Yesterday was a good day. After two pretty good lectures, one on women’s history of Australia, and one on the history of environmental impacts from European settlers (both delivered by the same history professor from UQ) I begrudgingly went to the library to keep writing my paper. Instead, Kelsey C and I looked up places to stay for our Spring break in a couple weeks, and settled on a place on the Gold Coast called Noosa. We’re going to stay @ a hostel that is 26 bucks a night (for a 5 person villa w/ tv refrigerator and kitchen, that is a two minute walk to the beach. Omg. Win.) It’s about 3 hours north of Brizzy, and a 40 dollar round trip (we’re taking G.E.D.’s free busride to C. Gorge from Brisbane the day after we get back from Noosa).
After we finished scoping that out and decided that we would find 3 other people in the near future, I decided that I would get on skype for the first time in a month (apart from a little convo to the parents to tell them I was alive this past weekend), and chatted with my girlfriend for 3 hours. It was amazing. It made me happy. (So happy in part because she made me realize that the paper that has been consuming my life and stressing me out for the past two weeks was halfway done over a week before it was due, which is for all intents and purposes, a first in my academic career). Also, I love her.
I took the bus home and distracted my host brothers from their homework by telling stories and roughhousing for an hour or two (taking a half hour break to watch the Simpsons in-between) before eating a delicious pasta creation of Donna’s. (It was chicken and sundried tomato with bacon and sweet chilli sauce. I ate about 3 pints of it for lunch today).
We ate a delicious chocolate cake and rice pudding for Tom’s birthday (A fact which I learned about 40 minutes before dinner. He told me it was his birthday after I got home and I didn’t believe him. Partly because of the context. I was giving him a wet willie and he told me that I had to be nice to him because it was his birthday.
“Bullshit” I said.
“No really, it is”
“Yeah yeah, I’ve heard that one”
Then Sam confirmed Tom’s story. Their birthday’s are five days apart. I wonder when Donna and Matthew’s anniversary is? Sometime in the end of May or early June is my guess. Anyways. Tom and I then gave Sam wet willie’s. One person on each ear. That’s what you get for sticking up for your older brother I guess. (I introduced them to the concept of wet Willie’s. They love/hate it)
So we ate cake and then Tom and I talked about girls while we were supposed to be doing homework and Sam put a fake spider on my desk because I told him a story about how I don’t like spiders. Real funny, kid. That son of a bitch. I feel I should mention the story now:
Three days ago I went to go pee in the middle of the night, and as I went to go to the toilet I saw this flash of brown go across the glass of the shower door. I took a closer look and I saw a couple of legs sticking out of the metal framework near the wall. Then the legs started to move upward. I don’t like spiders but I had to see more than just the legs. So I blew on the framework. In about 1/8 of a second, the spider shot out from the framework, around the hinge of the glass door, and stopped halfway between the metal framework and the edge of the door on the opposite side of the glass.
Fuck that is a fast spider. I went pee and went back to bed. The next morning I went in for my shower and scanned the metal framework on the inside. I thought I saw the legs sticking out at the bottom on the inside of the glass so I turned the water on (while standing outside the shower) and tried to point it at the corner of the framework. The shower head didn’t reach that far so I cupped water in my hands and tossed it into the corner. Nothing happened. So I stepped into the shower and bent down to look @ the corner. It was a screw that was sticking out. Not legs. Whew, I said to myself. I turned around to take my shower
AND THE FUCKING SPIDER WAS ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE GLASS IN FRONT OF ME. It’s a good thing I was naked in the shower because may have been need for a carpet cleanup crew otherwise.
Just to give you a mental picture (mostly for my girl Erika Harris on this one, seeing has how I don’t have a photo) the diameter of this spider’s legs are only slightly larger than a 50 cent piece (minimal by Australian standards) but the thing can move probably about 10 inches per second. Squashing the goddamn thing would be near impossible. Anyways. I showered while looking at the bloody arachnid the entire time (it made it real easy to not go over the 4 min limit that the Aussie government suggests to conserve water) and for some reason didn’t really feel the need to do my pushups and situps and yoga that I normally do to wake myself up in the morning. In fact, I was wide awake on the bus and even talked with Katie and Zoe on the bus to school (normally we nod and smile at each other and cease verbal communication until the free coffee @ the G.E.D. classroom is obtained).
SO ANYWAYS, after Donna made Tom go to bed because he wasn’t doing any of his homework, I sat up for about 3 hours and wrote two sections of my paper. It was super easy because I had already read everything, and it was all in language that anyone can understand, so if you have to block quote something, you block quote it…….and then put a sentence after it to recap what was said, and maybe another to say why it was said…….and then YOUR DONE. It is so weird. Normally I have to spend pages deciphering the poetic implications of the language or alternative meanings, or debate about why and where things are mentioned in the literature. And I have to argue a point.
I just have to say shit here. I say it and I’m done. I state like its fact (cause it is I guess) and then that’s it.
I submitted my intro to Peter and he told me to be less biased in it. Meaning that I shouldn’t have an opinion during the opening. You just give background and say what you will discuss. It takes two seconds. And my brain doesn’t hurt at all. I’ve written seven pages and I’ve essentially just been regurgitating what other people say I haven’t had to really think for myself at all. Crazy.
Today, Lauren convinced me that she wanted to write the last section before our conclusion, and I conceded because she had an amazingly well constructed outline of it, and even if her grammar or sentence structure is complete crap, (which is isn’t) it will maybe take 5 minutes to edit. Then I just have to write a page conclusion and WE. ARE. DONE. A full seven days before it is due. Crazy.
The other funny story from today is that I managed to set my family’s home alarm system off. I got in the door, and supposedly have 1.5 minutes to put in the code, so I go to my room to put down my backpack and umbrella (it has been pouring down rain consistently for the past 60 hours). That was a mistake. The thing started beeping angrily upstairs so I went up to put in the code and it got even angrier after I came up the stairs. I went to punch in the code and all hell broke loose.
I’ve never been on a nuclear submarine, but I’m pretty sure that the nuke warning on one of those is much more subtle than this fucking device. My ears were bleeding, so I tried to call Donna on her mobile to ask what to do, but the power had been out since this morning (unbeknownst to me) to I had to parade around the neighborhood at 1 in the afternoon to try and find someone’s phone I could use. By the time I got a neighbor’s cell phone the company had called Donna and she figured that I had screwed up and told them that she was coming to check it out and they didn’t need to send anyone. I made the mistake of hitting the “off” button before punching in the code. You punch in the code, and then hit off, which is different from setting it, to set it, you hit set, then punch in the code.
Honestly I’d rather fight an axe murderer in hand to hand combat than figure out that fucking thing @ 3 in the morning.
When Donna got home she told me the reason it freaked out on me was that I went in to my room, instead of going straight upstairs which makes it freak out automatically. Great. Anyways. Made for a good story to tell people over drinks sometime.
Tonight I am going out to dinner and then to a showing of Avenue Q downtown. I get to enjoy it because I can’t write anything til Lauren gets her part of the paper done. PARRRRRTY!
Live is so good sometimes.
P.S.
I described the spider to Tom and Sam and they told me it was probably a juvenile of one of these guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRV4d9LCawU
This video, might I add, was sent to me by Ben Bryant the week we got here. That fucker.
Miss you all and I am looking forward to being home!
-Chris
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