Living in South Bend, Pt 1

I suppose "Living in South Bend" could be the name of my blog if I was more inclined to regularly document my life instead of posting random musings, which have become increasingly literary. I don't post as much as I could because of a difficulty finding a balance between total literary permeation and the endless daily documentation of mundane events. So, here's a stab at letting people know what's actually going on with me.

Recently, another main reason for very few posts has been a busy schedule. From the end of August until about 6:30pm on Friday, December 17th, I had an increasingly busy schedule in a way I have never known until now. It's easy to say "I never knew what being busy really meant until..." but now I have a new frame of reference. Throughout college, I tried to juggle one or two jobs, classes, reading, and papers with other involvements and personal life, but now I have a personal life and a work life. The line between them is supposed to blur. When should I not be working toward my PhD? So far, my only good answer to that is "only when I just finished final papers," to permit for sanity.

I could talk a lot more about how my classes went last semester, and maybe I will, but right now I'm thinking about the snow outside. If you didn't know, I love snow, especially fresh or falling snow. One winter in Chicago, snow fell every 4 out of every 7 days. I loved it because the snow didn't get a chance to sit around and turn grey, then black. I've been told that we had unusually consistent snowfall so far this year in South Bend. Usually, people say, it snows often, but not for long periods of time. Sounds good to me, fresh snow all the time. On city-data.com it says that South Bend is ranked 18th on the list of 101 US cities with the most snowfall. There were no cities from Illinois on the list. I had to get used to driving, but then I had to get used to driving in the snow. It's sort of exhilarating and another reason why I'm enjoying all the snow. If I had named the blog centimes2pence2cents, I might make a tri-continent comparison of my life in terms of exposure to snow.