Wrapped

I probably should have warned you that I was going to drop off the face of the planet for a week. Sorry. Between giving finals and grading said finals (I realize that essays are the best way to assess whether or not the students can analyze and evaluate rather than just regurgitate information, but damn, do they SUCK to grade! Also, I wasted WAY too much time as an undregrad trying to craft quality essays while taking my finals. Wish I'd known then that the prof was just going to skim the pages looking for key words and phrases!)and finishing my horrendous thirty-page final exam and last-minute Christmas shopping and apartment-cleaning and other more fun stuff that I might elaborate on later once I have posted accompanying pictures...it was a week that didn't allow any time for blogging, is what I'm saying.

But now after spending yesterday driving to New Jersey to drop off my pets with my relatives and approximately 11 hours in airports/on planes today, I'm in my hometown writing this from my bed. I figure I have approximately ten minutes until I keel over in exhaustion, which is just enough time to say:

1) I got word yesterday that I was accepted to do a job at a conference at the end of February. I was going to go to the conference anyway since several people from University Land are going so I'll have roommates. It's not one of the two really big nationwide conferences in my field, but it's probably the biggest of the regional ones and I've always heard that it's friendly and good for networking, and I figure the earlier I start schmoozing the better (even though I still hate, hate, hate that whole game). Plus I found out recently that a few friends from my MA program are going to be there, so I was partially planning to go just to see them as well. I didn't have a paper ready to submit for this conference, though, and I wasn't willing to do the whole write-an-abstract-and-then-write-the-actual-paper-later-if-your-abstract-gets-accepted thing because I didn't see how I could feasibly complete a paper between right now (when they're giving out notices of acceptance) and the end of February. Not with everything else I have to do. So I was just going to go even though I wasn't going to actually be doing anything at the conference. But then a call went out looking for people to do this job for an event that's part of the conference (sorry for being vague, but there's no way to explain it without giving away what I do since this is a job that only exists in my field). It was something I could do that didn't involve actually writing a paper, you just needed to send your CV and a paragraph explaining why you'd like the job. So I did that, not thinking I'd actually get the job. But I did! So it's a good thing all around, I think. Now I can better rationalize the expense of going to the conference since I have an actual job to do, and while it's not quite as good as adding another conference paper presentation to my CV, it IS still another line for the CV nevertheless, and any conference experience is good experience.
The only downside is that now that I have this job to do, I absolutely have to be at the conference from start to finish, which means missing my Thursday night class one week. Which means I can't possibly skip the same class two weeks later on the weekend that I have to go back to homestate for my college roommate's wedding, where I am a bridesmaid. I had warned her that this might happen and she said it's fine if I don't come down until Friday, that she and her fiancee aren't driving down to the ceremony site until Friday afternoon themselves. Still, it seems risky to not fly into town until a few hours before the rehearsal dinner when I'm a member of the wedding party. Oh well, what can you do? I'll make it all work out somehow. I usually do.

2) I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow, and I'm seriously considering chopping it substantially shorter. I have a round-ish face and hair that is pretty wavy most of the time and downright ringlet-y when it's humid, so I can't go TOO short without looking ridiculous. I'd get a super short haircut in a second if I thought I could actually pull it off with my hair type and facial features. I know I can't, so I'm not going to try. But I'm craving a change. Right now the longest part of my hair reaches the center of my shoulder blades. I know it's probably more flattering for me to have long hair like this, but it's driving me crazy! I've always been weird about hair. Loose strands of hair disgust me. Seriously, I will often literally gag if I pick something up and there's a piece of loose hair stuck to it, even when I know for a fact that it's my own hair. I'm just a weirdo about it. I can go months (sometimes a year or more, even) without the hair thing really registering as an issue, and then all of a sudden I wake up one morning and am just utterly disgusted with my hair. Not that I think it looks bad, not that it feels bad, it just suddenly grosses me out. And right now I'm definitely having a hair freak out period because I have been losing a ton of hair lately. I don't know if it's the fact that it's a new season or maybe my body thinks I'm stressed out (I don't feel horribly stressed, though; this grad school stuff has it's moments but I don't feel like my stress levels now are substantially higher than they have been at any other point in my life) or maybe I just need more iron in my diet or what, but for the past month or so my hair has been falling out at a disturbing rate. It's disgusting, I know. I don't even know why I'm telling you this. But I've been noticing more hair than usual in the shower and in my hairbrush, and every time I take off my jacket now I have to pick strands of my own hair off of it (shudder) and there was this really horrifying moment a couple of weeks ago when I was lying in bed one morning just sort of absentmindedly running my hands through my hair and I pulled out a literal clump of hair. And then I had to run to the bathroom because the experience almost made me throw up. That makes it sound more alarming than it is. (Actually, the most alarming thing is that MY OWN HAIR makes me want to throw up sometimes. I know it's weird, I wish I could get over the hair issue, it makes it really inconvenient to share a bathroom with anyone). While it was a clump of hair, it was like a small clump. Just to clarify, I don't think anything is actually wrong with me. I probably do need to just force myself to eat more red meat. I also read on the internet that sometimes just coincidentally a lot of your hair will somehow end up on the same growth cycle and more than usual will fall out for a month or two. Plus I have really thick hair so I would have to lose a huge amount of it before it actually became noticeable. So I'm not actually worried about it, it's just that it's grossing me out and I don't really want to spend the rest of the winter having to unravel stray hairs from my scarves, you know?
So the goal is to come up with something that's short enough that the strands of hair I lose aren't long enough to make me want to throw up, but long enough that it flatters my face. I'm worried that I'll regret it if I go short, but hey, it's just hair, it grows back. And by the time it grows back I'll probably be out of this latest my-hair-is-making-me-want-to-barf phase. Plus my 2008 beauty horoscope in Glamour told me, "Don't be afraid to go short!" when I was reading it on the plane earlier, so maybe that's a sign!
I guess I'll just see how I'm feeling tomorrow. I should definitely get some sleep so I don't make any rash decisions out of sheer exhaustion.