Friday, September 17, 2004
I’m going to a three-day conference this afternoon. It makes me feel very grown-up to be going to a conference at all and it makes me feel exhausted to know that this one is three days long.

When it ends on Sunday, I have to drive back home and go straight to work at the bookstore. And then wake up and go straight to work at school…. and then to the bookstore. I think it doesn’t pay to think too far in advance.

Last night at work I was shelving books in the psychology section. Good thing, too, because now I know that I am not only a borderline personality, but I also have raging obsessive-compulsive disorder! Whew! I needed that information. I stay away from the medical reference section altogether because I don’t want to know that I have lupus and chronic fatigue syndrome, which I am sure I would have if I read about them.

Apparently having obsessive-compulsive disorder involves having obsessive "bad thoughts"—which is a very serious matter that I don’t at all intend to make light of. I do actually have these. But when reading the book last night, I have to admit that the examples they used were pretty funny. In a very serious tone, the doctors wrote that "examples of ‘bad thoughts’ include: teachers that see buses and imagine throwing children out the windows of them, priests that fantasize about urinating on Jesus, and veterinarians who imagine tearing dogs limb from limb".

I have always been worried by the amount of terrible images that flash through my head all of the time, but I am glad that I don’t have this particular variety of OCD. I imagine people I love or myself being hurt—which apparently is one kind of "bad thought". But it would suck to have the "perverse thoughts" variety. Yikes. Though I do think it is funny to imagine throwing children out the windows of yellow school buses. Funny to think it—not funny to do it. Of course…ahem.

Off to work and work and more work I go!


¶ 4:30 AM

One of my cute Men's Chorus boys was just hauled out of my school for having a bunch of marajuana in his pocket.

Ah, the dream dwindles... ¶ 8:24 AM

I like North Carolina, but I hate this weather. Well, I don't mind it if I am at home but this commuting during threat of tornado is for the birds.

It is crazy windy and rainy right now and I have to go to my car and drive to Chapel Hill and then back to Greensboro-- a total of an hour and a half in crazy tornado windstorm hurricane remnantville.

Wish me luck. ¶ 11:42 AM