I may not have had swine flu two weeks ago, but I sure do have an ear infection now. I never had these things as a kid, so to have one just under a month away from my 21st birthday seems a little ridiculous. But there you are.

In order to distract myself from the itchy-cottony side of my head, here are some wonderful things that have happened over the last few weeks:
1) The principal of my elementary/middle school e-mailed me and asked whether I would be willing to inaugurate a series of letters from alums, telling their stories and updating everyone on their lives.
2) At the Women in Theater Conference in September, I ran into one of the administrators of Residential College (FreshSoph Edition) who asked whether I'd be willing to help her organize some smaller women in theater events for the residential college. I gave her my e-mail and said I'd be happy to. Just before Fall Break, she e-mailed me and asked whether there I could meet with her for lunch to discuss plans for a SWAN (Supporting Women Artists Now) week in March. At lunch, she explained that she did theater in middle school and still loved it and wanted to take advantage of her organizational skills (which are indeed legion) to pull the SWAN Week (usually just a day, but why stop there) together. She said she would pull together lots of different ideas from students on events to include, and then asked me how I would like to be involved. After about twenty minutes of vague talk about wanting to get students who knew and loved theater but who hadn't done any at Princeton involved, I ran out of ideas. She asked me what my favorite part of theater was, and I mentioned playwrighting and The Play. Immediately she crossed off all the other ideas she'd written down for how I might participate and said, "You'll do THAT play." So I get to cast it and direct it for performance as part of this week at the end of March celebrating female artists, which is more than I could ever have hoped for.
3) Fall Break: one week of intense relaxation, productivity, great time with the Aged Ps, and the beginnings of an ear infection. Three out of four isn't bad.

I got back from Fall Break yesterday. Now the real work of the semester begins. But I'm slightly more optimistic than I was this afternoon when I went to pick up my antibacterial ear drops from the pharmacy. There's nothing like being informed that neither of your two health insurances covered ear drops. After calling my dad and getting the OK to spend $100 on the only thing that was going to keep me sane this week, I retreated to the magazine section to await the filling of my prescription. Standing there, reading Cosmo and close to tears (I'm pretending it was the magazine's fault), I realized that things could only get better. And they did. The ear drops were soothing, dinner was yummy and we ran into old neighbors/friends (Athena and her posse--remember them?), a brief run at the gym got me sweaty enough for the best shower of my life, and now I'm sitting here FINALLY updating my blog.