Status update: I have finished the paper after sitting here for about nine hours straight. I have e-mailed it to my professor and to the photographer I interviewed. I am done with History of Photography.

Tomorrow, I have a final exam at noon. After today's long push through the paper, the last thing I want to do is study. But if I don't study, I'll blow the exam. And that would suck.

I'll repeat my complaint about studying: how do you know when you're done?

What I want to do is climb into bed with a warm cat and Jane Smiley's Moo and fall asleep after ten pages. What I have to do is reread everything we've read in Rhetorical Theory since the midterm. Groan.

In anticipation of your comment: no, after tomorrow's exam, I will not be done done. I will have approximately twenty-four hours to breathe before I have to sign up for summer school.

I just took a call from a credit-card company offering me a platinum whatevercard. The call center guy asked for me by my first name. I let him get through "You have been pre-approved for --" before I cut him off.

"Please put me on your Do Not Call list. And don't call me by my first name." Then I hung up. The idea of a national opt-out program sounds better every day. And bring me the head of the dingbat responsible for telling call center employees to address potential customers by their first names. How rude.

There's rain on the way. My head hurts.