09/04/2003 - 8:52 p.m.

It's been a long long long time

I am a very peculiar person. However, we'll back up and start the story at the beginning. (No, it doesn't go quite back to my birth- that's a different story.)

Monday was supposed to be the All State IHSSA Individual competition, held here at uni. For those theatre/speech people in the world, understand that here in Iowa this event is the highest honour of personal high school theatrical performance. Five people from my high school would be coming up to perform, along with a lot of other people from high school. I had planned to skip all my classes that day and see everybody.

It is an interesting occurance that ever since I have attended IHSSA, the weather here at uni has never been favourable, nor was it pleasant for any of my college visits either. Now that I'm here, any day that I've ever seen groups on tour of the campus, I note also that it's not a nice day. Good of the weather to show itself off at the worst. "If you can stand this", the campus says, "you can probably graduate in four or five years. We may as well accept you."

IHSSA this year was a bit different. The night before, Thor took it into his head to grace us in this first week of April with a splendid snowfall. Something between three and five inches fell and the event was called off entirely.

So much for my plan to skip classes, eh? Well, no, not exactly. I've never been one to allow the pleasures of today to interfer with the demands of tomorrow, and so took the day off anyway.

I did not discover the grave error I had made until Tuesday night at nine o clock when I realised that today I would be expected to turn in an Astronomy assignment, pass a Humanities exam (requiring the reading of 100 pages of textbook, the entirety of All Quiet on the Western Front, and Crime and Punishment), and also perhaps have begun to make some sort of showing that I have, in fact, finished the book I chose to read for my German Lit. project. (The Song of Bernadette, incidently. Not a particuarly gripping story, I suppose, but a rather a nice one if the length isn't intimidating.)

Well, no big problem, I supposed. It was nine o clock, I could skip out finishing Bernadette, and read Western Front instead (luckily I read and fell in love with C&P last year- I know that book just about cold), that'd take two hours, at very most, and I could do the Astronomy in under an hour- how long would five problems take me? Then I'd skim the Humanities in half an hour and be in bed before one o clock in the morning. Good deal.

The astronomy assignment took me three hours to finish. Yes, five questions, three hours. He likes to ask in depth questions that require that you go look up half a dozen things he mentioned only breifly in class. This is no big problem- in fact, I think it's a lot of fun to do the work, but I was not intending spending that much time on it.

Now it was midnight, and I began upon Western Front. I had intended to read it ages ago, but I couldn't because of the very nature of the book. It is very difficult for me to bring myself to read this book about war, this book that, by showing the audience the Great War, hopes to fight Lloyd George's statement that "this war, like the next one, was the war to end all wars". When I began reading, we were on the brink of war. Disenheartened, I left Paul to his own devices in France. Last night I had more than half of it to read and no choice to do otherwise. I doubt I will ever be able to read the book again. The single thing that stands out to me in that book is the mention of Detering and the horses: "I tell you it is the vilest baseness to use horses in the war." And what of using men?

By the time I finished reading that, it was quarter past two, and I began upon the text work. Upon taking the test this morning, it was quite unnecessary for me to read it, but there was no way my knowing that at the time. So, then it is coming on three thirty and I think, well, why not try and finish those last 200 pages of Bernadette? (The book is 575 pages total.) I did. At five o clock this morning I turned out the light, hoping beyond hope that perhaps I would be able to get out of bed in two and a half hours.

I woke up ten minutes shy of being late, and how I made it out of bed and dressed and to class I cannot describe. This is the second time that's happenened- the last time was about this far in to the last semester.

Since then, I have not been back to sleep. I'm not at all certain how I managed on less than three hours sleep all day, but I have.

And now I'm talking to my mother. Oh joy.