• 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!

Sitting in the library while I should be essay-writing, I’m presently feeling …

• relieved that the essay-o-doom that I had due this morning is done ― twas slightly rushed but I think I gave the topic a reasonably thorough treatment. I must say, it’s rather cool to be doing a degree where I get to write essays about pictures of naked women ― and no, not that type of picture you dirty sod
• worried that there are two more essays-o-doom due in the next five days, particularly considering my progress is, um, not too great …
• annoyed that the people sitting across from me (in the library, do recall) can’t stop talking to each other, right under a sign saying “silent study area”! Fair enough if you see someone and whisper to them for two minutes, but it’s been a bloody hour!
• happy that in the space of thirty minutes today I randomly ran into three awesome people who I normally never see at uni, all in the library café.
• freaked out (still) by the random stunt I witnessed yesterday: while I was at the main UWA bus stop at 6pm (the crowd waiting there was bigger than normal, not sure why), four guys wearing identical overalls pulled up their car onto the grass median of Stirling Hwy in front of us. They pulled out a jack and spare tyre as if they had a flat … but they didn’t. They started to jack up the car (on grass, so it rose all of 2cm) right after slowly stripping off their overalls to reveal bare chests & boxers. One of them took it all off and paraded nude along the median for a few minutes, then jumped back in the car and drove as the bus came. I am not making this up (honest!). What the?!