Cette petite écolière n'aime pas son travail

So here I am, studying in the library, ostensibly because "I can focus better here." Hogwash. I've just found other ways to put off doing work, including...ba-ba-da-BAAA!! blogging. (That was my trumpet fanfare. Just so you know.)

I have to admit, the library was pretty effective at first. There's no one here to talk to, so there's no way for me to read something interesting, comment on it to whoever happens to be nearby (usually Madison, poor soul), then launch into a long verbal reaction that ends up only vaguely related to the original topic. So, with that being the case, I did manage to power through two chapters of engineering reading (and all the comprehension questions associated therewith), along with a three page paper analyzing a primary source I looked at this morning in the Special Collections library for my WWI history class. After that, however, I started on my paper for engines--an analysis of the History Channel documentary (if you could call it that) Life After People, which you'd think would be right up my ally, being that I haunt the TV listings for interesting History Channel programming (often in vain, I might add, seeing as the History Channel seems to be more interested in airing ridiculous shows with ridiculous names, such as Pawn Stars, instead of actual historical programming like The History of Sex or The Dark Ages). But anyway, it's not that Life After People was bad. (The show, not the concept in general. I'm not a huge fan of the general concept of a life without human beings.) But yeah. It wasn't bad. But I just don't know how to spin a five page paper out of it that doesn't sound like a book report.

I took a study break to go get some water and a ciabatta roll from Novack and then came back up to my seat in the Tower Room, which I'd clearly staked out by surrounding it with roughly 50% of my earthly possessions, including my laptop, my tote bag, my notebook, my Chinese calligraphy midterm project, my engines book, my charger and its supplementary extension, etc. I then proceeded to uphold my resolution to "jump right back into work" by checking blitz obsessively and looking at my iCal again to see if I'd almost reached the end of my blocked-out library study time. (Nope, I'm here 'til five and it's just past four. Darn.) Then an engineering stroke of inspiration hit me and I banged out a paragraph of my paper. So far, so good. Then ANOTHER stroke of inspiration hit. Unfortunately for my productivity, it was a blogging-related rather than engineering-related stroke of inspiration, so here I am.

I wouldn't say that this particular turn in my library time has been devoid of accomplishments, though. For example, I did use the word "therewith" for quite possibly the first time in my life, and most certainly for the first time in this blog. (In any blog?) So things are getting done over here. Just not the right things. You know how it is.

So I should really get back to my Life After People essay. And I should probably try to finish it with as few references to the [cock-and-bull] theory of Rapture as possible, since it's probably not terribly relevant to whether or not the Golden Gate Bridge will rust and fall apart in one century or two. But it's gonna be really hard not to. I mean, in the show, the humans just DISAPPEAR! They leave their housepets locked in the house, their cars in the middle of the street, their alarm clocks set. Where did they GO?! For a special that claims not to be concerned with how humankind came to disappear, Life After People pretty tantalizingly dangles a bunch of unspoken morbid possibilities just out of reach. And come on. People want the morbid stuff. That's why we watch horror movies. And Access Hollywood.