Monday, November 09, 2009

When drinking water becomes a bad idea...

In my years since starting this blog, I had never gone one calendar month without posting something new. That is, until now....

October just flew by at tornado speed. By the time I had stopped spinning, it was November already and my first term at school was halfway over. Midterms came and midterms went, and with each mark that I received back, I was surprised -- pleasantly or otherwise. My self-concept has diminished, and I'm sure my IQ has dropped twenty points since beginning grad school.

Today, I decided to bring a water bottle to school. It would be nice to stay hydrated throughout the day, since Mondays are unbearably long, with almost eight hours of classes non-stop.

I walked into my first class with a lilt in my step, seeing that my friends had already arrived. I plunked my bag down, opened it up, and fished out my folder of class-notes.

Things didn't feel right. As I laid the folder on my lap, I noticed that my jeans were getting rather wet. I placed a tentative hand into my shoulder bag, and to my dismay, discovered what I already knew by that point: I had accidentally left the cap of my water bottle open, and almost all of the 600mL of liquid had ended up out of the bottle, forming a pool for my notes, pens, and crackers.

First reaction: I laughed. It was good to have a sense of humour about things since there was nothing I could do about it any more.

The first uh-oh: I realized the book I had borrowed from my audiology professor was in there.

Then came the scramble. I quickly snatched all I could out of my bag. My friend to the left ran to grab me paper towels from the bathroom, and my friend to the right proceeded to lay out some of my papers on the front table to air-dry.

As I surveyed the damage, I thought how lucky I was that I had printed everything on a laser printer instead of inkjet. I would have curly crunchy pages after everything dried, but at least I would still be able to make out the text. And it was luckier still that I had left my laptop at home today instead of bringing it to class in my shoulder-bag.

I just spent thirty minutes blow-drying my papers. Now comes the part where I go to buy my professor a gigantic box of chocolates in anticipation of the profuse apologies I will have to give when I return his book.

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad your laptop wasn't in your backpack! I guess by now (over a month later!) everything is dried out!

    (I'm behind on keeping up reading the blogs I like to follow...was without a computer for four months. I borrowed my oldest daughter's computer now and then, but it is a netbook the size of postage stamp...and I have very old eyes which just aren't up to reading text microfish sized! I finally got a new computer--yeah! So, I'm back to catching up with old friends again!)

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