I just turned in my taxes. I am victim of my own sloth, as I'm getting a substantial refund, and could have filed for it months ago. But hey, the gov't certainly seems to be in need of an interest-free loan at the moment.

I was a bit amused at how much retirement money I'd been putting away while in the Corps. My retirement investment worked out to be about 40% of my gross income. When I do my 2009 taxes, I expect to be very depressed by the difference. On the bright side, I'll be able to deduct many thousands of dollars in college expenses!

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I finally figured out UB's online course catalog, and got myself registered for summer session. There are only four class slots, so I can only get 12 credit hours. As it stands now, I've got nine; one of the classes I'd like to attend is at capacity. I am planning to stop by an advisor this week to see if I can get "forced" in.

In unrelated news, the UB gaming club (of which I am a member) is having its annual convention this upcoming weekend. I'm not on the staff, for only the second time ever. (I think I wasn't staff my freshman year.) I did some helping out today, though. The club office needs to become a workspace for this week, and the first step is a thorough spring cleaning.

For 233 years, the Marine Corps has been teaching men (and now women) how to do three things:

1. Kill people
2. Destroy property
3. Clean things

Of late, there has been little call for #2 and no need for #1, so I was glad to do a little #2. I declared it a full field day: all furniture was dragged out into the hall and cleaned; the floor was swept and mopped, all windows cleaned, and all walls scrubbed down. The only thing we didn't do was strip and wax the floor. I wanted to, but the custodians wouldn't let us.

Lastly, I discovered in a corner a pressurized cylinder containing helium that one of the other clubs had used to inflate ballons. It was not secured on a stand nor was it secured to a wall. I twitched, as did my friend Jack, who (as a glass artist) is also familiar with pressurized cylinder safety precautions. We ended up sticking it behind a door where it was no longer exposed to traffic, and extracted a promise that it would be returned posthaste to wherever they got it from.

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So I got myself a Roomba, a robotic autonomous vacuum cleaner. I set it to start cleaning as I left for class this morning. When I came home, I found it had high-centered itself on a book on the floor of my bedroom. It's just as well, because the little thing's dustbin was quite full. I don't like to vacuum much, so perhaps having a slave robot do the work for me will improve the cleanliness of the floors in here.

When the Robot Uprising happens, I'll be first against the wall. But until then, my rugs will be very clean.

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We had a lovely memorial service for my grandmother yesterday, and I'm glad that so many people could make it. While her passing is sad, nothing in life is unalloyed tragedy; all her children, all her grandchildren, and all her great-grandchildren came together. It has been wonderful visiting with people. I regret that I've not had the time to see my grandmother on my mother's side. I hope I'll be able to get back out here soon.

By now, many of them have already left. Tomorrow is the start of another week at work or at school, and our responsibilities await. Tomorrow I too must fly back to school, and beg copies of Monday's lecture notes from my fellow students.

Even as Grandma's life has ended, our lives will continue.

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Today I had lunch at the on-campus Burger King. (I'm sorry, nutritionists in the family. It was cheap and fast.)

My change included a genuine 1943 steel penny.

That made my day. Which is a good thing, as it's a rough week academically and personally.

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Yesterday I was talking with a friend, and laughing how one should never take the snowbrush out of the car, as that would guarantee snow the next day.

And today, it was snowing on the way to class. My friend accused me of having removed my snowbrush, which was a baseless calumny. Someone else must have done the cursed deed.

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My telephone woke me up this morning. It was my father, calling to tell me that his mother had died at about 1:30 AM.

R.I.P., Anabel.

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My "Works Citied" for the paper I turned in this morning:

• Ahamed, Liaquat. Lords of Finance. New York: Penguin, 2009.
• The Bangville Police. Dir. Henry Lehrman. Keystone Film Company, 1913.
• Barry, Dan. “A Few Moments of Hope In a Mountain of Rubble.” New York Times 13 September 2001: A1.
• Bush, George H. W.  “Letter of Resignation from the National Rifle Association.” 3 May 1995.
• Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Novato: New World Library, 2008.
• Guthrie, Woody. Dust Bowl Ballads. 1940. BMG Distribution, 2000.
• Marty, Martin E. Modern American Religion, Vol. 2: The Noise of Conflict, 1919-1941. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
• McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941. New York: Times Books, 1984.
• Shakespeare, William. King Lear. c.1605. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
• Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 2006.
• Terkel, Studs. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. New York: Random House. 1970.
• "vigilante." Def. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009. Merriam-Webster Online. 22 March 2009.
• Watkins, T. H. The Hungry Years. New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1999.

Maybe I'm overly proud of myself, but I feel proud to have such an eclectic bunch of citations.

I really wanted to work in:

• D_, Esther Louise Schaller. Unpublished Memoirs. 23-28 January 2009.

But she is too young for her memoirs to cover the time period that I was discussing.

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I got up a little early today, and had some time to kill before the bus would arrive to take me to class. While rearranging a closet, I remembered that I'd been given some fancy high-gloss laser printer paper, intended for printing photos. "Hmmm," thought I. "I wonder what the paper I'm turning in today would look like on really nice paper?"

So I loaded my printer with ten sheets of the stuff (eight page paper + title page + works cited) and printed out the whole shebang. It looked good. It was a bit too glossy, but the paper was very white and it made the ink look very black, giving a nice contrast.

Then I tried to staple it. My stapler just couldn't handle ten sheets of extra-heavy, high-gloss paper. The staples were skidding off the top sheet or a middle sheet, they just wouldn't go through the whole stack. I tried to force one through manually with some pliers, and ended up stabbing myself in the finger with the sharp staple tip, and bled all over my nice paper. Cursing, I tossed it in the recycle bin, went to class, and turned in the copy that I had printed last night on boring old regular paper.

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I was walking through the student union today and saw a girl wearing a Horseheads High School sweatshirt, which was kind of cool. Small world and all that. Then I realized that it was an HHS Class of '05 shirt, and I felt really old.

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