Week 3 - Facebooking & Facialling

Thursday #4 – after having a self-imposed 36 hour facebook ban since Tuesday night, this day started off with a massive catch up effort.  There were important things that needed to be addressed on facebook so it was a necessary start to my day.  Youtube links needed to watched, comments needed to be made and most importantly, study needed to be avoided at all costs.  A quick skype session with DTM also helped in this regard – it also helped bring me back down to earth.  Along with the free movies, ice cream binges and excessive amounts of shaker fries; my Thursdays had also involved receiving a decent amount of insults.  It was perhaps my own fault for spending so much time talking myself up, DTM felt the need to deflate my ego a little; nevertheless was nice to see him slip in 2 offensive comments in a 10 minute chat.

It was then time to catch up on TV and again avoid studying for next week’s exams.  Gossip Girl helped and when I got desperate Dr Oz was there.  I finally sat down to write some notes at about 5.30pm and after a solid 3½ pages it was time to break for dinner.  Post-dinner, The Marge had decided to throw a Nutrimetics party, so any hopes of studying that night were now completely out the window.  Bugger.  After spending a couple of hours learning how to stop the clock and fight my wrinkles and dark circles I was again feeling good about myself; after DTM’s comments on how old I looked, this party could not have come at a better time.  It’s a real compliment when your own mother buys you a product to help with dark circles under your eyes...and you’re 24.  By the time everyone left it was close to 11 and I had to accept that there was no point even attempting to finish my notes.  A step up from last Thursday but still no free movies.

Week 2 - Procrastinating & Failing

Thursday #3 – by far the most boring Thursday to date, with the day off uni I was free to do whatever I liked and I only briefly left the house.  There were big plans for a day of uni work; nailing an assignment so I could relax on the weekend, organising a semester worth of notes from a giant mess into individual subjects and maybe even start studying for the upcoming exams.  Of those things I managed to get my notes sorted and into binders, it’s not as catchy as Meat Loaf’s version but I reckon 1 out of 3 aint bad.  It involved a lot of stapling, hole-punching and searching through various piles but finally my notes had reached some level of organisation.  Now it’s just a matter of learning them over the next week or two, eeek.

I had taken a phonecall some time last week about donating blood and had jumped at the chance since it is my very favourite form of procrastination – you can’t possibly feel bad about not doing uni work when you’re helping save lives!!  Turns out you can feel bad about it.  After turning up to my appointment right on time, it was 45 minutes before I even got to the interview stage but I wasn’t too worried about the assignments awaiting me at home because I knew I was doing a good thing.  After sailing through that it was time to lie on a bed and try not to wet myself after downing a couple of litres of water in the couple of hours prior.  Finally someone came over to get things started and commented that it would be easy to find my vein as she could see my “track marks” – how lovely.  Apparently not.  After a very painful needle insertion she explained she’d missed initially but had finally got it in the vein – thoughtfully, she never took it out when she missed though, instead just made a bit of a mess of my arm wriggling the needle around inside it.  Almost immediately the thing started beeping and she tried to blame it on some tangled cord.  The beeping continued and I was quizzed on whether I’d drunk enough (definitely yes), how I was feeling (absolutely fine) and told to just keep squeezing the thing in my hand every couple of seconds (not the 10 she’d originally specified).  When the beeping would not go away they waited for it to get to 200mL then stopped it, unplugged me and wrote “flow ceased” on my pathetic little bag of blood.  In my 8 years of donations I have never felt like such a failure, I know I had the full 470mL in me, they just didn’t try hard enough to get it out.  So I finally got home about 2 hours after I left and realised not only had I not been doing uni work, I hadn’t even really done anything constructive so my feel-good procrastination turned into just regular old procrastination.

The night was however looking up with a reminder from M-dizzle that Beauty and the Geek was on.  I excitedly switched on at 8.30 only for The Marge to realise she wanted to watch The Slap so we switched channels.  I managed to catch the emotional end of the episode and luckily only missed 2 makeovers – am pretty excited about the other 4 happening in next week’s ep.  I also managed to get up to date in Gossip Girl and How I Met Your Mother so the day wasn’t completely unproductive.  No movies or ice cream involved but it certainly was a cheap Thursday.  Hoping for an improvement next week but not liking my chances with exams getting ever closer.

Week 1 - Drinking & More Drinking

Thursday #2 – in the week since DTM left, uni had gone from bad to worse, so naturally when this Thursday rolled around there was only one thing on the agenda – drinking.  Following his suggestion that I use his absence to spend some quality time with M-dizzle, the 2 of us (together with a few hundred of our closest friends) hit up unibar for some Oktoberfest action.  Before making it to the official party we spent a couple of hours downing ciders with the 713 gang to ensure we wouldn’t be too sober for unibar.  After teaching what we thought were valuable lessons in home safety, attempting some indoor cycling, explaining the importance of drinking THROUGH the hangover to some amateurs, and doing a quick shot of Bacardi; we were ready to take on Oktoberfest.  After a few hours of insane toilet queues, cans of Smirnoff that took me back to my teens, music I’d never heard before, giant sausages, and pretzels that were “hard like a bagel and sweet like a doughnut”; it was time to cut off the wrist band and head to McDonalds.

Rejuvenated by our quick big mac stop; M-dizzle and I were ready to take on the Rege in all its Thursday night karaoke glory.  Not one to ever get on stage for karaoke, I instead took the time to teach one of the giants my Grandpa-style dance moves and impress the gang with my superb knowledge of lyrics from songs that were big before I was born.  To say they were blown away by the fact I could sing American Pie in all its 8 minute 30 second entirety was an understatement.  However to say I was humble about it would perhaps be stretching the truth.

Things M-dizzle and I learnt on this Thursday without free movies:

1. Relocating people’s laptops as a home safety lesson is not always well taken or appreciated.  I suspect instead of learning not to leave a bunch of strangers unattended in the apartment; The Blonde Giant may instead have learnt not to leave 2 friends and 13 ciders unattended in the apartment.

2. Indoor cycling is not as easy as it sounds when the bike seat is located higher than your belly button.  As a general rule, if it takes one person to hold the bike still for the second person to then use a table and a wall to mount the bike, it probably won’t end well. 

3. Cycling on the balcony with an appropriately sized bike and a cider in hand is much more enjoyable than the aforementioned indoor cycling.  However, drinking before excitedly mounting the bike may lead to some pain for one’s lady bits.

4. When you've been drinking for a couple of hours, have started to get a headache and are feeling a little sleepy; you must not, under any circumstances, sit on the floor.  We stressed this lesson to The Less-Experienced Drinker who was struggling before 7pm and after heeding our advice she was seen outlasting us at 1am.  As the hangover started before reaching Oktoberfest we told her she had to just drink through it.  Seeing her after the Rege was a proud moment for all of us.

5. Bacardi, when not in its Breezer form, is disgusting and should not be taken straight.  It did however, successfully take us from “too sober for unibar” to the previously discussed indoor cycling so all was not lost.

All in all a good and educational evening was had.  It was by no means a free Thursday, but as there was still money in the wallet on Friday morning I really can’t complain.

Week 0 - Shopping & DVDing

When DTM packed up and left on Thursday, I was suddenly left without my weekly date.  Gone were the days of free movies, ice cream binging and mixing and matching fast food to get the best of both worlds with Oporto wraps and McDonalds shaker fries. On a brighter note, perhaps my days of impending hypercholesterolaemia were also gone.  Armed with all this free time (surely uni assignments and exams could wait) I needed to find a new way to fill my Thursdays; not to mention the rest of my week! There was the suggestion I recruit someone new to take me to movies, but no-one sprang to mind and the audition process seemed tedious. Plus there was the fact that in the past I had only been willing to pay a max of $1 for the two of us to see a movie, and even then it wasn’t very willingly; so what were the chances I could find someone else who would accept this somewhat expensive deal?  There was talk of spending more time with M-dizzle but 5 days a week is probably sufficient already, if not verging on excessive. Beauty and the Geek was looking like a promising way to spend my evenings, especially since Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year had sadly come and gone all while I was at free movies.  I was at a loss for what to do and since nothing exciting was coming to mind, I figured I might as well record my boring efforts to find something to do on Thursdays.

Thursday #1 – there is some debate over whether this Thursday counts; yes it was free-movie-less but it was not DTM-less.  Nevertheless my night had to be filled as DTM was busying himself at an airport rather than entertaining me.  In a panic with no Thursday night plans for the first time in months, I did what any girl in my situation would do; I headed to the mall and bought a pair of shoes and some costume requirements for the following night’s fancy dress shindig.  A fairly tame Thursday night but care of some good bargain hunting and a surprise sale, I only ended up $52 out of pocket after my shopping expedition.  Hardly free but one cannot be expected to walk around barefoot.  Upon returning home I settled into bed with a quality DVD from a community television show circa 2005, yes, perhaps an oxymoron.  Too much excitement for one night, I left some of season 1 for another day.  A good start to my Thursdays without free movies but there is definitely room for improvement.