I cannot quite believe how I have spent the entire afternoon. It reminds me of the dreams one has with high school or college as the setting. You know, the ones. You're in school and in a panic. You're totally unprepared for a big test that you've just remembered is being given today. Maybe you're unprepared because you didn't study or you haven't shown up for a single class all semester or maybe you're in a panic because you just realized that you forgot to get dressed between showering at home and going to class and your memory lapse is now out there for all to see.

Well, okay.

This afternoon hasn't been quite that traumatizing, but it still seems strange that I have had an afternoon of desperately doing homework that I've neglected until the last minute. Homework? I couldn't believe it when the instructor assigned it. Homework? That's okay when your parents force you to go to school and do nothing themselves all day except go to work and have nothing to do in the evening but sit around and do things that parents like to do--things like make dinner and schlepp you to the mall or to your friend's house. But homework for adults who are paying to have a good time one day a week?

I was much more gracious than it sounds like I was when MA gave the first assignment. And the second assignment didn't sound like it would be much of a problem. I mean I'm not getting graded on this, right? I could do the whole thing in like ten minutes, easy. It wouldn't be the best picture ever drawn, but hey (and here I shrugged in my mind), I'm not trying to be teacher's pet. Ten minutes and I'm outta there.