Sunday, 07 June 2009

  • What Did I Do Today??

    Final exams.

    I had been composing a long, winded explanation for you all as to why I had been so long absent from my blog but finally decided that sentence pretty much summed up my paragraphs of excuses.  ;)

    *****

    Want to know what my Sunday schedule has been today?

    6:30 AM: My first action of the day was to kill mt alarm clock by hurling it at brick wall.  It's astounding, really, the sheer volume a tiny battery-powered alarm clock barely the size of my palm can generate.
    6:32 AM: I actually got out of bed, then promptly leapt back in as soon as my skin experienced the dramatic difference in temperatures between my bed (warm and toasty) and my room which had (quite alarmingly) acquired the frigid temperatures of Antarctica overnight.
    6:32 (and 10 seconds) AM: I ventured to extend arm outside of the "safety zone" and switched on my most awesome heater beside my bed.
    6:35 AM: I determined by cautious experimentation that the air near the heater was actually significantly warmer than in previous minutes, indicating that the room would soon be back to normal living temperatures.  Twisting my dunna (that's Aussie for "comforter," by the way) around me, I groped towards the foot of my bed and grabbed the fuzzy and oh-so-vibrantly-orange bathrobe Jill gave me.  Time for a shower.
    6:36 AM: I looked like Frankenstein's bride.  With disasterous hair, bleary eyes, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and a toothbrush bursting out of the pockets on my shockingly orange bathrobe, I staggered haphazardly down the hallway towards the showers.  Wouldn't you know it, though: Jess had already claimed one of the two showers, and I judged from the melodious tunes issuing over the shower door that it was the "good" shower, too.

    *Sidenote: there are two showers at my end of C-1: the "good" shower and the "evil, sucky, why-do-we-even-HAVE-that-shower?" shower.

    Now, the distinction between these two showers would (on the surface) appear fairly minimal: one has what we refer to as the "drought-proof" shower head while the other has the "drought" head.

    "Drought-proof" is pure awesomeness.  It's basically a big disk about the size of a teacup saucer, half an inch thick, and absolutely riddled with holes.  It pours an deluge of water down on top of you, and (as an additional bonus) uses a different water heater than the "evil, sucky, why-do-we-even-HAVE-that-shower?" shower, meaning  that you aren't either burned to death or frozen solid every time someone upstairs flushes a toilet or takes a shower.

    "Drought" on the other hand is one of those shower heads becoming increasingly popular among Australian politicians.  These little (emphasis on the word little) showerheads have been equipped with a handy dandy waterflow regulator as an attempt to combat the drought issue Australians have been dealing with for the past decade.  The result is that you stand under an absolutely tiny (think the dent inside a teacup saucer...you know, the one that holds the teacup?) showerhead that dribbles a meager pittance of water onto your freezing, soapy head.  Clearly, Australian politicans don't use these things otherwise they would have long ago figured out that you use an additional fifteen or twenty litres of water just trying to rinse your hair out than you would with the "good" showerhead.  Oh, and by the way, the water handles on the "evil" shower are incredibly tempermental which means that your time in the water is spent at the whim of the water heater.  Who knows?  At the flush of a toilet, it may decide to become scalding, or it just might decide to see how close it can go to 0 degrees without actually freezing the pipes.*

    So, there I was, at 6:36 AM, standing on the tiles in the bathroom, staring at the "evil" shower.

    6:37 AM: Taking a deep breath, I walked into the "evil" shower.
    6:41 AM: I swiftly excited the "evil" shower, and raced back down the hall towards my room.  Standing in my bedroom, I surveyed the damage to my person: patches of red, burned skin and blue fingers, toes and lips could be dealt with, but I was going to have a harder time recovering from the shampoo bubbles still clingingly determinedly to my hair.
    6:42 AM: "To heck with it," I thought, grabbed my water bottle and marched back to the bathroom where I gracelessly stuck my head under the sink faucet and, using my water bottle to get the tricky bits, attempted to rinse the remainder of soap suds from my brunette hair.
    6:45 AM: At least most of the suds were out...
    6:46 AM: While I appreciated the efforts of my radiator, my bedroom was still on the decidedly chilly side, so I pulled on a pair of warm sweatpants and my favourite CHP sweatshirt and headed down to the common room to make a cup of coffee. 
    6:50 AM: With a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a toasted bagel from the bread basket in the other, I walked back into my bedroom which was finally starting to heat up to tolerable temperatures.
    6:55 AM: I finished tidying up my small square of a bedroom and settled myself at my desk for some study.

    .....studying, studying, studying, studying, studying.....

    8:45 AM: I replaced my sweats with some dressier apparel, pocketed my keycard and made my way out of Weerona, past the tennis courts, over the rugby oval, and across Gipps Road to St. Bridgid's, the local Catholic parish.  (The ushers love me there, by the way, because they think American accents sound so funny.)
    10:08 AM: Basically reverse the above paragraph... ;)
    10:15 AM: Score!  Pancakes, crumpets, bananas, strawberries, and hot chocolate for brekkie!
    10:45 AM: Socializing, newspaper-reading (you can't imagine how oblivious I am to the outside world here, except for when it comes to the Sunday paper), and a full tummy later, I made my way across the courtyard from A-Block back to my room in C-Block.
    10:46 AM: I turned my iTunes on shuffle and settled myself at my desk again.

    .....studying, studying, studying, studying, studying.....

    1:30 PM: Snags-and-Steak Barbie!  *Thank goodness for Sunday S.R. Barbies.  The Senior Residents put on snags-and-steak barbies every Sunday to help us get through the long interval between breakfast and dinner at 6 PM and everyone loves them for it!*
    2:00 PM: An extra snag wrapped in a paper napkin (to counter "the munchies" later), I headed back to my room.

    .....studying, studying, studying, studying, studying.....

    2:45 PM: A quick glance out my window revealed that the sun had actually managed to break free from the repressive clouds that had been covering the skies for the past three weeks.  I eagerly seized the opportunity to get some vitamin D, grabbed up my books and iPod and headed for the picnic table by Weerona East.

    .....studying, studying, studying, studying, studying.....

    4:20 PM: The sun had disappeared behind the clouds once again, and a few threatening raindrops had made some lovely splashes on the ground beside me, so I retreated back to C-Block.

    .....studying, studying, studying, some green tea, studying.....

    6:15 PM: A rumbling in my stomach indicated that, regardless of the fact that I'd simply been studying all day, I was still in need of some extra energy, so I drifted back to the dining hall in A-Block for some sustinence.
    6:50 PM: Revived by green beans, potatoes, and ravioli, I cleared my dishes away, said "Ciao" to my tablemates and disappeared once again into my room.

    .....studying, studying, hot coffee, studying, studying.....

    12:05 PM: My brain feels too full to read another line from my anatomy book or to attempt another equilibrium equation.  Solution?  Update my blog.

    ;)

    And here we are: it's 12:23 PM.  I've studied over 14 hours today.  I think I'm entitled to call it quits and hit the hay.  Love!

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