jampy

There is another girl in my group of friends by the name of Heather. I'm used to being introduced to people familiar with her, and not me, in ways that distinguish my identity from hers. This time I was introduced as 'Sensible Heather', but I misheard it as 'Sentinel Heather'. I know which I prefer. Perhaps, if I started introducing myself as Sentinel Heather, people would be more likely to remember my name. Or perhaps I just need to develop a fucking personality, so that morons who should know better will stop introducing me as Julia.

The Gravedigger Puts On The Forceps
Attendance has been quite a problem for me in the past, which is why I was maintaining a perfect attendance this semester. After missing a few classes due to war-related disgruntlement and illness, I became convinced that I had missed too much, would be unable to motivate myself to turn up in future, and thus was ultimately doomed to failure. Instead, I showed up to my English tutorial fifteen minutes late, took a seat and then immediately made an insightful comment (which the tutor said after class must have been some kind of record), then made further insightful comments in my Ancient History tutorial about the Nicolet chapter on libertas that I'd read. I also learned that, although I am completely unable to do the trilled r that it seems absolutely everyone can do, I have a remarkably clear uvular trill (the french r) which my Linguistics lecturer is completely unable to do. I don't live for the approbation of others, I simply welcome it.

I had register training yesterday at work. It seems that, in addition to not being allowed to wear jewellery in my nostril and helix piercings, I'll have to tuck in my shirt. I hate tucking in my shirt. My shape could be described as extremely curvy, but tucking in my shirt conceals the fact that I have curves and instead makes me look like a boiled egg on stilts. My mother describes the effect as 'matronly'. (In addition to this, they didn't actually have my size. They showed us the order form the other day, which had sizes up to 26 or something, but didn't actually have anything above a 14 left in stock. I tried on a 14, but it was unbecomingly tight. A 16 would have done it. They're going to order one in for me, but in the meantime I have to wear the purplish-blue shirt I happened to be wearing yesterday. It's fucking stupid to have a strict uniform policy and then make it so difficult to obtain the uniform that I can't wear it on my first day.) I'm rather annoyed that they didn't mention this aspect of the uniform before hiring me, just as they should have mentioned the piercing limits. Mind you, there are two other girls at work with nose piercings. Neither of them were informed of this rule in the interview, so I'm wondering if they're not going to enforce it. Interestingly, the manager has only mentioned the rule in relation to me, and I wonder if I could claim discrimination, since I doubt they'll insist the Indian girl doesn't wear hers. When we were discussing it on break, I suggested that I could claim I had converted due to my devotion to Bollywood movies, and there ensued a lengthy discussion of Dil Chahta Hai, which I love to bits. I may be getting a copy of the soundtrack soon.

The shop opens on Saturday, and it's been thoroughly publicised so it looks like it'll be enormously busy. I don't feel at all confident about my skill on the registers, and I'm concerned that I'll get flustered and accidentally sell bourbon to a four-year-old. Just like what happened in Clerks. The coolest, or possibly most alarming, thing is that the time clock works by scanning my fingerprint. I type in my employee number, and then put my fingertip on the scanner. It's delightfully spy-ish, but also somewhat disturbing that they have my fingerprint on record.

If Only...
One: Does anyone know how the war's going?
Two: It's been called off because of rain. They were expecting a desert war, and now there's a mud war... "Damn, now we have to get out the bikinis..."

There's a great contentment that comes at the end of a day spent well. You know you're learned when you read Cicero and George Eliot in one day. I also spent some time with my friends, saw Daredevil (which rocked) with Andrew and went for a run with my sister. It was a marvellous run, I reached a point at which my legs were raring to go but my lungs couldn't handle it. I also discovered that I can run fast enough to freak my sister out. For a while now, whenever I've been walking along I've had an urge to simply lean forward and execute a perfect somersault. Yesterday, while Abby and I were walking through the park on our way home, I tried it. My back felt bruised from the contact with the ground, but the feeling passed and didn't include the nasty muscle-wrenching, vertebrae-out-of-alignment pain I associate with any kind of acrobatics. Easier still were the rolls I learned in Aikido so many years ago and practiced over and over again, in which one rolls over the top of one's shoulder, rolls diagonally over one's back and exits the roll in such a position that one is able to simply leap up and walk away. I want to do some more rolls, and preferably take up Aikido again. My desire to kick ass and be agile may have something to do with the number of superhero movies I've been seeing lately. And yes, I may one day learn kickboxing.

Today, however, has been less productive. Claire is practicing administering a particular intelligence test for her course. She's had the kit at home, sitting ominously in a briefcase in the loungeroom. Last night it began to make small, regular beeping sounds, which I traced to the case. Holding it upright, I undid the locks, whereupon it stopped beeping. Naturally, when I opened it I found that the beeping had been produced by a $5 stopwatch included in the kit rather than the bomb I had half-jokingly speculated to be the cause. It was my turn to be tested this morning, and I had a lot of fun with the test, apart from the beastly block patterning section. We had not yet completed the test by the time I had to start getting ready for uni, so I missed a few sections. It appeared, when I was putting on my socks and shoes, that I would be late for my Ancient History tutorial. Then I realised that I was wearing bright pink socks with olive green trousers, and felt ill at the contrast. I had to find my new purple socks which provided a far mellower contrast. I have trouble wearing green pants at all. With my synaesthesia, they're a bit over three, and are far more on the side of evil than I'd like. I don't like odd numbers, unless they're cubes, a fact my mother noticed while we were comparing number preferences and assocations. Four is the best number, and is red. This is possibly why I wear a lot of red t-shirts. What with my sock crisis, I ended up being half an hour late for my history lecture and elected not to attend. I therefore went to sit and chat with my friends, and therefore missed my next two classes. All this, in third week. Until last Friday, I hadn't missed any classes at all. So much for this semester.

Abby plays with Heather's hair
H: Abby, that is so annoying! If you keep doing it, I'm going to have to stab you.
A: Well, you were going to do it anyway.

The Week In Brief

• Got a job. Crowed about new job. Had two training sessions for said job.


• Fiddled with my timetable. Managed to switch English courses online, blessedly free from the necessity of sucking up to Evil Bastard English Co-ordinator. Picked up my $65 course readers, discovered that 400 page Ancient History reader includes only ancient sources, and modern articles must be obtained from the library. Found my Heinous Bitch Linguistics Lecturer had scheduled the two tutorials (for the class of sixty) at 2pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I had just changed my Ancient tute to this Wednesday timeslot as the 2pm Tuesday time had me in classes for five hours straight. Didn't think it'd be too much to ask for Linguistics to schedule at least one of the tutorials on a Friday, seeing as they're just about the only department in the Arts faculty to make students show up for lectures that day. Spoke to lecturer about inability to attend, and she shrieked at me to change my timetable to accomodate her inconsiderate timetabling. As Jack so eloquently put it, it's really unbelievable the amount of administrative ass-banditry we have to put up with.


• War broke out. (I find this phrase curious but useful. Surely the combatant parties should play into it somehow? Perhaps, "The Coalition of the Willing broke war out today," the phrase conjuring for me an image of a glass-fronted box such as the kind fire axes are kept in.) Suffered stress-related digestive ailment - when I say that war gives me the shits, don't assume I'm speaking figuratively. Protested on Thursday and Sunday. Found that astonishing numbers of passionate, socially aware people were becoming apathetic and even critical of anti-war protesters. You're all so naive, they say. It's clear Howard doesn't care about public opinion. However, I reply, I don't really expect Howard to pack the troops up and send them home. It'd be nice, but his actions so far suggest it's not going to hapen. I simply want to express my opposition. I think it's better to do that than sit around bitching about current events and fretting about the future.


• Finished tunic or, more accurately, completed most of tunic then begged mother to do visible stitching ten minutes before feast was due to start. Attended Newcomers' Feast. Made the mistake of asking Caleb about the cloved lemon he was holding, so he gave it to me. Never again. Made idiot of self in attempt to give lemon away, an attempt made both surly and frantic by my acute embarrassment and urgent desire to visit the ladies'. (Relived embarrassment for rest of weekend. I can keep this up for some time, mind you. I still occasionally feel like an idiot about things I did when I was six.) Tried to help out in kitchen when fuse powering both sole cooktop and sole oven blew. Never again.


• Voted in State Election. The same steady-as-she-goes, tough-on-crime idiot got in. At least it wasn't the Conservative Asshole. Had significant difficulty discovering the outcome of the election the following morning as four networks ran constant updates on the war, one in Spanish and then Greek, while the other showed children's wildlife shows.


• Plotted changing templates, as this one is clearly making life difficult for a good many people, including myself. Also researching hosting possibilities in order to free readers from the tyranny of popups.


• Picked up $35 CD player as a result of cola promotion. Can't find my CD wallet anywhere, so I'm stuck with the shabtacular promotional one they gave me. Must find CDs so I can listen to American Beauty soundtrack and life will seem poignant and beautiful.


• Fell into torpor on Sunday night shortly after posting blog entry. Suspected causes include stress, exhaustion and not enough gin.

I started the training for my new job yesterday with my Responsible Service of Alcohol course. I quite enjoyed it but it took six hours, the woman was a bit vague, and I managed to get the chair that was broken on one side so I developed back pain. When I left at the end of the course, I checked my voicemail and found a message from my sister saying that the war had started, bombs were flying, and the protest was on at 5. I raced home, changed, and made my way into town. I was 45 minutes late, so by the time I got to the city I had missed most of the speeches. (Why do protest organisers think people need an hour of speeches to get riled up? If we didn't know about the issue, or didn't care, we wouldn't have been there.)

Since Claire was a marshal she couldn't meet me, but within a minute of arriving at the scene I had seen Justin and Francis, followed quickly by Tom who led me to Julia and Kristin. We were in about the third row, so we may have been on TV. I don't like going to protests alone, it tends to feel pathetic and lonely, which is why it was so nice to meet up with Kristin, who also had no interest in being in the middle of a riot. We made a pact to get each other out if things got nasty, but they didn't. Unfortunately, some idiots threw eggs and red paint at our (anti-war) Premier's car. It should be noted that these events took place nowhere near the march route, and to hold that as representative of the protest is ridiculous. Of course, that's exactly what the news media have done. The only other nastiness was after we'd dispersed and were making our way back through Pitt Street to the Town Hall area of the city, past many balconied pubs with drunken stockbrokers who jeered and called "Go the War!". Idiots. There was no physical violence, but such provocation is clearly stupid. I wish for peace.

The Kiss
After three soul-destroying hours of classes, I headed to the library to get a head start on my tutorial readings for next week. My back aching, my eyes bleary, I scanned the shelves for the text I was assigned and found there to be about eight copies. I discarded the first as it was littered with pencil markings, then flipped through a second for similar taint. Instead, I was greeted by a glinting as a bookmark of Klimt's The Kiss peeked up at me from the pages, a glimmer amidst the humdrum.

I'm currently working on ideas for spreading random joy and senseless beauty, in ways that guarantee speedy discovery. We need them now.

Happy Days Are Here Again
I find it strange the way fortune seems to run in series of good and bad, and it can all hinge on a single day. On Saturday, I was unemployed, unfit, my room was a mess and I was feeling cranky after working through a heinous fight with my boyfriend. On Sunday, Andrew too me to see Saathiya, which I rather enjoyed, and we had a midnight bed-picnic. I fell asleep in his arms, with my mouth tasting of Sheridan's Coffee Liqueur and Custard Eclairs.

This morning on the way to breakfast, I had a call from the guy who interviewed me on Monday. He had said he'd get back to me by the end of the week, and when I didn't hear from him I figured I'd flunked another job interview. I felt nothing, no disappointment or hope, as I answered the phone. But he offered me a job, and I have three training sessions coming up before the store opens on the 29th. I avoided writing about the job in detail before because I didn't want to jinx it. It's at a big chain bottle shop two minutes from my house. With them, I get discounts at all the other businesses in the chain, heaps of training (including in Responsible Service of Alcohol, which you also need in order to do bar work), and genuine opportunities for advancement since they're expanding heaps in my state in the next year or two. Since they're hiring so many people, they're flexible. I know, ask me in six months' time and I might say I hate it. But for now I'm overjoyed.

And since I'm in such a good frame of mind about employment, the one thing that has been stressing me out for months, everything else seems shiny as well. Little things currently contributing to my joy include my most-of-a-tunic in a beautiful shade of soft blue cotton, and the fact that I have nine of the fifteen coupons required to qualify me for a CD player for the low, one-time price of $35. Mind you, the tunic is for the Newcomers' Feast next Saturday, which happens to be the same day I have Induction, and have to vote in the State Election. It's good to have to do more things than usual because people think you're worth paying. I feel important. It's all good.

I had an awful time last night. No, I don't want to talk about it. My tears have dried upon my cheeks, but I feel cracked and hollow.

My team came second in the Trivia Night. I might add that we would have come first, had not the other team obtained a player additional to the limit of four imposed at the start of the night. I would be more inclined to gripe, had we not received really damn good prizes. I came away with a $25 Borders gift card which I intend to spend today as it is their 20% Student Discount Day, as well as a Lego Star Wars Mini Model Set. I now have an X-Wing Fighter. I put it together at lunchtime yesterday, and attracted a small crowd.

While I'm in the city today I also need to visit fabric shops for tunic material. I've been avoiding it a bit, I think, because I'm very bad at decisions like that and I'm concerned that it'll cost a lot of money. I don't want to spend more than about $3 per metre, but it's quite possible that they won't have anything I want for that little. My fingers are crossed.

I love my linguistics course. We spent an hour yesterday swearing to figure out the rules behind Expletive Infixation, why you'll say abso-fucking-lutely but not ab-fucking-solutely. Lots of fun. It's assessed entirely by problem sets, so I don't have to worry about a heinous exam at the end of the year. My Ancient History course is great too, but the English courses are leaving me cold. I'm thinking of changing from my Media Studies course to the Medieval one. Unfortunately, the one I have no choice about is painfully boring as well.

I managed to be ten minutes late for my first class of the semester. I blame the bus: I arrived at the stop two minutes early, but I've noticed lately that the buses arrive seven minutes early, and that's by the time on the ticket validator not whatever crazy time I happen to have on my phone or watch. I waited twenty minutes for the next bus, hoping that it would be as early as its predecessor had been, and would go quickly in order to get me to my lecture on time. Not so. The bus not only went slowly, but actually stopped to change drivers. Fortunately, this time, the replacement driver was actually waiting at the stop. On previous occasions the driver has got off the bus and walked away, leaving the passengers to sit in an unattended bus for fifteen minutes until the relief driver shows up.

I got to uni and hurried to my class. Both the lecturers are fascinating and I can't wait to get started on the courses. My Phonetics and Phonology course promises to add a dash of scientificity to a program of study otherwise dripping with essays and subjectivity, and my Ancient History course continues to be the candy in my academic lunchbox. (I know that's cheesy, but I've been looking forward to it far more than my English courses, largely because of my demoralising experience dealing with a member of the English faculty, which leaves me doubting my ability and enthusiasm for my major, which is all rather disturbing. Claire suggested the Treat Hypothesis this morning, and I found it enough of a relief to adopt it into my thinking.)

Last night's tunic-making workshop went well, and I left knowing how to measure and mark out the fabric, although I had no tunic myself. I opted instead to simply observe and help Rhiannon, a chicky I met at the meeting, and I now have plans to make my tunic of a deep and rusty red, as well as one for Abby in a deep blue. I plan to take her to the upcoming feast, you see, as she has been extremely enthusiastic about them every time I've gone in the past and at some point I made a vague agreement about taking her to the next one I attended. We could both rely on hospit, I suppose, but I've been in the SCA for three years and haven't yet made anything, which I find more than a bit pathetic. In addition, as lovely as it is that there are clothes provided for people to borrow, Abby and I are both big girls and the selection doesn't generally extend very far in that direction. And it would be nice to have something of my very own.

Tonight is Trivia Night. I am a bit sad that the game isn't running, but I suppose I can't hold it against the GM as he also happens to be the person running the trivia. My fiendish question shall be included, and I can't wait to see if people get it. It should be a good night, but teams are of four and we don't really have a team yet, although Andrew and I seem to have dragged Benj to our team, based upon the fact that he is Andrew's bitch. If you say something often enough, it becomes truth.

What with all this stuff, I'm feeling ridiculously busy. It's a bit of a pain that with study comes social life. I needed the social life much more in the holidays, when I was bored and feeling crap about the fact that no-one will pay me to do things. Now I feel hectic, and wonder if I have the time for lectures amongst my social obligations. Gainful employment seems an impossibility.

Today has been a stupid, annoying day. My superstitions have been proven correct and have kicked me in the ass once again. I probably should quit my bitching since there is some benefit there, but it's plenty annoying. Detail later, if I can overcome my irritation sufficiently to write about it. I'm off to jump in puddles on my way to an Arts and Sciences night, where I will learn to make a T-tunic and thus shall be able to participate in SCA events by virtue of my possession of garb.

Being in a six year relationship by the age of twenty puts me in a fairly small category. People are not only puzzled that we got together when I was thirteen and he was eighteen, but also by the fact that we haven't broken up yet. How do you do it, they ask. Unfortunately, there is no way to answer this that won't sound smug, especially since my answer is a fairly simple one involving not breaking up with your loved one. The fact that Andrew is the most wonderful person I've ever met plays into it in many ways. I'm equally puzzled about how people can love someone or even just like them enough to consider letting them into their pants, and then drop them like a hot brick come Tuesday.

On-again-off-again couples confuse me even more. Sure, I tell them, we argue all the time. Once every couple of years we have a fight serious enough to discuss the possibility of breaking up, or just 'taking a break'. Once, relatively early in the relationship, we even attempted to take a break. I think we had phone contact the next day, and it was a huge relief for both of us. I've had some people make patronising, insulting comments about codependency, and I know they just don't get it. I'm not the type to pick on single people, and I don't assume that everyone is better off paired up. But the simple fact is that Andrew and I are both happiest when we see as much of each other as possible, and it's only the financial problems that keep us from living in sin like we should.

That said, there's a base level of snarkiness, whereby we have the occasional pathetic little argument about something that doesn't matter to either of us. Kath, a friend's wonderful mother, characterised the difference between good relationship conflict and the bad kind as being whether the people involved are just tired, busy people, or if there is genuinely a power struggle of some kind involved. Now, power struggles have never been much of a problem for Andrew and I. Most of the time, when we're aware of tension we take it out by wrestling - we're considering purchasing some gym mats at some point, before we break the bed. Needless to say, it's a lot more fun than it was in the old single bed. Snarky tension is a bit more difficult to disperse as it tends to follow any change in subject, but I think real progress was made today as we managed to have a good laugh while maintaining the snarking. I suppose this is odd.

This weekend was wonderful. We made dinner and watched George of the Jungle which is, I confess, one of my shameful favourite movies. This may have something to do with the presence of a treehouse. There was lovely snuggling, and lovely snoosnoo, I finished Blood Omen and read a stack more of ABBDIARA (which I would like to refer to henceforth, as my book but that there are only forty pages to go and, judging by previous consumption, will be finished before I write again). I established myself as a Harry Potter expert(!) by coming up with a truly fiendish question for the upcoming Trivia Night, one I couldn't have answered myself had I not had the volume in question open in front of me.

His ears are pale and creamy, but the bottom of his earlobes are flushed pink. He gives crazy-making backrubs and drinks his coffee so strong and dark, I half expect the spoon to dissolve. He smiles and his cheeks become all round and kissable. His eyes are some amazing combination of brown and green that I've never seen before, which looks like a glowing mossy treestump underwater. He has a little birthmark on his neck that he doesn't seem to know exists, and hair so curly that he looks surprised when he lifts his head from the pillow of a morning. He laughs and warmth spreads over me; he holds me and I instantly relax.

And that my delight be solidly fixed,
Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mixed,
In whose tender bosom my soul might confide,
Whose kindness can sooth me, whose counsel could guide.
-- from The Lover: A Ballad - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

This week I...

• Joined a few clubs, met some new people and made friends with the laminating machine.
• Applied for a job. I don't want to jinx myself, but I'll tell you this much: it's not only convenient but something I'm eminently qualified to do. The interview is on Monday morning. All prayers/happy thoughts/good wishes greatly appreciated.
• Rejoiced in the cooler autumnal weather. Rediscovered a few old favourite pairs of jeans.
• Cheered quietly as the irritating neighbour who played disco music loudly at 2am moved out. Sobbed quietly as neighbour on the other side began to supplement their frequent, late piano sessions with extremely bad recorder and clarinet.
• Took too large a dose of antihistimine before going op-shopping, and found myself falling asleep amid piles of clothes.
• Was quite disappointed by Solaris.
• Suffered several nights of fitful sleep, awakened frequently by nightmares, and spent my waking hours with cramped shoulders and headaches.
• Wrote little, and updated my blog seldom.
• Completed my enrolment and received my timetable. I have eleven contact hours per week this semester, and they're spread over five days. This is most frustrating. I shall attempt to shuffle my tutorials around.
• Finished reading The Mezzanine. I loved it, as I've loved all that I've read of Nicholson Baker's works, for its minutiae. Unfortunately, as I was reading it in snatches when I could find the time, often for ten minutes on the bus, I lost track near the end of what was the main plot and what was a digression. I'm now deeply immersed in A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away. Now halfway through and gaining fast.
• Bought an ex-rental copy of Bedrooms and Hallways for $3.
• Plotted revenge on Nein for screwing around with their programming at every turn, playing cricket when I wanted to watch Frasier and for not having yet scheduled The West Wing and several other series that are due to return soon.

Our printer has been on the blink for many months. The dodginess started as soon as we got it. A printer was included in our package deal, but the model one step up was delivered along with the serial cable that would have worked for the intended printer, but not for the snazzier version we actually received. I had a comical moment of attempting to stick the enormous serial plug into the USB socket before realising that it wouldn't work, and calling the customer care line to complain that we'd received the wrong cable, creatively omitting the fact that it was the right cable but the wrong printer. They sent a USB cable by express post. Next, we found that the printer ran through cartridges at a prodigious rate, and each cartridge cost 1/3 of the total retail price of the printer itself. Not good.

In frustration at the printer's profligacy with resources, I used one of those clandestine refill-your-cartridges-but-sell-your-soul thingamajigs, figuring that if I was able to refill the cartridges three times before the printer exploded, I'd still be better off. Then the printer stopped working altogether. By this stage, I was well and truly sick of tinkering around with the damn thing, and had become quite accustomed to taking all my documents into uni on disk for printing. A good computer with a dodgy printer still left me better off than in my previous situation, where I had to knock up documents on the 486 and take them into uni, taking considerable time to reformat them. The printer slid into disuse and disrepair.

A few weeks ago, my sister managed to gather my family at a weak moment and raise this matter. It was decided that an effort would be made to keep the printer in inks and free from dust. Indeed, when I went to clean out the printer this afternoon it was so full of dust that I began by simply turning the machine upside down. Chasing the dust bears chasing the dust bunnies, out fell a five cent piece and a needle threaded with blue cotton. I vacuumed and dusted lightly with a dry cloth then changed the cartridge. The printer did a beautiful job of Abby's assignment, but I have trouble believing that this plastic box that sits on the desk actually prints things. It's most disconcerting.

After such a long, hot summer, I'm finding it difficult to accept that this is Autumn. As far as I'm concerned, this is a brief cool spell brought on by recent rains, and the baking heat and aridity will shortly return. However, it is also a relief and a pleasure to sleep in flannelette with a quilt, and wear jeans and boots and my lovely grey rollneck sweater. It was also most pleasant to go for a run yesterday, and not be in a sweat before I'd even started. It was one of the best runs I've ever had, and as soon as I got out the door in my shorts and running shoes I felt let off my leash. I have a theory that too many things we have to do are abstracted from things we need to do in a hunter-gatherer sense of the word, and doing things like running and playing with fire restores some focus, allowing us to deal with the pressures of society. That's how it works for me, anyway. This theory owes much to Romantic Primitivism.

My computer has been acting crazy, running incredibly slowly and encouraging us to kick it and remind it that it is our bitch. It seems to be mostly fixed after a disk cleanup as well as running Ad-Aware (we had, to my horror, four separate copies of Gator) and deleting some large programs we infrequently use. Fingers crossed. We don't have the know-how to do anything else, so I hope it's fixed.

I'm heading out in a few minutes to meet up with Andrew. We're seeing Solaris, after which there's the usual Flodge dinner and gaming. Tomorrow, O-Week, the university's orientation festival, begins. I'll be helping out at one of the stalls. However, every O-Week has one stinking hot day, one day when it rains and rains, and one day with decent weather. The challenge is in predicting which is which and arranging your stall shifts accordingly.

I went to do the much vaunted Fixing My Enrolment today. I was ably prepared, and it was simple, but for the fact that the person I had to apply to for special permission to do my subjects is a prat. I spoke to someone about this after leaving his office - she, too, received one psycho communication from him and one positive one. Both of hers were by e-mail. I, however, experienced the horror in person, and he elected not to permit me to enrol in my second-semester Advanced unit until he's seen my first-semester results. This is most frustrating. For starters, the only reason I needed special permission was because I received only 63% rather than 65% in one of my units. The courses I am enrolling in require credit marks in all units, while they were publicised the previous year as requiring only a credit average, which I have comfortably achieved. Since it was their fuckup, I shouldn't have to jump through hoops. In addition, treating me with suspicion and disdain is not only rude but counterproductive: after hearing his suspicion that I'm crap and won't do well, I can't help but wonder if he's right. This works on the basis that the goal of the English department is to help people study English, however, and after meeting this jerk I'm reconsidering the notion. Gah.

I just wrote a rather extensive entry on the time I accidentally almost took a job at an adult store, before realising that I'd already written about it. The real stinger was that what with the mood I'm in at the moment, I thought that the post was rather witty and was possessed of an elegant flow, but viewed alongside its November cousin it revealed itself to be a stilted, shrivelled cadaver. And now I have only a tedious meta-post.

My mother is washing her hair, and her conditioner smells exactly like those Uncle Tobys Tropical Muesli Bars that I had when I was a kid. The packaging was electric blue. My other favourite flavour was Peanut Butter, and I was somehow always reminded of these muesli bars when I saw the vet on a TV show I used to watch.

Since figuring out what I want to do for my thesis, my selection of subjects for this year has been radically altered. Admittedly, I had two toss-ups, but I have selected my first semester subject, a Media Studies course, and it's not one of the two I was considering doing. Both the Media Studies course and the previous frontrunner, on Medieval literature and politics, are run by one of my favourite people in the department, who was absolutely lovely to me in first year when I was in a lot of trouble academically, and I'd really like her to be my thesis supervisor. She reminds me a lot of my lovely high school science teacher. Obviously, her specialties come into consideration, as does the wisdom of this particular thesis plot, but I figure it's never too early to think ahead. Having selected my subjects, I am absolutely determined to end my shilly-shallying and endless postponements, and finally complete my enrolment tomorrow.

Recently I have noticed that my hair is getting darker. It's always been a sort of medium brown, but recently I've noticed that individual hairs are becoming thicker, darker and curlier, leaving my hair with an impression of overall darkerness. Or so it seems to me. Where will it end? I've been considering a haircut. A much shorter, cute flippy model. I've always favoured simplicity, however, and I suspect this style would require upkeep above washing and brushing. It also might make me appear moon-faced, and we can't have that.