Freshers' Flu (Dramatic Thunderclap)

Productivity eludes me.

Meep meep.

Well, to be fair to myself, not all productivity. Only the relevant kind. Domestically speaking, I'm totally awesome. I clean and cook and vacuum and buy groceries and do laundry and take out the recycling and remember to water the cacti. I've even done really really grown up things like buying insurance and remembering to pay rent.

High five, me.

I mashed the swede.

But where the problem comes in is with all the academic stuff I'm supposed to be getting around to at some point. I start every day with excellent intentions, but then I get distracted by the internet or being a domestic goddess ninja warrior, and next thing I know the day's over and I haven't done anything. Um, again. Apparently taking the better part of a year off from studying didn't do much good for my ability to concentrate.

I think another part of the problem is that I've suddenly turned into a sociable person. And if you think that's weird, imagine how I feel. So even on the nights I do sit down and think "right, now I'm going to get work done", invariably someone sends around a Facebook message with a much better idea, and so I do that instead.

Like going into town for a drink and late-night chips.

Or pancake evening. For which I arrived on time even after getting lost in the suburbs of York clutching a frying pan.

O HAI.

Where Imke gets a devoted following teaching people to knit.

And we take strange photos.

I suspect that pancake evening was responsible for the fact that several of us now have the same sore throat.* Yes, we've been struck by the dreaded... Freshers' Flu [play the organ in a thunderstorm here]. Maybe all that cutlery sharing was unwise. In a country where you have to sign a waiver before you can cross the road or look out of the window, that was pretty transgressive of us.

Then on Monday I went to a potluck with SCOOP, the student co-op, where I ate a ridiculous amount of cake. This was also unwise. I've done a lot of unwise things this week. I made these amazing zucchini muffins, which were a big hit (once I said courgette instead of zucchini so that people knew what they were).

My half-hearted resolution to get work done was further challenged last night, because it was stroopwafel night, a totally casual event where we all totally casually went to Jelle's to totally casually eat stroopwafels, none of this just because we wanted to meet his girlfriend, who was visiting from Holland (she's delightful and she likes A Very Potter Musical, so she's obviously a keeper). Having woken up sick on Tuesday morning, I was going to be sensible yesterday and go for only a short time. So because I am nothing if not predictable, I stayed late with all the others, drinking hot chocolate and then walking home in the cold (unwise unwise unwise).

But everybody loves stroopwafel night!

And after all the unwisdom, I spent today in bed, coughing and feeling feeble, trying to find motivation to do the readings for a subject I'm 98% sure I'm going to drop for a more interesting one anyway. On the plus side, the good thing about being sick is that you have a pretty good excuse to throw your notes across the room, wrap yourself in blankets and read Terry Pratchett instead.

I should be at rehearsal tonight (I've joined the Gilbert and Sullivan Society because they have a non-auditioning chorus, so I get to just rock up and sing, which is more or less all I want from life), but the being feeble won out, so I decided to stay  in and "get work done". Where "get work done" translates as "make soup", "bake rolls so dense you could use them as bullets" and "update blog".** It's starting to look like I should give up on the whole academia thing and just open that bakery I've been talking about for years.

Or maybe I should stick with it a bit longer. At least until I learn to make bread rolls that can't be employed as weaponry.

*Well, we have different throats, but they're similarly sore.
**Just so you guys know that, if I fail all my courses, I'm sharing the blame with you.