As I’ve noted previously, I got to bed at about 4am Monday. I set my phone’s alarm to 11:59am (I can never remember what 12:00 is, whether noon or midnight), giving myself a little less than my preferred eight hours. In any case, Rob woke me up at about 11:30am ringing to drag me out to get the thesis printed, bound and submitted. D’oh. :)
‘course, I knew we were to do that on Monday; I’d half organised it and consented fully… I just hadn’t expected a late night, nor Rob to want to get it done so early – he had work starting at 1pm.
So, I threw on yesterday’s clothes and raced down to uni to meet him, where I waited for fifteen minutes while he was late. :P When he did turn up there wasn’t much for me to do, initially – he had the final copy of the thesis on his thumb drive, and it was just a matter of waiting for it to print. We first tried the library, where they have pretty reasonable laser printers. Unfortunately, the computers they provide there are worthless husks, all run off a centralised terminal server (or servers), and they run like #%@!. After twenty minutes of waiting first for the actual Word document to open, then for it to spool to the printer, only to have it silently crash while spooling, we unanimously gave it the middle finger and went off to find somewhere else. Unfortunately Cafe Digital – where one would normally do printing – are now closed until next year. I hate it when they do that. >:(
Ultimately we ended up in one of the Beth Glesson computer labs, where they have a crappy desktop laser printer. Nasty, but it actually works, and the computers there – while nothing flash – are mostly functional for trivial tasks like printing.
Unfortunately, the printer was stocked with a fairly random assortment of A4 pages, so our thesis is an interesting combination of white & light blue pages, and various shades there-of. Hopefully no-one notices. In any case, Rob printed the colour pages (about a dozen, out of ninety) on his inkjet at home, which while pretty good isn’t as sharp as a laser printer, so there’s a visible but subtle difference between them.
Nonetheless, neither of us really cared at this point. We’ve spent a lot of time getting the thesis done in a short period, and we’re both pretty happy with the actual content. It took three days between us just to proof read the darn thing; that’s more than enough polish for it.
We finally finished getting it printed, sorted, stacked and double-checked just after 1pm. Rob then left it to me to hand them in while he ran off to work, already late. That would have been of course a trivial task, if it weren’t for the unfortunate hours of Margaret, the lady to whom our submission had to be made; she goes for lunch from 12:30 to 2. Damn. So, I also had to go to lunch, waiting for 2pm so I could hand the thesis in and get back home, hopefully for some more sleep.
The late night and the abrupt awakening had left me with a bit of a growing headache. It was only minor – not much worse than the dull pain I’ve had all week from the heat (dehydration, and the poor diet as noted previously). I set about fixing that with a drink & foccacia in the Agora. While I was sitting there eating that, Emily passed by (from kayaking). She joined me for lunch and we chatted for a while. While we were sitting there, Gabby passed by, on her way to meet someone to whom she was selling her laptop. She’s an exchange student, you see, from the U.S., who left yesterday (Tuesday), in fact. Thus, she was in a bit of a crazy rush to get all those last minute things done.
She said she’d come back after sorting out her laptop, but after half an hour or so Emily & I were both done with lunch, so we departed without seeing her again. I’m not sure what happened to her exactly, although Emily said she did catch up with her later, and Anthony said he also caught up with her. He’s been more or less courting her for the past few weeks (possibly months), the end result of which was more or less nothing; she said bye, and left. He and I, like Bobo & I, have also been sharing commiseration for the past few weeks. :)
So anyway, I handed the thesis in, which was fine, and then went home. I needed to do my tax stuff, which I did, and then returned to uni to post – while they provide you with an envelope, it’s not prepaid; cheap bastards. So I had to go to an actual post office to buy one measly 50 cent stamp. I hate that. While I really like Theo – the guy running La Trobe’s post office, who helped track down the FedEx package from Apple a while back – it’s not enough to actually like snail mail. I’m very tired of prehistoric, troglodyte governments enforcing archaic means of communication. You really should be able to just do your tax online. (and don’t give me that e-tax business; it’s Windows only and apparently sucks anyway)
While I was doing my tax I caught Sarah online, and she noted that she was taking work home and wouldn’t be sociable that night. This was after cancelling whatever tentative plans we had to get together Sunday night.
Anyway, after posting the tax stuff off I went over to Anthony’s little bachelor pad in Glenn College and hung there for a while. Unfortunately my headache was moving up the scale by then, and while I did take two Nurofen while I was there, they didn’t do anything in any reasonable time (as it turns out, they did very little at all, even when they did finally kick in… my immunity to it is obviously better developed than I thought :( ). We just chatted, and watched trippy visualisers from his Xbox.
After that, at 6pm when we parted ways so he could go down to dinner and I could go find mine, I knew I wasn’t going to be up to cooking something for myself – and knew I had only some chicken kievs; not a wholesome meal – so I set my sights on eating out. I thought of Smorgy’s for some reason, and thought that’d be really good. Unfortunately I just can’t bring myself to go out and sit at a restaurant by myself, so I had to find someone else to join me. I tried Laura first up, because we’ve been talking again for the last few weeks, and I’ve been meaning to catch up with her. She already had other plans, unfortunately. I then realised of course that I hadn’t seen Roxanne for ages, and should at least once before I move down the peninsula for the summer. I rang her mobile, but got an immediate “we’re stealing your money even while you listen to this extra long-winded message saying you can’t get through” message. Knowing that her house is a crazy maze and she often has trouble hearing her phone ringing, I decided to drop by unannounced.
Unfortunately I was more surprised than she, given she wasn’t there. She was, in fact, in New Zealand, where she’s been for a while; she returns on Friday. She’d told me about her New Zealand trip, and I remember her talking to Bobo all about it back at her birthday drinks, so I should have at least suspected. Anyway, her mum was there, and we chatted for a little bit; she filled me in on what Roxanne’s been up to and whatnot. It sounds like she’s been having a ball, and has taken lots of photos, so I expect another giant New Zealand slideshow in the next few weeks. :D
While we were talking I was thinking about dinner still (yep, I’m food-orientated, get over it :P ) and then thought “hey, Ebony! I haven’t seen her in a while, we should catch up too!”. Then of course Roxanne’s mum immediately mentions that Ebony’s in New Zealand with Roxanne. D’oh!
I just don’t seem to have any luck with social stuff this week. :/
Anyway, defeated, I popped round the corner from Roxanne’s to the shops there, where I had intended to just get fish & chips and retire back to home to watch a movie or somesuch. Unfortunately the fish & chips shop was unceremoniously closed, so I went with pizza (my only other option). As it turns out it was a rather good pizza, so that was fine. I watched Shaun of the Dead for about the fourth time (and still liked it :D ).
After that, I can’t really recall… I think I basically went to bed.
