beyond academic emo: prisonship inventory of sentiments/commodities

one of the things that stinks about giving advice is how platitudinous, catch-all and relatively hollow our hard-earned lessons sound when churned out in sentence-form. thus, you'll understand how i half-grimaced, half-mewed long ago when a certain family member told me earnestly how

things seem like they're going great guns for you, Pat. and that's really great. I'm proud. and you need to really make sure you enjoy these times, Pat. cuz it's sure as shooting that there'll be times when the world rains cats and dogs upon you. enjoy these times, Pat, cuz eventually times'll suck eggs, and, by extension, you'll suck, too.

"sure," i'd thought at the time. sounds reasonable enough - like a paraphrase of a parable from a Randy Newman song, or something. and it is reasonable - shit, it's probably even "true," (i'd thunk.) but that was all before the current conjuncture, when oddly enough, graduate school got hard again. (i know, who'd've thunk it? you could knock me over with a feather.)

now, i have a lot of uncomfortable things in my life, like everybody else: some things - by no means all - that are much more uncomfortable than grad school's sudden difficulty. but grad school is something tuff that is both "personal" and "general" enough as to be appropriate for weblogs (aka, "blogs.") so here we go with a thoroughoing personal inventory in light of this recent, panic-attack-ish element to "school," which once was a padded cell for holding-forth, but which is now a caged structure reminiscent of "Hell in a Cell."
Part 1. Problem Areas

1. Health and welfare? Oh no. I've had some sort of walking plague since I boarded that aeroplane last Weds. Clammy hands, cough, headache, shakes, sniffles, snot, phlegm, etc. All the rest (upset tummy, too!)
   
2. Social Encounters? Nope. Does Election Night count? I barfed.
   
3. Eating Right? More like, "eating out." 'Can't afford it, but also can't seem to stop, or, can't seem to take the time to cook.
   
4. Body/Mind, Work/Life Balance? Oh, p'shaw. My body is a two-legged sack of balloons. My skin is the consistency of a paper shopping bag, but it looks like a potato sack because there are tuffs of hair pasted on to the bag (, which holds balloons of various sizes).

But that's just the downside. See me, I gotta lotta upside in my life. Part 2. Upsides

1. Herself: But that's obvious. We're like the Footprints Prayer over here in the Brown House. Or Smith and Jones, in that Silver Jews number.
   
2. SonicYouth/SonVolt/Slint(/Springsteen?!?): update post soon.
3. Shoegaze: It matches the weather. In particular I've listened to the magnetic morning full-length thrice since I e-music'd it yesterday (even notwithstanding the american apparel-ish alb cover). Do you guys do the emusic? I'd like to, uh, monitor yr playlists and share recommendations with you.
   
4. Over-the-counter cold medicines: this has to stop. Not sure they help at all. I just like the plop-plop, fizz-fizz aesthetic. (Honorable mention: cough drops [not lozenges.] "Honey-lemon" and "eucolyptus," specifically.)
   
5. It's sweater weather: what? This post has 'emo' in its title. Do you need a road map?
6. Cardinology vinyl pack: 'love the t-shirt, 'haven't rocked the bonus 7" yet...comic book is awesome. Lengthy alb review coming soon. Commenter David, among others, received a warped 12". 'Mine has a surface scratch but no audible flaws.
   
7. Crime Novels: crime novels in particular, Ross MacDonald and Lawrence Block in particular. I'm going back to the well, even opting to crack the seal on what may be the last (?!?) of the Matt Scudder novels, certainly the last one I haven't yet read.
8. "Organizing Grievances" and organizing grievances: top-shelf!
   
9. The return of implicitly (not explicitly) lewd texts/emails/voice messages/ground mailings from evil r+b: how long until I start posting poems again, at this rate?
   
10. Chris Matthews: much to a lotta peoples' chagrin(s), including, sometimes, mine.
    
11. French fries: yeah, there's this place just a block away from the Brown House that makes, I think, the best french fries in Eugene. (Better yet, they come with a special "french fry dipping sauce" that features horseradish, but nonetheless reminds me of the famous white sauce" that accompanied the mozzarella sticks back at Shenanigans', where cool kids like evil r + b once glommed underage frat sodas.) Eugenians, which restaurant do you think has the best fries? I'm prepared to get exploratory about starch this Rainy Season.
    

so anyway, there's the nov 2008 catalog. what works for you when "times" are "tuff"?