Laughter Through Tears

My new hobby is going through my never-properly-cleaned Hotmail inbox, where I get all my notifications sent. Aside from some receipts and terms updates, it's mostly stuff from Twitter, Tumblr and Dreamwidth. And AO3 notifications. I like reading through them and remembering how many cool people I know.

Miracle of miracles, I'm actually doing pretty well on my paper. I fumbled around for a while, trying to assign references, because I foolishly wrote the background section without inserting them immediately. However, the introduction and background are written and reasonably polished, I have an experimental design, and all that's really left is to outline the proposal technicalities.

All of this within the parameters requested. No papers twice the length they ought to be, no bibliography covering half the research done in the last three years. No experiment aiming to solve the mind-body problem once and for all. Generally this project is least reminiscent of dubious past undertakings, which leaves me pretty hopeful. Of course I still need to run through the requirements again with a fine tooth comb, but that's why I scheduled everything with lots of padding.

Now I break for lunch. Eventually I'll have to muster the courage to check the grade from my third test. Sunday it's back to boring old cell biology.

I just experienced the world's most incredibly relaxing shower. I'm dangerously calm right now. I feel amazing, but I'm mildly concerned that I'll just flop right off my chair.

Everything is fine, or will be fine, or is as close to fine as a reasoning mind can expect it to be. Everything that needs to be written or handed in will find its place. All the good ideas will be filtered in, and the dull or pointless ones will be filtered out. Accomplishments stand just as high as do slipups and outright defeats.

Everything happens for a purely retroactive reason, and that's okay, because it still brought me to where I am, and that's what matters.

I think I am going to reread some Dragon Age fanfic. Maybe later I will even try to write, but if I don't, I still got a lot of good work done today.

Well I was first so busy and then so excited that I forgot to update that I finished all my presentations and now I have a short window to unwind before I have exams and papers to hand in. Today and tomorrow are officially rest days and on Sunday morning it's back to work.

Today in neuropsychology I got an awesome compliment from a fellow student regarding a comment of mine in class a few days ago. I don't want to go into the details but I disagreed with the professor pretty strenuously and, you know, it's always hard to express vehement disagreement with an authority figure in a manner that's both assertive and respectful. This guy came over to say he agreed with me and respected the way I approached the problem and suddenly I was really proud of myself, for something that it hadn't occurred to me to feel pride over before. It was nice.

Then I went to get some prescriptions filled and that's always a pain in the ass. Moreover I have a bunch of other medical chores I need to get to, post haste. I also spoke to the pharmacist about my sleeping pills and I need to be even more careful about alcohol than I have been so far.

I was wound and cold and tired, so I played a rousing round of "let's keep this lesbian princess alive long enough that she can stare down a foreign dictator and shame him into brokering peace with the power of her regal presence" AKA my fifth Long Live the Queen victory. I saved the walkthrough along with my previous victories and I'm thinking of posting them here, backdating the entries, and then posting an index so anyone who wants can use them.

My goal for the rest of the week is to get all my schoolwork done in advance so that I can have the weekend to unwind guilt-free. Always allowing that one of my classes doesn't pop a last minute exercise on me. One of them already managed to upload an exercise a week in advance, which I would be fine with, if I hadn't just shifted to trying to get my shit worked up in a more timely fashion, and not the day it's due.

Oh well. I knew it would be an adjustment period, you can't unwrite years of bad habits in two weeks. At least some of the errands I'm running are connected to pleasant things, like sending gifts to friends and picking up a package with a cute, sassy t-shirt. Not to mention scheduling time to invent a new recipe. Plus if I'm very, very good I can reward myself by playing hours and hours of Dragon Age on Saturday afternoon when Tumblr is dead.

All in all, yay.

I murdered microbiology this morning, so that's it for this round of exams. I don't have to think about them again until April. So for the rest of the week, until next term starts, this journal is all fandom, all the time.

For some reason, I started catching up on Fringe. It's... still Fringe? Ludicrous, but entertaining? Not quite what I'd like it to be, but somehow it still sucks me in? But, what I really wanted to note is that I just finished watching the Two Astrids episode and, oh em gee. No, I didn't weep like a child pr anything, but for real. Her enormous, terrifying doe eyes. They are freaking huge in her face. I've been clamoring for an Astrid episode for a while, and now that I've got it, I think it broke my brain.

I just took a shower, to which I am going to refer as the Shower That I Deserve. This week I finally got some fix-it work done in my bathroom which I have been deferring and putting off and not finding time for, for ages now. Now everything is done and looks exactly the way I want it, everything has a place, the water it hot, the towels are hanging. Plus I had pilates this evening and a hot shower after pilates is definitely a cause for celebration. Right now, nothing else matters, because I got the shower that I deserve.

After neglecting it for weeks due to being sick/tired, my apartment is finally clean. What I did discover yesterday morning was a meal moth infestation in one of my kitchen cupboards. Throwing out anything that might have been infected was depressing. Now the cupboard is clean and empty and all the food is stored someplace safe. I did go grocery shopping, not so much to replace all the rice and such, since I can get that from my parents, but for fresh fruit and medical supplies.

I cough very little now and I have an appointment for a lung capacity test of some sort. However autumn is still the peak of the allergy season, even if the weather is summery. Accordingly I needed more tissues, but opted to drop the OTC nasal spray in favor of saline, which is supposed to be better. Certainly I'm doing better now than I did Saturday night, which is when I stopped taking the nasal drops. The package does say they're a short-term solution and I'd been using them way too long.

Yesterday I wrote a bit. Later today I plan on taking a walk, or maybe just going up the street to the park to sit and read. Not parking myself in front of the computer all day, at any rate.

Last night I spotted a spider under my desk, which made me nervous although I reassured myself that it's harmless and won't offend unless offended. It's gone now, but they're nocturnal so it might be back later tonight.

Overall I think things are looking up on most fronts.