I've had three hours of sleep. The editors at Polyphony have informed me that they're not looking for anything else over 10K, which means that for the last couple of weeks I've been busting my ass on a story that basically has no target market now. (Ironically, now I'll go back to the piece I was working on for them before I started the Poe story.) Also, the editor for that boardgame thing I was working on sent me an email this morning basically saying "You don't know what we're looking for and we don't have time for revisions, so we're going to find someone else at the last minute." I can't get PHP to build correctly on OS X.1, I have a lot to learn about PostgreSQL in just a couple of days, and I have homework due at 2:30 that I'm nowhere near finished with because I spent my free time this weekend working on those damn board game scenarios.

On top of all this, I sent out checks to cover a number of bills, and because the secretary for the library science department forgot to appoint me (half my paycheck is coming from Marc's SLIS funding this semester), I have to pick up a second paycheck today and it will now be a race against time as to whether the rent check bounces or not.

I want to curl up and go back to bed but I can't afford to.

I'm holed up in my lab right now because the weather is absolutely vile outside -- a mixture of snow and freezing rain, coming in at about a 15-degree angle to the ground, so fast that it stings your face if it stands out in it.

The lab is in the journalism building, just below the engineering building, which is set into a hill. Rather than walking down the hill in the elements, I usually go into engineering at the top of the hill and cut down through the building. This dumps me out in a small parking lot, basically an alley between the buildings. Apparently, this alley is sized just right for the wind to whip around in a giant horizontal vortex. With the snow painting the air white, it looks just like some kind of special effect in a science fiction movie. Trippy.