The Dead Blog

Yep, that would be THIS blog. It is dying a speedy death, brought upon by my total immersion in university life.  Two weeks to go and the semester will be O.V.E.R - and it can not come soon enough.  My life these days revolves around work, sleep, uni, work, eat, sleep, run, uni, work, uni, sleep, eat, uni, run....  It seems I can only focus on one major activity at a time after all and right now, that activity is assignments.  I have three to hand in over the next two weeks so I am going for it, hammer and tongs. 

My running has taken a major hit with my lower back just about as twisted as a pretzel.  It has made running un-enjoyable (did I really write that?) and difficult to do.  I finally made it to Rosie, my physiotherapist, who could barely knead/bend/stretch me for the tightness and tenderness in situ.  She thinks I've got some kind of post-viral inflammation going on and perhaps I do. I thought I was just tired but perhaps I have picked up some latent germ along the way.  I have been "out of sorts" for a few weeks, which I just put down to old age and studying.  

This is the state of my desk (err.. the dining room table) right about now.  I am sitting among a sea of articles written by the obit editors of The New York Times and The Telegraph, which I am referencing for my Major Project Proposal Document.  In between trying to write lines of text that make some kind of sense, I am eating cherry tomatoes, having glasses of water, talking to the neighbours... Basically, anything that involves me not actually DOING my work!  I've just been across the road to Linda's house, which is now up for sale.  Her orphaned daughters have moved in permanently with friends who have three daughters of their own.  So, I went to "carpet crush".  It's a gorgeous house!  Really light and bright and the kitchen is magnificent...

 http://www.eplace.com.au/index.cfm?menuItemID=44416

.... and I was doing fine, wondering how wrong it would be to move across the road to a house with a lovely kitchen, when I saw all the photos.  One in particular, in a tasteful gilt frame of a beautiful Linda and her husband on their wedding day, two young happy people, both now dead, and the photos of their two little girls, now part of a new family.  Well, the waterworks kicked in and I had to leave.  It was just too sad.  I hadn't expected such a reaction.  If I was more clever at writing, I could explain how it felt.  So, hopefully the girls will be happy in their new home and their English grandmother is staying until the end of November, just to make sure they are settled in before she flies home to the UK.  

Here I am with my wonderful buddy, Annie.  We're off to Italy together - in 2014 so have been trying to plan what we're going to do (and how we're going to pay for it!).  Spud and I went down to Sydney for his birthday and to see our first opera, Madama Butterfly, at the Sydney Opera House!  Of course, it was absolutely FANTASTIC and now, of course, I want to be a set designer or opera singer, neither of which will ever happen because I haven't gone an artistic bone in my body and when I sing, the RSPCA is inevitably called!

Right, enough procrastinating.  Time to get back into it.  Last Saturday I spent about four hours with my three other team-mates filming a video for our group assignment.  Sunday was another five hours in the computer lab editing the video.  Tomorrow, we've booked a study room in the library for six hours to work on the project some more.  Next Wednesday we are presenting/pitching our product - based on the Apollonian and Dionysian paradigm as described by Nietzsche's (@#$%^&*) and the week after that, handing in a 2000-word assignment explaining it. If only we knew what we were talking about!