It figures on the last weekend before Finals Week that everything which could go wrong did go wrong. In many ways, to many different people.
Hoo boy. Let's start from the beginning, and I'll keep things as brief as possible.
Friday was the only really good day of this entire weekend -- Lady came in and we had a wonderful/day night together. It couldn't have been more perfect; it's days like Friday which remind me (not that I needed to be reminded, of course) why I love that girl so very much. We went out to dinner at Applebee's, came home, and generally just spent as much time together as possible. I can't tell you how much I missed that, or her. Through all of my sleep deprivation, grading hundreds of papers this semester, and writing close to 60-page final projects, Lady has been what's kept me going. I treasure every second with her, especially even more now that she'll soon be going home to the east coast to work over the summer.
It was Friday night that the first omen of the rest of the weekend occurred, and it's when the fan belt broke on my furnace.
For those of you who have a heating/cooling system with a furnace and central air, you know that while the AC unit may be outside, the unit is also hooked up to the furnace, and when it's on it's the furnace's fan that blows the cool air through the house. Without that fan? Nothing blows.
I noticed around 11PM on Friday night that nothing was blowing through my vents, even though the AC was on and running. There was no air moving. The furnace fan was on and running as well. Hm. Because of this, I used my basic knowledge of machinery to figure out that the fan belt had broken -- otherwise the furnace fan wouldn't be running at all. Does that make sense? The "engine" of the fan will run, but the blower won't run. Which means, by deductive reasoning, that the fan belt is about the only thing it could be.
This, of course, was not good news for me and Lady. Lady tolerates heat even less than I do, and it was in the 90s on Friday and Saturday. Without the fan belt, I can't even run the furnace's fan to move air through the house. That in itself is a huge problem -- it means that my house basically turns into an oven. As it's the weekend, Lady was here, and I have my final exam to give Monday (read: today) afternoon, I knew I wasn't going to be able to get it fixed until at least after that -- so, sadly, we were stuck being hot. We dealt with it Friday night; it wasn't too bad. Saturday, however, was awful -- and I couldn't do anything about it. It was easily ninety degrees upstairs in my house, even with the floor fans, propped in the windows, blowing on us. It was because of that unbearable heat, as well as a few other reasons, that Lady went back to school on Saturday evening instead of staying until Sunday morning as we'd originally planned. I may write about that more later, but for now it's unimportant.
I was up all night Saturday night and through most of yesterday; not only was I taking care of stuff around the house that needed to be done, but the heat and my allergies made it near-impossible to sleep. Believe me, I tried multiple times. Finally, last night I was able to take a nap for several hours, which was sorely needed.
When I awoke -- groggy and in the dark, I found that I'd received a voicemail as well as two texts from Lady, telling me to call her because something bad had happened and she needed my support. I found out what it was soon thereafter -- one of her closest friends was killed in a car accident on Saturday night.
Lady is, understandably, devastated. I called her and talked to her briefly, and was as sweet as I possibly could be, of course, but there's nothing else I can do but be there for her and take care of her when she needs me to. And right now (again, very understandably) she's not really in a talkative mood. I probably wouldn't be either, to be honest. I told her I'm here for her when and if she needs me, and left it at that. I love Lady. I love her a lot. I wish there was something I could do to help her feel better, but I know there's really not. At least not right now.
So, really, this weekend has just been a string of bad things happening one after another, with the exception of Friday of course. I also haven't heard from my parents in over a week, so I have no clue what's going on back home, if anything. Still, things could always get worse, and maybe will before they get better, so I'm trying to keep my chin up. After all, this week is the last week I have to do anything school-related until the end of May, when I'll start teaching summer sessions, and next weekend I'm planning to see Lady graduate, and meet her mother and aunt.
Last night, to deal with the heat and to prepare for the summer, I once more made myself hairless. I have gone clean-shaven for the first time in about six months, and I shaved my head almost down to the skin, using my clippers without any guard on them at all. I don't necessarily like being almost bald, but if it's a choice between that and sweating profusely if it's going to be 100 degrees every day again soon, then I'd rather have no hair. Lady encouraged me while she was here to cut my hair again anyhow; she likes the really-short-hair/almost bald look on me. Now, all I have to worry about is sunburn on the top of my head for the next few weeks until it grows out a little more.
Besides, it's comfortable (if a little strange-feeling), and I now don't have to worry about shampoo. I can run the bar of soap over my head for a few seconds, and be good to go.
I will also say that I was originally considering a mohawk. Not kidding.
Anyway.
This week is going to be long and rather strange, punctuated at each end by stuff to do. There's today's final exam and grading, and then finishing up exam grading on Thursday morning with my grading partner before I can post my grades and be done for the semester. In the interim and afterwards, I have Tuesday and Wednesday off, during which I can see if I can get my landlord here to fix the furnace fan belt, Friday to relax, and Saturday to drive to Lady's school for her graduation on Sunday. It's going to be interesting to see what I can get done and how I'll end up doing it. That fan belt thing needs fixed soon, though, before it gets way too hot again.
So yeah, that's the brief-brief version of what's been going on. There's more, of course. I may go into more detail with some things over the course of the next few days, but who knows. For now, though, yes, things could be better...but they could also be much, much worse. And I'm thankful that right now they're not.
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