insomnia

Mood Swings

[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]

Fucking hell; this stuff is weird.

For those who might think to the contrary; no, it’s not usual for me to snap at something which wouldn’t usually have bothered me, and march myself out of Aber. Several miles (and two hills) later, came to a halt and wondered what had set me off.

Later, I completely broke down into tears and collapsed into a blubbering mess, for no reason at all.

Last night, I slept for the best part of two hours. Just couldn’t get settled. Which is insane, because after my little marching exercise earlier, I was completely exhausted and could have quite happily just lay on the grass on the banks of the Ystwyth and fallen asleep.

Still got a killer headache and occasional nausea. It’s hard to comprehend that, despite the fact that all I did was eat a tiny (well, actually – quite chunky, but you know what I mean) tablet, two days ago, and I’m still feeling the effects. Weird shit.

Can anybody else out there who’s taken Lariam tell me: does it get better than this? If not, I think I ought to speak to my doctor before I start really …

It’s Over

It’s over to you:
I can’t find the answers when you’re gone.
And it’s over to you;
You can’t find the answers where you are.
I won’t tear you down!
I won’t tear you down,
To get into the world you wanted.
I’m kicking through the walls…
No-one can believe in the things that never change.
– “It’s Over”, The Goo Goo Dolls

I can’t sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day and I really oughta get some, and I’m knackered, but hey.

Tomorrow’s the first day of the Fresher’s Fayre. I’ll be selling hot dogs, alongside Kit and Paul, all day, in order to raise money for Nightline. Perhaps I just don’t feel like everything’s sorted yet. This last week I’ve spent most of my working hours at the office, and as a result the amount of planning and preparation that has gone into this three-day event has been a blur to me… perhaps that’s why it doesn’t feel ‘finished’ – because as far as I’m concerned, it never really ‘started’. This project… I’ve not really been a part of.

The plan is to meet up early in the morning and collect the remainder of our supplies – fresh bread, bacon, and other perishables – then go and set up in the Sports Cage on Penglais Campus. Then, having set up all of our stuff, we’ll go and check that the Nightline stand itself has been set up and see if the Nightliners who’ll be running it want a breakfast bacon sandwich.

My Local Education Authority contacted me to tell me that while they’ll offer me my usual student loan for this, my final year in education, they won’t pay my tuition fees. This puts me in a moderately complicated situation, as I’m not able to pay them myself out of my current income. Instead, my current plan – should my appeal to them fail – is to find an unsecured loan I can take out to pay for my studies, and pay it off after my graduation. Hopefully, however, they can be persuaded to pay, and that won’t be necessary.

This town’s fascinating this time of year. So many students reappearing… look down any street and you’ll see two young people struggling to carry a TV into a house. A stark contrast to the two weeks previous, in which it’s been a ghost town, or the weeks before that, when we were infested with tourists.

Claire’s come down with the Freshers’ Flu early – characteristic illness of University towns at that time of year when people from all over the country bring their local illnesses to one place all at once. There should probably be some kind of quarantine process or something. Like out here during the Foot & Mouth outbreak.

I’m going to go fridgesurfing then write some more code to the sound of Goo.

Sleep well, sweet Aberystwyth;

Helpless

I can’t sleep.

For the last week or so, I’ve talked a little every day or two with a really good friend of mine who is, unfortunately, going through some problems at the moment. They’d been quite understating and evasive about talking about them at length until yesterday, when they suddenly revealed to me quite how difficult they’re finding their life, of late.

What scared me more than how bad their situation is is that I honestly don’t know what I can do or say to help them. I’ve tried everything I can think of and it’s beginning to upset me that I don’t know what else to try.

I still can’t sleep.

Sleepless

Completely exhausted. Can’t sleep. Miss Claire.

Cool Thing Of The Day

Cool And Interesting Thing Of The Day To Do At The University Of Wales, Aberystwyth, #51:

Spend all night playing e-mail tennis with somebody cross-campus, simply because it’s 2:40am and you haven’t got anything you’d rather be doing (except sleeping, but I’m not sleepy, soo…).

The ‘cool and interesting things’ were originally published to a location at which my “friends back home” could read them, during the first few months of my time at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, which I started in September 1999. It proved to be particularly popular, and so now it is immortalised through the medium of my weblog.

Cool Thing Of The Day

Cool And Interesting Thing Of The Day To Do At The University Of Wales, Aberystwyth, #50:

Sit up ’til 5:00am coding for a project that doesn’t have to be in until a week on Friday. On the up side, discover the root cause of the bug that was holding back the progress of the Group Project, and, by redeveloping some source code, cut down estimated production time by two days. Get lots of praise for this. Be happy.

The ‘cool and interesting things’ were originally published to a location at which my “friends back home” could read them, during the first few months of my time at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, which I started in September 1999. It proved to be particularly popular, and so now it is immortalised through the medium of my weblog.

Avatar Diary

Went into college for Pure Maths, and for the first time in 1999, arrived on time (as opposed to one or more hours early)! Went out for tea to McDonalds with my dad and sisters in the evening. Went to my mum’s house, and spent five hours (almost breaking my personal record of 5 hours 27 minutes) on the phone to Fay, and, after failing to go to sleep afterwards, sat up and watched the sunrise before dropping off. If anyone asks about why I was on the phone to her at that time of night, I’ll tell them that I’m running a phone sex line as a way of making extra income. No – that won’t work… It was my call… Hmm… Let me think of an explanation, then…