A series of unfortunate events

Oh yes, those Baudelaire brats have nothing on me.

I think I already mentioned my knackered laptop. After a drying out period, it started working again, aside from a few start-up issues and a complete lack of working spacebar. The fact that I'm able to type a coherent blog entry from the comfort of my room is down to the lovely Mark, who managed to find a program that would let me swap the functions of keys, thus using the Ctrl key as a spacebar. (This is proving confusing when I use other computers and wonder why the spacebar isn't working.) Anyway, I rang up Dell, who after an hour on the phone duly promised to send me a new keyboard by courier, which they would then instruct me how to exchange for the old one. To this end, I had to go to Maplin's and buy screwdrivers.

This was on Monday, if my memory serves me correctly; by Monday afternoon, my minor cold had turned into a major, nasty, rotten cold and I felt rubbish. I decided to get a super-early night to get rid of it, and went to bed at about 9.30pm. After two and a half hours lying awake, half an hour on the phone to Mark doing extensive whingeing and half an hour reading Jasper Fforde, I finally got to sleep at about 1.30am. Predictably, I woke up the next day feeling rubbish.

The day after that (Wednesday) I woke up feeling even more rubbish, and my eyes were all gunky, so I decided to go and see the college nurse, on the off-chance that this wasn't just a symptom of my evil cold. The nurse (who was very nice) told me I had conjunctivitis. I cried. She gave me tissues. She told me off for using the same tissue to blow my nose and wipe my eyes, saying it was exactly this kind of behaviour that had got me conjunctivitis. I went to my room and spent the day being ill, trying not to get too behind by reading Hobbes and Marx. Now, this was the level of cold that's fantastic when you're at school (those of you still at school can feel smug now), because you're ill enough to take the day off, but not too ill to read books and watch Disney videos and generally have a pleasant day relaxing at home. However, in this instance, I had to go to lectures, because other people's lecture notes are incomprehensible to anyone but them, and I'm damned if I'm getting behind in the first week. I had to make my own honey & lemon. I had to make my own hot water bottle. I even had to make my own bed! (Being sheltered is so much more fun than being independent.)

Anyway, some time in the afternoon, Dell rang to help me set up my new computer. I got out my shiny new screwdrivers, and proceeded to fail entirely to unscrew the little screws that hold the keyboard into the laptop. (I'm weak, alright?) The Dell Man was a bit stumped by this. Not knowing what else to do, I ran downstairs to my friend Chris (who, fantastically, lives in Room 101) and said something to the effect of "Help!" We both dashed back up to my room and he proceeded to fail entirely to unscrew the little bastard screws. Eventually we gave up, apologised to the Dell Man and rang off.

All in all, it's been a dandy start to my university career.

Oh, and one more thing: how is it that even when I'm doing my own laundry and there are nobody's clothes in the load except mine, I still manage to end up with two odd socks?