Not a Valentine's Day Post

I love you all. Really, I do. I just don't want to work myself into a froth this year - 'cuz last year I did that and it ended up completely sucking. For adorable V-Day sentiment, click the big banner up top and go to the comic. The Trinities will KILL you with the cuteness and the flowers and the hearts...

In other news;

My stats professor was very cool about the work I missed, so I am still in good shape for a 4.0 this semester. My application for a graduate assistantship is in to the grad school, and a 4.0 would improve my chances for a Fall appointment.

That would mean that in the Fall, I could finally begin the task I have worked toward these many years: warping young minds to fit my liberal agenda... I mean, teaching undergrads. Unlike most grad students, I'm excited about it, as it's what I really want to do when I grow up (ahem).

I know this must frighten some of my readers. The idea of His Sinfulness presenting the work of Weber, Durkheim, and, worst of all, Marx, must be terrifying to some, but I think I'm the perfect representative of mainstream higher learning. At least I'm completely obvious about my stances - religiously, politically, ethically, and in any other realms of thought that you can end with an ly. Without trying, I have become a texbook example of the classic liberal arts academic - left-leaning, pacifist, secularist, humanist, vegetarian/vegan, queer-friendly, and staunchly in favor of freedom of speech, choice, and religion.

It was once not so. I once toted a gun and enforced laws that ranged from silly to anal retentive to downright discriminatory. I followed orders (usually), did as I was told (for the most part), and shined my jackboots every night. How different things are now, some 15 years after I left the State Patrol. It feels like another life, or a story about another person.

In comparison, this life is all too real to me. It's so vivid that the edges of it can cut you; I'm handling each day like a shard of glass. Fragile, razor sharp, refracting and reflecting every bit of light. I am exhausted, but I'm forced out of bed every morning just to see what happens.

I suppose grad school suits me.