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July 24, 2010

Blown All-nighters, Italians, and Proms


Every time I write one of these, the memories I'm writing about feel more and more distant.

I suppose this is what I get for writing up most of my RSI-related posts as backlogs.

The night before the first draft of the final paper was due, I prepared myself for a long haul. I stocked up on food (a giant bag of tostitos and a box of double-stuffed oreos. I am nothing if not classy), packed up my bag, and settled myself into the Starcraft section of W20 to get working.

Notably, even during this very tense night, Ash and Luke managed to play said computer game. This is because Ash is one of those people who believes he can't work when he's too tired (so, like me before RSI), but rather than sticking it out, he prefers to go to sleep, so he'd finished up his paper a day ago. Luke is just obsessed.

I settled down between Ash and Nicholas and took my now-sorted work (thank you for the file folders, Didge) and went through it, one folder at a time, compiling all of the information that I had into a cohesive whole.

I'm losing cohesive loosely, as there have been a lot of edits since to add to the cohesive nature, but regardless, I was pulling everything together. My big goal here was to make certain that I'd used all of the information that I had.

The first folder took me over an hour. I had twelve folders. I got through the second and third faster. Then I hit the fourth.

I needed a diagram.

I spent about half an hour wrestling unsuccessfully with Gimp before Nicholas took pity on me and helped. He, then, spent about an hour wrestling with Gimp for me, while I found an empty computer near Bashir and Sadie and worked my way through the extremely imposing "diffusion" folder.

When Nicholas had finished and I got the computer back, I blearily walked around the cluster, taking note of Olive sitting up on a computer divider, typing away on her laptop.

I kept writing. Some time after Ash had left, I sent some zephyrs back and forth with Bing, and soon after that he came over from the dorm and took over Ash's computer. I'd offered him oreos for the company via zephyr, but after his arrival, he declined.

About a half an hour after Bing arrived, I was done. I looked at the paper before me, completely shocked, but elected not to complain. I printed a copy, brought it to the dorm, and slept until nine thirty the next morning. Less than five hours, but better than nothing.

My alarm went off, Leila made groaning noises, then I showered and proofread the entirety of the paper before going downstairs to the Simmons cluster, making changes, freaking out that I couldn't find me key, realizing the key was next to the computer, going to W20 for breakfast, experiencing disappointment that W20 was not selling breakfast at this early hour, walking upstairs to the Athena cluster, finishing the changes, printing off another three copies of my paper, and handing it in.

I was, overall, quite pleased to have garnered a few hours of sleep, but still rather tired.

By this point, it was 5 pm. I know, a lot of hours going by really fast, but that's what happens when I'm working. Soon after that, we left for the Italian food trip.

When we got there, we were sent off on our own to find somewhere to eat. This was, of course, highly difficult. I was running around with Minette, Tal, Dexter, Donny, Zorah, Susan and Norman. At some point, Zorah and Donny slipped away to eat something that I'm certain was highly romantic, and then Susan and Norman got so sick of us looking for Italian places that they went and got Chinese food.

The four of use remaining eventually found a restaurant. We were led in, then to a set of stairs. We went down the stairs, through a room of diners, then turned left, passing through a second room of diners, its ceiling slightly lower than the first. We then passed through the kitchen and into a third room, with still lower ceilings, and, in place of windows, two TVs, one displaying a video of an aquarium and the other scenic portraits of the Italian countryside (and associated freeways).

It was, all in all, entirely bizarre. I'd meant, here, to talk about prom, but, well, it wasn't a particularly awesome experience.

I walked over with Susan and Carlisle, danced briefly, then spent a good percentage of the time sitting outside, talking to Carlisle and Ravi about our respective high schools, and with Bing about how terrible the music was. Then Nicholas and Joseph, completely covered in black, meshy clothing (yes, faces included) showed up, and proceeded to act weirdly.

By that time, I was feeling exhausted, so I left early and walked to W20, where are number of starcrafters had ensconced themselves. Even that, though, just seemed rather pointless, so I went back to the dorm, chattering with the gangstered up Jared and Gopika on the way.

So, fake proms, like real proms, are, all in all, not worth the effort.

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