Running Away from Lethargy

So I've started running with my housemate in the evenings. The weather has cooled from the smothering summer heat, but hasn't yet frozen into dread winter (alright, so Brisbane doesn't see snow). We get rained on occasionally, but we're usually soaked anyway.

I shouldn't talk about the bouncing. It isn't really appropriate. I bought garments to make it stop though. You haven't experienced weird until you get the ache due to bouncing while running.

Instead I'll talk about energy. I've heard that you start feeling more energetic after you've been exercising for a while. I almost died running up the hill near our house the first time, walked the second time, and successfully ran up the third time. The fourth time, I almost died again. I don't get it. I wasn't expecting to make it that third time, and figured that if I'd done it once recently, surely I'd be able to do it again.

Not so.

Even more oddly, my legs have been fine. My arms ache instead. Bizarre, yes? I haven't been carrying weights or anything. Am I tense while running? Does exercise and being outside stress me out that badly?

Hiking around campus with a laptop and my textbooks on my back is easy, and campus is hardly flat or small. Have you been to St Lucia recently? You have to travel twice as far to get from one side of the university to the other as you used to just to get around all of the construction work going on at the moment. And yet, my shoulders and legs take that as par for the course. While carrying nothing on my evening run makes my arms feel like lead.

Science fail.

I'll see how it goes tonight.

There Must Be Another Way

Disclaimer: My linguistics lecturer is enthusiastic about her work, and goes to a lot of trouble to explain new concepts and help her students. That's wonderfully refreshing in a teacher.

But we're a lecture behind, and all of our marks come from worksheets based on the lecture notes published on the internet which aren't necessarily followed in the lectures themselves anyway.

The tutorials are spent going over the worksheets that we tried to fill in the previous week. That's all.

Does this sound as disorganised to everyone else as it does to me? We're basically trying to teach ourselves the material from internet sources before each class, and just spend the classes telling each other our answers. It's working so far, but that's mostly because we're still working through what nouns, adjectives, and verbs are.

The tutor today told me that my analysis was too advanced for the current work, and that I should stick to the basic rules for now. Why give me a poem to analyse if you don't want me to analyse it as a poem? The structure is clearly different from regular prose. Will I have to relearn this later?

I know I wasn't going to use this blog to whine, but surely there's a better way to run this course. Am I being ridiculous? Are my expectations not what they should have been?

Happy Fish

The world is a slightly dimmer place this week. Not just because of the rain.

For a few short, wonderful months, I had a fighter fish friend named Sparky. I have never met a happier, braver, or more resilient critter. He danced every day when he thought he should be fed, and was always excited when someone came into the room. Considering he lived on the kitchen bench, that means he was pretty much perpetually excited.

He'd follow you around the room against the glass of his bowl, and investigate anything that rested nearby, be it inanimate object or finger. And he knew the difference between fingers, faces, and objects.

He survived more than 7 months of disease, from lumps to infections to fin rot and finally liver failure, and still kept swimming. He earned the name Toyota for his sheer strength against the odds.

He taught me that you can be happy just to be alive, and lifted my spirits every day when I came home. Our lizard friend Mikey fascinated him, and they kept each other company with staring contests through the glass.

He rests now beneath a brilliant yellow hibiscus in my mother's garden; it's the happiest plant I could find. I think he'll like being a pretty flower. A painting of him in his prime hangs above Mikey's tank.

We love our Sparky Toyota, and we'll miss him terribly. We're glad he isn't sick anymore.

He has finally found peace, and he'll never be forgotten.

Just Like That, I Forget

This blog didn't go at all to plan, but I guess that's the point, isn't it? I learned quite a bit from the few posts I made, particularly when I looked back at them.

Then as soon as I realised the direction it was taking and tried to turn it around, I promptly stopped posting. That doesn't mean I have nothing to say; just that it's so much easier to write negatively.

I did learn something today: I'm trying to set up wireless internet in my new house, and I've discovered that the initial providers deal in long contracts with unnecessarily large data blocks for my university and webcomic-viewing usage, while the plans I might actually like are offered by the rebundlers my dad warned me off. I could post about that, but it's not the most pleasant topic, is it? And I'm certain everyone else has already figured it out, so why unload my frustration onto all of them?

I've honestly had a lovely day. I slept in, finished my homework, ate chocolate, and praised my other half for doing the dishes without prompting. I suppose I could post about some of that. Who doesn't like sleeping in? Homework is a near-universal thorn, while chocolate makes many people's day. And the stereotype causes my man's spontaneous decision to wash dishes cause for celebration.

But I don't feel like it. I have a writing blog now, but it's for my benefit more than anyone else, so you'll have to stumble across it without my directions.

Posts in Driftwood will have to float in whenever the tide turns that way. See you when I see you. :)