I'm now a fairly decent seven days into mid-semester break, and what do I have to show for it? Well, I have the memory (which will probably never leave me) of Jennifer and I, knees drawn up under two umbrellas, unable to see more than three meters through the torrent while biggish lakes ran into each other on our picnic blanket. I have about 150 of 2000 potential words saved on my computer, and an email sent to two of my university professors asking if it's acceptable to hand in a typewritten essay. I have sat in the front seat of Hailey's new car, white-knuckling the dashboard as she surged up and down her driveway in alternating first and reverse gear at a surprisingly terrifying 20/kph. I have nearly a full new wardrobe to replace my paint-stricken previous one. I have a promise from Nick to pump up my bicycle tyres which has not yet been fulfilled.

Leaving out the details of a reasonably successful tea party and finally having seen Casablanca, none of that really seems like anything at all. I do, however, have a meeting for costume hands working on the musical 'Tommy' this coming Sunday, and immediately after am going to The Manor to meet with a girl who I'm shooting a corset party for on the eleventh. Hopefully after that, the promises of my first free week will come away looking a little more fulfilled.

I'm beginning to think I'm much too much of a cynic for art school. Preferably, I would call it being a realist, but cynicism's a factor, no question. I just have a problem taking anyone seriously who lectures in other faculty's theatres asking 'Why does art have to look good? Hmm? Why does it have to look nice? Why can't we earn our living doing even less than what is already expected of us?'.

Today I saw the worst exhibition I could ever have imagined, and I'm well into the process of doubting my place in this dystopian institute. The pretension here reeks savagely. I think it's time to act like children and tag the Mondrian building.

But they would probably just call it art and give us scholarships.

The entire last week in which I felt I've been careening down an impossible road, I never considered that I might just simply swerve a full 180 degrees in one. What's happened is this: I feel much better. I now work for the NZ Comedy Festival! We've been given a brief in FineArts 103 that I actually enjoy! After 11.30am tomorrow I will never again stick orange peel to an inside-out cereal box and call it art! I start Photography on Monday! I've nearly finished Script Frenzy! Acting classes start in a week! I had tonight off from teaching my three guitar classes! I have been given permission - nay, encouraged - to draw on the walls with permanent marker!

So on, so forth, and many other thrills and merriments, I can assure you. None of this, however, lies adjacent to the fact that it's quarter past one the morning before my final sculpture deadline, and I am sitting in bed, very much upright, with no desire to sleep at all. Well, maybe a little desire to sleep. But not very much.

That was my in-road. How about that?

Alright, my desire to sleep is mounting. This won't be a neatly-worded account of my thoughts, because I'm too tired to properly word, articulate or, indeed, think my thoughts. Ah, but that reminds me. I shall leave you with a quote from the ever eloquent Chipslyn (or Chip, Chippy, Achips, Chipchipchip, Chippendale or El Chippo, if you prefer);

Writing this in the carpark behind Britomart Train station while I wait for a ride. I've had quite a day, and it's still early. First, I missed the bus into town which is okay because I had a buttload of large A1 cardboard pieces to carry in as well as 3D collages. So thankfully I was able to get a ride in, and I arrived before 8am. I decided that I'd probably have to skip Philosophy 101 in order to have all my artwork up (presentation is "key", apparently) nailed to the wall by the time they start crits. So, I spent the time I should have been spending learning truth tables and propositional logic, whacking nails into useless collages. I then noticed that my Eftpos card had been stolen. Okay, well I can't prove it's been stolen, but it's certainly not where I left it, which is in my wallet. Always.

So once 9am finally rolled around, they gave us an extra half hour to put our work up anyway! It depressed me rather to realize that I didn't need to skip Phil101 after all. it happens to be my favorite class. This is the second one in a row that I've missed. I asked the tutor if she could do my evaluation first, because I'm sick (another of today's gems) and I wanted to leave right after. She said yes, then promptly forgot and went in roll order. I'm an M. Although after a couple of people she remembered and came over to do mine.

It was something of an anticlimax, I have to admit. She looked at my wall, with a slight smile, and 'hum'ed and 'ohh'ed and said she liked this and quite liked that. Then she looked at my drawings, looked at me and said "Is that it?" I went red and mumbled something about actually having done two more, and I put them in the car this morning but didn't seem to have made it up to the studio. I can't even guess where I could have possibly lost them along the line of getting out of the car, walking through the door, taking the elevator up to the third floor and going into the studio. I think if I lose one more thing, my mind will follow. Or maybe it's already gone, that might be WHY I'm losing things.

She then asked if I had an A3 sketchbook. "Yes," I said "it's an old one I used for design last year, and it's kind of... all the pages are falling out, so I don't bring it in."

She didn't seem very impressed by this at all, and said "Well, you kinda have to... y'know, bring it in cause like, otherwise we kinda can't tell where you're at, and you should still be doing those three drawings a week, so it's kinda necessary cause there's gonna be this sorta big assessment next term and we need to know that you're like... on task."

I just nodded and said 'thank you' a lot.

After leaving Elam gratefully, I was nearly at the train station, and would have made the 10.13, when I suddenly remembered that I'd used up the last trip on my 10-trip ticket yesterday and needed a new one. Having lost my Eftpos car, as already mentioned, I had no idea how I was going to get home. I dug through my wallet and found a $2 coin, which for the student price of $1.60, would get me to Baldwin Avenue just fine. It wasn't until about ten minutes after that I realized I was no longer able to ride for student price on single-ticket fares. You have to buy the ten trip, or you ride as an adult.

Much more hectic activities followed in my quest to get home -- home is where I keep the throat lozenges -- but I won't get into them now. Have just seen car pull up. Will continue later.

Am now on TradeMe trying to find someone off whom I can buy brightly colored socks. There is NOWHERE to purchase silly shades of sock, I am certain. Everyone nowadays wants the 'sensible sock' for the workplace, and the market for anything else has just closed right up. Either that, or it's the other extreme. There's no happy medium. No good looking in the women's section, all that's there is 'funky striped toe sock!' or 'thigh-high lace garter sheer support sock with bow'. No good looking in the mens section, because it's all either white ankle sports socks with one geometric shape of color if I'm lucky, or horrible gaudy patterns on wool socks so thick you could mug someone with them. All I want are some regular cotton socks, which happen to have been dyed ONE bright color per sock, such as yellow, lime green or purple. Is that really so much to ask? May go to K-Mart tomorrow, although I doubt I'll have time as I have to be back by 3 to meet Hailey.

I really ought to go do some more work on my Fine Arts projects. According to my study timetable, I still need to do observational drawing for five and a half hours and do 2 & a half hours of work on my collage project. No, that wasn't a misspelling of 'college'... we really are getting graded on how well we cut out pictures from magazines and stick them onto paper. Not - as Nick observantly pointed out yesterday - nearly as difficult as the primary school version, where you are expected to use little pieces of colored paper to make a picture. I feel as if I spent years working up to this point and now that I'm here, am being forced backwards.

Circumstances have changed  so drastically since my last journal entry that I may as well just re-introduce myself altogether. Hello. My middle initial is 'K'. How do you do? I like Bruce Springsteen, colored scarves and flavored tea.

I am now a university student. I catch the bus in the mornings at about 7am (try catching the bus in the dark... c'est difficile!) and take the train home in the afternoons (sometimes the mornings, depending on class schedule). I am also now an adult, which is nice. I also found my phone charger! Which is also nice. And I can now speak in the language of Propositional Logic, or "PL"... which is extra nice.

I have two new volunteer jobs and though they are unpaid, I don't feel as though I need to complain since, to be fair, I am receiving free money each week for doing essentially nothing. The first job is as an usher at the Maidment theatre, which I need to confirm I'm doing for each show, and the work is not very steady, but it gets me involved in that sector of life which is really why I took it. Also, once I'm done showing people to their seats, I get to watch the show for free. The second job (and this is not arranged in chronological order) is teaching guitar at the children's center that I used to be a tutor at. I teach three half-hour classes (Beginner, Advanced-regular and Advanced-hyper -- meaning I've arranged the advanced class into two groups; those who want to learn and those who find it very difficult to refrain from pinging heavy duty rubber bands into each other's eyes long enough to remember that Every Animal Doesn't Get Banana Eggs (the pneumonic we made up to remember the string names)). I just need to take a sentence out now in order to call to attention the four different types of punctuation I used between those parentheses... I should possibly get more sleep and take up drinking decaf. Either that or jolly well hurry up and pass Philosophy 101; Intro to Logic.

Obsessive-compulsive punctuating aside, I should really get to bed now, it being after 11pm and I need to get up before 6. AND I want to read my book which I bought for a mere $5. AND I want to do a bit of writing as well. So, I really must go. But I hope I will make it a priority to update a little more often. Would hate to see my journal die out after going strong for three years or more. So, talk soon.