Currently Listening Young Blue Eyes: Birth of a Crooner By Frank Sinatra With the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra Snooty Little Cutie see related

The Paper That Ate My Life is finally done and turned in.  I know all my friends will be glad to hear this, especially since they won't have to hear me whinge about it anymore.    I don't know why writing this paper was so hellish.  Usually I can bang a paper out pretty quickly - I did the last one for this class in one morning.  This paper, however, took days. 

I think part of it was the subject matter.  French history is just so bloody depressing!  (I mean both of those adjectives - both bloody and depressing, the latter rather on the account of the former.)  They can't ever come to any resolution, so sooner or later there's fighting in the streets and atrocities and innocent people dieing.  It's not that Napoleon III (the guy I was writing about) was any kind of saint.  He didn't exactly turn France into a democratic dictatorship from the goodness of his heart.  But he tried so hard to make things work.  He just about killed himself trying.  He used himself up, and then it was over, and we have the Paris Commune, and the massacre of the hostages (including the Archbishop of Paris), and thousands of people dead in the streets of Paris (most after the fighting was done, which means that the soldiers were killing people who'd already surrendered).  Maybe studying history isn't for me - I find it fascinating, but I can't detach myself from it.

However, with all that said, I had a truly excellent time swing dancing last night.  I've been getting so frustrated over all the ways I'm not the dancer I want to be that I've been forgetting to enjoy myself.  Last night, however, was fun.  We learned a Charleston move called Johnny's Drop, which kicks butt (well, not really, unless you're doing it really, really wrong).  Also, it's so much easier to follow Charleston when you can actually feel what the guy is doing!  Then I danced an entire dance with Mr. Clean and he didn't correct me even once.  I can't remember the last time that happened.  I half suspect that this was due to some sweet person dropping him a hint rather than that I've actually improved, but it was still an ego boost.

And now I'm off home to clean so that when the ladies come for women's group they'll actually have a place to sit...