1. I thought I'd take a month off from school, from blog, from everything... it didn't work. I spent my vacation stressing about papers and my next term of the Shakespeare Institute, so... not much of a vacation. In other news, writing 4,000 word essays is not an easy task. I'm done with one, and finishing the other. It is important to take the time to do the bibliography correct (give yourself a few days on each one of these.)
2. So, what did you get for Christmas? Two books on Technical Theater that will help you write your dissertation, you say? Yeah, me too. Gone are the days of getting excited, waking up early, and seeing a brand new bike... or rather, gone are the days of being young. I was excited to get two bottles of bourbon at the Duty Free on the way back to England. Times have changed.
3. The plan for the New Year is to get back to the gym (already started) as I was taking some time off to get fat over the holidays and it worked. I would also like to finish the essays for last term, and start on the essays for the new term as soon as humanly possible, because if I have to pass in 16,000 words this May instead of 8,000 words, I'm gonna need to get started. I've got to design a Midsummer Night's Dream (March), and provide tech support for Brit Grad (July) as well.
4. According to sources, the 2013 season of The Globe goes on sale on February 15th and season tickets are £30 for Groundlings. I'm there. The 2013 season for the RSC is already on sale, and since I live around the corner... I'm here.
5. I had a near death experience recently, and I thought I'd share. Now, to be fair, I was never in any real danger on that airplane, however, when you are flying at 33,000 feet and midway through the Atlantic Ocean with nothing for a thousand miles and the New Year hits (quite literally) with a few loud bangs, and turbulence that felt as if one of the gods reached out to shake our collective hands... Needless to say, I couldn't sleep.
It isn't fun to have thoughts that border on crazypants. Believing that the plane would start its rapid descent into the ocean at any moment, and that I would have only seconds to say everything that needed to be said, write everything that needed to be written, and do everything that needed to be done, I could only think of one thing to do as I waited. I kissed my girlfriend, told her I loved her, and breathed. Then I did it again.
In those moments, because it wasn't just one of them, I was trying to think of other things that had nothing to do with fiery death. I watched Inside the Actor's Studio, DIY, and Battleship. That really didn't work, but I could reach exactly nothing in my bag as it was all the way on the floor and bending over might throw the plane off balance. I'll watch some How I Met Your Mother, and then Frankenweenie. HIMYM, good. Frankenweenie, bad. I keep turning stuff off after five minutes. How long has it been since we almost died? An hour? Two?
We landed at Heathrow and besides my utter exhaustion, all I could think about how Virgin Atlantic was really the best airline we've had experience with for the past four years. We got an extra checked bag for free. The seats we reserved were fine. The air-mistresses were very nice, and very comforting when I asked for their assistance in calming myself down before I announced to the plane that everyone should shut up so I might think of a few appropriate last words. They were really very nice, and it wasn't their fault that the aircraft jumped six feet at a time and made the Jewish women behind us start to pray in Hebrew... in hindsight, the praying didn't help my thoughts of Armageddon, New Year's Jinxes, and ditching the plane in the ocean.
Virgin Atlantic, the nicest airline to imagine your doom in.
If we'd flown Delta, we would've been dead.
It is now 9:42 am, and I am about to start writing the rest of one of my essays and finishing the bibliography of the other one. I'm surrounded by research in the forms of xeroxes, highlighted to show the best passages to quote in my paper. I've got my coffee and Vicky is still sleeping. I don't blame her, in fact, I'll see if I can join her until ten. Procrastination counts for nothing if you have nothing else to do.
“Time is too slow for those who wait
Too fast for those who are scared
Too long for those who grieve
Too short for those who rejoice
But for those who love time is not”
- Henry Van Dyke, "For Katrina's Sun-Dial --- often misattributed to William Shakespeare by people who get their research from Wikipedia.
But for those who love time is not”
- Henry Van Dyke, "For Katrina's Sun-Dial --- often misattributed to William Shakespeare by people who get their research from Wikipedia.
Year 1, Day 102 -- Words Written: 5,292 in Term Paper Language.
No comments:
Post a Comment