... between getting ready for the holidays and trying to get a little more work done before the end of the semester -- well, I'm sure lots of you are doing the same, you know how it is.

My trip home was fun, aside from a couple of slightly weepy moments when we had to tell someone else about Sparky or were just remembering him. This sounds really callous, but it was actually easier to come back to New York this time because I didn't have to say good-bye to Sparky and worry that it was the last time. But I saw lots of people, pretty much all my relatives on my mom's side, and a few on my dad's, plus just random people (like my childhood dance teacher) that we just happened to run into.

[OK, I just have to mention this. I'm listening to the radio -- WFUV, what else -- and they just played the most awesome live, acoustic cover of Peter Gabriel's "Your Eyes", by Jeffrey Gaines. If you can find it --legally or illegally, I'm not judging -- on the Internet somewhere, you should check it out.]

It's snowing today. It could be a doozy -- they've been saying possible blizzard conditions tomorrow. Luckily I had time to run the errands I needed before the roads got too bad. One of those errands was making an emergency laundromat run. Our toilet decided to clog up and overflow last night -- at 11:30 pm, of course -- and before we woke up our landlady and got her to fix it (the woman does not mess around with a plunger), we managed to get the bath mats and a couple towels pretty gross. I'm glad I got them washed, because even though we threw everything in plastic bags, I wouldn't have wanted to leave them in the house all weekend. Yuck.

The roads were not real great when I left the laundromat -- driving the two blocks home was the most treacherous driving I've done in New York, since they hadn't got the plows out yet and it's a pretty steep downhill slope almost the entire way. Thank goodness I got home without hitting anything.

I've managed to make it the entire day without turning on the TV, which I think I will try to continue as I try to pick up my very messy room (I swear it was clean when I came back on Tuesday). I need to wean myself off my TV habit, which is becoming very bad and definitely hindering the amount of work I get done. I either neglect my writing to do housework, or neglect the housework to write, and really don't spend enough time on either. Of course, I spent all afternoon reading, which is not really getting work done, but at least feels more edifying than staring at the TV for the same amount of time. Besides, one of my writing professors once told me reading was 90% of being a writer. OK, now I'm babbling, which means I should go.