I love poetry. I just hate studying for quizzes. Especially quizzes that are part of the final but actually take place the week before finals for which you are given 2-day warning. So I procrastinate now and then, usually with spider solitaire, two colors. I think I'm officially a spider-solitaire freak. I started out with one color, and got to the point where I was trying to break 1200 points because I never lost if I played straight (unless the game screwed me over in the final drop). Today, just a little while ago, on two color, I successfully got rid of all four black sets before I got rid of any red sets. Perhaps it's time to move on. [sighs] but four color is so hard. I guess it too will be easy eventually, huh? Just more chance for bad luck. I still fail to see how Grace wins at freecell so much more often than I. She had a 12-win streak once. I never play it that many times in a row, but I think my win rate is much closer to 50% or 60%. I'm a big strategy person, and when I can't figure out a strategy, I actually lose more often than sheer chance would dictate. It's strange that way. I can almost always win minesweeper if I don't have bad beginning guesses because even those situation in which nothing is obvious, I can figure out what would contradict and eliminate those spaces, which usually leaves a single possibility. The main trick to spider solitaire is to take advantage of the fact that you can move things off a same-color stack onto a conflicting-color stack in order to move something that otherwise would not be moveable. It occasionally screws me over at the end when I should have a move but don't because too many conflicts are stacked together, but it wins so often that it's worth it. And using Undo is not just for the end; you can undo at the beginning to help get what you want. I've cleared off 4 columns with still two rows left to be put down.

Anyway, poetry, I have 14 poets that I have to be able to identify and talk about based on a writing sample, just seeing their style! ugh! some are obvious, others will be darn near impossible. All I can do is read a couple poems, read all my notes, and hope for the best. I'm halfway through, but it still sucks. She said it would be fairly simple and easily recognizable stuff, but I'd almost rather have had a final during finals week, even though it's the last day of exams at 8:30 in the morning. Everyone always tries to move those 8:30 exams. Literally, both of my 8:30 exams are trying to be moved. My math class is going to have it thursday evening (we're not supposed to have exams scheduled thursday, but he figures that we can take the exam thursday night and study friday morning, rather that studying thursday night and getting up early for the exam). And my poetry class has this quiz plus some take-home section or something that she'll give us tomorrow. Plus the paper that I have to have done by tuesday because I'm a senior and she needs the time to grade it before grades are due. [sighs] C'est la vie d'etudiant. I'm gonna get back to it now.