Friday, March 21, 2008

Spring Break: A Wild (Mild) Time


So it's spring break and I'll actually been rather busy. Unfortunately, not busy in the normal sense of spring break. I still had to go to work at my newspaper job, and I also had to finish my presentation for the conference this weekend. Because of this, I've been living off a combination of fast food and sheer nerve. Writing has become my only form of communication (oh, irony) and I can't seem to write what I want. Towards the end of Thursday night, it all did start coming together. I read my speech for the following day aloud to my roommates and it all felt like it was beginning to make sense-I just might convince the PhDs at the conference that I'm worthy of being listened to.

The week wasn't entirely wasted to the academic bubble. Between meals and reworded paragraphs, I actually did some exercise-of course, what I mean by this is playing Rock Band on xBox 360. I'm getting better at the drums and actually finding myself enjoying music once more. Though I really hate songs with an overuse of the bass drum and most the songs on Rock Band do this. As Thursday rolled around, I was in a bit of a panic as I wasn't up to where I wanted to be with my writing, and the house was getting rather dirty. I couldn't seem to focus and continued taking breaks to play ping-pong, rock band, and check if there was anything new about the upcoming G.I. Joe and Hellboy movies. Yet, I did manage to get to a comfortable point with everything-though I wished I had more time as I would've loved to memorize my speech or perhaps create a powerpoint presentation to go along with it. I did try to end the night right with an anime I rented called Vampire Hunter D, but the disc was scratched and mid-80s animation just ain't what it is now. So, I turned it off and ended the night with some of the second book, or season, of Avatar: The Last Airbender. There's something truly brilliant, fun, and funny about that show.

Friday morning came and I was running a little late. I wanted to make it to the session before 11:00am, thus I was forced to grab breakfast at Burger King-French toast sticks just ain't the same anymore. I took off to Loyola, which is off the same exit as LAX. I arrived at the campus in pretty good time, but Campus Safety didn't know where the conference was. I looked around for a while and became rather nervous. I wondered if it was being held off campus and I missed the memo. I tried calling numbers, but no one was picking up. Finally, I gave a call to a roommate to check the conference info...fucking shit, it's next weekend. Now, if I had known that Loyola is a Catholic school, I might have thought it odd to hold a conference on Good Friday. Alas, I didn't know and apparently can't see straight when it comes to checking dates. I'm normally not a flake about such things-in fact, I'm rather obsessive about them. Maybe I'm losing my edge...okay, I never had one. Either way, the conference is next weekend and I'm a little relieved. I now have the extra time to familiarize myself more with my material, and, today, I made a bomb-ass powerpoint presentation.

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