"welcome to my world" - a novel.

okay, my planned schedule last week was this:
Tuesday: class from 10-4, then meet with project partners to complete preparation for Wednesday's presentation
Wednesday: class from 9-12, including aforementioned group presentation (on victims & perpetrators in Gunter Grass' Crabwalk - (insert sarcastic woot!), begin essays for Griffin (they aren't due until 11 Dec, but I had a schedule...)
Thursday: continue essays
Friday: turn in essays for Griffin, class from 12-3, International Student's Christmas Party, Grad Student's Christmas Party, weekly class party, crash
Saturday: begin intensive GRE studying until Tues afternoon.
Tuesday: take train to Dublin, GRE 1-5, return to Limerick that evening

my actual schedule so far:

Tuesday: as planned, except one of my partners (joan) was in the ER for most of the day/evening waiting to get an xray and find out that she had chipped part of her patella... brian and I were remarkably calm and got ton(ne)s done & when Joan got there, we only had an hour more to do, so yay!

Wednesday: class - check. presentation - check. Actually, the presentation went incredibly well! So I am hoping for a decent mark... addition to the schedule: random fever. I blame the weather. It was below freezing on Friday night and by Wed it was up to 65. un-fun.

Thursday: not a drop of writing. headed for the store and to return a laptop to Jonathan and Jonathan invited me in for tea... nearly 3 hrs (and no store) later, we were both starving and went to lunch, which is where I was when a friend from NJ (Christine) texted me about coffee, so off I go. Then I stop by the store on my way home which is right under Christine's apt and she invites me up to her place - so I visit with her for 30 mins or so before I decide to make stovetop lasagna and invite her to my place for dinner. She comes over and we do celebrity crosswords while I cook and invite our friend/my classmate Nicole to come downstairs (she lives in my bldg), which she does... the girls leave a little after 9 and I actually begin a 500 wd essay for Griffin!

But my Thursday doesn't end there! I am looking for photos as an appendix to my paper. I had an idea and couldn't make it clear in 500wds, so I cheated a little and included photos. One pic wasn't great, so my roommate offered to go out with me at 11:30 at night to take pictures of this bridge I was writing my paper on so we spent the next hr or so walking around in the dark in the mud trying to get "the right picture" - and we did! yay! I got back home, continued the writing... and completed my essay at 4:30am. yay. SEVEN HOURS FOR FIVE HUNDRED WORDS, WHAT??? Oh well.

Friday: wake up at 10, go to library to photocopy my photos, line at the copiers, head to class without the copies. Class was nice. Spent my break at the library making copies, finished class, went to turn in my essay to Griffin (I figured one essay is better than none). Griffin wasn't in his office, but Michael Kelly (his officemate was). On my way out of the office, I decided to do something nice, so I told Dr. Kelly (keep in mind that he's not my prof -- but he and I do run in the same circles) how much I liked him and that I thought he was "too cool" and that I "loved him to death" and that when I see him, I just have to smile... *sigh* Which is all true... I have this compulsion to try and make people know that they are appreciated. I also mentioned that I could sit and listen to him switch from his irish accent to french "any day of the week" - HAHAHA! He loved it and we had a great conversation for like 10 mins. Then as I leave, he mentions that he's sure he'll see me in the next couple months (our break is from 13 Dec - 28 Jan) -- and I realised that Dr. Kelly WILL, in fact, be my professor NEXT TERM. (laugh out loud!) I have 1.5 hrs before the International Students Christmas Party (heretofore mentioned as: ISCP because I'm lazy) so I return to the library, aka my least favourite place on campus - but that's for another story, to see if I can get crackin' on that 2nd essay. This 500 word essay is finished in 45 min! So I run it over to Griffin's office - he's leaving for Eastern Europe this weekend to do a lecture circuit this week) - in pouring rain. And I literally ran, so my asthma kicked in. I walked into the office where both Michaels were sitting at their desks, Griffin made a comment about how I should have an umbrella with me - I almost remarked that they are useless when the rain falling sideways, turn in the 2nd paper, and call out as I leave "you guys have a great weekend!" like we're best friends... *sigh* but they were both remarkably animated and actually called out "you too!" pretty loudly -- for those guys, anyway... my fever is still around off-and-on and no one had mentioned the class party, so I did not push it... headed to the Christmas parties. Had a free 10euro meal at the ISCP, tried mulled wine at the Postgrad party and nearly gagged. Actually, I did gag. Then I really didn't feel well, so I headed home in the horribly cold windy rain. Curled up & watched Ugly Betty, House and Criminal Minds online.

Saturday: woke up (VERY late!), went to the store, got home & took the practice GRE in math. Very disturbing how stupid I feel, but I keep trying. Learned that I really should focus more on my vocab anyway because the literature and english depts I am applying to place higher emphasis on the verbal sections. Had lunch/supper (I told you I woke up REALLY late), sat down on the couch with the tv in the background and a box full of flashcards and started memorizing. I began around 6pmish. When I started, I had already done A-H. So I began at "I" and went through them all - taking out the ones I for sure know - and set to memorizing. Around 11:30, Nicole comes down for a break from her essay-writing and we watch the end of 100 best movies of all time... Star Wars won. I was very very disappointed. And I realised that my cultural theory has really worked - I have learned TON(ne)S and can now argue with those critics about their criteria - haha! After Nicole left, I continued until I did not have any more recall and went to my room. I looked at my friends' blogs to see if anything interesting had happened and sure enough: MayB found this website where you are given a word (which turns out to be mostly GRE words, by the way!) and you have to choose the best deifiniton. For every word you get right, this company says they'll give 20 grains of rice. I made 10,000 grains of rice - woot! I only missed about 3 of the words from the GRE box... :) that was encouraging! And I went to bed around 3:30.

Today, I woke up frustrated that I had made a REALLY careless error on the paper I gave to Griffin that I wrote in 45 min. I used IMDB to recall the character's name in a film I was reviewing and used the name of the actor instead of the name of the character... I realised this during my conversation last night with Nicole, but I obviously got more and more frustrated by this through the night, so first thing I do when I wake up is fire off an email to Griffin explaining that I know about my mistake and that I have friends who mark University essays and get really discouraged by their students' errors and wonder how they made it past secondary (high) school -- and that I hate that I may have a reputation with him for being "that" student -- the one who sounds like an idiot because she isn't careful in her writing... ugh. And now I am about to shrug that mistake off and head back to the couch for more memorization! I have just over half the box memorized!!! The rest of today should get me to nearly the entire box and tomorrow I will continue the math portion...

and there is your update on my week!