Meanwhile...

So anyway, random computer rebellion notwithstanding, the last two weeks have been fairly unremarkable.

Big school: I am continuing to be quite alarmed by just how much of my first year I seem to have completely forgotten. When a simple stress analysis problem was presented to us last week, I stared at it blankly with the rest of the class. We could all see that it was a relatively simple problem; but at the same time, none of us could remember how to solve it. It reminded me of the kind of frantic confusion I often experience first thing in the morning, when my alarm goes off… I know that some complex relationship exists between the buttons, the glowing red numbers and the persistent bleeping; but I just can’t figure out what it is…

Work: Everyone is either very friendly, or very gay, or both. Mostly, working at The Big Gay Department Store seems to consist of standing on one’s feet for ten hours, talking to people with a degree of politeness more commonly reserved for foreign dignitaries and grandparents. I am working as part of the SPT – the Services and Payment Team - which means I am a universal, interchangeable till monkey. I don’t work in any given department, instead I turn up in the morning and find out which till bank(s) I have been appointed to. So far, I have worked on kitchenware, china, glass, furnishing fabrics, toys (which is kinda cool – it’s full of toys), menswear and childrenswear. It is forbidden for men to work in womenswear, as many female customers take offence at men touching their pants; but it’s okay for us to touch their kid’s pants, so childrensear is not a problem.

Home: Is all considerably more bearable. We are all working/schooling/both, and are no longer getting under each others’ feet or on each others’ nerves. We’ve started to regularly attend the Inn on the Green pub quiz each Sunday with Matt “I Can’t Help The Superiority Of My Race” Smith, and have decided that our team name each week shall be a different Arnie quote. The first week we were “I Need Your Clothes, Your Boots And Your Motorcycle”; last week we were “Phased Plasma Rifle In The Forty Megawatt Range”; and tonight we wer “What Is Best In Life? To Smash Your Foes, See Them Scatter Before You, And Hear The Lamentation Of Their Women”. Our strong sense of morals and lack of internet phones means that our best finish thusfar is 8^th out of 16.

Meanwhile, every spare bit of time I get is spent painting toy soldiers; the current bane of my life being a rather large and unpleasant Chaos Dragon.

I bought my ticket for the Warhammer Grand Tournament Third Heat quite some time ago, when I only had a handful of troops and a fire-breathing killpig to paint. Now, with less than four weeks to go, I have an entire handful of troops and a fire-breathing killpig to paint…

It's a hard life, being a nerd.