Stress, As Usual

If anyone wants to make my life easier, they could:

a) find cheap tickets to Manila from late July to late September,
b) tell me everything I need to know about structuralism,
c) find a guest lecturer for my course this summer, and
d) throw a birthday party so I have an excuse to eat ice cream.

Luckily, Ginger just turned 25 and made D. happen, and I spent part of the evening at G&Ds drowning my stress in Dime Bar ice cream and a cake from the Covered Market with a well-proportioned mermaid on the top. (It turns out that the mermaid was appropriate, since Ginger casually mentioned that she's swimming the Strait of Gibraltar this summer. She says things like this in roughly the same tone of voice I use to say that I'm breaking in a new pair of shoelaces.) And now, someone's camera has a video of me being handed a piece of mermaid's torso, tossing it into my mouth, and offhandedly commenting that breasts are soft and taste like marzipan. When this leaks onto the internet and destroys my career, I hope someone has the decency to edit in a shooting star and the "The More You Know" theme.

For Everything Else

- tanktop and pair of Umbro shorts: £5.99
- membership at Bourton Mills: £30/month
- grande iced americano from Starbucks: £1.90

- getting simultaneously buzzed from caffeine, endorphines, and an over-the-shoulder smile from some guy on your way back from the gym: priceless

(I'd attribute this to my credit card, but I think it has more to do with the fact that Oxford is exponentially more magical when you're not bundled up in a peacoat and mittens.)

The Best Part of Waking Up

In an attempt to relive my sweltering, underpaid summer in DC, I went online and found last year's recipe for cold press coffee that basically changed my life. I'm self-aware enough to know that this won't actually save me any money, it just means that I'll keep getting an iced americano every afternoon at Starbucks, go home, and pour myself a cup of the homemade stuff. And this is how I trick myself into overdraft yet again.

Overheard at Rhodes Ball

"Parties like this are the only times that I look at everyone else and think that I'm relatively normal."

Dancing Queen

After last night's hip-hop bop in Hertford (the last of the year, now that the entz ban has gone into effect and we're not allowed to throw parties that might disrupt exams), I bounced out of bed this morning, picked up a somewhat gross amount of coffee at Starbucks, and then walked down to Ginger's dance competition at Iffley. I made it early enough to get front-row seats for the ballroom portion, and then joined up with everyone else for the Latin portion and all of the jiving and cha-chaing that that entails. I don't know how it ended up, but I do know that Ginger can dance like a mofo. And watching it made me want to take up dance next year - mostly because I'd have an excuse to wax my chest and wear tight bellbottoms and get approving nods for it. It's the best sport ever!

And now I'm off to the Rhodes Ball, which is the final event of my Trinity Term social calendar. After this, the hardcore studying starts - for that reason, I plan to pay no attention to the little voice that tells me when I'm making inappropriate conversation, eat one of everything at the dessert buffet, treat the dance floor like I would at Baby Love, and generally behave like a child. Yay!

Punt!

After getting like five hours of sleep yesterday, I got up this morning, grudgingly shuffled to the shower, and plodded out the door into the chilly, overcast weather to Marks and Spencer to pick up a batch of pain au raisins and coffee. The pain au raisins were for everyone I was going punting with. The coffee was so that I wouldn't fall asleep in mid-punt and drown in a shallow river, thereby killing and embarrassing myself at the same time.

I'd never gone punting before - and granted, since you're supposed to drink and do it in the sunshine, doing it at 9am on a cloudy day didn't seem like the best way to try it for the first time. But the clouds parted before we got to the river and someone brought wine, so that turned out okay. The water was really calm and we saw ducklings that were so young that they were still fuzzy, and when we weren't being laughed at by everyone in the Social Science Library, we did a pretty convincing job. That was not at all thanks to me, since I ran us aground about a half dozen times because it is way harder than it looks. I'm glad I lost my punting virginity with Leana because she was kind enough not to laugh at me. It wasn't just that I kept drifting from bank to bank, I got stuck in a tangle of plants in the river and then almost got swept off the back of the punt by an overhanging branch that caught my chest. If I was that bad at actually losing my virginity, I owe someone an apology.

Back to Nature

I can't remember the last thing I've done that's felt quite as primal as going to the gym, stripping down to my underwear, and potting a fern in my shower. It looks great, which is more than I can say for myself when I'm half-naked and covered in mud.