silent night blade

i just got back from blading with the big group - every week i miss it and that irks me, so tonight's arriving *just* in time (i left the apartment later than i'd expected to, i blame the alarm clock) was a real treat.
my feet hurt a bit, and i learned a few important lessons for blading at night in the relative cold:
a) snow mask a must
b) bright clothing a must (i knew that, but i was in a hurry to get out of here)
c) protective gear needs to be easily accessible (i did just buy wrist-pads, so no excuse there)
d) i should probably invest in a head-mounted torch

the section where we went through the park, pitch black except for whatever other people's light passed over, silent and slightly frosty, was simply gorgeous!

and back to the day:

last night i tried to arrive a little later than the agreed upon hour, but i always forget how quick the journey to the smith is and i arrived about half an hour earlier. and everyone else was over an hour late, so i sat nursing a couple of beers (bottomless beer night) until they arrived, by which time i'd soured a little at the lack of company.
when everybody rocked up i had another beer, we tried to play tekken 5 (but the controls weren't working, figures), talked a bit and then left.

...

i was a wreck this morning, and my alarm has become untrustworthy. instead of pressing snooze, i manually reset it to five minutes later... i fortunately didn't pass out again, because i noticed that my phone clock hit the desired time and did nothing... including moving on to the next minute. it froze, quietly, and i experienced a similar problem with it when i set it to get me up to go blading. good thing i have two alarms!

a terrorist alert had all entrances to tel aviv sealed this morning, which wrecked absolute havoc on the nation. yeah, it's not as bad as people getting injured - or worse, but it's still pretty effective.

i was too unfocused to work this morning, so i managed to get the number of unread messages in my inbox down to 75, that's from roughly 300. it took me three weeks to get to 300 from 500, so i guess i can say it was a productive morning...

i helped one of the guys write his personal statement (university application), and was reminded that i wanted to learn all the elephant jokes... so in a couple of minutes i'm going to put them into my palm-top :P

i spent an hour or two documenting my project in an amusing fashion and simultaneously being annoyed by the kinder, who argues about things he doesn't understand and isn't really interested in learning about. every time i tried to get him to push off he picked a different, equally irritating subject... we didn't have too friendly an afternoon :/

in a bureaucratic stroke of genius, i was (late in the afternoon) informed that the half-and-half vacation was authorized, but i had to urgently fill out all the forms again and get them signed. we did it all quite efficiently, and at the end of the day i sent off a beautiful prose-mail with instructions for the secretariat (because now i'm the resident know-it-all, this is fairly amusing).

i had a great personal interview with the unit commander, he seemed to enjoy hearing my tale and we had an interesting discussion about my plans for the future. he told me he's committing himself to convincing me that it's more important to stay where i am :P

after the interview i needed to broach a few subjects with my SC, and he just happened to be leaving in the direction of the bus stop that i needed so i got to kill two birds with one stone. i discovered the source of the confusion (i talked about wanting a second interview): when discussing my plans for the future, he thought i was referring to an army branch and not an entire industry.
language barrier, huh? pity :/

i was exhausted when i got home. i cleared up a few things online, showed my new flatmate how to do laundry, made myself a salad and lay down for an hour and a half. i think i might have slept, but i'm not sure.

i'm actually quite tired now, and tomorrow's a big day as i have to sit in boring lectures for most of it before writing an exam. yay!

i'm so glad i caught the rollerblading group tonight ^_^