Big win for Liz in the Procrastination-Bowl!! I opted to be responsible and stay home to work on my thesis this evening. I’m celebrating my birthday tomorrow night, so I don’t see Sunday being a huge triumph for my synaptic function and I didn’t want to let yet another weekend go by with no progress.
I was sitting in the living room, amidst a stack of papers in an organizational scheme discernable only to me, Murder She Wrote playing the background, and my laptop, being the slave to convention that I am, on my lap. I had added two paragraphs to my introduction which, when you’re trawling through primary biology literature, is a big deal, when the power went out! I groped around to find my way out of the living room and stumbled up the stairs, becoming painfully aware of how poorly I know the layout of my own house, and found a box of what we call nightlights in Europe. If my wireless was working, I would wikipedia the American term for you, but I guess we’re going to have to get through this one on general knowledge alone.
I’m back in the living room now, and I’ve decided that staying in on a Friday night to work on my thesis is sacrifice enough; doing so by candlelight is venturing a little too close to martyr-territory for my taste. I’m writing this blog into Microsoft Word because I can’t get online and more worryingly, my battery is inching toward empty. I’m really going to be bored when that happens! I have a game on my cell phone where you put little coloured balls with faces onto them in rows and make them explode; essentially a rip-off of Tetris, but entertaining nonetheless. However, that option is somewhat of the “not an” variety given I can’t find my cell phone in the dark and the only way I know of finding it is to use internet-based phoning to call it while I wander around the house seeing if I can hear it.
My cat Buttons is helping with the ennui by making mysterious sounds at the doors and windows every so often which, given my constitutive level of caffeination, I’ve been convincing myself is a violent burglar taking advantage of the blackout. The only thing that’s more unsettling is the critical battery bubble that just popped up on the bottom of my screen. Another downside of my current amish-ish predicament is that said screen, being the only source of light, has attracted about five moths who are currently prancing around as I type. Yuck!
This is really a damning assessment of my ability to function without electricity in general or in particular, the Internet. Maybe I should use this as an opportunity to learn how to entertain myself with the simpler things in life. Or maybe I should buy a spare battery for my laptop. I think the latter may win that particular contest. I would opt for knitting by candlelight but I am working on toe-up Jaywalker socks on size 1 needles and I feel that might spell disaster.
The worst thing about this whole debacle is that I was less than ten minutes from J.B. letting us know who the real killer is. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t working that hard on my thesis. Right, I’m off to see if there’s a way to make a game of minesweeper out of torn up bits of paper.
