Saturday, May 26, 2007

RIP Morris the Mouse, I'll Miss you

He was only with us for a little while, but he was a happy little mouse. I think he died of old age, since he always had food, water and warmth, so at least he died in comfort. I'll never forget how he ran on his wheel, and how he cleaned his whiskers and ears with his little hands. I'll miss you Morris!

Sunday, May 6, 2007

3 Reasons Why I Forgot the Keys in the Ignition

I was ready to leave the house today, when I realised I couldn't find the keys to my dad's car. Why am I driving my dad's car? More on that later... I checked all the usual places; my bag, my room, the kitchen, the garage, pretty much all the surfaces in my house, but the keys were nowhere to be found. Anybody who knows me knows that I'm ridiculously organised to the point where even my shoe boxes are coordinated in terms of colour, frequency of use, and current season, so it's very unlike me to misplace my car keys.

After a while of searching, my dad came back into the house to tell me I'd forgotten the keys in the ignition of the car. I'd just come back from Matt's house and was ready to leave again, so they'd only been in the ignition for about 20 minutes, but still, I felt a bit funny to have done something so absent minded. At first I thought it was just a lack of sleep due to coming back late from a birthday last night, but I realised there's a few more things going on that prove I'm not going crazy, I just maybe need to relax a little.

1. Uni
It's just that time of year where I've fallen completely behind in my lectures, and everything is due at once. I've currently got an "Artificial Intelligence and Logic Programming" assignment in the works which is driving me crazy, and "Circuits and Electronic Systems" assignment due in 3 weeks that I haven't even thought about starting. I've fallen behind in the "Embedded Systems" labs, so I need to go into an extra session to finish that off, and a "Communication Systems" lab tomorrow that involved a pre-pre-lab, a pre-lab, and eventually a lab report that is going to take about a week to figure out. I have circuits test coming up that I really need to do well in, and weekly AI tutorials that are getting increasingly insane. Needless to say, I pretty much have no life right now, and a combination of bad weather and no time means I'm not getting much exercise which is throwing of all my energy.

2. My Car is Broken Again
A couple of days ago I was leaving Matt's house, just about to get out of the residential area onto a main road when all of a sudden my forward gears stopped engaging. I'd managed to leave the spot before this happened, so I was sitting in the middle of a main road, with on coming traffic, and no way to move! I turned my hazard lights on but this didn't stop a few drivers from beeping at me (yeah THANKS A LOT I wasn't AWARE that stopping in the middle of the road is not such a good idea). I finally realised that my reverse gear was still working, so I decided to reverse my way back to Matt's house (which took a fair bit of talent I might say) and call my dad.

It turns out that the gear box needs to be replaced which will cost 2 grand. Keeping in mind my car cost a total of 3 grand, this is... not good. So we're currently trying to get a hold of the only Mercedes specialist in Perth who has a 1 month waiting list at the moment. I've been going into uni with Matt in the mornings, so I've been getting up a bit earlier than my usual 7.30am starts, and this together with 9-5 uni is starting to get crazy.

3. House Hunting
Matt has been house hunting for about 2 months now, and our heads are pretty much all over the place with what/where/how much/when to buy. We've just seen a house that we're really interested in and so now we're deciding whether to go ahead, or wait a bit more. It's all a bit scary really, and it's a bit daunting to think that moving out of home is just on the horizon. Being an only child it's hard to think I'll have to leave my parents, and my nice safe cosy room at my parents house... so nice and safe and warm.

So I guess a combination of stress, lack of sleep, and more stress is why I've been forgetting a lot of stuff lately. Plus Matt's grandma has just sold her holiday house in Yanchep, which has pretty much been our get away for the past 4 years, so there's no escaping to paradise any more! Sigh. So that's my little rant. I'm sure my tune will change after exams, but in the mean time, I guess I'll invest in a new set of stress balls!