Friday, 06.22.2018 - 8:35 pm.
I started this week, on Monday morning, with prosecco in a plastic cup to celebrate a friend getting his paper published. I ended this week today, Friday afternoon, with an English mojito to celebrate another friend passing her viva, that is, becoming a doctor. Yay for having things to celebrate with friends.
Just last weekend I experienced my very first hungover. On Saturday night, a few girls from the Psych Department got together for “wine tasting”, which was just drinking wine of different types and chatting. I had a lot of fun! Although I wish we could have expanded our topics of conversation and skipped the hour with my friend’s roommate boyfriend. I needed girl time, OK? But he was cool, and the whole evening was enjoyable.
The morning after, however, I woke up with a slight headache and took two naps in the morning, effectively losing my entire morning and coming to until past 1 pm. It was a very half-assed hungover, but my drinking habits are also half-assed. Thankfully. I’ve gotten to a point in life in which I enjoy and could do with some alcohol, but I truly feel like staying away from it after drinking a bit, and I’m not too fond of feeling a buzz.
This week I’ve truly started writing my thesis and it feels so good. It is taking me more than I’ve expected, however, and I’m not meeting the deadlines I’ve set for myself regarding finishing and correcting chapters and studies. I do have the luxury of time, more than other colleagues, but I don’t want to dwell on it. I have a lot of material to go over and I’m a perfectionist when it comes to writing a single paragraph.
Today in particular was very nice, it made for a very gratifying end of week. Andrew and I went in the morning to buy a gift for a friend’s birthday. We got very little work done at the office before it was lunch time and we met with said friend. After that lunch, we headed back to the Department to celebrate with the friend who had just passed her viva. And with her and other people, I headed to a nearby pub/bar for celebratory drinks.
I really love this friend, and she’s also very fond of Andrew and me. They both shared an office in the old Psych Department, so she’s very much one of the first British people we’ve met, and one of the few (if not the only one?) I feel very close to. She’s very friendly and all about being critical of what’s wrong in the world…hence she loathes the Human Flaming Bag of Dog Poo (HFBDP), and I’ve heard him talk about her in very nasty terms.
He was actually the topic of conversation while we were celebrating at the bar/pub. We were just talking about nasty shit he’s pulled on others, the horrible things he says (think nastiest-corners-of-the-internet type of things), and how he’s confessed he does that to crap on others and feel better about himself. It made me angry thinking about him and hearing how he screws with other people, but it was also somewhat therapeutic knowing that everyone agrees with me in how fucked up he is. Ultimately, I came up with THE stance to take regarding him: He’s living in his own personal hell, let him burn in it.
Andrew and I ran into him yesterday, actually. We had the disgrace of sharing the lift with him as we were leaving work. Andrew commented on his new hair color, and the HFBDP was upset because nobody else had seemed to noticed. A honest “it looks good” escaped from my mouth, because I’m such a fucking goody-two-shoes even though I should just fucking withdraw all reinforcers from him. My guess is that “nobody else noticing” was just everybody else being sensible and not stroking his ego.
Bless Andrew, though. As we got out of the lift and outside the building, he says to me, “we *were* going for coffee, right?”, so we said goodbye to the HFBDP, who was going in our direction towards the bus stop, and instead we headed to the opposite direction to the coffee house. We were not going for coffee; we got to the coffee house and then turned around for the bus stop. Andrew said that to save us, and especially to spare me from sharing any more breathing space with the HFBDP. Bless Andrew, man.
My compliment to the HFBDP is even more out of place considering my suspicions that he’s been messing with my stuff. I didn’t go to the office on Monday, I was at the Psych PhD writing group in another university building. On Tuesday, I came to find my wooden doll on the opposite side of my desk, in a different position than I had left him on Friday and with things I cover him with (a tiny umbrella, a paper mustache) on the floor. My PC was not turning on because someone has disconnected it. It’s not real harm, it’s silly, really, but also very creepy.
Then on Wednesday morning, I woke up to the e-mail notification that someone had tried to change my Facebook password. Lucky for me, I had the two-step verification option. This had happened to Andrew, too, months ago, and to the friend who passed her viva today a week after him.
My guess was that the HFBDP found out I blocked him from FB and he got mad (Andrew blocked him too, way before me, but I can’t remember if he did that around the time someone tried to change his password). It looks too much of a coincidence, but also I have no proof it was him, and hey, maybe it wasn’t. And if he did it, the best I can do, as much as I hate to say it, is to act like it didn’t happen.
On happier, silly news: the Colombian girl I like showed up to the writing group on Monday. She’d offered to lend me a book because she learned I’m reading another from the same author, whom she likes a lot, and I said I’d take her offer. A few days later, the Colombian boy, whom I also liked, came up to my desk and handed me the book on her behalf. No, they’re not related, they’re just both getting their PhD in the Psych Department and they’d met (with a bunch of other people, I assume) to watch the soccer match involving their country.
Still, how nice that she was carrying the book (it’s a huge book!) for me, and that he was the one who handed it to me. Hashtag nearly blessed, as much as they are my crushes but neither of them are attracted to me and I’m married. Screw it, hashtag blessed. It’s all good.
Now, as it’s customary now in my life, I gotta go and pick which projects I’ll be working on this weekend. Is it the study on bisexuality at Pride? Is it my comic strip? Doodly stuff for my online store (ha! That sounds cooler than it is and I’m not expecting more than two customers, if any, but I *am* quite proud of it)? A pitch for the university doctoral magazine? A post for my psychology blog which has been abandoned? Or ALL of these?!