Small Mercies
I've just received an email about one of my classes tomorrow: it's cancelled. Upon reading it I cried, "Oh, thank you!" to my monitor and whatever kind person made this decision. The class that comes before it is "sort of" cancelled: he has nothing to teach us, but if we'd like to discuss our major essay topics with him, then by all means swing by. I've known what I'll be writing about since class #1 (Blogging and SF Writers--appropriate, eh?), so that's a no. Which means that my only class tomorrow is my 10:00 - 11:30 class, and I am NOT going to get up at 7 AM and commute for over an hour to get there and then over an hour to get home again for an hour and a half of class. Not feeling like I do right now, not even with the lovely Extra Strength Dristan Cough and Cold on my side. So: yay.
Of course this also means that the two assignments that I've done so far today don't need to be handed in until Thursday and next week, repectively, but hey, I will not complain. Especially as I now have another day in which to prepare these damn presentations and work on this essay, as well as another week to deal with
Civilization and Its Discontents and
The Brothers Karamazov, never mind
Last of the Just.
And speaking of
The Brothers Karamazov, it went and surprised me by getting interesting around page 580 or so. See, it always had interesting bits in it; I'm particularly fond of times when the narrator stops the story to give a person's entire history, or tells an only tangentally related story. Seriously. While pointless side-stories and the like usually irritate me no end, these bits were the absolute highlights of the book for me (and far too rare). When it came time for the main characters to interact again, my eyes would glaze over.
So I don't know what changed. Did I suddenly connect with the main narrative? Is the approaching murder trial enough to finally get my jaded attention? Was it, perhaps, that the Devil suddenly became a character? Or should I merely chalk my sudden enjoyment of Dostoevsky to the fact that I seemed to be running a fever last night? Whatever the cause, all I know is that after crawling into bed at about 9 PM, I pulled the heavy book onto my lap and read it quite happily for a good hour or so. And speaking of bed, I'm going back to mine.
