Karma in motion
Well, happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I'd snark and all, but I'm afraid I'm rather too busy to manage much of a rant on cheesy commercialist holidays... especially since it's one that doesn't have much of a presence in Finland anyway.
In this case, my lack of updates is consequence of, not lack of events, so much as a pure and unadultered lack of time. It's been quite a while since I've experienced being this swamped. There's something awfully liberating about the notion that you don't have time to do anything besides work; it's hard to feel bad about not getting something done in time if you've spent literally all waking hours (and a number of those scheduled for sleeping) to get it done.
Of course, there are also forces working against me, which did a lot to intensify my workload last week. It would appear I have done something something terrifyingly evil in a previous life, and now the evil karma has come back to haunt me in the form of the essay version of my quite brilliant presentation on the goddess Ishtar. I shall describe the breadth of my misfortunes, as I think I'll enjoy looking back to this week someday to laugh.
While I enjoyed the subject a great deal, writing the essay itself was work enough, as the teacher insists on accurate sourcing, and most of my material was spread around three sizeable books, several articles that I did not have quite at hand and things that I had read somewhere but couldn't quite recall where. It was due Thursday last week, and I started on writing it Wednesday evening, and finally finished it somewhere around five in the morning. It was at this point, as I was saving the file to quit and resume proceed with it in the morning, as an unforeseen and quite improbable software bug eats the essay, never to be seen again.
I guess I was quite mortified by that at the time.
Well, no problem, it was just eight pages, and I still had the structure for the original presentation and I still had most of the source material I needed at hand. It took most of Sunday, but the second version was longer and better than the first. Now, having finally finished the thing, for a second time - on Tuesday morning I set out to print the thing since I'm having that class that morning. Now, wonder of wonders, it turns out my printer decided on this particular moment in time to run out of ink. (I had a spare ink tank, but inevitably it was the wrong type.) Now at this point, while I was verifying this, I was already running late, but I decide to salvage the thing by putting it on the Internet so I can print it at the university.
But of course I'm using a Macintosh, so I have to turn it into a Word file. Microsoft Word, obviously, took the opportunity to screw the file up in every small detail necessary. I put it in the net anyway and emerge half an hour late to class; later that day I spend a pleasant half an hour fixing everything that was wrong with the file in the computer class. Finally I set out to printing it, and it comes out okay... on the second try. At least the teacher was touched and amused by my long-suffering efforts to get the essay done.
Incidentally, my bike broke down and the service firm has been stalling fixing it for a week now, busses have been strategically late all week leaving me stranded in -15°C temperatures for up to twenty minutes at a time, and whilst traveling on foot, I slipped and tore up a perfectly fine pair of jeans as well as a perfectly fine knee.
That sob story aside, one bright spot on these last few weeks is that the weather has been quite nice. There's been a lot of snow around, there's very little wind and while temperatures have been increasingly cold lately - enough that even the ocean finally froze up - it's refreshing more than anything else. I've tried to spend as much time outside as I've been able to spare, which isn't really all that much, but even a little counts. These photos are almost three weeks old, when the sea was still open, after a pretty incredible snowfall the previous day and a night that froze it all up - but I figure they're worth showing on account that it really was a uniquely beautiful day by all standards.
A snowy bay where
in the beach, open water
lingers by the rocks:
The restless ocean
breaks against the rocks, sparkling
into frozen buds:
and amidst the ice
by the familiar rocks
long, distant shadows
Aaand with that bit of pretentious artiness, I guess it's time to go to sleep again.
In this case, my lack of updates is consequence of, not lack of events, so much as a pure and unadultered lack of time. It's been quite a while since I've experienced being this swamped. There's something awfully liberating about the notion that you don't have time to do anything besides work; it's hard to feel bad about not getting something done in time if you've spent literally all waking hours (and a number of those scheduled for sleeping) to get it done.
Of course, there are also forces working against me, which did a lot to intensify my workload last week. It would appear I have done something something terrifyingly evil in a previous life, and now the evil karma has come back to haunt me in the form of the essay version of my quite brilliant presentation on the goddess Ishtar. I shall describe the breadth of my misfortunes, as I think I'll enjoy looking back to this week someday to laugh.
While I enjoyed the subject a great deal, writing the essay itself was work enough, as the teacher insists on accurate sourcing, and most of my material was spread around three sizeable books, several articles that I did not have quite at hand and things that I had read somewhere but couldn't quite recall where. It was due Thursday last week, and I started on writing it Wednesday evening, and finally finished it somewhere around five in the morning. It was at this point, as I was saving the file to quit and resume proceed with it in the morning, as an unforeseen and quite improbable software bug eats the essay, never to be seen again.
I guess I was quite mortified by that at the time.
Well, no problem, it was just eight pages, and I still had the structure for the original presentation and I still had most of the source material I needed at hand. It took most of Sunday, but the second version was longer and better than the first. Now, having finally finished the thing, for a second time - on Tuesday morning I set out to print the thing since I'm having that class that morning. Now, wonder of wonders, it turns out my printer decided on this particular moment in time to run out of ink. (I had a spare ink tank, but inevitably it was the wrong type.) Now at this point, while I was verifying this, I was already running late, but I decide to salvage the thing by putting it on the Internet so I can print it at the university.
But of course I'm using a Macintosh, so I have to turn it into a Word file. Microsoft Word, obviously, took the opportunity to screw the file up in every small detail necessary. I put it in the net anyway and emerge half an hour late to class; later that day I spend a pleasant half an hour fixing everything that was wrong with the file in the computer class. Finally I set out to printing it, and it comes out okay... on the second try. At least the teacher was touched and amused by my long-suffering efforts to get the essay done.
Incidentally, my bike broke down and the service firm has been stalling fixing it for a week now, busses have been strategically late all week leaving me stranded in -15°C temperatures for up to twenty minutes at a time, and whilst traveling on foot, I slipped and tore up a perfectly fine pair of jeans as well as a perfectly fine knee.
That sob story aside, one bright spot on these last few weeks is that the weather has been quite nice. There's been a lot of snow around, there's very little wind and while temperatures have been increasingly cold lately - enough that even the ocean finally froze up - it's refreshing more than anything else. I've tried to spend as much time outside as I've been able to spare, which isn't really all that much, but even a little counts. These photos are almost three weeks old, when the sea was still open, after a pretty incredible snowfall the previous day and a night that froze it all up - but I figure they're worth showing on account that it really was a uniquely beautiful day by all standards.
A snowy bay where
in the beach, open water
lingers by the rocks:
The restless ocean
breaks against the rocks, sparkling
into frozen buds:
and amidst the ice
by the familiar rocks
long, distant shadows
Aaand with that bit of pretentious artiness, I guess it's time to go to sleep again.