My. Foot. Is. Killing. Me.

At this moment, I can't even rest it on the ground while typing, that's how bad it is. And it's throbbing even when I'm not putting weight on it. Renate's Ace bandage helps only very slightly, so I took it off again. I know it'll get down to a more manageable amount of pain in a minute - this is just how it works - but still: this is not fair. Can I have a new heel? Or at least get some store credit for it? Seven years it's been like this; that's a long enough trial. And I don't want to go back to the doctor.

Just popped two Aleve. Hopefully that'll help.

Other news... after long, nightmarish hours of making adjustments, I've got my schedule worked out for next semester:

Language and Dialect
English and its Relatives
Language and Culture
Math for Liberal Arts Majors
Intermediate Spanish
Aerobic Swimming

That leaves only one class which I still need to take, and then I'll be totally done with all my degree requirements. I could have fit that one in this time, too, but Utrecht always has tons of linguistics classes, so I opted to take that last requirement next year and do Spanish and swimming this spring instead of having a 100% difficult schedule.

The Spanish, by the way, is, yes, Intermediate, and yes, I am deeply ashamed of this fact. In all honesty, I probably could manage back at my previous level after a couple difficult first weeks, but I opted to go for the lower level - that schedule is very challenging as is; I don't need Spanish presentations and Spanish literature tests on top of it all. And I technically already know the language - I'll be able to handle the homework and all with no sweat. My grammar and such is still intact. I just need some thrice-weekly exposure to sort of 'remind' me how it all goes, since it has somewhat faded from my memory with the relatively recent acquisition of Dutch. Así cállate, porque ¡todavía puedo hablar español! :)

Aerobic Swimming is, contrary to popular belief, not water aerobics - it's merely a higher level of swimming than what I have now. A workout, basically, except that in this class, everyone will have been swimming for years, will know what they're doing, and won't need any technique work. Hopefully I'll learn how to correctly do butterfly in this class I'm in now - because I definitely can't go into that level with the pathetic dying-cow version of it which I do now.

Ahhh... the Aleve is starting to kick in. I can set my foot flat on the floor now and have only a light level of discomfort.

OK, guys, so my next question: which is the best mp3 player out there? I have 10 gigs of music on my computer, 99% of which are mp3s (the rest are WMAs) and I want a player that can hold them all with plenty of room to spare. My hard drive is almost full from all the music and movies I have, plus I transferred a lot of my CDs onto it while I was in the Netherlands, since I had a limited amount of space and didn't feel like schlepping CDs around. It'd be nice to free up some space by getting those off of there.

Anyway, so does anyone have a player that they really like? My sister has a 40-gig Apple iPod which she says she likes a lot, and since that's the one that has the best online reviews, I'm leaning towards that. It would be great for airplanes and trips. The only thing is, she says it's not organized all that great when it comes to individual albums and such. It doesn't seem to bother her, but it would bother me - I like lots of folders and 'compartments' to put things in, so that I can find things easily. But then again, she has one from a year ago, whereas they released an HP version of it this summer (made to sync up better with PCs) and I think that one has better organizational features. Anyway, so I'm leaning toward the iPod, but there are a lot of other ones out there now too - Creative has several nice ones, and I love the 256 MB player I have from them - I've had it about a year and a half and still can't find one single thing wrong with it, aside from the capacity. Anyway, we'll see.

I should really be doing linguistics, but I just can't. I'm having an attack of "why do I understand this stuff in the classroom but then don't understand it when I have to do it at home?" Haven't had one of those since senior year calculus. Oh well, I'll ask around in LIN 3201 tomorrow - some of the people in there take 3460 with me as well, so maybe they've gotten further than I have. It's due Tuesday.

I guess I've talked your ears off enough for now.

Tomorrow: Michael Moore speaks at the O'Connell Center! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for speaking on a Monday so that I don't have to work! Woohoo!