• Four thousand word essay written in two days: check.
  (Actually I should be more precise: four thousand words of dribbly and incoherent stream-of-consciousness ranting, check.)
• Impressive Eagles win that I had to miss on account of said essay: check.
• Remaining alive despite having had about 30% of my RDSI (recommended daily sleep intake), due to several factors including said essay: check.
• Change of leadership in Japan that was supposed to confirm one of the points of my thesis, but has actually invalidated it: check.
• Leaving previous employer on account of being generally overworked: check.
• Confusing, horribly eventful, and altogether up-and-down birthday last week — from being surprised by Awesome Helen with cake, to being stressed over not completing stuff on my last afternoon at work, to catching up with other awesome people at lunch, to being forced out of the Social Sciences building by a fire alarm at 8.30 pm, to forgetting to do a bunch of crucial tasks, to ROFLing at Adam’s take on Monty Python: check.

Now with all that out of the way, I feel like I might actually get something done now!

So now that I have a functional blog … maybe I should do what all the other crazy kids do and use it as a diary-type thing so that anyone who reads this can see how shockingly engrossed I am with myself. In the spirit of narcissism, then, the last week of my life looked somewhat like this:

• I finished all three assesments that I had … except that one was a day late, which is the first time I’ve handed anything late, so I feel all naughty and rebellious now. Actually, I lie, I’m just scared about how much the deducted marks will hurt me. In my defence, it wasn’t my fault! At least, not entirely …
• I spent a day at work, configuring printers, loading paper, and playing with our twiki. Alas, it would have been more fun if I had more stuff to write. The Arts student in me wants to write, dang it!
• I received a funky certificate to say, “yay Hourann, you’re cool!” because I spent a few days mentoring first-year students earlier this year. Reminds me of when I was given certificates in high school …
• I attended a lecture in which we were told that our set of assessments for that unit followed the pattern of the Tour de France. I don’t see the resemblance.
• And most importantly, I received the iPod mini that I’d bought on eBay a few days earlier. I am now torn between the cynical “oh look I have succumb to materialism and Apple’s idea of cool” ideas in the back of my mind, and the very superficial “oh, look, shiny!” that dominates the rest of my thinking.