I'm going crazy. I've been trying to log into webmail for the past 35 minutes, to no avail. ALL I REALLY WANT TO DO IS SEND THIS ONE STUPID EMAIL. JUST ONE. JUST RETURN THIS ONE EMAIL. Whew, had to get that out. I hate when the man keeps me down and prevents me from checking things to do off my Things To Do list.

Since Friday, I've filled my mind with mush and I feel like I can't form understandable sentences anymore (well, off the top of my head, anyway. I have to think specifically about each item I'd like to say, to repeat it over and over in my mind, taste it in my mouth, kind of mouth it, gum it, for a while to ensure that what I'm saying is an accurate representation of what my mind thinks it's thinking, that the words actually mean what my mind is telling me they mean. In gumming the phrases, I'm testing if they feel like that meaning is supposed to feel, do they shape my lips in such a way that I'm used to that meaning shaping them? It's like I've lost all confidence in my linguist abilities. Or maybe just in my thought abilities, having not been forced to use them for a little while now.)

I've watched the following movies:

• Spanglish (really, really good, heartfelt movie)


• Nat'l Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (a classic)


• Goodbye Lennin (German movie; really, really good)


• School of Rock (eh. doesn't deserve the hype)


• The Italian Job (woof. pretty good for an action movie)


• The Matrix Revolutions (the third in the Matrix series; just as trite and filled with cliches as the second one, made for a good laugh)


• House of Sand and Fog (eh. The book, which both my mom and I read last year before the movie came out, was incredibly good, though incredibly sad. The movie, however, was incredibly sloooow and mediocre. It did manage to raise the same thought provoking questions that made the book so good, like questions of fault, blame, responsibility, fragility of human life, the delicate line of lunacy and sanity and who detemines where the line stands in particular instances.)


• Miracle (haven't finished this one yet, but so far I'm glad I only borrowed it from the library and didn't pay to see it)

I've also kept myself busy starting to read Tom Wolfe's new behemouth of a book, I am Charlotte Simmons. It's a story that should take 300 less pages to tell, drags on interminably in parts, and is not nearly as entertaining as the reviews made it out to be. I kind of just want to finish all 700 pages just because I'm "not a quitter."

I've got a stack of other books waiting to be read on my desk, too, from our family trip to the Broward "We're the 6th largest library system in the country" County Library. When we were checking out Sunday afternoon, there was this boy who looked to be about 20, wandering around the first floor. He had on a bomber jacket from the early '90s and was humming his own tune, kind of dancing around to it. It was clear that he might have been missing a few links in his chain,