It's one indication that maybe we're not moving ahead as fast as everyone else.

It's been going on for a long enough time that you say it's not just a short-term anomaly. There's something going on here.

If that portion of their costs are going up 4 percent and total revenues are going up 2 percent, then you've got to find other places in the budget to cut. Costs are growing faster than allowable revenues.

If it's time to party, it's time for hip hop. I love Drake, Jay-Z, Kanye. If I'm chilling at home though, I'm listening to Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Radiohead, DJ Shadow. I also listen to a lot of classical.

And so I was scared. I was scared of my own sexual hunger, which felt so secretive and uncharted, and I was scared of the sexual hunger of boys, which felt so vivid and overt, and I was terribly uncertain of the relationships between sex and power and value, which seemed so merged and hard to tease apart. In the midst of all that, I didn't exactly loathe my body, or feel ashamed of it, but I was deeply ashamed of my fear, which felt disabling and immature and woefully, painfully uncool, a terrible secret, evidence of some profound failing and ignorance on my part. Other girls, or so I imagined, knew what to do, how to use their power, how to derive pleasure from it, and in contrast, I felt not only freakish but isolated, as though I was standing outside a vital, defining loop.

Making sure our senatorial slate was able to run has been our priority all along. I'm glad we could reach a resolution to actually achieve this goal.