Day 10: Last night I

Day 10:

Last night I couldn't fall asleep, even though I was exhausted. This has been an occaisonally recurrent problem for me over my adult life, but it is happening way more now. I think its some sort of internal self destructive mechanism where my brain tries to sabotage all of my hard work by keeping me awake, thinking of things like "I bet it will feel so good when I'm done with this test" and "wouldn't it be nice to live in New Zealand?" Shut up, stupid brain! One would think you would be exhausted from studying until midnight. But no.

These little bouts of insomnia force me into a really unhealthy cycle of drinking caffeine all day to stay awake, and then taking sleeping pills at night to get to sleep. Maybe I should just develop a heroin addiction and an eating disorder while I'm at it. You know, just to round things out. God, wasn't there a Saved By the Bell episode about this?

Other than my perpetual exhaustion, things are going ok. I am fairly on schedule, thanks to the fact that I stayed up late to finish off respiratory pathology and pharmacology. Now its on to the kidneys, most complex of organs, about whom I'm not very excited right now.

The weirdest thing happened to me day before yesterday. I was studying at the World Cup in the Ecotrust building, sitting in the back at two tables pushed together - I like to spread my stuff out. The place was dead, and as the laws of the universe would have it, the only other people in the place were sitting at the table right next to me. So I was studying away, listening to Postal Service on Mike's Ipod, when I was startled out of my concentration by a guy putting his backpack down on my table. Now, even though I am at a double table I am clearly using all of the space. I have two books, a binder, and several piles of notecards spread out, with very little open table left. And, to reiterate, there were almost no people in that coffee shop - there were at least a dozen open tables. Needless to say, it was a bit startling to have someone decide that, given their options, my table was the one they should sit at.

So I look up. The guy is hurridly arranging his laptop on my table, saying something about how he can't pick up the wireless signal. "Are you guys connected to the network?" speaking aggressively to the party next to me, who are I reapeat, the only other customers in the coffee shop. "Cause I can't get it." He's clearly very put out by the inconvenience of that situation, which must have been set up intentionally to annoy him. He's so put out, in fact, that he doesn't actually ask if its ok if he sit at my table. He just does.

But here is the amazing part. The guy is short, chunky, clean shaven, with a bit of premature grey sneaking in. He is wearing a yamaka (sp?) skull cap. He is wearing a giant tie-dye shirt with a large tie-dyed hot pink electric guitar in the middle. He is also wearing a long, thick gold chain around his neck. And on that chain, a giant gold pot leaf.

So the angry jewish pot-smoking hippy rock and roll laptop nerd sits at my table, in the little open corner not occupied by my stuff, and types very loudly on his computer. He occasionally makes loud grunts of consternation. Soon the party at the next table packs up and leaves. But does he move to the open table? The table that was obviously getting an internet connection? Of course not. He stays at my table. So its me and him, sitting together in the back of a very large and very empty coffee shop. It was very difficult to concentrate, let me tell you, but I wasn't really sure what to do. I was honestly kind of enjoying the utter absurdity of the situation.

After a while, probably about 10 minutes, he packs up and leaves, his giant gold cannibus leaf swaying languidly against his pink tie dyed electric guitar. He manages to accomplish this entire event without ever once having spoken a word to me. What was he thinking? Did he honestly not know that he was breaking like 9 or 10 rules of social behavior? And why was he wearing a giant gold pot leaf on a chain? These are just more unanswerable questions to keep my brain occupied while I'm trying to fall asleep, involuntarily contemplating the ridiculousness of the world.
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