Spring Day and lights out.

April 19, 2003

I started a website update yesterday afternoon, but I stopped it for some reason and quit without saving. I just wasn’t really in the mood to write a big update. To tell you the truth, I’m not really in the mood to do it now, either, but it’s been a few days and I thought I should live up to my responsibilities. I’ve just been in a funk the last few days, and I’m not really sure why. I feel like I’ve gone through the last month or so in a daze, and this week has felt even moreso like that. I think I’m just on autopilot, and I’m not sure what I should do now. I’m starting my big huge Quant project that’s due a week from today, and then later I have to get to work on my next draft of my independent project paper…all sorts of good stuff. But the fact remains that I just feel a big funky. Most of the days this week I’ve been a little confused about what day it was, and I really had to concentrate to make it through some of the days without going nuts. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, confused, not sure what’s going on, and only then realize that I’m in bed and I should be sleeping. One time a week ago or so, I was taking a napo on my couch, and I woke up, got up because I siddenly thought I had to do something, bounded across the room, then realized that I’d been asleep, maybe dreaming. I think I’m either going nuts, and I’m pretty sure it’s all my work that’s doing it to me. Ug. I’m at that point where I have about three or four more things to do before I graduate, but it’s been such a long hard road that I don’t even want to do those last few things. Too bad they’re all substantial parts of my grades or I’d just leave them be. I don’t have any finals, so these really are the last things I have to do before I walk up on that stage and get a piece of paper worth more than the next car I drive.

It’s hasn’t been all fun and games, though. Wait, that’s not fun and games. OK, so there has been some fun and games. Monday I’m sitting in Commons at dinner, and *bink*, the lights all shut off. We rarely lose power on this campus, and my computer has only been reset once or twice in four years from power dips or outages, so this was a big thing. I go back to my dorm, find that the power is out there, too. My room is especially quiet since al the electronics are off, so I just sit around for awhile. I have no books to read, no games to play, and definitely no TV to watch or computer to play around on. I ended up just taking a long shower before work, though I figured that I probably didn’t need to go. I ended up going because I had a paper due on Tuesday, and thankfully I’d transferred it to my laptop when I’d gone outside earlier in the day and wrote three pages of it out in the sun. ITS ended up having power but no Internet access, so I wrote a couple more pages and then went home an hour early. Power was still off on most of the residential side of campus, so I just sat around in the dark with a bunch of people from the floor. We had emergency lighting in the hallways, but it wasn’t really bright enough to read. I went outside for awhile and sat in the cool air with my friend Julie and some of her classmates, but after awhile we got bored and went and played cards with some of the other people from my floor. Around 10:30 or so, we heard that the field in front of Dan and Heather’s dorm was the happening place, so most of us trekked over there and found most of the school out partying. I stayed for awhile and had a great time out there, but around midnight I went back to my room and found that the power had come back on around 11:15, but since it was pretty late to keep working on my paper, I went to bed. That was literally the most exciting thing that happened to me all week. Tuesday was slow because I had only two classes, and then Wednesday was Spring Day, which means no classes at all.

Spring Day is sort of a love-hate relationship for me. It’s supposed to be this big, organized event for students to relax, but no one ever puts much effort into booking good bands, so every year I’ve gone the people that have come have pretty much been crap. I was kind of looking forward to hauling my chair outside and sitting in the sun with Dan, drinking some beers and listening to the music from a good distance away, but alas, the weather didn’t hold and it got back down into the 40’s with heavy winds. Not a good day to be outside, not a great day to sit outside. I had some ice cream and popcorn, entered the raffle (I won a hula hoop), and then went back inside for the rest of the day. I had work to do, but again, I just wasn’t in the mood to work, and instead I watched the last three movies that I had rented. No Mom, nothing on campus was open, so I couldn’t have gone to the Field and Career Center. I watched Crocodile Dundee, Mission: Impossible, and Mission: Impossible 2. I’d seen Dundee many times before, and Mission once, but never the last one. In short: good action movie, bad film. Had nothing to do with the whole Mission: Impossible theme, either, just an excuse for Tom Cruise to look cool at the hands of legendary action director John Woo. Mind you, I wasn’t complaining, but it gave whole new meaning to the phrase “mindless action flick.”

So no more movies for me. I returned them, didn’t rent any more. I have too muchg work to do in the next two weeks. Come to think of it, two weeks from this upcoming Monday I’ll be completely done with all my work except for the arduous task of packing up all my stuff. At least I don’t have to haul the couch away this year–I found someone else to do it since they’re taking it.

On one final note, Dan was driving back from Madison today and made some fresh venison. Next time someone asks him if he hunts, he can respond in the affirmative and that his weapon of choice is a 1997 Plymouth Voyager minivan. Hope his insurance covers it. Oh yes, and speaking of hunting, I went and watched the first campus movie since my freshmen year, Bowling For Columbine. What a fantastic movie. It sure deserved the Oscar, and it opened up my eyes to a lot of problems that plague the United States regarding guns. Michael Moore is really god about not explicitly stating his opinion about things, but through his editing and the questions that he asks, you really see where he’s headed. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely something you should watch.

Well, I think I’m going to go back to work, or look for something to make for dinner, either way. Have a good weekend everyone, and be thinking of me as I slave away tomorrow. Cheers.

Posted in Geekery, General