Well, last night I experienced it - serendipity. After going to a concert of Bach’s funeral cantatas, Bryan and I headed to U-Lounge for a drink. We apparently walked in on the Quebec Student Health Alliance’s Christmas party. We ate sushi, calamari, brie, filet mignon, lamb, sesame beef and other finger foods as well as drinking for free. I am forced to eat my peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch today rather than for dinner last night as had been planned. The waitresses would not accept tips and the bartender poured Bryan a triple of a $200/bottle scotch without even measuring. God must have heard the two of us sobbing in our respectives beds the night before over money troubles and schoolwork and decided to give us a treat. Too bad we only had an hour and a half to kill, though clearly no more food could be consumed, I would have been up for more drinking…

Other than that, things are “okay” I guess. I don’t know how I am going to get my car’s wipers fixed and I have a big test in Latin that I am not prepared for at all tomorrow afternoon, but I am hoping to be able to review all the material at least once this evening after music class and tomorrow morning. There is also a ton of work to do at the office, but i am trying to focus on one thing at a time. Stressing does not make anyone more productive.

Went to see Rent last night: God those people can sing. i really really liked it. i want the soundtrack. i want the movie on DVD when it’s released. i loved being able to feel smart because i understood the references to literature and philosophy. i want to live la vie boheme. i do not want to get AIDS (obviously).

Thoughts on Blogger: I was reading about the Canadian blog Awards, voting was last Thursday, and a surprising number of them are hosted on blogger. now, i like blogger and all, but i think the best of the country would most likely be found on someone’s personal space, no? of course, i have had to give up on the website since my FTP uploader stopped working. lovely.

The weirdness of language: When did “grandma” become a derogatory term? I was reflecting about this on the metro. what’s wrong with our society that we call old people family members to insult them? this is ridiculous.

Lastly, an update on my car: The wipers died. Lovely. Because i needed another repair bill before actually buying that stupid for sale sign. it looks like i am officially not going to be working next semester. part of me cringes at this idea, but another part of me is revelling in it. i am torn. is this good or bad? will i be able to cope with all my spending money being debt?

Plans for today: i am going to go fold my laundry and take a shower. then i am going to study for my latin test on wednesday. depending on how long i can manage that, i may spice it up a little with some studying for italian and working on my final project in latin. oh yeah. and i am supposed to see Steve today. what we will do is a true mystery. i don’t feel up to lounging in front of a tv all day but i see no other options for the poverty stricken. i have $5 for the week after gas and that does not include what i will have to find to get the wiper fixed. crap.

There are so many. Primarily, i have been engaging in some serious non-academic reading. Watership Down, which by the way is FANTASTIC, if you have never read it do so, and a novel by Amelie Nothombe entitled Robert des noms propres. Also very good. Yeah, we’ve reached that time of semester where i manage to find tons of activities to avoid doing the work that is piling up and looming over me. The good news is that despite finishing both these books i have completed by arab essay, done my latin homework and begun my final project for latin. i have 13 out off 55 lines pseudo-translated. They do not make sense, but there are English words.
I had intended this post to be a tad longer, but Steve just called and he is already at home so i need to get ready to sleep over at his house tonight. i did not see him this week at all because of bad traffic and snowstorms. i hate winter. the only good part is the mittens, scarves and toques.
i am going to see RENT with Lisa tomorrow! Woohoo.

The cats have fleas. I can’t cope. Besides the torturing them by fastening a piece of plastic around their necks which make them scratch all the same, we brush them for at least half an hour each day hoping to manually remove every little egg and nasty, creepy, jumpy bug. I’ve been bitten numerous times during the past couple of weeks, but, oblivious to the facts, mistook the itchy bumps for spider bites. Spider bites that disappear in within a couple of hours of waking. I am stupid.

It was the bites that clued us in finally. Apparently my Mum is particularly appetizing to vermine. Which is ironic, because when we were infested with head-lice when I was in high school, thanks to that bane of a younger brother again, she was immune.

I have had at least three nights now of flashbacks to waking up in the middle of the night and combing the little buggers off the base of my neck. I ended up shaving my nape with a razor and wearing a ponytail really low on my head for at least eight months. It was hell.

So, on reflection, this experience has pointed out two aspects of modern society: one good, one bad. Not having parasites breeding, feeding and sucking on your body is definitely a plus. However, why are there little liquid caps to be applied to the nape of a cat’s neck to get rid of fleas, but not a similar remedy for the head lice that still circulates in primary schools. If I contract cancer later, I will know it came from spraying my head with the toxic lice-killing product for my MATTRESS after two years of useless shampooing.

for the first time since school started i have completed all the homework i planned to get done this weekend before an ungodly hour on sunday/monday night. i am celebrating my not writing a long blog to keep me up longer. i may write tomorrow, but i am pretty fed up of typing this weekend and know it is only going to get worse as i have more papers to do and reports to write at work this week. i am feeling good though. plus, my car is running and parked on my driveway…if anyone is interested - $2000. I need the money to buy my books next semester. pass it on.

i have a big paper due for monday and i am trying to write it tonight. unfortunately, i have spent too much time in the last two days watching the gilmore girls and am now getting pretty stressed out. i still have other work to do too, but it is the paper that is a problem. i am taking a break now to blog and then do another page of latin (also monday as well as an italian chapter test again).

i worked 17 hours this week. money is good. my car is supposedly fixed now. i am go pick it up saturday if all goes to plan. i went out for breakfast with Isabelle this morning, ate french toast, crepes, a heap of fruit and english cream before we walked back to my house where i burned a CD with some pdfs for school for her (she doesn’t have the internet). i did laundry, my china history readings and fell asleep. i started writing my paper, did two pages of latin and then watched another two episodes of gg before spaghetti for dinner. not super productive. i have written another paragraph of my paper, confirmed that i have no italian homework just studying and am now blogging. i am not going to go to bed until the paper is done and i am going to do a page of latin in between each paragraph, so i will be lucky to be finished by 1am. it’s my own fault.

tomorrow i am supposed to go get my car and go to walmart with my dad and grandmother because he asked me to as a special favour. i am hoping to be able to watch my China lecture tomorrow too. Maybe Sunday i will be able to start my latin project due the last day of classes…oh wait. i have a test in latin next wednesday. what’s more important to start? God i hate this.

Problem i have encountered: i cannot blog on the videotron site from the office. oops. i guess i could just write up a blog and send it to myself, but then how would my avid audience cope with having to wait another whole day before finding out what happened to me? Maybe i should rethink the whole relocation of blogging concept. no. i like having a website with my own, albeit messy and overly simplistic, design. you’ll just have to cope. or i can continue blogging here when i am not on the laptop and just copy and paste later.

I got an A+ on my Arab History Midterm. This is good. I managed to connive a new assignment out of my Latin professor because i CANNOT translate Cicero. It is impossible. I should get the new assignment on Wednesday, however, Sunday night i spent a good hour trying to translate one sentence, got nowhere, and ended up simply watching TV for the rest of the evening. I have so much work to do i could hit myself.

my Mum is now a falafel addict. She wants to eat Lebanese every Monday night before Aquafitness. this is funny but sad because i am already on an almost entirely Lebanese diet because of the cheapness of the food.

Lunch at Carlos and Pepes was great. I was stuffed and intellectually stimulated. I had better get to work.

I just finished a lovely dinner of chicken thighs my Mum made. Surprisingly enough, that is not a sarcastic comment. I am waiting for the water to boil so i can make tea and consume insane amounts of banana bread while attempting to translate 60 lines of Cicero’s Scipio’s Dream.

I think this will be the last week of posting to blogger rather than the videotron website. I am going to try and set-up a comment section, but if i can’t i will just include a form for my readers - ha - to email me responses.

Last night i got drunk on three different types of alcohol: tequila, sambuca and vodka. We were finishing the bottles in Steve’s parents’ liquor cabinet. I do not actually remember falling asleep. After a day of hardcore studying it was a much deserved break from thinking. i discovered that i really like romantic program music however. Useful day. I am also far enough to begin writing my Arab History paper. I am going to stick to Latin this evening however.

Steve and I watched both Ghostbusters today. He shaved his head. It is quite a look - skinhead with a chipped front tooth. We made a big breakfast of little potatoes, cheesy scrambled eggs and toasted belgian bread. yum. it made up for my lean cuisine and grilled cheese sandwich dinner the night before.

i can’t come up with anything deep right now. i should also seriously consider some creative writing soon, as i have gone a whole week now without making so much as an attempt. ugh. does designing the website count as “creative” because it should. i am looking forward to coffee with Lisa tomorrow.

i promised myself that i would blog tonight. i have a headache and my cat is determined to sit on the laptop. i want to see if that i am in pain wil evidence itself in my writing. i think it might be easier to push further when it’s crunch time at school if i really thought it would help and that my work would not just be crap. from the few times i have tried to finish latin translations after midnight, i have learnt that it is pointless to do more than 15 minutes or so.

yesterday i was supposed to do homework during the evening. i ended up getting my italian exercises done while watching CSI and doing my assigned readings for Chinese History before going to bed. The rest of the evening was “wasted” talking to Lisa and working on the CSS and index page for the webpage. Talking to Lisa was not a waste. I am happy to find out how she is doing. The webpage was though. A waste i mean.

i got a phone call at about 9am this morning, a hour into my homework doing and steve told me that he was not going to work today. i called him back and told him he couldn’t come and pick me up (my car is broken again, but that’s a different blog entry) until 11:30 because i just had too much to do and tomorrow couldn’t replace today because i have an optometrist appointment. This upset me more than it should have. At 12 he was not here so i called and he had fallen asleep.

We went to see Jarhead this evening. it was very good. like full metal jacket but not as purposelessly disturbing. he loses it in one scene, but it is more effective if the guy has to live with the consequences of his actions anyways.

work went well yesterday. Neil had me explaining the origins of credit notes to him. i got to write up an essay on it (okay, not an essay, but i can’t think of any other word right now, headache remember?) which, because i was in a peevish mode, mimicked the origins of species a little and included a section title in latin. yeah. i’m a loser. hopefully Neil will want to keep me even at eight hours a week next semester. Dad thinks he will, but he always overestimates my intelligence.

i only have five minutes left until it becomes tomorrow and i wanted a post for today. i did write SOMETHING yesterday. The mission statement on the webpage. it sucks. i can’t write about myself or my goals without it being horribly one dimensional. i guess everything i write is very one dimensional, but i am more critical of my expressions of things that are important to me.

what a catchy title you say…

well, they are. i don’t mean the normal adverbs that fit those oh so NOT useful definitions we were taught in high school: “words that modify a verb.” I am refering to those pesky, unrememberable adverbs that are called “adverbs of time” or “adverbial conjuctions.” have you never asked yourself what type of word “now,” “today,” or “furthermore” are? Well, i give you the answer. And they are a bitch to memorize, because in every day usage we take them for granted. They have come to haunt me in Italian now rather than just Latin (they are pretty much the only words i always have to look up in a dictionary now in the latter). We just completed a test on “adverbial prepositions,” i.e. above, below, inside, outside…yup. those are adverbs. you try differentiating them. not fun.

on another note, i spent a good hour working on the other website. should you feel the need to check out the new layout, you can do so at this link. I found the time because my latin class is cancelled today. woohoo. i am going to go to Prof. Gittes’ lecture of the Aeneid instead. Fun fun.