Keeping a week schedule helps, but I should really try to write these diary kind of entries more than once a week if I want to keep them up.
On Monday, I had an appointment for consult with a psychiatrist (a new one) at Parnassia at noon.
This meant I couldn't attend class, as I would have to leave very early from the first class, and would arrive very late to make it back to the second. Because of this—and because I didn’t feel to well—I sent an email to the two teachers the night before.
I got up on, didn’t feel to bad, headed to Parnassia, and made it right on time. The lady behind the desk, however, told me I could go to the waiting room, and could come back if I wouldn't be called within 15 minutes. That was a first, but I followed instructions.
I didn't bring a watch, and didn’t see any clock, but when I knew I had been waiting at least 15 minutes (it was probably closer to an hour), I went back to the desk. This time, there was another lady.
She looked very surprised when I told what I was there for. She explained the psychiatrist had called in sick, and that she had cancelled all of his appoitments by phone. I said it was ok, in the friendliest voice, and planned to head home.
It seemed to be bothering her more than myself, though. She came up to me from behind the desk with a list with phonenumbers that she had used that morning. It appeared she had called my cellular phone, and spoke in a voicemail. However, my phone has been stolen some time ago, and I was still waiting for the new one to arrive.
I gave her my home number, and she assured me the psychiatrist would call me to set a new appointment. Meanwhile, she kept apologizing every five seconds, and I kept repeating it was ok with a friendly smile.
Finally, I headed home (walking).
When I got home, my mom was still waiting for the guy that was going to repair the window that broke the Friday prior (and surprised to see me back so soon).
About an hour after I had come home, he finally arrived. The window was repaired surprisingly fast, and was looking a lot more clear than the previous one had in recent memory. Also, the window finally seemed to close easily, which used to be a bit of an issue.
After I signed some papers, and showed the kind man the door, I got out of my suit and into some basketball gear. I didn't feel like dinner, at all, and went out to play some basketball.
Around seven in the evening, I went home to finally have some dinner. I had dinner, and headed out to play basketball again.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. When I finally I did fall asleep, I nearly had to get up again, which I did. I felt like pretty much shit, but went to school to discuss my ideas for the Schermen met letters project anyway. The teacher was fairly possitive.
After class (I only had one to attend that day), I headed home and planned to get some sleep. That kind of worked out, but not entirely. I don’t know at what time exactly, but I fell asleep with my clothes on at some point. After a short nap, I had dinner, and played some videogames or something, and passed out again. This time a bit longer and deeper, but still not exactly a good night of sleep. I must have been unconscious for no more than an hour … yet, I totally lost my sleepyness, and stayed up all night again. (Shrug.)
It wasn’t untill around seven the next morning that I fell asleep (purposely, this time). I woke up around four in the afternoon, and got out around five.
I didn’t feel to good, obviously. I tried playing basketball outside, but I was feeling to weak and crappy even for that … at first, at least: after an hour or two, I suddenly got a good dosis of energy, via which I started feeling and playing a lot better. Unfortunately, it had already run late then, so it was time to head home again.
Wanting to break this insane rythm (if you can even call it a rythm), and knowing I’d have class the next day, I went to bed at three (which is still very late, but ey). It was nice idea, but it didn’t work out at all. At seven, I gave up, disabled the alarm clock that was set to go off an hour later, and got out of bed.
On my way to the academy I felt more anxious than usual (<sarcasm>gee, I wonder why that is</sarcasm>). It was so bad, I decided to get out a stop earlier than usual, and walk the rest. I noticed there's hardly any difference, so at least I learned something.
Class actually wasn’t too bad. I was a bit manic, but that's a lot more fun than anxiety and depression. Even my face-to-face meeting with the art history teacher for who I have to write an essay went well. On the other hand, I was also looking forward to head home.
This wasn’t going to happen anytime soon though. On my way out, I was stopped short by some fellow students. They said we’d have some new Media Training class thingy class at five (it was one at that time!), and that they’d be working on the proof for Friday in the meantime.
I didn’t feel like it at first, but I decided to stay anyway, and I think it was a good thing too. We managed to finish the proof together, and I know I wouldn't have done it right way if I had gone home. Media Training however … man, I’ve been through boring hours in my life before, but … damn. No offense to the guy that ran the show, but …
Around six, I could finally head home. It was friggin’ cold, so I decided to go by tram. It was the first time in months I went home from the Academy by tram, yet I was feeling perfectly fine (in contrast to the morning prior).
I don’t know what I did when I got home, but I didn’t really start working for school untill after midnight, right after I congratulated my mom with her birthday. After that, I started filling in a weekschedual for my psychologist—which also comes in handy for writing weblog entries, I’m experiencing right now—took a shower, and went to bed. Four hours later, I got up again. (This was around eight.)
When I arrived in class (a bit late), I saw Petr was showing some Processing examples via the beamer. I figured this was in relation to his Programming Python with DrawBot course. But,
I thought, Processing is Java, right.
So while I was halfway to getting to a seat, I said just that. He confirmed, and explained he was just showing some examples of what can be achived visually via programming.
I sat down right next to him, and somehow we got into a little dicussion on the use of Python in combination with xsl. He then realized this didn’t really fit the class, and said what we’ll be doing here is very, very basic, and that we should discuss this sort of stuff in private some time. I liked that, because this sort of thing interests me a lot, and I think I can learn a great deal from him.
The actual class—which generally is about corporate identies, and about letter heads that day specificaly—that started then was also very interesting. I learned things about letter heads I would probably never have considered, let alone take into account while designing. Yet, they seemed to be very realistic and relevant points. Then again, that’s what I'm there for: to learn.
After regular class, about half of the students left, but an even bigger number came in; all to learn a thing or two (or a shitload) about Python.
The class would have been interesting if it wasn’t for the fact that it was more or less a repetition of one of his earlier class, that Casper and I had also attended. The two of use decided to get a nice spot in the back of the class—where there was an internet connection—and put our knowledge to work.
In the few hours Petr provided the other students an introduction to the language, Casper and I wrote a little app that would 'design' a business card, either for Casper, or for me (which was randomly decided via if random() > .5. The card had three elements: a name, a profession, and a photo. The application was able to match the three elements (Casper’s name, with Casper’s photo, etc.), but the position of these elements was random. Random, but limited: as we set a static canvas on which everything should take place.
When class was over, our little app was working nicely, but had one nasty bug: it would always show both photos, even though I would match the name and profession properly. We showed Petr the problem, who was able to fix it rather rappidly (though I had expected him to say it's a bug in DrawBot). The problem was in the capitalization: changing image
to Image
did the trick.
When I got home, I congratulated my uncle and grandmother with the birthday of my mother, and went to my room to work on a present (a card), which I think came out nicely. I think my mom liked it a lot, too.
Somehow, I managed to still be awake around eight in the morning again. Perhaps one could say there's finally a rythm there, but it's not a rythm I want to hold on too. I was shocked when I woke up around five, and realized a day had been wasted.
I crawled in begind my computer (I felt like all energy had been drained from my body), and just set there. After a couple of hours, my mom brought me soup. A big, nice, full bowl of soup. I did something which I don’t normally do, which is to eat it at my desk. (I didn’t feel like moving at all.) I had put the cup down, originally, and was talking to my mom. At a certain point, I picked the bowl up by the iron holder—which is a sepperate part from the glass bowl—and turned my head because my mom said something again.
At that very moment, the glass bowl decided it no longer wanted to be affiliated with the iron holder, and parted. It hit my desk; my keyboard; my legs; my chair; the ground … in that order. I got up, did not look at the damage that had been done, dropped the iron holder from my hand, and headed straight for the kitchen.
Mom went bezzerk, and the following hours were spent mopping up soup from the floor; cleaning desk, chair, and printer; and taking apart—and throughly cleaning the parts of—a keyboard in a desperate attempt to save it. Crazyness.
During one of my many trips to the kitchen sink, I suddenly heard a—totally unexpected—laughter from my mom. She was on the phone. Somehow, it went through my mind that it was Ratna (my ex’ elder sister), and that she had broken up with her boyfriend after five years.
I asked my mom who it was, and she replied: You’d never guess who this is!
My reply: Ratna.
My mom: … Oookay then. How’d–
… Dunno.
… Whatever.
I decided to bother with my keyboard again and let the two of them talk.
After some time, I was asked to come to the phone. I felt nervous, but that wasn’t because I didn’t to talk to her … quite the contrary: I was filled with anticipation. I have liked her since the first time we met, and in the years I dated her sister, I’ve grown to love her as a friend and part of my family. When her sister and I broke up two years ago, I knew that was going to be the end between me and Ratna (and other family and friends that I’d grown to like) too; that’s exactly how it turned out to be, and I regret that.
Although it was good to hear from her, it wasn’t exactly a party either. We were both sounding depressed; in our tone, but even moreso in our words. She did indeed break up with ehr boyfriend after five years, so that makes the both of us that have lost the love of life. We have been feeling like crap ever since, and are basically going through the roughest time in our respectively lives. Jolly.
The reason of her calling was also more of a business thing than some social chit-chat (although it could also be a reason to break through whatever was holding her back before … but that’s just speculation): she wanted me to remove the pictures of her that were shown on my website. Her (now ex) boyfriend had found them on Google and sent them to her. This explains the qeueries for her and her sister’s names that had been showing up in my stats lately.
I said I would take them down asap; that I’d take them down that very moment … if it wasn’t for a keyboard drenched in soup. (Hey, Murphy, what's up?); and that I was sorry for placing them—without explicit permission—to begin with.
She said she didn’t even really mind herself, but that you know how my family is.
Ah, right. I forget that part … banned it from my neural system (nice folks; no disrespect; just not exactly as broadminded as I like to believe I am myself). She brought in a little bright note by mentioning she had also seen my work, and think my drawings are very good. ☺
We also talked about her sister a bit. I didn’t really want to, but it was good to hear she doing better. I didn’t bother asking why she was doing not so good before (which that statement implicates): I’m pretty good at math. It appears she’s on internship in Surinam right now, and is having a jolly good time. I mean it when I say I’m glad to hear that, but that was also the last thing I wanted to hear about it [her].
I heard some woman yell for the phone in the background, and it sounded vaguely familiar. Ratna yelled back that she was on it, then told me she had to go. Argh‼, hello flash-back. That was the sound of Ms., not being too fond of her daughters hanging on the phone, and—of all the people in the world—not in the last place with me. I’m fairly certain she could sense me. She always has.
We wished eachother strength and prosperity, and said our goodbyes. I managed to squize in that she [Ratna] can always call me if she wants to talk—although that was more of a polite gesture (wishfull thinking?) than that I think that’s actually going to happen—and hung up.
So how's my keyboard and the such doing then? Everything’s clean, but everything’s also very wet. I put the parts on the radiator, and went outside to play basketball for half an hour or so.
When I got home, everything was perfectly dry. I put together all the bits and pieces of my keyboard, and connected it. I booted my computer, and was relieved when it didn’t show a Keyboard not detected
error at startup. That’s where the fun stopped though: no response from keyboard whatsoever in Windows.
I disconnected and de-assembled the thing again, check all the parts again, and put everything together and connect it again. I repeated this process a couple of times, and then gave up on it. I realized I wouldn’t be able to continue the work on my school assignments for the next day, and that I was going to miss another Monday at the academy.
I could, however, run my ftp client, and delete the folders of the three sisters from the server, using nothing but mouse. That’s exactly what I did. Unable to make any modifications to the .htaccess or anything, all three pages would return a 404, but that’d have to do for now.
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