD at 7:00 PM. That won't work.
If I switch laundry day to Tuesday, I can actually sleep until a decent hour and still have plenty of time to do my laundry before I have to head up to campus in the afternoon. Tuesdays are just going to be a lot more flexible in general and therefore more conducive to laundry-doing. So Tuesdays it will be, starting next week. But can I just say that I had to SERIOUSLY think about this decision, weighing the pros and cons of both Sunday and Tuesday. I even considered moving laundry day to Friday, because Friday is when I try to clean my apartment and groom the dog (although I'm not quite as anal about Cleaning/Grooming Day as I am about Laundry Day because half the time Cleaning Day ends up happening on Saturday instead and that's totally okay). Tuesday won out for various reasons, the main one of which is, "Well, Tuesday HAS been Laundry Day at one point in the past, so it's okay for it to be Laundry Day again this semester," and even then I still feel slightly "off" about it.
Do you think I need psychiatric help? (Don't answer that, I'm totally kidding. If I was like this about everything I would worry, but I'm only like this about, well...let's change the subject.)

-I think I finally figured out a solution to my office dilemma. Did I already talk about this? Maybe I didn't. Anyway, I have a fairly nice office space. There's a brand new flat-screen computer on my desk that has an internet connection. There's a window. There's a mini fridge that one of the guys kindly cleaned out and started defrosting today so that we can actually use it. I only have to share with two other people (which is really not a bad situation for a grad student, I've heard of 8 to an office or a study carrel and no office at all at other universities). There are plenty of open bookshelves that I can use.
And therein lies the problem. As of now, my office bookshelves are completely empty and my desk is, um, very utilitarian (and by "utilitarian" I mean bare). This afternoon I bought a bulletin board that I decorated with pictures and I framed some pictures of my family and friends and my dog. See, I have to compensate with pictures of my dog because I'm pretty much the only person without a significant other and/or a small child. Anyway, I'm going to put all that up tomorrow to brighten up my desk and make it feel like it's really mine. I also bought some office supplies to leave up there. So that's going to be good. But I wasn't sure what books, if any, to put in my office.
The truth is, I just don't know how often I'll work in my office. Another one of my weird quirks is that I cannot do anything if I feel like someone is looking over my shoulder. And I'm paranoid about this to the extreme. For example, as a kid I would always stop whatever I was doing when the teacher walked around the classroom to look at our projects, or I'd just pretend to be fussing with some part that I was really already finished with just so that I could appear to be working. As soon as the teacher had moved on, I could start working again. This tendency has extended all the way to college, only now it manifests itself in different ways. For example, even though I willingly share my notes with my peers when they ask, I am very self-conscious when I am actually talking said notes, to the point that if we're all sitting around a conference table in a seminar I will hold my notebook on my lap so that it's not on the table for everyone to see. And this is when we're all taking the exact same notes! What am I trying to hide?! I don't even know. So because of this weird tendency of mine, I don't know if I'll be able to work in an office with officemates. Even if they're not paying a bit of attention to what's going on at my desk (and I guarantee they won't be) I'm still going to be worried that they're watching me.
In short, I think I'll be able to read in my office (I could care less if people watch me read) but I don't think I'll be able to get any writing done there, and I definitely won't feel very comfortable doing research on the computer unless I'm the only one in the room. Plus there's the added fact that I find the sounds of "silence" (flipping pages, clacking keyboards, etc.) more distracting than any noise at my own apartment and I don't think the office will be a very relaxing work environment even if everyone on the hall is actually being quiet. I may luck out and get the office to myself some days, but I think I need to assume that one or both of my office mates will be there most of the time, and there will definitely always be other people on the hall.
So I've been trying to figure out what to do about this because I am going to have to work in my office sometimes and, well, I think it looks better to have at least a few books in the office to give the illusion that I'm actually doing SOMETHING. I think my plan for now at least will be to take all of the 17 (!!!) books I bought for my classes this semester up to campus and put them in my office.
This will serve a few purposes:
a) I'm actually pretty much out of space on my bookshelves here in the apartment already, and the 17 new books need to go somewhere.
b) My desk will look more colorful and cozy if it actually has some books around it.
c) I will be forced to show my face at the office pretty much every day, even if it's just to pick up books I need at home. I think that even if I don't end up liking to work in my office (ESPECIALLY if I don't end up liking to work in my office) that it's still important to be an active part of the grad student community within my department, and that will be easier to do if I'm a regular presence in the office. I'll stay in the loop.
d) This will force me to really use my time wisely. I'll have to try to get certain projects done at the office during daylight hours, and I'll have to think really hard about which books I want to drag home every night. In other words, I'll have to have specific goals for nights/weekends and I'll have to stick to those goals and pace myself well if I don't want to keep making trips back and forth from campus to exchange books or get new ones.

So yes. I think that's what I'm going to try right now. Books in current rotation will be stored at the office and brought home as necessary. If it ends up being a sucky system, I'll just try another tactic. I can be flexible when necessary. Really.

Wow, this was an absolutely riveting entry, wasn't it? I don't know why you all bother with me at all (and yes, even though you're all a bunch of lurkers I know that you're reading, so thanks for letting me ramble, guys!)