-The weather in this place is crazy. Yesterday, there was rain, snow, sun, and strong winds all in the span of fifteen minutes (and the random switching between the four continued all day, leaving about an inch of snow on the ground). Usually, I would have just laughed at it, but because of the strong winds, my (broken) window blew open, as it does when it's really windy, and knocked my lamp to the ground, shattering it. The problem is that this is the SECOND time that this has happened this year, and the second destroyed lamp. I think I've learned to not keep my lamp on my windowsill from now on. So of course, I went to the infamous Argos and bought a pack of two small shade lamps for £7, and I'm actually quite in love with them, but that's not the point. The point is that Norwich owes me two lamps and £14.

-We all went to the Norwich City football match today, and I had a great time. I'm not certain I understand football mania any more now than I did before having experienced a match, but the trip doubled as a cultural experience and a leisure day. The stadium is at the end of the bus line from the university, but it took about 45 minutes to get there since it was Saturday when it usually would have taken between 20 and 30. Once we got in, we decided to partake in the surprisingly fairly priced concessions before the match started. Many of us were grateful they sold hot chocolate and coffee and tea, since it was about 29 degrees F out today (and I wore so many layers that I couldn't put my arms down like the little brother in A Christmas Story), but Sarah and I decided to get hotdogs and cider. The hotdog, while not like the stadium hotdogs I sometimes crave from the former Shea Stadium, MSG, or any sporting event snackbar, was about a foot long and came in a baguette rather than a doughy bun, so I was satisfied with that for £2.70 (about $4, which I suppose is typical of an American sport event). The cider, though, was only £3.30, and I was thinking it would be kind of fun and maybe even kind of English to sit watching the football in a stadium while having a drink. So we got our things together and proceeded back to our seats, only to be stopped by a security guard who kicked us out because we had alcohol. Whaaaa? We huddled around a rubbish bin in the hall and cannonballed our food and drink before the match started, which made me feel a bit sick, but at least I felt warmer for the first half. Turns out, you're not allowed to drink alcohol during a match, or even bring it into the stands. Thinking about it, it makes perfect sense: football matches can turn into madhouses without drinking while watching, so apparently you haven't been allowed to drink while the match is going on since the 1980s. But I suppose I was just surprised, since the attitude towards alcohol here is so much more relaxed, and you're most certainly allowed to drink multiple beers while watching a hockey/baseball/football/basketball game in America (and I could have sworn that I could have brought in a single, sealed drink to the Coldplay concert at Wembley if I had wanted, but maybe that's only for non-football events). Anyway, I guess I'll know next time.

The Canaries (Norwich) won, 2-1, though Chris Martin (the Norwich player, unfortunately, not the singer I love so dearly) didn't score a goal despite me rooting for him on principle. I actually had a great time. I've never been one for watching sports on TV unless it's the Olympics or the FIFA world cup, but I usually quite enjoy going to live events. Football is definitely a sport I can get into: the rules are simple enough, there are only two halves, the whole match is 90 minutes long without stopping the clock at any point, and people are about as passionate about it as I am about certain bands, so I can relate to the ownership/obsession part of it. It was definitely a cultural experience as well, though: there are songs inherent to each team, and they're sung at random intervals throughout the match. Of course, with half the 25,000+ crowd being drunk, overexcited, or having strong regional accents, I couldn't understand most of what was sung if I tried, but it felt very...un-American, anyway, which was cool.

I actually didn't even feel cold until about the last twenty minutes, which is saying something, since it was below freezing (though I think I need thicker gloves), and then it was over and the masses flooded outside. Aidan, Sarah, Barron and I got separated from the rest of the group, and since there were thousands of people all trying to catch the same two buses, we decided to walk a little farther away to the rail station and catch the bus there. Turns out that was a BAD move: all of the buses filled up at Carrow Road, then completely bypassed the rail station to get the crowds moving away from the stadium quicker. In the end, it took us longer to get home than it took the match to complete, from beginning to end, and we had to cross the street and ride the bus longer than from terminus to terminus to do it. Sigh. I actually wouldn't have minded if I had thicker gloves and didn't have to go to the bathroom, but still, it was basically that SpongeBob episode "Rock Bottom" where the second SpongeBob moves, three buses show up, but when he comes back to the stop, none ever come. That episode actually always kind of freaked me out, but I lived it tonight. Whoo.

iLust on Hold

I almost hate to say it, but I'm not sure if I understand this whole iPad craze everyone's going on about. Initially, I started to drool when I saw the demo video, much as I've done with pretty much everything Apple has come out with in the past ten years. There's that iLust which I think is brought out in most everyone except the most diehard PC/Microsoft loyalists out there, and I know I'm as big a sucker for it as the next person. And I have to admit, the iPad seems pretty cool on first glance: a tablet computer, probably without all the past inadequacies and glitches of PC tablets that prevented them from ever really catching on. From the demo video, the coolest parts to me seem to be the ability to watch movies and videos and browse the internet on a larger screen than the iTouch/iPhone in a completely portable interface (and I can't deny making big eyes when they demoed what I presume to be a modified iCal app...it was designed like the pages of an actual planner, fully customizable).

But to me, that's what the iPad is: a big-screened iTouch that you can buy broadband for from AT&T rather than fruitlessly trying to hunt down a free, unprotected wifi connection. It doesn't appear to do much more than an iTouch at all...it's just bigger, and I'm talking physical size, not capacity: the biggest iPad hard drive is 64GB. WHAT THE HELL CAN YOU DO WITH THAT? My iTunes library would take up fifty percent of the hard drive space from the get-go, and I couldn't even put half of my photo collection on it. My primary uses of any computer, including my iTouch, are to store and organize my music, videos, and photos and to browse the internet. With the iPad, I'd basically only fully be able to do the last thing on that list.

Then there is the classic iPhone/iTouch problem of not being able to run more than one application at a time. For something more than an on-the-go device, I think that's pretty despicable. I'm not sure how you can market a product as a revolutionary electronic device that naturally fits into your daily life and habits to an increasingly caffeinated and ADD world when it can only run one program at a time.

And the name. The stupid name. The proposed "iSlate" or "iTablet" would have been miles better than "iPad," which sounds like the word "iPod" said in a severe Canadian accent. It also brings to mind hygiene products, which leads to the start of "iTampon" being a trending topic on Twitter after its initial release. They could have thought harder about the name, but then again, I still think "iPod" sounds stupid, and look how that's become a cultural icon.

Maybe I'm missing the whole point of the product: maybe it's not meant to be a new "computer" as we know it. After realizing its hard drive limitations, anyway, I figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't designed to become a person's primary computer. But then if it's not meant to be a new style of Mac primary computing device a la the MacBook line, then what is it, and why is it so hyped?

• It's the iTouch in size large. I've got one of those and I love it, but I also love it because it fits in my purse.
• It's the Amazon Kindle/Barnes & Noble Nook manufactured by Apple. Still not revolutionary. I like paper better, anyway, and I'm not sure how easily I'll be swayed by the digital readers for the next ten years or so.
• It's an organization device. So is the iPhone, most smartphones, a Palm Pilot, and a Moleskine planner.
• It's a great photo viewer. Well, if it's 64GB maximum, and most photos are being taken with cameras over 12MP these days, that's not going to get you that many photos.
• It's a movie viewer. This is actually it's greatest merit to me, since it's a slim, portable film-watcher without sticking in external media with a decent-sized, great-quality screen (Mac certainly knows what they're doing in terms of screen manufacturing).

Maybe it's so hyped because it's the start of that "tool of the future" that so many people have envisioned where we no longer need to buy daily newspapers or countless DVDs or books that need to be disposed of or stored somewhere, and we just carry a screen around with us to get every type of media we could possibly need to use when we're not at home. That part I'll give them, but I honestly believe that it was the iPhone/iTouch that did that, and now they've just decided to supersize it. That obviously makes it a more enjoyable reading/watching/browsing experience, but it's not revolutionary. My point is that everything this machine does, some other machine already does it, most notably, APPLE'S OWN PRODUCTS. I'm not saying I don't want one or think that it's useless, because if someone decided to hand me one right now, I'd probably jump up and down like a five-year-old, but it doesn't replace any gadget I already own: I'd still need my PC for storage, I'd still need my iTouch for portable listening (and browsing when someone releases their iron-fisted grip on a wifi network), I'd still need my TV for watching live programming, and I'd still need my phone for making calls. Increase the storage capacity by at least double, permit it to run multiple applications at once, make it do something never been done before, and change the stupid name, and I'll be drooling over it just as much as the rest of the world seems to be. In the meantime, I'm still saving up for my MacBook.

Introspection.

-Today, while shopping for a stack of birthday cards for all of the upcoming Dickinson HUM310 birthdays, I couldn't resist buying two cards for myself to put on my wall: one is an V&A Museum print of my absolute favorite photo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney circa 1965, which is much better quality than the computer-paper printout I previously owned. The other card is shaped like a slice of beans on toast with googly eyes, stick arms and legs, and a cartoony smile glued onto it. I had to have it. Taken together, these two cards explain my personality in a nutshell, I think.

Interestingly enough, when browsing the Clinton Cards website for pictures of these fabulous cards (to no avail), I found that they sell a monogramable silver coin bank, which is the exact same one I've owned since I was born.

-I'm trying this tea thing, which is probably a bad idea, since it's 9PM and I planned to go to bed early tonight. I'm enjoying it, but I still don't get the craze. Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that I'm drinking Earl Grey with sugar and without milk, which I think is something close to a felony in the UK. I'll buy some milk tomorrow and see if that wows me.

-I'm currently in the throes of a love affair...with a hooded sweatshirt. I was disappointed last semester that UEA's School of American Studies (the American Studies department, in American) did not have its own hoodies for students to buy much like every other school on campus, so I decided to make my own online based on other schools' templates. It is perhaps the best-fitting, most comfortable pull-over hoodie I've ever owned. I'm trying not to wear it every day, because I think people will start to realize that I've been wearing the same thing five different days this week, but it's one of the best articles of clothing ever. It gets a weekly wash, but it gets a Febreeze every few days too, since every time I decide to use the grill in the kitchen to make my dinner, all of my clothes decide to smell like the inside of a chippy, and I'd rather not smell like frying oil until the next laundry day.

-I don't know why, but while on the bus today, for some stupid reason, I had one of those "wow, I'm in England" moments. You'd think after almost six months I'd be used to the fact that I'm not in America anymore, and I think I am, but it's this subconscious thing most of the time that you tend not to think about. Even when I'm confronted by something new and English, it rarely hits me in such a way that I feel like I'm outside of America. It also strikes me as suddenly funny that I'm pretty much a permanent, indefinite resident here, an immigrant. I feel like I have some sort of ownership on England, but I still don't feel any more "English" than when I arrived. I might even feel less so.

-I've begun to drink more here in England. I don't mean to announce this with any sort of fanfare, since I realized I actually kind of liked cider last semester and had little sips and tastes of things here and there since August. I've also felt more comfortable with the attitude towards alcohol in this country all along, but I was never compelled to order any for myself last semester, partially because I didn't feel like it and partially because I thought it was weird to one day be a teetotaler and the next not be. I thought with a new year, a new semester, and a new decade, if I was going to make the jump to social drinker, I might as well do it now when 2010 is shiny and new, so I did.

-I've decided that I need to go see a movie a week. It makes me significantly happier, and Cinema City (the arthouse theater) has some good films coming up in the next month. I don't exactly have the time to be whiling away the hours at the cinema, but I think I'm allowed a single day off a week to bum around town and window shop (or, erm, actually shop, like I did yesterday) and go see a movie. It changes my outlook on the week.

-I've noticed more grey hairs than usual in the past few weeks. I think the greyness of Norwich in January is speeding up my premature hair greying, like it needed the encouragement to go any faster. However, despite there being more greys than there previously were, the grey hairs seem to fall out easier, like they're not as rooted as well in my scalp. Fine with me, as long as that trend doesn't continue once I'm mostly grey in a few years. I alternate between being intrigued by starting to go grey at 17 and being utterly depressed by it.

-I've decided I hate house hunting, at least in this student market: over 5,000 students are vying for a finite number of places all at once. The three of us that are going to live together found the perfect place online, and I called up today to find it's been taken (though it might have never been on the market this year: these people are terrible at keeping their website up to date). Most places are either too expensive, too far from uni/a bus route, or too crusty. I don't have the time for this, I swear. Yet, stupidly enough, I've started to think about things like bedlinens for next year.

-I bought myself a new watch yesterday. It was £15 at Next, and about everything I said I wanted in a new watch, so I went for it. I took off my digital Ironman Timex for the first time in probably three years. I have to say, I kind of miss it, and I'll probably still wear it quite often, but I needed something a bit more my-age. I like it, but it throws me off to look down and see something analog and shiny rather than my beat-up purple Timex.

-I'm going to try to like tea. I don't know why I have the urge to do this, but I do. Perhaps it's because I like the idea of having a go-to drink to have every time I need winding down, or because it's such a cultural mystery to me here, or because I'm bored. I don't dislike tea, really, I just don't really enjoy it or get the craze, but I'll see if I can understand it soon.

-We just booked our trip to Dublin. Only 6 of us are going, which is lovely, of course, but I miss the cohesive group. However, money is more than tight this semester for all of us, so I have to get out of the mindset that I'm going to be able to bum along on every trip and that everyone else will be able to do the same. Anyway, I'm excited! Ireland and Paris in the same month!

-Wafflestomper is getting old. It's still very comfortable, and infinitely better than the real, fiberglass cast, but after a day of walking in town (or when I have to race all over UEA on Mondays), my knee locks up and hurts. I also have twice now forgotten that I wasn't wearing Wafflestomper (I take it off when I'm just sitting at my desk or on my bed in my room) and tried to go to the kitchen to get something to drink. I fell flat on my butt on the carpet in the hall both times. It's freaky to think I'm actually incapable of walking without some kind of assistance.

-I stayed up til 3AM watching the Haiti telethon last night. Coldplay were magnificent, and they're usually pretty terrible on television. Perhaps it was because of the cause, and the fact that there wasn't an audience filled with other famous musicians, which usually seems to make Chris freak out. I will forever be in love with Chris Martin, but the man can't dress himself: on international TV, he was wearing motorcycle boots, suit/tuxedo pants, a t-shirt that I'm pretty sure had a splotch on it, and a beanie that he hasn't taken off since December (except to loan it to Gwyneth once). He also sweats like a pig in a five-minute TV spot.

Today was "Rain on my Parade" Day.

-It appears as though EasyJet, a budget airline, has direct flights to both Dubrovnik, Croatia, and Santorini, Greece, which are my two top-priority destinations for the latter half of spring break. The problem with this is that they don't start offering those direct flights until THE FIRST WEEK WE'RE BACK IN CLASSES. This is, in fact, the story of my life: the timing is completely off. Other larger airlines of course fly to both of those destinations, but flights to Santorini on these airlines start at around $400, which no one else seems willing to pay. This isn't to say I'm looking to toss my money around, but I've gotten myself so worked up over Greece that I think I'd be willing to do it, since the accommodation is so cheap: I'd just be more frugal in my other trips. But no one else seems to be willing to go for that price, which all but kills the idea. We're talking about Lisbon, Portugal now, which sounds nice, but it doesn't have the same appeal to me. For some reason, I'm much more keen on the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. I'm trying not to be heartbroken about this.

-I'll admit another scrap of nerdiness: in early January, the Royal Mail came out with stamps of the album cover of Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head, which is tied with the Beatles' Revolver as my untouchable favorite album of all time. I ordered three strips of said stamps from the Royal Mail website for the measly sum of £5. Today, I get a large envelope from the Royal Mail, and I eagerly opened it. Inside was a catalog of stamps, and a note thanking me for my order--no stamps. They either forgot to put them in the package, or forgot to send me the package with them inside preceding this one. I'm convinced that both the Royal Mail and the USPS have a lifelong vendetta against me, since these screw ups seem to happen to me all the time.

-Speaking of the Royal Mail, I'm still waiting on three textbooks for classes that should have been here days ago. One of the missing books is kind of my fault, I suppose: I ordered the book from an Amazon seller in Canada rather than the UK, even though I thought I double-checked everything. The other two have no excuse.

-I forgot I wasn't wearing Wafflestomper when I went to go get some chocolate milk from the kitchen, and almost the second I stepped out into the hallway, I fell over and didn't really know how I got on the floor for a second. It's a strange thing, not actually being able to walk more than two steps at a time. I'm growing concerned about how I'm going to deal once Wafflestomper comes off permanently on March 2 and how long it'll take the muscle to grow back. As a side note, yesterday I forgot I was wearing Wafflestomper and attempted to sprint towards a crosswalk before the signal changed. That didn't work so well: I also nearly fell over, and my leg nearly pulled out of the whole cast. It turns out you can't really sprint when you can't bend any part of your foot or ankle. Who knew.

-I'm having minor friend-problems, which I'm obviously not going to write about here, but it looks like I might have to dust off my seldom-used confrontational hat and say something, since it's been getting me down more than I thought these sorts of problems could.

-Massachusetts is dead to me, thanks to their election yesterday. A REPUBLICAN senator to replace Ted Kennedy, Massachusetts? What a great way to repay Kennedy's decades of service. NOT.

-This next section isn't about my downer of a day, but I'm including it anyway. For some reason, I've been in a very Beatle-y mood the past few months. I don't think I can possibly reach the level of obsession with them I had back in 2003-2005, and I don't know where it's coming from, but I dug out my Help! and A Hard Day's Night DVDs and watched them these past few nights, and I don't think I've enjoyed them that much since the first time I watched them as a kid. I had a bit of an epiphany: I'm in England, I have a month-long break, and it looks that my previous travel plans have been all but thwarted. So, I'm going to go to Liverpool for a bit of a pilgrimage. I've been to the Beatles Story Experience before, but this time I'm going to have a proper Beatles mini-vacation and go to all the famous spots as well: their childhood homes (two are museums now), Strawberry Fields, the Cavern, Penny Lane, the Casbah, etc. I'll even take the cliche Magical Mystery Tour bus of Liverpool (though the Beatles day-tour might be out of my reach at £95). Why haven't I thought of this before? Whatever my travel plans end up looking like, I'm probably not going to be doing all that much in the first two weeks of the break, so I might as well spend two days in Liverpool doing something I actually enjoy. And I'm going to go by myself: almost anyone else would drag me down, either by not wanting to or not being able to geek out with me, or by making me feel like I was forcing them to see things that were uninteresting to them. I don't want to have to make excuses to people on why I want to see random buildings and houses. I want to see them and enjoy them for what I believe they mean to the history of music, and therefore, what they mean to me.

-There's something about the water in Norwich. I didn't really notice it all that much last semester until I went home, but at home, my hair started behaving differently, since it was actually behaving. On the other hand, my skin completely bugged out despite not changing my habits. Here, my hair constantly looks like I've been electrocuted unless I use half a bottle of gel or my straightener, but my skin is next to perfectly clear, which I don't think has happened since I was eight years old.

-I think Wafflestomper makes me walk faster, if that's possible. I think it's because my left foot is longer, so I have to take bigger steps. I can also kind of rock on it when I walk, and I get a sort of momentum going that I don't really break. I hope it'll be OK to travel with, though: I'm going to both Paris and Dublin while still wearing it. I can most certainly walk, but I get tired earlier, I think, and things with lots of stairs (particularly down stairs) or even the slightest inclines aren't so good. We might be going on a day-trip to some mountains in Dublin--there will not be any mountain-climbing for me on that journey, thank you very much.

-When my friends and I had our meeting about our spring break travels, Croatia was more of an idea than a real discussion. However, I've been looking at pictures and reading about it online, and now I really want to go, despite the expenses. I hope the other three that seem interested actually are willing to shell out for it too, because I'd kill to go. However, the two cities I want to go to, Zagreb and Dubrovnik, are pretty far from each other, and to get between the two by train, you have to go through Bosnia, which means even more money. However, if my spring break is just Croatia and Greece, I think that would be OK with me. I'd like to have Alex or my mom come to England to visit me in the first two weeks, though. And hell, if I can afford more, I'll do more. It's a matter of waiting and seeing, I think.

-It was actually sunny outside today. I don't think that's supposed to happen in this part of England until, like, mid April. It was a bit warmer than usual, too. However, when I decided to go out to walk to Tesco, it was 3:30 and therefore beginning to get dark. I forgot about that little detail.

-Tomorrow is Monday and I'm dreading it. At least I have supplies to pack a lunch this time, and I'll break my usual ban on leaving class to go to the bathroom if I need to. After those technical details, in terms of classroom discussions, I suppose the motto will have to be "the best you can is good enough." I seriously need to get a travel coffee mug, though. It might save me on Mondays.

The lure of the cinema today was stronger than the lure of multiple scholarly articles on World War I and Colonial feminism. And the thing is, I don't even feel bad about not doing anything today, partially because I'm fading fast, and partially because I've done nothing but work since Monday. And really, I can't think of many things that make me as instantly happy as going to see a movie in the theaters does, especially if I'm alone, and especially if it's in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. I like nothing more than sitting alone in the dark in a practically empty theater with surround sound and huge screens and a movie that's just come out. I saw Sherlock Holmes, which was thoroughly enjoyable, if not exactly an Oscar winner. I noticed something very odd after the movie, though. At home, when I go see British movies or watch British DVDs or TV shows, my brain seems to lapse into thinking in an English accent and/or intonation, which sometimes shows in my voice. This was well-mocked in my sophomore year at Wooster, when I had three British teachers, and I would occasionally say certain words with an English intonation. It happens after I watched Spaced or Harry Potter and the like, so I figured that it would most certainly happen once I moved to England itself and was perpetually surrounded by people with English accents. It turns out that didn't happen, and I still sound about as American as when I left, minus some changed vocabulary and the very occasional intonation slip-up. I noticed this a while ago. However, today, about five minutes after coming out of Sherlock Holmes, I noticed that I was thinking in an English accent for the first time in ages, and I froze. Why the hell should this happen all of a sudden? There are more English accents in my everyday life than there were in the 90-minute film. I think something is wrong with my brain.

Switching gears, tonight my friends and I had a meeting to discuss our ideas and plans for our month-long spring break as they stand now. (As a side note, I love all of these people: we all sat down with our calendars and notebooks and had a meeting that was, at most moments, more akin to a corporate board meeting or a college classroom discussion than it was to a bunch of 12 young adults in any social situation. And then we played Scrabble. We're so hardcore). I have nothing booked as of the present moment, but I've had a running list of ideas in my head for a while now, based on my own desires and what I've heard other people talking about. I'm saddened but not surprised to say that Iceland isn't happening this year, and neither is Sweden, in all likelihood. I plan to go to Paris in early February, which I'll book this weekend, and two weekends after that, my friends and I are going to Dublin for a long weekend. Concrete plans for spring break are hazy for me, but they will include one, some, or all of these countries: Holland (again), France (again), the Czech Republic, Croatia, and Greece. Of course, it all depends on funds and timing (since I have at least one paper to write over the break, my mom might be visiting, we're juggling at least twelve schedules, and I'm going to be travelling on a budget), but the absolute priority is Greece. The idea was planted in my head sometime last semester, and so many out of the 27 of us Dickinson friends want to go to Greece that it makes quite a lot of sense to rent a villa or a block of apartment-style hotel rooms for a week or so. It seems as though we've decided on Santorini, which is fiiiiine with me, but I hope we can also spend a day or so in Athens and see the Parthenon, since that's probably going to be where we fly into. Croatia is a bit of a random destination, but apparently it's been a Dickinson abroad favorite, and from what I've seen, it is absolutely beautiful. I've been hoping to visit Jane in Prague since she found out she was going, and I'd love to go back to Holland, maybe bringing a friend or two with me. But Greece is the priority. I've had Greece on the brain for two days. A villa, a bunch of friends, the beach, and the Mediterranean sun for 5 days or more sounds like exactly what I need. I think what I need is very early retirement at the ripe old age of 20, but perhaps I can hold on long enough and get through just so I can get to Santorini.

Oh, Your Collegiate Grief has Left You Dowdy in Sweatshirts, Absolute Horror

The Marathon Monday was definitely a marathon, but I didn't really start to feel it until about 15 minutes into the last class, when I was so tired and sufficiently hungry. However, I think the coming Mondays will be worse, since this past Monday was just for introductions, and three out of four of the classes didn't even go the full two hours. Next Monday, I plan to pack a lunch, which I'll scarf down while walking to/from the building on the godforsaken edge of campus where they throw the classes that don't fit anywhere else. This probably means I will choke on a cheese sandwich while trying to sprint to my class (while wearing Wafflestomper) while simultaneously slipping on the ice that is STILL not cleared from the pavements because Britain is under a shortage of rock salt and no one owns a shovel.

Besides going to a party on Monday night, which I basically crashed in the middle of, I will now and forever refuse to do anything on Mondays past 6PM besides shovel down food and spend the rest of the night in front of the TV (meaning, most likely, my computer, too). Well, unless there's a good party or outing going on with my friends, because I can't turn down that stuff. Subsequently, I slept til about 1:30 PM on Tuesday, despite being ever-so-rudely awoken by the fire alarm at 11AM (they feel the need to test the obnoxiously loud fire alarm in every building in the Village every Tuesday morning around 11 without fail. Why it needs to be at a time when quite a few people are still sleeping and why they need to check it every week, I have no idea). The super-late lie-in wasn't just a fluke, though, since I did it again today, completely by accident. Whoops.

I think all this free time unscheduled time from Tuesday to Sunday is making me feel a bit disconnected at the moment. I've spent all of my time outside of class so far reading in my room for classes, sleeping, or out manically running errands, minus the one short party on Monday and the upcoming vacation-planning session tomorrow night. I'm not liking this life so much. My only true enjoyment so far has been sleeping (granted, we all know how much I enjoy that). I know I brought this semester on myself and blah blah blah, and I'm certainly not regretting my decision to stay at UEA, but I think I'm perversely regretting a decision I made back in 2006 to go to university in the first place. Of course, not going to university wasn't an option, given my large conscience and senses of responsibility and reality. At the time, I tricked myself into thinking the whole game might be fun, but I was most certainly wrong, as I knew I would be, and I think very little of this whole experience has been worth it from an academic and monetary point of view. I've thought this for a while (probably since about day 2 at Dickinson), but with my new heightened frustration with academia, it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that not only do I want to graduate ASAP, I need to graduate ASAP for my own mental health. I barely know what I mean like that, because I'm not the sort that could be clinically depressed or do anything drastic, but I do know that I've been in a slow downward spiral for the past two years, and it's been speeding up lately. I feel likeI've been repressed from September to November and January to May/June since 2008, and I'm tired of it.

Oh Holy Hell.

So, I'm back in Norwich. I certainly don't mind being back in England, but I feel like my break was rather short, and I also feel both overwhelmed and unprepared for this semester, and it hasn't even started yet. I was just reminded that I have some readings to do for tomorrow's classes, so I should get down to doing them, since, oh yeah, ALL FOUR OF MY CLASSES ARE ON MONDAYS. This means I'm going from 10AM to 6PM every Monday with no breaks for food or bathrooms, but I have Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off. While it's nice to have all that time off, I'm going to come to hate Mondays with a firey passion. Also, there isn't time allotted in the schedule for me to get from one place to the other. So, my first class goes from 10 to 12, the next is from 12 to 2, the next is from 2 to 4, and the last is from 4 to 6. Even without the broken foot and Wafflestomper (the Aircast), I couldn't manage to run all the way across campus to 3 different buildings in the span of a minute, and one of the buildings is about a 10-15 minute walk from the main campus. I think I might scream.

In other news, it has snowed in Norwich. Apparently, there's been snow on the ground pretty much consistently since I last was in the country (it figures, doesn't it?). When I arrived on Friday night, it had obviously just snowed about 2-3 inches, and it was all very pretty. I continued thinking it was pretty until Saturday afternoon when I went into town, when I realized there were no plans to plow the roads or shovel the pavements (sidewalks). Apparently, since there aren't really snow plows in this country, they just throw sand ("grit") down on the road and have cars roll over it until the snow melts. This takes a while, and it makes a mess. Secondly, no one seems to own a snow shovel, including the UEA maintenance staff or the Norwich City Council: the pavements in town, on campus, on side streets, you name it, are covered in stomped-down snow. Wafflestomper isn't exactly compatible with snow. I've been putting a plastic bag over the squishy part of it, which has been keeping it dry fairly well, but walking on uneven, slippery surfaces with a fractured foot, a heavy boot, and little to no strength in my leg muscle isn't so fun. Today my friends and I went out to brunch, which was very nice. Unfortunately, it's Sunday, meaning the buses run infrequently, and it was cold and heavily snowing a sort of slushy snow, so rather than stand at the bus stop and get drenched while trying to get back home, we thought we'd at least keep moving. It was a good plan, but Wafflestomper protested due to the fact that there isn't bare concrete anywhere to be seen. I understand that England doesn't have very many snow plows or salt, or anything very hardcore for dealing with snow, but Christ, you'd think maintenance staffs and city workers would own SHOVELS for other things, and that they would be directed to use said shovels so people, broken feet or not, don't kill themselves while walking in a country wholly dependent on public transport (which all but shuts down in inclement weather). Individual people and families don't seem to own shovels, either. It's both funny and maddening when I have a hard time walking as it is.

I also pretty much 100% decided over break to not bother doing the Dickinson class, even though I'm forced to. This means I will fail the class. However, the grade isn't factored into my GPA (or "yearly aggregate") according to UEA, so as long as Dickinson can't do anything particularly nasty, like stab me in the back by withholding anything since I failed the class, I'm almost definitely not going to do the paper/project. I'll still go to class and do readings, but looking at the semester I'm in for, I can't handle writing a stupid paper that doesn't matter to anything anyway while simultaneously keeping up my grades in my four other classes that DO matter. Even though I know now that I have Tuesday through Sunday off, I need all that time to do reading and work for my UEA classes, as well as go food shopping, do laundry, clean, and all of those housewifey things that I actually like doing much more than schoolwork. I might include breathing in that list, too, but I'm worried I won't even have time for that.

-I'm so in love with my iPod Touch that I haven't turned on my real computer in two days. I don't think that's ever happened before. I decided long ago that my next computer will be a Mac by hook or by crook (which I will get after I graduate, if all goes according to plan), but now I have even more of a burning desire for an iPhone, if that's even possible. At risk of sounding spoiled or high-maintenance, I'm already mourning the fact that there isn't wifi in the Village back at UEA. However, portable wifi routers exist for about $50, where a little bit of plastic plugs into an Ethernet cable and makes a local wifi network. I think it would be considered ridiculous for me to get one just to power my iPod at UEA, but next year, in whatever flat I get with Rosie, it's unlikely to have wifi either (for our computers). If I pay $50 now, I both can have wifi in my room this year, and in our flat next year for the both of us. I might just do it, though I know Dickinson used to take serious issue with students creating their own wifi networks in the dorms. I wonder if UEA has a similar policy, or if they'd even find out if I created one.

-I'm not one for New Year's resolutions, usually, but this year I have two:
1. Write in my fricking diary every day. I've been keeping one of those Bridget-Jones-type diaries for a few years now (in addition to regular journals, which I've done since I was six), where you write the mundane things you did every day down on a page for future reference. I like doing it, it's proven useful, and it's fun to look back on. But with the craziness of my last semester, I wasn't as good about it as I should have, and I either never got around to writing things down (most notably all of my time in London, and most of late December), or more commonly, recalled what I did up to a week later and summarized it in general terms just so I had something down. This year, I'm going to make every effort to write down what happened ON the actual day it happened. I'll thank myself later.
2. Make a book of lists. A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a collection of books, which was tied with a website called Listography. I created an account on the site, even though I have yet to use it, because I think it's another exercise in self-discovery and inspiration and blah blah blah that I'd actually end up loving. I'm going to put some on my own Listography in good time, but I'm keeping a hardcopy, more extensive version for myself, too.

-In addition to all the other internetting things I do (Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Live Journal, Listography, and others), I'm debating whether or not to get a Tumblr. Two of my friends recently got them, and since it's basically a Twitter with more visual/audio/multimedia posts, I just might do it. I mean, I could totally use more things to procrastinate work with on the internet, right?