A free man in turmoil

As of today, I am a free man. Not in the "single" sense, but I mean free from University for another year, or at least until the new academic year starts anyway.

I'm sitting on a small two-seater brown leather sofa with my feet up on the arm of a three-seater brown leather sofa and even though I have the whole summer to enjoy the time I have off, I feel like I'm almost regressing back into a vegetative-like state 5 hours in to handing in my last piece of work.

I don't want to leave here. Can I stay here forever? Has the bubble of the University finally taken a hold of me and if I try to leave a strangle hold will commence? Possibly. I feel like I should be doing something, right now. Something active, to keep me going, something mentally challenging so what brain cells I have will not exponentially dissipate.

I should be happy! People around me have grins on their faces which can only be compared to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, and here I am with a face like a slapped arse and with thoughts running through my head, which are by no means the best of thoughts at times. I think I will just miss my friends.

Newsflash: This is possibly the first time Dan has come to terms with the fact that he is going to miss his friends from University when he leave his residence on the 10th June.

I know I have friends back home and writing this now feels like I'm somehow insulting them, but I am not; or at least I don't mean to. Why does University have to stop over the summer? I have come accustom to living here and if I could find a job that will help quite significantly and I would try my very best to keep at least one, or two of my close friends from Geology by my side.

Why am I in such torment anyhow? Can't I just be happy that I have the summer off? I can find a job back home, I can go down the beach, see my friends, socialise with my family, go for walks, buy a bike and cycle everywhere and even do a little bit of geocaching in my spare time. That list sounds like a fantastic summer, a summer which can rival previous years. Yet I am still not happy. I do have other things to look forward to, like going to the University of Utah in August until December, to study Physical Geography and Geology, or as I'd now like to call it: "MGeoscience".

Yes, I've taken the transition, I've decided it's in my best interests to convert to an Undergraduate Masters Program, which will enable me to have a Masters' degree at the end. Isn't that better? Yes, yes it is!

Well, I've come to the conclusion that moaning about all this isn't going to help. I just need to sort myself out.

Plugs and Dreams

Now revising words such as pyrometamorphism, eclogite, metasomatism, pleochroism, fiamme, aphanitic, plutonic, hypabyssal… und so weiter... I thought I’d take time off and update the blog. After a moderately enormous hiatus I’d like to say that I’ve been busy, but I haven’t. I’ve just been rather lazy and having nothing to say – I wanted to be an intellectual when writing a blog but I’ve come to the conclusion that a blog, my blog could just be a diary as such. So what better time than now to write about something which doesn’t concern anyone? Well, we’ll see.

Unfortunately, my ear plugs broke today. I am a little bit upset because I’ve had them for almost a year now and that £7 was definitely well spent. But now I’m thinking of purchasing some new ones. I have decided to go with something that involves rocks – funny that, coming from a geology student, no?

At the same time, looking at these ear plugs has spurred me on to actually look at the minerals which make them up. I’m going to go for the amethyst and / or the turquoise ones. The history behind these two minerals is fantastic. I found out that turquoise plugs were a part of a ceremony in Sicán in Peru – which shows that turquoise has been used as plugs for thousands of years! Exciting? I think so. But there’s nothing like the deep violet colour which dwells within the quartz mineral either. I love purple; it’s got to be said. It’s one of my favourite colours. It’s also cheap and cheerful and I hope that isn’t a metaphor for myself. I’m anything but cheap – haha. Oh, and according to Wikipedia (the most reliable source of information, ever.), amethyst is derived from Ancient Greek, which means “not-intoxicated”. The belief was that amethyst would help with hangovers, I honestly think that they were just hoping for less devastating hangovers. I also wish that, so the Ancient Greeks and I have something in common!

If any of you did want to look at the website with these plugs on, take a look here http://www.arka-shop.co.uk/acatalog/precious_stone_flesh_plugs.html

Anyway… On to another topic now.

For the first time in a long time, I woke up with a smile on my face and I felt content with life. For some reason, I had a dream about – dare I say it? My perfect woman. This dream was very strange; it was like my whole life within the few hours of sleep that I got. I met this girl and straight away we hit it off. She was wearing a white blouse and sandy-coloured, high-waisted trousers which flowed like MC Hammer’s trousers funnily enough. She also had a pair of brown leather sandals which came above her ankles. Her hair was blonde, short and soft, with her fringe covering her left eye, but her hair flowed, so it didn’t actually cover her left eye – which is strange because I thought I always liked long hair. She had deep grey, mystical eyes, a perfect complexion and even her lips were perfect. And everything just fit with me and her, we went out for meals, she fit in with my friends straight away, we even walked arm in arm together perfectly. And yeah, we were just perfect together… So all day wherever I’ve been going I’ve been looking out for someone like that, and I shouldn’t! I wish I could write more but I honestly cannot remember any more of the dream.

Well that’s all I have for now, there’s not a lot else to say. It’s been a pretty strange day! Now it’s time to go to Subway and get that well-earned Meatball Marinara!