Have just sleepily completed a healthier and more memorable alternative to getting drunk by myself: one pot of espresso followed by a fiction binge and a new sweatshirt. I've just read the second Bridget Jones book all the way through in the space of about 12 hours and am feeling tipsy with the shallowness of it all. I do not count calories or weigh myself regularly, nor do I smoke, so the italicized pieces above her entries must suffer the wrath and abstinence of my comfortable lifestyle.

Aforementioned Dreaded Exam is over with. For at least another 72 hours I will not have to deal with Margery Kempe or Julian of Norwich or litotes or synecdoche. There are times and places for all of this, but today was . . . just . . . not it.

Somehow I feel a justification in my plans for repeating my personal fiction binge--at least for an hour--with The Grim Grotto, which was smuggled in to me by some international travelers who said I mustn't look in their luggage because of the highly volatile nature of possible Christmas gift inductees. They took tea, admired my sweatshirt, and trudged upstairs while I continued reading. It is now past two o'clock in the morning, a deliciously quiet hour.

Am so tired. Am so irresponsible. Only one cure for guilty feelings of irresponsibility--try to give yourself an ego-boost by pretending that you are better than people who are a little less responsible than you. It works, trust me. The sink is half-full of dirty dishes, and here I sit at my keyboard with a blog entry.

Espresso is gone, book is over, and my eyelids are beginning to droop. A fond and somewhat tipsy adieu to you all.