May 29, 2008

It's hot, so unbelievably fucking hot at 3AM. Especially considering that I was wearing a sweater and warm socks just last monday. Now it's 3AM and I've got the window open and I'm sitting here in just boxershorts and a shirt. I can't sleep because of the heat, even though I'm moderately tired and now I'm just trying to keep busy until the temperature finally shows any inclination of dropping.

My roommates were bitching about the bugs again, and they refuse to keep their windows open after sundown. This means that there has been no airflow through the house since it reached well past 25 degrees this afternoon. The mosquitoes don't bother me, they have no appetite for my odour and their buzzing doesnt really get to me either. But my two flatmates are each bothered by one of those. The window issue led to a couple of fights last year, but we finally resolved to screen off some windows, unfortunately we were too lax to do the other ones.

The heat is very damp and clammy, it has rained probably over 10 times today, usually for less than 10 minutes and it dried up almost immediately. Not a good atmosphere to exercise, but of course I had made plans already and I went rowing. I rowed in my single for an hour and I was drenched in sweat for 59 minutes of it. So much sweat came running off my head that it trickled past my eyebrows and eyes making me appear to cry.

I considered taking a dive in the channel I'm rowing on, but I encountered so much debris and weird foamy stuff that I decided not to risk my precious health. In a couple of weeks the average temperature of the channel will have risen so high again that the water-authority will start placing signs warning about harmful algae in the water. These will probably be hung right next to the signs warning NOT to touch our mutant fish, especially if they've got more than two heads.
It would probably be better to steer clear of the place entirely, but there's no other place to be on the water, and I need to be on water as much as I need to drink it. It's probably some genetic mutation too...

A year ago, on the last night of my American boyfriend's Canadian visit, we dirtied our hands throwing clods of flower garden at the queen, who withstood our assault with (quite literal) iron dignity. The quixotic gesture was my idea and, though it was playful in execution, there was some undercurrent of gravity, of private jealousy in it.

Why does every prodigal son need to be offset by an obedient elder brother? Why couldn't we have been prodigal twins?

I just logged in to my 'course page'. This is a web-page that is supposed to allow a class to communicate with the professor so well that we can all keep at least a 3.5 GPA, or else. This is a page at pretty nice state university, one that has a beautiful stadium and a rec center that will knock your socks off. But the course page is about one step down from a listserv.

Thanks to my experience on E2, I am the only one in the course, including the professor, who knows how to add fancy things like paragraph breaks into our posts. To view a post, you click on the thread, and then click on the title of the specific post. You cannot see a whole discussion at once, even if it's just two posts. Viewing a reply to the original post does not show you the original post. Would could all sign up for free Gmail accounts and have a better 'bulletin board'.

And the worst part is, the professor is impressed with the level of technology being used in this Internet based course.

Okay, don't panic, it's not a computer science course or anything ironic like that. It's one of those humanity courses. (Oh, the humanity!) But this isn't something the professor thought up himself. This is a page recommended for internet classes by the university. They would never suggest that their football team could practice in a vacant lot, but academic students are welcome to slum it in the eighties. (Hey, it was the golden age of the internet. Things just went downhill from there.)

I will stop now, because you've heard these complaints before. I bet you've written a few yourself. And my children will be writing them too. But today it's my turn to say it.

Information is more important than sports! Fund me for once, you morons!