Have I mentioned how bloody cold it is here?

It is so bloody cold in my room. I’m not sure how I can stand it.

I have the heater running full-blast. And yes, it is a one-setting heater and the dial only corresponds to how long it’s running, but I’m going to pretend that it means it’s heating the room. It doesn’t do a very good job, in all honesty, but I’m going for the placebo effect here.

I’m also cuddled up in my duvet and I have my wrist-warmers on. I would wear proper gloves, but I can’t operate my laptop (or read a book) with them, so I have to make do. The wristers are better than nothing, honestly. And eventually I’m going to go to the kitchen and make soup or something. I can’t have tea or coffee, since I ran out of sugar this afternoon. The grocery store on campus doesn’t appear to have sugar, so I keep stealing packets from the dining hall breakfasts. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to go through an entire box of sugar in six months anyway, so this ends up working out a little better.

So, what’s been happening lately? I went to the cinema with some of my friends yesterday, and that was pretty exciting. We saw Black Swan, which was a very disturbing film. I’m not sure I really liked it. It was a little too weird for me. And it was terrifying, and everyone was utterly mental, and it was pretty graphic. Not really my cup of tea. But it was better than sitting in my room alone, I suppose. And then I had a two-hour long conversation about absolutely nothing with the Welsh girl down the hall, and that was pretty wonderful. Making friends can be fun!

Though I have a hard time going to the kitchen when there are a lot of people there. I feel like they’ll judge me for eating microwave soup all the time, and for not having any cutlery/pots/what have you. Or proper food items, really. I eat a lot of microwaveables. Which reminds me, I meant to go buy bread today and completely forgot. Curses!

I actually did some of my homework today, which is honestly exciting. I’m really bad at procrastinating, so the fact that I read a handful of poems for my Thursday seminar is a good thing. I also picked a poem to memorize (more on this later) and devised a topic for my big procedural essay. Yes, I know the procedural isn’t graded. But now that I have a topic, I can do research! We’re going to pretend that the paper isn’t also due Thursday, because then I will cry. And will write it all on Wednesday night anyway. I sort of hope I can chat with my tutor about it on Tuesday when I see him.

So, the poem memorization. Our assignment is to pick a sonnet and memorize it. Not too difficult, since sonnets are only 14 lines. Naturally I decide to do a Shakespearean one, because my love for Shakespeare knows no bounds. I picked Sonnet 20. Now, those of you who know little to nothing about Shakespearean sonnets will not understand the significance of this. See, Sonnet 20 is one of the most controversial sonnets in the sequence, mainly because it appears to be about homosexuality. It’s one of the ones people point to and say “Shakespeare was totally gay!” It also contains some rather explicit puns.

Basically, it is one of my favourite sonnets because it is so controversial. It’s fun to discuss because there are so many different ways you can take the interpretation. And, you know, puns.

I’m going to go into tutorial, break out this sonnet, and probably blush the whole time. It will be awesome. I will look like a right American who took what’s probably the most explicit sonnet we were offered and memorized it because she has the mental maturity of a twelve year old. I swear, I picked it because of the discussion potential. And because if I was given the chance, I would write my paper on the sonnet and the various interpretations. Maybe I’ll even write my big paper on something of the like, after we read the plays! POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!

My paper topic, less excitingly, is probably going to be about the role of poetry in historical documents. I’m going to be citing Sir Philip Sidney’s “The Defence of Poesy” (aka “An Apology for Poetry”) and part of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey’s translation of Book 4 of The Aeneid. I need to do more research, because for some reason English English papers (pfft) are supposed to be research-based instead of critical analysis. I hate doing research. I really hate reading other people’s critical essays, because they write like pretentious douchbags. English major problems, seriously.

This is where I took two hours off writing this post so I could watch Being Human and eat a cup of noodles. I am really bad at finishing things, seriously. Just ask anyone who’s ever read anything I’ve ever written.

Though the episodes of Being Human were awesome, so I guess that has to count for something.

Anyway, to summarize: I have a lot of work to do this week. So much work. It will be awful. If I survive this week, everything will go a lot more smoothly. We’ll see what happens.