I finally ran today.Took 4 days off, which made me feel like a slob. But actually, my run today felt really good. I think it was good I let my body heal a little. But here's the problem: I've always run/hiked/worked out b/c it made me feel good and/or I really enjoyed it. But I have to admit a slight cosmetic motivation creeping in. It's not that I don't like the way I look or anything; it's just now that I've been running a lot, I really love having muscular legs. And when I don't run for a few days I feel a little flabbier, and that makes me feel like I have to run again. I know, so dumb, but at least I'm running.

Helping out with grad student registration today was fun. Grad students are just not that smart sometimes. I mean, I've been at the school for exactly one week and have no reason to learn anything about the procedures b/c I'm leaving at the end of this week, but I understand what's going on better than some of the students who've been there for 5+ years. Was I that dumb when I was in grad school? Probably. It's difficult to allocate any brainpower for mundane things like common sense when you're life is consumed by understanding Eliade and Derrida.

A few of the students weren't registering for any classes, just doing research. For some bizarre bureaucratic reason, they still have to trudge on into the office with a signed piece of paper, so I can enter their i.d. numbers into the computer to verify that, indeed, they are registering for nothing. You'd think they could manage to get the whole process online. Probably a lot cheaper than paying me for a week! Or hey, they could pay me to put it online. I don't actually know how to do that, but I'm fairly certain I could figure it out. Then again, that kind of thinking hasn't actually landed me a job yet.

In any case, one of the kids who was registering for nothing mentioned that he was spending every day at home watching bad daytime TV. I warned him that that's exactly the road I was starting to go down when I dropped out of grad school. He didn't seem to heed my warning; he was too excited by Judge Judy. Of course, if I'm not mistaken, I've also seen more than my fair share of daytime TV since I left grad school, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.