This morning* barely started at all. My alarm went off, but it was still dark out. Seven is not a good time to wake up if you're looking for sunshine. It almost never is. I've found that the sun often rises shortly after six, sometimes as late as eight, an on occasion, as early as five, but seven is a no show.
I disabled my alarm and snuggled back into place, but soon the sky lightened to only dark gray, like dull gunmetal, and my room mate started to get ready. I left it until seven thirty to actually bother lifting myself up and dropping down out of bed. I was still dressed from yesterday and still as unshowered and unkempt as two days before, but I decided I was as ready as I could get before class.
I grabbed my backpack and headed out the door. I didn't have enough time fror breakfast, maybe a snack, but there was no point in chancing it. I headed straight for my tutorial, throught the parking lot, up the back alley stairs, across East Mall, through Kaiser, and past the Cheeze. pausing breifly to joke with myself as to whether that was really a man dressed as the bunny from Danny Darko or whether I was in rough enough shape to be hallucinating. I made it to the lab with time to spare. My friend was already there, sitting in the seat beside mine. I share every class (that I attend) with him, and we were going to try some of our impossible physics questions.
The tutorial started. I paid some attention as I fiddled away on the lab's computer. Programming is easy, at least, once you get the concepts, understand some mathematical background, and know where to look for problems. I excel at it, I finish all our assignments first, and then spend most of the lab time fooling around. Today was a prime example. I was done out hour and a half long assignment in probably less than fifteen minutes, I could have done it faster, but then I started building an interface. Nothing special, it simply greeted the user, asked them what they wanted to do, asked for some numbers and printed the answers, and kept going until told to quit, at which point it would say the cliche, "Have a nice day!" before closing. The teacher's assistant seemed annoyed by the amount of extra (and to be honest, useless) code I'd written in. I was just biding time until my friend was done.
When it was over, we headed for the PPPP (first-year engineering study lounge) to work on some physics. Then when we got bored and hungry, we went to the Student Union Building (SUB) for some breakfast. We talked and ate until it was time for math, which I usually skip, but he convinced me otherwise. And he turned out to be right. I was startled to find them working on new material. I paid attention, picking up what I could and looking up how much further we had gotten in the book. I wasn't afraid of falling behind, but it's nice to know where I was expected to be.
Next was thermodynamics. We were working on entropy, learning new concepts on the fly (not having had the time to read ahead), and completing all the work we were given without too much trouble.
Then I headed back to rez with another friend during my vectors class. The teacher has even said that if we can do the work, that coming to class isn't necessary. I keep up with the work, and what little else the teacher teaches is obscure mathematical methods to solving force problems. Methods so obscure that while I am able to derive them, and have even seen how they might be useful, I've seen too many people too confused over what they mean (usually nothing, they're just a method). Instead of class, I had a chat about how social skills, specifically, the lack of them.
When I got to my room, there were beer cans on the floor, loud music, and my room mate dressed up like Rick James, dancing to the cheers of some floor mates. I talked with my Australian friend before heading to chem.
Chemistry is one class that, no matter how little extra is taught in class as opposed to in the book, and no matter how many times I fall asleep trying to pay attention, I will not miss. That is because it is a class in which I admit that I am not up to date, and probably never will be. I arrived early, fell asleep during, but still caught some glimpse of understanding, I hope.
From the end of chem onwards, I went back to rez, talked, went for supper, and then tried to get some work done. I failed.
My first failure was not getting the last question of an online assignment in on time. It was easy and doable, I was just distracted until two hours to late (my first incomplete assignment in that course). I then started writing code for a rebellious program that would combine all my other programs and functions. I found myself also doing dishes in our lounge, cleaning up after someone's haircut (he went from shoulder length to about two inches), and helping another friend with his Joker costume. It was creepy, very creepy. He had a good laugh and voice for it too. I then had to humour a drunk guy who was visiting where he had lived last year (guess where). My room.
By the time all this was done, I had given up on homework. I dressed up as a ninja and headed out with a group of friends. We walked around, creeping people out (my sneaking creeped out more people than anything the Joker tried). We found a few dead parties and lots of groups of oddly dressed people. Pikachu, Pooh, Mario and Luigi, robots, ginger bread and more. It was early for a Friday when we decided nothing else of interest would happen. That's when a Residence Adviser (RA) walked out and asked us if we had seen my room mate. I did a quick (running) round of the residence asking if anyone had seen him. When I got back to my room, I found out why.
My room mate was drunk. Well not just drunk, hammered, shit-faced, smashed and any other descriptor of heavy inebriation and intoxication you can think of. He was standing, but in a way that only caused more worry. An RA was pulling him upward every now and again while trying to get it though his head to stay in his room. I stayed with them, as he wandered away, saying something about a party (all the ones I knew of were long over) before he shot down the stairs.
We (the RA and I) followed him down. Another RA (from my floor) was talking to someone on the main floor. She took a shot at talking sense into him and we got him into the elevator and into his room. He collapsed a few times, we warned him about ending up in the drunk tank, hell, he even asked to go. We got him into his room, we set him up on the floor (a fall from his bed would be bad, and he would fall), the RA gave me a few last words of how to get help, and she left. I bolted the door, considered physically blocking it, then sat down and watch.
He wasn't able to stay still for a moment. He was constantly moving around, out of his blanket, towards the door, into my closet, under his bed, anywhere within reach of a man who can't fall asleep and can't get up. He even stood a few times and made a dash for the door. He got it open before I caught him and put him down gently.
Since then he's fallen into what I hope is sleep. He's had instances where I couldn't hear him breathing, other times when he wouldn't breath without stimulus, and he's even thrown up (probably a good thing) on our floor (not so much), but I managed to flip him over, and while into the mess, away from the possibility of choking on it. He's now snoring loudly. It's now three of the clock and I've given up on hope of sleep. I don't want anything bad happening on my watch, and a long watch it's going to be.
To end on a better note, here's a shot of my Australian friend, the Joker and his girlfriend Poison Ivy.
*I'm going by subjective time, in which morning is the few hours after waking, night is the time when sleep would be a good idea, and day is the in between.
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