Candy is dandy, but liquor is SO MUCH QUICKER

I smell like a box of chocolates.

I’d fully intended on helping my mom all day with the baking of holiday treats, but got distracted for a couple hours while I helped Kevin finish up his geology lab book. Talk about a nightmare. If that kid gets even a C in the class, I’ll be amazed. He just lost his steam halfway through the semester, and it went downhill from there.

A further nightmare for his schooling has surfaced. Turns out his Intro to Computers professor dropped him the third week of school for reasons unknown to anyone (including the professor, who can’t give any explanation and is actually IGNORING both Kevin and his counselor), but never said a word to Kevin about it. Instead, Kevin has been faithfully attending class all semester, turning in assignments, taking tests, even e-mailing the professor a couple of times to let him know he’d be out sick. All this time, the professor never once mentioned to Kevin that he was dropped from the class. No. Kevin finds out Wednesday morning when he shows up for the final. The professor looks at him all funnylike and says “You’re not in my class.” After about five minutes of intense conversation wherein the professor admits to seeing Kevin in class all semester and receiving his assignments, Kevin is told he was dropped at the beginning of the semester and would have to see a counselor to straighten it out. NO JOKE.

Kevin was so angry, he ended up just going to his other final for that day and then heading home. He met with a counselor on Friday after his math final, and the poor woman was just totally confused as to what was going on. Apparently this is something that has never happened there, since most of the professors at Solano are not complete blithering fools. She was even more gobsmacked when she was told that the professor had said Kevin needed to sort it out with the counseling staff and not him. She had Kevin e-mail the guy right then and there, and then followed up with an e-mail of her own insisting that the professor respond ASAP.

That was 24 hours ago. Not a peep from the professor. Kevin is just furious and yet totally despondent. He didn’t really need the class…just for general ed. He’s more upset that he spent a whole semester on it and is basically getting nothing out of it. I’m angry because this means he paid money for a class he doesn’t get credit for, and cannot get refunded on. I keep having to resist the urge to kill the professor with my bare hands. I just don’t understand this guy. I mean. No sympathy, no jumping on things when he realized a dropped student was turning in work…nothing. I hope the guy’s balls drop off.

Ok. Deep breath. Nice happy feelings.

So aside from the brief interlude for schoolwork, mom and I cranked out a slimmed-down version of our usual bevy of holiday goods. No. We didn’t make it less fattening. We just made less things. Give us credit! We’re not insane!

We of course made a double batch of my insanely delicious fudge (my modesty is amazing, is it not?), plus a load of Italian buttercookies, chocolate-dipped biscotti, pumpkin butter, white zin jelly, peppermint bark, and, after discovering we had like ten pounds of leftover walnut halves, spiced walnuts. In fact, we couldn’t stop snacking on the spiced walnuts. Even now I’m getting an itch and a craving for them. But they’re in a giant Ziploc baggie, tucked safely away in the cupboard. Sometime this week I will also be making candy cane cookies and sugar cookies decorated with a wide array of colored royal icings. My decorating tools have been dormant for almost four months…they’re feeling lonely. Besides, I like having the flashiest cookies in the office. And I have this new sugar cookie recipe that I’m dying to try…courtesy of my decorating instructor. These cookies are TO DIE FOR. If I can make them even half as good as she does, I’m in business.

It’s nice rediscovering Free Time. Now that I’m completely done with school (took my geo lecture test yesterday morning; instant grade report shows me at a solid high A. w00t), I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I’m pondering catching up with both my reading and my SLEEP. I have a sorry stack of books on my headboard that require serious attention…

Plus. TA-DA! New season of Project Runway has started and I’m already just in love with this year’s designers. I’m already voting Santino as this year’s Wendy Pepper. The man is an ass through and through. It gives me great glee to see him not win a challenge. He’s THAT awful of a person. His work, though, is very interesting. I have to give him props; unlike Wendy, he is damn good at what he does. Still. Can’t help but wish him elimination just for being a smarmy cock.

I’ll give more opinions on PR in the upcoming weeks as things unfold a little further. For now, I reserve most of my judgment until I get a better handle on the rest of the designers. Some are so low-key, they aren’t even worth spending my energy on at this time (think: Robert from Season 1). But I have a feeling this season will kick out the jams even better than the last. I can just smell the conflict a-brewin’…