I hate what my thesis makes me do.

Shots or not, my alarm went off at 9 a.m. this morning and I leapt out of bed to sit at my little laptop-holding, blue-spraypainted card table. In preparation of today, I had turned it toward the wall, so I couldn't be distracted by trees or birds or blinds or light switches or ironing boards. All of those objects have played a role in preventing me from writing my thesis this fall.

So I've been writing and staring at the wall for three hours straight.

I also checked the school Web site to check on my formatting requirements where lo! and behold, I discovered my left margin could be 1.25 inches! And on pages on which headers appear, I can have a 2-inch top margins. How awesome is that? Can I have a header on every page?

Anyway, after reformatting my paper to fit the school's requirements, I discovered that my formerly single-spaced, normally margined nine page paper was, in fact, a halfway-completed 22-page masterpiece. And that's without the two-page glossary and whatever appendices I may decide to pad everything with it.

I'll admit it though, I'm starting to get seriously concerned about finishing this damn thing.