Renaissance Girl

So Tuesday was going fairly well on my end--just work and class, & I got good feedback for my project, so that was useful. After work I went to Andrew's; we ended up going for Mexican food, my (hereafter vain) attempt to cheer him up after his bad day.

If I were as talented as David Sedaris, the following story would be hilarious; instead it's just a litany of awful things that get ridiculous if (like me) you have a tendency toward the absurd.

We get back to his apartment after dinner, he heads toward the bathroom--& steps in half an inch of standing water. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the basement apartment is flooding!
This day was Chekhov, let me tell you. We tried to mop some up--got nowhere of course. His neighbor Chris comes downstairs to get his laundry & starts cursing loudly, which is when we discover that the laundry room is flooded, water is literally bubbling up from the drain in the floor, the carpet is soaked, and the storage room across the hall--full of cardboard boxes on the floor--is slowly filling up. Well.

If we're going to be Monty Python about it all, the bright side is that it was definetely community bonding time--we ran upstairs and knocked on all the apartment doors, telling them with half a hopeless smile that, Hello, you don't know me, but I live downstairs, & the apartment is flooding, & if you have anything in storage you might want to move it? People came down to help move things, commiserated, talked about how ridiculous the weather is (this is June for crying out loud), laughed...because what else can you do?

Andrew & I drank cognac amongst boxes of rescued storage items. Andy came home, helped sort out drying books. We talked about how ridiculous and Chekhovian this day was--everything is just vaguely awful until the last act, wherein everything goes to shit & someone dies. "Well, no one has died anyway," Andy says. "Not yet," I said, and immediately regretted it. Way to tempt Murphy. Bailey got home; more cleaning. More drinking and commiserating with neighbors. And then Andy gets a phone call, and the room goes very quiet--you know, when something happens; you can just tell. There's a certainty that just blankets itself over everything. A family friend of his passed away that night--unrelated to the flooding (and expected in a way; he was very ill).

So we hugged, standing on the damp carpet. And drank more cognac. And Andy said that the Chekhov had finally come full circle.

This may just be a Chekhovian week--it's been raining a ridiculous amount and everyone around me has problems (personally I am not wallowing in much, but it's quite enough for all my friends, thank you)--Cozy got sick, finals are killing everyone, the rain is making everyone I know depressed. It's a little silly.

I could really do with a comedy-Shakespeare week after this one, all right? Or possibly a Tom Stoppard (circa Arcadia or R&G)--there might still be talk about the futility of life, but at least it would be optimistic, and there would be witty dialogue to go along with it.

What playwrights control your life today?

So I finished that paper at about 2am--better than I was expecting, I suppose. My ears felt a little pressure-like, but I figured that was just exhaustion, so I went to bed. I woke up a while ago & my ears have been pressured all morning--like when you're in an airplane, & you need to pop them? Except they haven't popped. For...many hours! This is driving me crazy. It doesn't hurt, but it is annoying as hell. (I'll go to the health center tomorrow if it doesn't change, but it doesn't feel serious...I just can't get them to pop!)
Does anyone have any ideas? I've chewed gum & yawned until world's end, but nothing really works. Blargh.