probably saturday - part ii

[... continued]

later, pg and i needed to do some midnight snacking: covering the lentils with fire sauce made them far more interesting. i had a quick chat with my sister, which turned into a conference call with her daughter and ric's mother - it was girls-only shopping-induced hysteria, to which i quickly said "good night" before resuming my studies. i had a lot of theoretical texts to wade through, and i got most of it out of the way.

---thursday:

did i get plenty of sleep? not enough to sort me out. our first class has begun to bother me, not because it's not social and entertaining and not because we aren't learning interesting things, but because we don't seem to be focused on the course topic and that's kind of what i'm most interested in hearing about.

the first class of the new course (what we lost in the number of weeks we make up for in the number of hours per week) was interesting. the lecturer's cool (if a little too cool sometimes), and i once again find myself the only guy in a class filled with girls (same story with one of last year's classes). i feel a bit outnumbered and there are feminists about... but so far, at least, we seem to be off to a good start.

---in the hour between class and the anime screening, i stopped by wr with intent to chat - he's been in hiding for months. he was occupied with smoking and strumming his guitar, and very defensive when i asked how things were going. when i finally got an answer out of him, i found myself very disappointed:

he's been studying for many years, dragging out his (undergrad) degree with various excuses (some quite justifiable), and the last semester was supposed to be his final one wherein he discharged the only requirement remaining: a seminar paper. he was in almost every class, sitting next to me, sometimes paying attention and sometimes not... but there's no way he walked away from the course with nothing. hearing that he hadn't handed in anything on tuesday shocked me. it's one thing to hand in a sub-par paper, but nothing???

life is short, you only get one, and making mistakes is part-and-parcel of living. but if you're making the same mistakes over and over again, you're doing it wrong. unless you don't want to succeed in whatever you're attempting, in which case by attempting it at all: you're doing it wrong.

---we had a good anime screening, even though i missed a few minutes here and there when i couldn't keep my eyelids open. read or die's "special operations division" amused us greatly.

...

thoughts on the bus to a private lesson: this living life shit is tiring - and i'm not sure if this even counts as "to the fullest" - how did i survive this week?!

the private lesson on web development: i came away with a handful of cash and feeling like a fraud. i mean, everything's documented online. the kid seems to have (more or less) a handle on things. i showed him stuff he didn't know, and gave him a few important pointers, but really? most of that he could have gotten with a google search.

---friday:

having entered sweet oblivion a couple of hours before, i woke up at 3am to make sure that my fellow students (in the new course) had access to the movies we have to watch before tuesday. while handling the stuff that was going to take a few minutes, i came across a set of funny animal videos. i usually don't post those, but this one actually made me laugh out loud so i have to share it.

i returned to bed to have horrible nightmares, but an otherwise great sleep. it was free-comics-day friday! and little did i know, i wouldn't be out there acquiring free comics. i began the day watching the man who shot liberty valence (one of the assigned movies), absolutely enthralling, and it was just about over when pg came in to tell me her sister's water had broken and so we headed off to the hospital to pay her a visit.

why are hospitals signed so badly? we must have blown half an hour wandering the halls trying to find the right division. nobody could help us, and i'm not sure if it's like this world-wide or if it's just an israeli thing. sure, you don't see this sort of thing in the movies... usually in the movies, when someone's in a rush to see someone else in the hospital they find the room with no trouble at all. you never see them running through the hallways, half-crazed and out of breath, harassing anyone in sight in a desperate search because they might be too late to witness the miracle of their child's birth or to receive the awe-inspiring, heart-warming final speech...

in spite of having tons to do, i spent the rest of the day either eating or sleeping. i needed that.