Walked in on a woman shitting in the woods today???? She stared at me with a very serious expression. I did feel bad, but I certainly didn't feel guilty. It's not like she was deep in or even trying at all to shield herself from the views of passersby. In fact, she was practically standing on the road. Even worse, a point of the road that was just past an intersection wich I was coming out of, because of wich I had no chance of noticing her before it was too late. I didn't know how to react. All I could think to do was walk past her at a brisque pace, trying not to look in her direction while dragging my excited dog away from her. She pulled her pants up and reached for her nordic walking sticks, wich were leaned against a tree. Then, she greeted me. I quietly returned the greeting. Jesus Christ. I'm going back to the city tomorrow.
They recently started printing so called "Nutri-scores" ranging from A to E on the packaging of participating brands, wich let you gauge how generally healthy something is at a cursory glance. My diet these days consists mostly of convenience foods, wich, predictably, all got an E. However, the bag of chips I just bought is ranked at a D. I can therefore officially say that eating bags of chips for meals would be a healthier way of living than what I'm currently doing. Obviously that's not actually true, these scores are over simplified and bound to the context of the food they represent, but the idea that I COULD back that statement up with "data" if I wanted to is pretty depressing lol.
Boy, I sure am glad that no one I know irl is aware of this page's existence lol. Not that there's anything too bad on here (aside from the possibly incriminating ikea thing). Some of the entrys on random thoughts are a bit weird, but people already know me to be a weirdo, so whatever. I'm mostly just embarassed for my poems and short stories. And this is totally independent of the quality of my writing (though it does suck) btw, I could be the next fucking Göthe or whatever and still would feel like I'd have to DIE if anyone who has any context of who I am irl were to read them. I'm just shy like that about the things I make. I think that this is sometimes confusing to people because I manage school related public speaking situations pretty well and crack the stupidest jokes with seemingly high confidence, but as soon as I have to present anything with the slightest bit of genuine emotional investment, I get the meat sweats. Two years ago, I had to write like a biting fuck off poem about something that pissed me off as homework for my german class. This was during the beginning stages of covid, when plans were falling apart and no one knew what to do about it. Because of this, certain 90 minute exams were substituted with "Replacement services", wich were tasks that we could do at home that were graded like and were supposed to have an equivalent workload to a 90 min exam. My Biology teacher appearently didn't get that last part, as she made us go into a forest, mark a square area of 3 by 3 meters and examine the attributes of this are, such as temperature, light levels, humidity, what species of vegetation were present, how MANY of each species were present, HOW TALL EACH MEMBER OF EACH SPECIES WAS etc., without providing any of the tools or knowledge neccesary for this, telling us to just look for apps instead. This was not a 90 minute job. I was sort of lucky in that my dad is half a botanist and that there's a forest right behind my house, but some people really got SCREWED by this assignment, and they had enough shit to do with the other replacement services anyway. The students were complaining amongst themselves, there were talks of complaining to the principal. So that anger is what I decided to channel while sitting in my bed the night before my next german lesson, coming up with very stupid and convuluted word play, laughing like a maniac. German was my last lesson that day, and the period had advanced toward its end when we began presenting and reflecting on our poems. I thought I was in the clear, when in the last minutes, after the class had run out of insaniacs who presented their stuff VOLUNTARILY, my german teacher called on me. I stalled for a bit, then, despite shaking and sweating, managed to give its presentation justice. People thought it was hilarious. They jokingly forged plans to smuggle it into the Biologys teacher's bag or have it presented to her alongside the official complaints (DEAR GOD) and I just smiled and quietly thanked people for their compliments, feeling my face burning and the roots of my hairs stinging into my scalp. Finally, the bell rang. I power walked out, onto the parking lot, got into my car, still shaking, barely conscious, backed right into some girl's car, looked her in the eyes and drove off. She was real nice about it, considering, but it still cost me 300 Euros. (SO what I'm saying is: if you know me and I catch wind of you finding this page, I'll CAUSE MASSIVE PROPERTY DAMAGE.) Despite this shyness, I do sometimes yearn to show people the stuff I make. I WAS pretty proud of that poem, tbh, even if it was total nonsense, and I think my german teacher sensed that. and by calling on me, he esentially put my unassertive avoidant ass in a position where it "had no choice", and by doing it at the very end of the lesson he (probably unintentionally) enabled me to exit the situation quickly. So, really, it was quite a nice thing of him to do, even if it ended up costing me 300 bucks. I made the writing page of this website following a similar logic: By uploading my writing to a shitty little website, I can passively present it to anyone who might be interested in it, and I'm "forced" to let them read it, but whenever I feel a sense of EXTREME DREAD coming on at the fact that people might be reading this garbage and furrowing their brows before blacklisting my page and going on to better things, I can reason with myself that no one actually looks at this page and that those that do would never read it because they don't know german. It's a clever workaround to my neuroticism. By the way, it does make me kind of paranoid that I never hear anything from the 30 to 50 people who look at this page every day, according to my statistics. Where do they come from? What are they looking at? What do they think about the things they are looking at? WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM ME??? So I've added a guestbook for all those passersby to hopefully leave a few of their own RANDOM THOUGHTS in.Check it out!
The scientific process: observe a phenomenom-> form a hypothesis based on observation-> test hypothesis-> if hypothesis fails test, change hypothesis.
Example: For my first two months of living in the city, I didn't own a bike lock. I'd let the thing stand out in the open on bike racks or sometimes even carelessly leaned against a tree or a pole, seductively presenting itself to criminally minded passersby. Once, I even left it at the train station for an entire weekend, or maybe a WHOLE WEEK, I'm not sure anymore. Yet it was never stolen. Not even a little bit! Observing the phenomenon of my continued bike ownership in spite of nothing stopping anyone from just jumping on it and riding off, I drew the hypothesis that this city is some sort of crimeless utopia full of SAINTS, or at least devoid of thieves. (I still eventually got a bike lock, of course. I'm not that big of a daredevil.) This hypothesis was tested months later, when I got myself a box of teabags, left the store, went to the cafetaria or something, realized I still had some other stuff I needed, went back to the store and didn't want to seem like a shoplifter trying to smuggle out tea while buying other stuff (I hadn't brought a bag with me, so I was just walking around town with a box of tea in my hand, in open sight, would've raised questions at the counter). So, thinking fast and remembering my previous positive experiences with non-thievery in this city, I placed the box of tea bags on top of a bus stop which stood a few meters from the shop, figuring that the awkward positioning, which had forced me to get on my tippy-toesies to place the box, would further discourage potential rapscallions from taking it, for fear of looking like weirdos. I was in and out of the shop whithin AT MOST 7 minutes, but when I returned to the bus stop, the box was gone. Hypothesis failed! Miserably! I am therefore forced to adjust it: There ARE thieves in this town, they just have very weird priorities.
(alternative 1: tea boxes are easier to steal than bicycles)
(alternative 2: no one wants your crusty bicycle, shithead)
(side note: looked up synonyms for "thief" for this post (pathetic, i know) and saw "law" listed as the antonym. Since a thief is someone whose defining feature is taking things from people, wouldn't the opposite be someone whose defining feature is giving people stuff? Like Santa Claus? Something to think about while you watch your food heating up in the microwave.)
There's a bus stop just outside Campus. It's the one closest to the Uni if I want to go back home, but it's very annoying to get to because it lies behind a four lane street and the nearest traffic light is like a hundred meters away. Plus, I always seem to manage to leave Campus when the waiting time for the next bus I could take exceeds fifteen minutes, which is enough time for me to walk to the bus stop that follows, which I usually end up doing. Because of this, I've only used this bus stop twice since returning to the city after the holidays, but on both occasions, some really weird trash sat in its leftmost corner. The first time, it was two half-eaten containers of chinese takeout with baby socks(?!) on top of the food, Second time it was an empty bottle of Berentzen with the label cleanly removed, a heap of used tissues with something brown on them, and half of a dry bread roll. I guess people are having some wild parties. I wonder what trash I may find next time? Very exciting stuff.
I think I'm just not made for living with roommates. Yeah, I got a roommate. Remember? I mentioned his existence ONCE like a year ago, before even meeting him. His non-presence on this blog since then should already give you some idea of how things are between us. Nothing against the man, he seems like a really nice guy. He's the sporty, outdoorsy type, studying forestry, drinking protein shakes out of a bottle won at some running event, lifting weights in his room. We've just never gotten beyond the small talk, which I will admit is to a pretty high degree my fault. Although, it does always feel like he's being overly polite to an extreme, uncomfortable degree. Also, he has opened conversations with the exact same phrase (word for word, and not banal "Hi, how are you?" stuff, but, like, a topic we had previously discussed in those exact same words, it's very weird) on multiple occasions and sometimes contradicts himself, which makes me wonder if he just makes stuff up about himself to get me to talk to fill dead air. I don't know. But even if we had tons of stuff in common and were able to get close with each other, I still don't think I'd be able to live with him in a fulfilling manner, because I just can't help but see him as an invasive element in my life. Isn't that crazy? He was here first. But I often get so lost in my head or waste a day away on an extreme, dragging low, enter states in which no one can be allowed to see me, that to then know that there is someone sitting just beyond that thin bit of drywall to the right of my bed, who could pop out anytime and burst into the kitchen as I prepare my pathetic little cup of soggy instant noodles at 10pm in a brainfogged haze, makes me lose all motivation to do anything. I also have the tendency to make any accomodations someone demands from me, implicitly or explicitly. When I sit on a train or bus and someone sits down next to me, I stop living for myself. Everything I do from that point until the moment they leave revolves around being as undisruptive to that person as anyhow possible, for fear of making them uncomfortable. I essentially minimize my existence. Same applies here: I live on an incredibly basic and unhealthy diet, buying only the essentials so I don't fill up the fridge and don't spend too much time in the kitchen, since he cooks often and with many ingredients. It's gotten a bit better now, but for the first few months I was very careful to be quiet, to the degree that my presence could only be gleamed from the ceiling light seeping into the hallway through the little milk glass window in my door. He actually commented on this, saying I was like a ghost. He said it in a manner that was obviously supposed to be jovial, but a lot of estrangement shimmered through. I just feel bad for him. He did try, but I can tell that, now, he avoids me like I admittedly have always avoided him. We run into each other once a month or less at this point and leave it at a greeting.
Like I hinted at, I thought I was getting better, but over the last weekend, he was out for once (which is another weird thing I'm noticing- he's never out), and it was such a massive relief! On Saturday, I got up at 11, showered, took my jbl speaker into the kitchen (and it was just so nice to listen to music with some physicality for once, the bass filled the floor), fried some omlettes while listening to some Arto Lindsay, took out the trash while leaving the speaker going on shuffle play in my room, did the dishes, put my clothes into the washer, did some work, practiced bass (using my audio interface and headphones), read a bit... Sunday morning went similairly, but I could feel the fear of not knowing when he'd be back and kept finagling with the volume controls on my box, unable to really enjoy the music. But then, in the afternoon, I had a real down and dry bass practicing session, where I tried training my sense of rhythm (which is arguably a bassists most important sense, moreso than taste or smell) and stamina by playing the same bassline on a loop at an incrimentally increasing bpm, taking my sweet time, only getting faster when I could feel myself being locked in with the metronome, for over an hour without interruption. I wouldn't be able to do that with him next door, because i'm afraid he might gget annoyed at having to hear the same few measures of bass for an hour, although I'm not sure if he'd even be able to hear anything through the wall. I cooked half a bag of spirali noodles, which had been sitting in my drawer untouched for MONTHS (You know you're fucked when you don't even have it in you to cook some noodles from time to time) and had a nice evening.
All this to say that I'm DEFINITELY moving to a one-person flat next semester. If I can afford the rent.
Had a dream today that seemed somewhat significant. I was sitting on a train, leaning onto my left arm, which rested on the narrow window sill. Opposite of me sat a lecturer of mine. The mood was relaxed and comfortable, but with the appropriate professional distance. I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, it might have had to do with my future plans and personal issues. Suddenly, her expression changed from a politely interested smile to a worried frown. She cut me off by asking if I was ill. I was confused and myself a bit worried. She pointed to my left arm's underside. I looked at it, did that "ooooooooh!" thing you do when you finally understand something and laughed: My artery was hanging out from my wrist in a small, blue loop, the sort that forms when you put two fingers on a bit of straightened out yarn and push one towards the other. The skin beneath the loop was undamaged, the artery must have emerged from two holes. Looking at it, I was filled with a sense of recognition. I laughed because I was relieved that that's "all" it was, and because I realized that I had totally forgotten about my artery loop, which I found funny, because it seemed like the kind of immediate life-threatening danger one shouldn't be able to just forget about. "Yeah, I'm just very weak. Like, borderline anemic." I said this in a self deprecating manner, half joking, half apologizing (for what?). She tried joining in on my laughter, but it was slightly awkward. I don't remember who said it, if it was me, her, a third person I don't remember or just a thought loud enough to manifest itself as speech in my dream: "You should try pushing it back in." So that's what I did. The conversation continued, but I wasn't really paying attention. I kept fiddling with the artery. It was a very weird sensation to press on it, because I could feel it inside my body, but it wasn't really part of it. It felt like touching a thin cable that was plugged into me. Once my lecturer had reminded me of its existence, the sensation of it dangling around and sometimes, when I wasn't careful enough, lightly brushing against something, was so uncomfortable that I couldn't ignore it anymore. This sensation followed me into my day and tripped me up while I was trying to study.
My life these past 3 weeks, told as a series of minor and major fuckups:
FUCKUP 1: ACCIDENTAL ABLEIST
With exam dates and essay deadlines fast approaching, I'd been spending these past few weeks almost exclusively in the uni's library, since I realized that it's basically impossible for me to get any work done at home. Other people appearently had the same epiphany. The library was much fuller than usual during this time, forcing me to abandon my usual post near the entrance and venture deeper into its belly. Because of this I realized that there were actually bathrooms for men and women let into in the library's left wall, hidden by rows of bookshelf. Up to this point, I had thought that what now turned out to be the restroom exclusively for handicapped people was the only one in the building. The sign outside of it reads "WC for all!", and this fuckin Bozo thought that that "all" referred to the visitors of the library, not the genders of its actual, handicapped clientele, so up to that point, I had just used it whenever I needed to go. It's hard to gauge the evilness of this action. Is it worse than taking handicapped parking spots? On the one hand, the obtrusion caused by it is much shorter, since I'm in and out of the restroom in usually 5 minutes, but while a handicapped driver can still use a regular parking spot, using regular toilets isn't really an option, so the obtrusion is of a much worse nature. Either way, it's a dick move. I feel like an idiot, and am very ashamed.
FUCKUP 2: MY IGNORANCE ON LOCAL MATTERS (see p.1) TAKES ITS TOLL
I didn't start working on a 3000 word essay that required me to gather a bunch of historical knowledge about an unenjoyable topic until 5 days before it was due. This forced me to cancel plans to meet up with my parents and my brother, the latter of which I hadn't seen in months, and fully lock myself up in the library. After a rather unproductive friday I was determined to fully take advantage of Saturday. I even ordered two additional books that seemed relevant from the library vaults (Books usually get put out into the pick-up area the day after they're ordered). When I took the bus to the library the next morning, the campus was almost devoid of people, only being roamed over by a few deposit bottle collectors. A police car was parked infront of the library. The two cops inside eyed me as I approached the library's doors, with looks that spelled confusion and suspicion. I reached for the door's handles, but they wouldn't budge. I was thinking that I might be too early, when I noticed a piece of paper taped to the glass: the library and its subsidiaries were closed during this weekend due to a BOMB DEFUSAL in the Inner City. The note must have been hanging there all week, and thinking back on it, there had been various warnings of the impending bomb defusal at the bus stations, but none of them had appearently managed to penetrate my clouded consciousness before now. Not only was I thus robbed of the books I needed, I was also denied the quiet, social pressure-laden working environment in which I prosper. Dejectedly, I walked through the Inner City along the route delineated by the barrier tape that had been put up, and returned home, where I didn't get shit done all weekend. The deadline was monday midnight, and by the end of Sunday - aka 3 am, which is when I went to bed - I was at about 1500 words. All hopes were placed on Monday.
FUCKUP 3: THE EXHAUSTED CREEP INVITES MISUNDERSTANDINGS
On monday morning, after a nutritious breakfast in the library's own cafe, I went to work. Initially, the essay progressed steadily, but as the hours went on, my pace slowed down, both because of the effects of my ADHD meds fizzling out and the 4 hours of sleep I had had catching up with me. At 8 pm, I decided that I was going to get an Energy drink to combat the second issue. I powerwalked out of the library, determined to waste as little of my valuable remaining time (4 hours) as possible on the Energy drink retrieving trip. I had planned to get it from the grocery store in the Inner City, where I sometimes buy drinks when I have to wait for my bus home, but then my eyes fell onto the gas station that's directly next to Campus. Thinking I could save time, I made a b-line for its entrance, found the fridge with the energy drinks, opened it, reached inside- and hesitated. The drinks were massively overpriced. Weighing my stinginess against the urgency of the situation, I finally concluded that i would be better off getting my drink at the grocery store, also because I was pretty hungry and thought I might buy a döner from my regular stand, so I slammed the fridge door shut and stormed out of the gas station. When I had almost reached the street, THe gas station attendant called out to me. He thought I had stolen from the fridge. I realized how susupicious my behavior must have seemed, amplified by my shabby appearence and the strange urgency of my movements. After making me empty my hoodie's belly pocket and then patting it down himself, the attendent allowed me to explain myself, after which he finally let me go and apologized for his honestly very understandable reaction. I walked off towards the grocery store. The checkout line was so long that I no longer had enough time to get something to eat, and I only ended up saving about 30 cents on my drink.
FUCKUP 4: THE MISSED SUBMISSION
At 11pm, my essay had reached the 3000 word mark but was nowhere near finished. THere was no rough draft to work off and I had written it down chronologically, because of which the first parts were in desperate need of editing. Furthermore, I hadn't yet properly cited everything, and honestly wasn't even entirely sure how I was supposed to cite things. The crowd of people around me began to thin out. At 11:30, a shrill alarm sounded, followed by a booming voiceover announcing the library's impending closure. I scrambled to haphazardly draw my text towards a conclusion, tried to find and add all of my scattered sources, and, after a bit of a hunt through the web (23:55- another announcement- library closes in 5 minutes-) found and filled out the declaration of Plagiarism my lecturer had demanded. By 11:58, I had exported the essay and written the most barebones email I could manage to my lecturer, but when I tried to attach the file, I got an error message. 23:59. I reexported the file. another error message. "DING DANG DONG. IT IS MIDNIGHT. THE LIBRARY IS NOW CLOSED. THE DEADLINE'S PASSED TOO, YOU LITTLE BITCH." I packed my stuff and left. I narrowly avoided being locked in by the janitor. The buses no longer drove, so I had to walk home for an hour, with clenched fists. When I arrived, I saw that my lecturer had sent me a concerned mail asking where my essay was. As it took me 2 hours to fix the technical issue that caused me to miss my deadline, it was 3 am when I sent her a mail apologizing and explaining the stiuation. It reeked of self-pity and resignation.
She granted me a day extension.
I was able to finish the essay, and with it, my second semester.
EPILOGUE
FUCKUP 5: AN UNRELATED FUCKUP, YET SOMEHOW THE WORST OF THEM ALL
I forgot my fucking bass guitar on a train while visiting my parents for the weekend. FUUUUUUUUUUCK. I reported it immediately, but even if they do find it (if it wasn't stolen) I'll have to deal - AGAIN!!! - with the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Deutsche Bahn customer service. And if I can't get it back? Time to buy a new fucking bass I guess. God fucking dammit man. I hate this shit.
A general life update is due. My new study program has begun. It's great! Feels like I'm on the right track this time. I'm still not all that socially integrated, but, y'know, whatever. Baby steps. As long as I can keep up academically, I'm golden, that's my measure of self-judgement now. New roommate has shown me that the issue I described 3 posts ago lay less with the roommate as a concept but the roommate as an individual. He's perfect, by my definition, which means that he doesn't feel the need to superficially befriend me. Not that he's rude, mind you. If there's a practical issue, we can cooperate effectively, even share a few laughs, and once it's solved, he'll happily return to his room and we leave each other alone. It's very chill. We can be around each other. I have, since making that post, also learned that my old roommate appearently frequently complained about me to the Landlady. I just wish he'd said something to me. He always kept that friendly facade up. I'm pretty dense, but adaptive. After the Landlady finally erupted at me one day about these things, I went into the washroom and tried to fold my laundry. I stood there motionless, cloth in hand, for about 2 hours. Occasionally sinking to the ground and hiding my face behind my hands. I hadn't felt like that big of a piece of shit in years. finally, I returned to my room and spent the rest of the day in bed reading, with waves of despair, self-loathing and shame constantly breaking on my brain. It was a day of intense emotional and mental labor. The next day, I was hypercareful to adjust my behaviors. The Landlody noticed and joked how I had gone from one extreme to the other. I can change, I just need people to be honest and straightforward with me. It could all have been avoided. Well anyway. Two months without Internet!!! Nightmare existence???? Honestly, best two months of that whole year. I had a somewhat acceptable sleeping schedule, I read a lot of books, My head felt clearer than it had in years. I suddenly found myself with so much time. Honestly, Net access might be a net minus for me. I'm not even active on social media anymore, and still, I just can't get anything done when I have it. These two months have made me realize that the majority of the terrible habits which have enslaved me have their origin in my unrestricted internet access. In a way, I was almost happy that there were so many issues and delays in the Wifi-aquiring arc. But no one can live without Internet these days, Especially not in a post-quarantine world, and one definitely can't force their own bullshit onto their roommate. It was very embarassing when he knocked on my door, ten minutes after moving in, to ask for the Wifi password, and I could only give him a shrug, because the Internet man still refused to come. well, we've got it figured out now. But on the day Internet returned, I stayed up til 6 am. The day after, I only left my bed at 10pm to get some food. I hate it man. I'm not even a computer person. My old roommate assumed that this was the case once and wanted me to help him with computer stuff, and, embarassingly, I couldn't. It's like this: A heroin addict definitely has more experience in handling syringes than the average person, but would you expect him to administer your flu shot?? He'd be way more fit for that than I am for helping you with your laptop. Mine broke recently because it autoupdated, and appearently it couldn't handle that???? I have no idea how this fucking thing works. I just sacrifice my time to it, and in exchange, I get some tingles, or, more often, enter a state of comfortable numbness. Heavens this post is already way too long. And pretty depressing. I'm just kind of in a mood rn, sorry. All in all, I'm actually doing way better than last time I posted, so don't worry. Everything's coming up Brennholz!
WEIRD TRASH UPDATE!!!
There's this water fountain that's constructed like a stairway at the back entrance of our campus. While the pools get lower in steps, the rather slim walls to their sides remain at a constant level. I have made it a tradition to walk on top of the left wall when I return from university, reveling in the risk of falling into the water, which would ruin my laptop and all of the work I have saved on it, plus whatever library books I am lugging around at the time, because in today's civilized society, you have to find ways to satiate that gnawing craving for DANGER wherever you can. The other day, when I had reached the end of the fountain, something caught my eye: the docking station of an electric toothbrush, the exact kind which I have, just laying there in the dirt next to the fountain. Huh??? What the hell's the scenario here? Where would it have been plugged into? And why? Was someone brushing their teeth by the fountain? If yes, again- why??? And why leave the charger behind? The toothbrush is useless without it, and I'm not sure how easy it is to get a replacement. It's not like this is a typical littering spot either, it's a bit out of the way, so if whoever left it there just wanted to get rid of it, there must have been a better place available. In fact, there would have been a trashcan just a few steps away. It's strange. One potential explanation I have is that it fell out of a window of the building next to the fountain. But that's a gym. Do people brush their teeth at the gym? With a valuable electric toothbrush that might get stolen? And would those hypothetical people bring the charger...? Utterly mysterious.
A while ago, I bought a small, thin, paper-cover notebook on a whim while shopping for pens (I keep losing them). It took up permanent residence in my jacket pocket. The idea was that whenever I had a thought or idea I'd like to remember, I'd pull it out and quickly jot it down then and there. Turns out that I don't have a lot going on upstairs lmao. I've mostly been using it to write down dates for events I see on posters, but I have thus far still always forgotten about them despite the note... One thing it actually has been useful for now in the beginning stages of the new semester is looking up which rooms I have my seminars in. I wrote a comprehensive list with buildings and room numbers on the very last page, and it's been saving me from having to pull out my whole ass laptop in the middle of a hallway to check in the online course catalog. But all that doesn't matter anyway, because yesterday, without me even noticing (I stuck my hand in reflexively and felt something wet, thought it was melted chocolat at first-- I hadn't had any chocolate that day) a bird managed to shit right into my open jacket pocket. The poop ran along the notebook's cover and seeped into its pages. Impeccable aim. A real sign from above that walking around with a notebook makes you look like a pretentious douche. I'm just really bad at remembering things. And yeah, I could just take notes and make a list of my rooms on my phone, but I hate (and am quite bad at) typing with touchscreens, and with turning it on, opening the right app, loading the text (my phone kind of sucks, old and sickly) and all that, it's a whole procedure in comparison to quickly flicking open a notebook. By the way, my phone also got some bird poop on it. Easy enough to wipe off, except there's these holes at the bottom (for ventilation?) which are filled with it and I can't get it out. I hope it doesn't start to smell... I might have to screw it open and see if I can clean it that way.
Went to some kind of festival or fair today. They had those rigged-ass games where you have to release a button at just the right nanosecond to cut a rope from which a huuuge plushy dangles. I thought I'd try my luck... First try I didn't even realize when I was supposed to let go, second time I missed. Each attempt cost 2 euros, I only had 2 euros left at this point. After some hesitation, I told myself "third time's the charm", and- lo and fucking behold- I GOT IT!!! It's a squirtle plush, about as tall as a 10 year old child and twice as wide. Let me tell ya, this has done wonders for my self esteem. I am now "that guy", you understand? People pointed me out to their friends, and I was beaming, and standing proud. Nothing could have topped this, of course, so I soon left the fair. I had to walk home for about an hour, and I have to say, walking home from a fair with a huge ass plushy is probably in the top 3 ways you can be walking on a regular Saturday, topped only by holding hands for the first time with your partner and hugging your baby close to your body (not that I have experienced this). It's so large that you have to essentially embrace it like a lover, and it's so soft, it's like you're walking in a constant bear hug with a cloudman (I am now 20% less judgemental towards people who own dakimakuras). All the people you pass in the street smile at you, half in amusement at the sight of a grown-ass man lugging around such a massive plushy, half sharing your excimtement about your victory. The children look at you as a hero. Of course, after half an hour of walking up hills, the question of what the hell I was even going to do with this thing emerged in my head. I passed a school and got the idea to attach a note like "for (generic name)", throw the plush over the gate and read about what happens next in the local news on Tuesday. Sadly, I didn't have any paper or pens with me. I might gift it to my brother, Squirtle's his favorite Pokémon. For now, I've sat it down in a chair at the dinner table we never use because we eat in our rooms.
Got through another Semester. I'm slowly getting into the groove of things. Took a while, but eh. Finally no longer totally isolated, too. I made some buddies through a mandatory study group. You have to understand that the whole university experience was (and still kind of is) incredibly intimidating to me. Just being on campus, around students, in lecture halls fills me with an incredible, entirely irrational dread, and the people around me appear as an impenetrable wall of eyes. Not ideal mental conditions for making friends. But I'm getting there. I went out with the group and one of the guys gave me this big drunk hour long pep talk at 2 am. He interrupted himself every 5 minutes to mooch some fire off a couple sitting nearby (after about the fith time, they just handed him the lighter) or piss against the church we were standing next to. We ended up studying for the exam together. I'm in good hands.