Long See No Time?

Where have I been? Around.
But I've been doing lots of things this summer. I can't believe it's August already and classes begin *gulp* next week. I'm a little reluctant to go back because I'm nervous about starting my thesis for real. I already have a fat stack of library books on my desk waiting to be skimmed for potential interest to my project. I found a professor who is willing to direct my thesis, and my adviser says it sounds promising. Let me tell you, it gets a whole lot scarier once you tell people your ideas and commit to following through with it. I've also signed on to do part-time environmental volunteer work in exchange for room and board on the island where I will do research.
In addition to getting that set up, I've been tutoring several students multiple times a week in ESL, reading, grammar, writing- anything you can imagine that has to do with the English language. It's actually a lot of fun, and I'll continue to work with three of my students throughout the school year. I'm glad I get to keep working with them, but I don't doubt it will be a full schedule what with taking classes full time, not to mention my assistantship, which I've already started. My professor e-mailed me early in the summer to see if I'd be interested in helping him with one of his many projects over the break. No assistantship was available for the summer, so he's been giving me as many hours as I want on his own dime. I really like working with him, I just hope he's not putting any kind of financial burden on himself to keep this going. I'll be happy once the department is handing out my paychecks again in a couple of weeks. Right now, my work with him consists of proof-reading typed transcripts of letters written by Civil War veterans with the original handwritten manuscripts. It's incredibly interesting, but every now and then I give myself a bit of a headache trying to figure out what a certain word is.
I got my back-to-school haircut this morning, hurrah! I realized I hadn't been to get a trim since March... wow. Slightly embarrassing when my hair stylist pointed this out to me. But she's great and understands how scatter-brained us grad students can be. I just need to do a bit of back-to-school shopping and I'll be set. I got myself a couple of spiffy new lunch boxes-- well, bento boxes-- in Osaka, so that base is covered.

Things I want to do before summer vacation ends:
1. Go to the beach. The ocean beach, not the lake beach.
2. Finish the novel I'm reading.
3. Go for a walk by the river.
4. Get Korean ice cream one more time (melon flavor of course).
5. Sip a pina colada in my back yard.