"I’m flesh, not bone…"

Yesterday was both the best and worst day I’ve had at Rose yet. Fer skerious (to quote a friend). I woke up at 06:30 after about four hours of sleep, and proceeded to skip breakfast, barely pass a major Physics exam (I’ve estimated my grade at about 75%, using the answers he posted online) that my friend Kitty-Cat burst into tears and sobs in the middle of, and mumble my way through my Rhetoric class because I hadn’t finished my reading in the one class I can (and usually do) hold my own. I went on to hurredly scribble some answers to my curve-sketching Calculus assignment minutes before the class began, to skip my normal lunch in order to work on a lab revision due that day that I still didn’t understand how to fix, and to repeatedly zone out during Logic Design while working out scheduling for lab write-ups, baking experiments, Thorn, and homework, which is not at all helpful for someone barely getting the content as it is. I should probably work on that. My customary walk/run after class and before homework? Most-fucking-definitely out of the question, and the stress reliever would have been nice. A meeting with my annoyingly slow-talking, mumbling, repetitive advisor made me miss the 15-minute window after ECE 130 for lunch. It’s not his fault, of course; it was just bad time management on my part. That didn’t make me any less hungry, though. Following the meeting about absolutely nothing that I can recall, I Calculus’ed my next assignment while waiting for someone with a mixing bowl and measuring cups to return from class. Thorn nights means no homework gets done after 17:30, so I try to get it all done before then. When my SA returned sometime around 15:00, I asked her for a mixing bowl and whatever large mixing implements she might have, and waited vewy, vewy patiently as she calmly passed out the weekly newsletter to our entire floor and chatted with each recipient before remembering that I was standing there waiting. It takes, according to my directions, 45 minutes to bake a batch of brownies. For two batches, plus mixing and cooling time, I was looking at well over two hours, and it was already past 15:00. After I got the mixing stuff, I ran pell mell with a bookbag of homework, a CD player loaded with Spooks, a square glass baking pan, a casserole dish (mixing bowl), oil, eggs, measuring cups/spoons, and a teeny bit of remaining sanity down four flights of stairs to the basement, where our laundry room (and kitchen) is, barely managing to avoid tripping over my stereo headphone cord and killing my only six eggs (as well as myself). I combined ingredients while fighting with the cord of my headphones, cussing over the lack of counter space, then quickly threw the first batch, for my residence floor, in the oven. More lab work time, as 17:00, closing time around here, was rapidly approaching. This was interrupted with about 75 trips up and down the four floors to put away the eggs and oil, then to remember that I needed to get my dishwashing liquid and rag, then to remember I left my Calculus notes in my room. I finished my lab around the time my batch of brownies finished, so I fished the pan out of the oven with my dish rag and some paper towel, and waited with, I admit, absolutely no patience for the brownies to cool. In fact, I just dumped the still warm brownies onto a plate, raced upstairs again and quickly distributed them to the ten girls on the floor. The rest lost out. In went the second batch, which turned out to be much more than half the mix, worrying me about cooking times. This was at 17:15. I ran my lab down to my prof’s office and dropped it in the box outside the door, not even caring that mine was right on top, revealing I was the latest to turn it in. Back down to the basement for more Calculus curve-sketching, washing of dishes, anxiously prodding the brownies to will them into cooking faster, and dancing to “Swindley’s Maracas”. Standing up and doing homework on a washing machine left me with several unbelievable kinks in my back and shoulders that are still present as I write this (although now compounded by “mouse shoulder”, or the problem that I am too short for my desk–my Physics books are of some assistance here). After an hour of waiting of the brownies to finish, I ran down to the Thorn office, dropped off my stuff, and informed them that I would be coming back with hot brownie mush any minute. I ran back to the basement, fished out the brownies, shovelled them into my Tupperware, scrubbed the pan, stuck my CD player, dish cleaning stuff, and containers in the pan, and ran back to the Thorn office, to find that we were missing a front page story–not an uncommon occurrence for us–and that our above-the-fold story was just being started by our News Editor. Because this week was Alcohol Awareness week, I ended up composing a front-page article on alcohol laws in Indiana. Most definitely not front-page material, folks. Although, I will admit that some of the things I found were fascinating. My evening consisted of doing the layout for pages one and three (the news pages) with mucho input from just about everyone else, researching the “article”, and entering changes on edited articles. Every discussion by Jacob about books, and in particular Palahniuk, reminded me that I hadn’t read my assignment for Rhetoric yet. I got out of there some time between 02:00 and 02:30. Adobe, once again, feel free to kiss my ass. The learning curve for your programs should not be have the slope of an exponential function. For rizzle. “InDesign experience” is going on my resume. I managed to leave both a binder and my PDA (hey, I’m not used to carrying one anymore) in the Thorn office, the former of which Luke actually ran up to my room at something ’till 03:00. I have to wonder if it was odd for him, as a junior and a guy, to be on a freshman women’s floor, even if most people were sleeping. I, at least, always feel weird when walking around other people’s floors (and guys’ floors by extension, since all the other floors are guys’ floors…), like I’m invading or something. Maybe I should worry less about getting off campus and worry more about getting off my floor occasionally.

It wasn’t all bad, however. I entered my Physics class to find a very cool and sweet card from Kitty-Cat at my seat waiting for me. In my Rhetoric class, the thesis my group came up with the class before as an “answer” to an analytical question posed by the prof (a different question was given to each group) was considered by him to be the strongest of the eight groups’ in terms of originality and insight. I didn’t get back my Calculus exam from Wednesday, which is great, because I know I did very poorly (and yesterday, that might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back…). I got my Amazon package, and hence my Spooks CD, and have been jamming ever since. Oh, my damn that is a good CD. Bridgy got me a cute card and a bag of Reese’s Cups (Reese’s Pieces and Cups are my favorite candies). My messageboard was graffitied with “Happy Birthday”s, and Amy (a girl on my floor) gave me a Kit Kat and a rainbow-colored note posted on the wall outside my door to commemorate the event. Someone, possibly Jenny the RA, put up ballons and a banner on my door. The lesson in Logic Design wasn’t complicated or hard. I just need to make sure I read the book, and I should be able to get it (sequential circuit building blocks–counters and registers). I finished my lab revision. My brownie mush was hella good, and a hit with everyone. I went to Thorn to find some of a cheese pizza saved on my behalf and a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday”, led by Luke and Bob(by) (the other Editor-in-Chief). I was handed more responsibility than ever this week, and I enjoy what I do, despite the frustrations. I got to give Bob(by) a scalp massage, although he loses points for cutting his hair from its shaggy ‘fro. Our flat-out weird Flipside Editor (the humor section) was actually more funny than annoying, and his mention of Papa John’s garlic-flavored partially-hydrogenated soybean oil brought back good memories of much laughter while working at the theater. Our George Dawkins was blissfully absent. I got a great laugh when Luke was rendered incapable of coherent speech as one of our staff gave him the massage of a lifetime as he tried to do the layout for the Events page (around 01:30). I got the satisfaction of doing the complete layout for the news sections of the paper, and InDesign shan’t kick my ass anymore. Now if only I could tame Photoshop similarly…

The “good” paragraph is much shorter than the “annoying” paragraph, but yesterday was definitely a good day. It was, in fact, a great day.