There's no place like...dammit!

So even those of you who know me might not know that the title of this blog was intended to be completely and totally ironic (my first choice, the oh-so-original californialove.blogspot.com, was taken.) Right now, I'm feeling anything but love for Claremont. Well, mostly just Pomona, who yesterday released its list of available rooms and room draw numbers for next semester. Turns out I'm number 105...out of 117 people...competing for something like 56 beds. Katie, ever the conscientious one, sent an e-mail to the housing director informing her about this discrepancy, to which she replied: "We're expecting more rooms to open up once we know who's going on leave and who'll be moving to off-campus housing next semester." Riiiiight. So suddenly 49 people will up and leave Pomona in the spring? I was joking earlier about having to pitch a tent on the quad, but now I'm seriously considering it. It would sure seem warm after this semester...
Yep, that's right. All college-related bitching aside, here I am in St. Petersburg in December. It's officially winter now, and it shows: the locals' fur coats are getting heavier, the food is getting heavier, the street PDAs are getting heavier. And I've only got 19 days left in this city. That's 19 days in which to accomplish everything I've been telling myself I'd do since back in September: go to all the museums, attend a ballet at the Mariinsky, swear a hockey game, that club where every night is New Year's Eve. Not to mention write a research paper about the development of Russian rock music, which has recently been taking me down all sorts of philosophical detours (should Russian rock groups sing in English in order to preserve rock's musical "drive", which the Russian language itself has a tendency to suppress? If so, can their music still be called Russian rock?) which, while fascinating to me as a sometime music perception researcher and on-and-off aspiring rock journalist, are hard enough to express in English, let alone Russian.
I guess it'll all be over with soon enough, whether I like it or not, and then it'll be back to mundanity--and my tent...