Of Dry Heaving, Power Outages and Trains.

I actually handed in a take-home exam late today. A whole ten minutes late. I'm abominable.

Tuesday evening, after a successful 17th C. exam and halfway through the Short-Story exam, I was sick. I made it out of the classroom and down to the men's room on time, but the rest of the evening was less-than fortunate.
It's funny how nihilistic you can become when you're hanging off the handrails in the wheelchair-accessible stall, desperately trying to rid your body of whatever vile substance is making each passing moment feel like an eternity of suffering.
I made it back to the classroom, somewhat refreshed and with enough of an adrenaline rush to write out most of the second-last part, but the high turned into a very low low and I slowed to five minutes per sentence. When it came to the last story (Akutagawa's In a Grove, which Kurosawa's Rashomon is based on) I had already spent half an hour with my head on the table shielding my eyes from the horrid brightness of the fluorescent lights; I could feel the electromagnetic radiation reflecting off of the bright white exam booklet and penetrating the membranes around my cerebellum.
I had to go dry heave some more, and when I got back there were only ten minutes remaining. The second adrenaline rush gave me enough time to fill out the last part in point-form. Dr. Mingay offered to drive me home, and said he would take my "sudden change to a strange shade of pale" into consideration when he was marking. I told him that I had felt fine that morning (which is true,) but I'm not sure if that was a bright thing to do.

This morning, the power went out. I slept in one hour, so I was a bit rushed putting the finishing touches on my take-home essay. (Who assigns an eight-page take-home essay, anyway?) I left at 10:30, knowing that it takes at least fifteen minutes to get to King's and another five to print out all those pages.
Fifteen minutes doesn't account for careful driving (on account of the fact that I forgot to get more fuel on the way home Tuesday) or trains. I made it to the front desk at almost exactly 11:00 (when the paper was supposed to be in.) The receptionist was away from the desk when I got back from the lab (where I waited an extra fifteen second for the computer to turn on because someone had hit the power button on the monitor--computer monitors turn themselves off, people!, it's the twenty-first century!) so the timestamp probably says 11:10.

Like I said, there's a strange nihilism that comes with bodily afflictions. I'm feeling a bit better now, but not well enough to feel any sense of loss over this deadline.

I'll have to get some kind of energy together for the PSYCHO exam tomorrow, though.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock