Hey Lady!

I planned out my Wednesday so well.

1. Photocopy my pages for thesis class and leave them in everyone's box.
2. Take my meetings with the members of my thesis committee -- we have to pitch our scripts to the committee, and they're supposed to give feedback to our thesis advisors (who are also the chairmen of our committees).
3. Get all my comments done on the ER outlines given me by fellow TV class members, and punch up my own ER outline to hand out in Thursday's class.
4. Go to Critical Studies class, watch The Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis.

Well, I should have taken the hint when I woke up in the morning because the alarm went off.

Not the bedroom clock alarm. The house alarm.

The message: Just stay where you are, it's all downhill from here.

Turned out the alarm went off because the cleaning lady had arrived and I had set the alarm (during my insomnia the night before) to go off immediately upon any door being opened. The cleaning lady was unperturbed; I, however, nearly lost a kidney in panic upon waking.

I showered and dressed quickly, got my things together upstairs, and dashed out the door to go to school and start going down my list of things to do.

I realized something with a blinding flash as I drove to USC (and robotically went about the challenge of dodging the insane, bypassing the incompetent, and ignoring the nonconfrontational) -- let's see, I have boundless energy, I'm cranky, I'm getting tons of things done, the voices in my head are speaking at two and three times their normal speed, I can't sleep at night because I'm restless...gee, I couldn't be in a manic phase, could I?

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Yes, I'd like to come out of the closet about one thing: I'm one of those. I'm bipolar -- well, bipolar II, the sequel, at any rate. Bipolar II is reportedly the kinder, gentler, more 90's version of manic-depressiveness. When I get manic, I talk a lot and write a lot, instead of going on shopping sprees or thinking I can do anything (I tend to be too realistic in my grandiosity).

Oh great, I thought. Well, I should take advantage of it, at any rate, while the going's good.

I got to school and discovered that my first appointment never showed up. Okay, fine -- I'll go to the cafeteria and sit a while. Then I went back to the GSP Office and waited for the second appointment. I waited for an hour. At the end of the hour I learned that the wrong office hours had been written down for this teacher; I'd waited for nothing.

This is not a good way to make Diane happy.

I went to the main student cafeteria and planted myself at a table for the next 3 hours and tried not to be bitter about having wasted my day. I worked on my fellow students' ER outlines and worked on my own for a while. Then I headed over to Critical Studies.

The movie was The Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis. I had never seen The Nutty Professor (either version), because when I was a tiny Di, I used to watch and love Jerry Lewis movies. (Somebody start passing around the smelling salts, please.) My dad told me that Jerry Lewis used to tell actors that he'd let them be in his movies but wouldn't pay them hardly anything. My mom got angry at him for telling me that, but that was the end of my watching his movies, much as reading the biography of Abbott and Costello killed my love of watching their movies.

Anyhow. I loved The Nutty Professor. He takes the potion and voila! He's Dean Martin. (Does anybody know if that was the original joke?) Even scarier, in several scenes, he resembled John Travolta, which made the whole coolness factor even scarier. The scene at the prom was painful because Lewis' speech went on so long, but the payoff with Kelp's parents was hysterical.