[notch]

so, the russian final is done.

i don't remember the last time i went over the prescribed time for an exam. i don't remember the last time i went up to the prescribed time for an exam.

we started at 1:55 for a three-hour exam beginning at 2:00, and i handed mine in at 5:15. i was the second person to finish, ahead of four others including a native speaker.

but, you know, that's done. so now i just have these two blasted papers.

GIP!

two things:

1. darthrami, i'd still be eternally grateful if you managed to get me a grab of blair threatening kincaid with that flare gun or whatever the hell it was.

2. to be fair, i think blair and hermione are really more nerds than geeks. but this may be a hair that only nerds (and geeks) bother to split ...

i believe i have [insert metaphor here]

cracked the shell/scratched the surface/taken the first all-important step/etc.

so the problem was getting 10-15 pages on the lexicalization of russian participles as ordinary adjectives. ( cut for the benefit of those of you who'd rather stop right there )

the psych paper, by the way, is done. finished it yesterday and it's not due until tomorrow (morning). that may be a record for me, so don't anybody forget it. sixteen pages, plus appendix (!) and references. i was going to hand it in this afternoon and get it the hell off my desk, but by the time i finished the damned russian final it was too late to get over to the psych department before they closed (assuming they were closing at 5:30, and hadn't locked the door at 5, in which case it was way too late). this is a bigger bummer than it may seem, because it's actually due tomorrow morning at 9:00, and if it weren't for that i wouldn't even be out of bed at that hour.

grr.

psych prof was very cool on my comps committee, though. knew what answers he was after on the word-learning questions he'd given me, of course, but said afterwards that on the actual linguistics stuff he'd (not being a linguist himself) kept his mouth shut because he didn't know any of the words i was using, never mind whether i was using them correctly. "i would have died," he says to me. "i was like, allomorph, allophone ... aloe vera?"