No-Rest November

I'm sure glad I had geology 210 this semester and already have three credits out of the way, because I don't know if I would have been able to manage. This was a rather hectic week. My average time spent on campus per day this week was ten or eleven hours.

One of my big assignments was a lab writeup for my groundwater class. I took that class for fun, but sometimes it's not that fun. Particularly during lab writeups. On Wednesday, I was working on my writeup (these writeups take forever), and we have to put equations in. Word has an equation editor so that you can put equations in, and we're graded on using them. Well, I was using the equation editor, when it mysteriously made a division sign into a boxed question mark. When I tried to click on it to fix it, the whole document froze--and when I closed it, it wouldn't let me open it again. I had spent several hours on the project, and I was locked out of it! I was able to open it in WordPad and then copy and paste it into Word, but all of my equations were lost. The equations are pretty time consuming, so I had to put them all back in.

And just as I got to where I had left off on the previous attempt, the exact same thing happened again. The exact same equation, the exact same error, the exact same result. I was locked out of my document again. It was about 11:00 p.m. at this point, so I couldn't bear the thought of putting the equations in again, especially if the same problem would occur. I emailed my professor asking if I could have some more time and if I could put the equations in by hand--which would be both faster and safer--even though we're graded on using the equation editor.

I was granted permission to put the equations in by hand, although I don't think I got permission for it to be late. And it was late. I didn't finish by the deadline of 5:00 on Thursday. That's a terrible feeling. Oh well.

I did have a fortunate experience that night, however. I ate a smaller-than-usual lunch, and after a particularly exerting day in my swimming class, I was feeling a little weak. I bought a sandwich from the vending machine, intending to go buy a regular meal later. As the sandwich began to vend, it stopped, and I panicked that I wasn't going to get what I paid for. But then it started again, and instead of getting no sandwich, I got two sandwiches, and thus didn't have to buy dinner that night! I don't feel bad, because there was no way to return it, but more significantly because BYU vending machines have ripped me off a few times, so now we're closer to being even.

Three nights this week I went swimming in the evening. Swimming for Non-Swimmers is the lowest of the swimming classes, and I'm one of the lowest in the class. I just can't swim. But I'm definitely getting better. I'm best at the backstroke, but that's not saying much.

All my time spent on campus left me mentally exhausted, but the swimming left me physically exhausted. I don't feel like swimming is that exhausting. But apparently it is. On Friday night, after coming up the RB stairs and the stairs of my complex, I felt completely winded.

The next morning I went running. It had been two weeks since I had been, due to schoolwork and Halloween. I've been going on a new route, a route that is quite enjoyable but has some really steep parts. I have successfully mastered this route several times, but yesterday was just really hard. I pushed through the steepest part, but then later I was going uphill again and I just couldn't make it. I had to stop and walk for a few minutes. All day I was feeling the effects of that run. I'm not sure what to think about that--whether I should be disappointed that I didn't successfully make me goal, or whether I should be glad that swimming exhausted me to the point of not being able to finish a run.

Yesterday wasn't a good day to catch up on homework, because I had to go to two sessions of stake conference. Today was the last session of stake conference. They released our stake clerk, and as a ward clerk I got to know that clerk fairly well. At first he scared me, but I kind of grew to love him, despite his very odd personality. Most of the emails he sent out ended with "I hope this is as clear as mud." After they released him today, they asked him to bear his testimony. He told a story, and then for his testimony he sang a verse of "I Believe in Christ." It was very awkward. It always is when people sing in testimonies. But I'll miss working under him, even with his sometimes incomprehensible emails.

I remember hearing of a demotivational poster that, although I never saw it, said something like, "Blogging: Never has so much been said about so little." I feel like that's what happened here on this post.