98% of the time I haven't even heard of the authors she selects, much less actually read the book before she even selected it. So I'm feeling quite cultural and everything.

I know a lot of people say they purposely don't read anything Oprah picks, but you should read this one, trust me. Maeve Binchy is one of my very favorite authors and has such a wonderfully engaging style. I liked "Evening Class" even better, though, so if you are one of those people who refuses to read anything Oprah picks, go read that one.

So Sting has a new album out and I didn't even know about it until my friend Mary, who first got me hooked on The Police when we were in 7th grade, e-mailed me that he was going to be on the Today show, which he was, last Friday.

I haven't bought the CD yet. I'm going to get it tomorrow, when I go into the city to the only discount CD place in the area, a store called MediaPlay. My mother and I are going to Smallville (where my aunt and uncle live) on Saturday, for the fall foliage festival and an engagement party for my cousin, so we're going to listen to it in the car on the way there.

I don't know how mall music stores stay in business. I wandered into the one here today (in this town's one mall, a most depressing place) just to see what kind of deals they had. The cheapest CD I found was $16.99. Most were $17.99 and up.

That's just crazy. I can barely bring myself to buy any CD that's more than $14. There's just no need anymore.

Boy, did it rain here last night, and rain and rain and rain. I was up until 1:45, and had just blown out the candles and gone into the kitchen for some juice when the power went out. In the process of trying to find the matches I spilled a mug of coffee all over the rug (okay, so it had been on the coffee table since that morning, and if I had just been a responsible person it wouldn't have happened, but whatever) and was cursing up a storm when the lights came back on.

My cat hates storms. It's not the rain, so much, but the wind. For some reason, wind just makes her go out of her mind. I felt bad, but I had to shut her in the bathroom last night. She was making such a racket that I couldn't sleep, and it was already 2:30 and I had to be up in four hours and I just had no patience.

I think she felt better in an enclosed area, anyway. She never cried or anything.

I was still way late this morning. Whenever I run into my upstairs neighbor in the hallway, I know I'm late because she always leaves at 8:00 on the nose. So I'm scurrying along to class and run into Susannah at the intersection, and while we're walking toward the door closest to our classroom, we meet Marissa coming up the sidewalk from the other direction, and all three of us file into our seats from the door in the back of the classroom while the professor just stands in the front of the room and watches us.

I think he may have been waiting for an answer to a question, but he certainly wasn't going to move on until we were all nicely settled.

How very kind of him.

We got our pictures back today, the portraits we had taken a couple of weeks ago for the yearbook, and I have news for you all: I'm horrendously fat.

I have no idea where it all came from, but I looked at those pictures and wanted to cry. There was a general buzz that the photographer was lousy, but he didn't put that extra chin on me or puff out my cheeks.

It's really terrible. I think I've been in denial for a while, because they did weigh me when I first went in for an exam for my medical problem a couple months ago. I was surprised at the number but went around thinking I couldn't possibly look like I weighed that much.

Well, I do. And I have to do something about it, upcoming holiday season or no. This is pathetic.