a frustrating weekend
01.17.2010 
22h07This has been a very frustrating weekend.
First, I've realized just how few friends I have left around here. Ciara and Raph were off visiting friends and family, Celine and Ben were off snowshoeing through the countryside, Erin was off skiing ... and I had no plans, all weekend long. How sad is that? I probably should've just sucked it up and gone to Paris this weekend, but I was hoping to spend a quiet, productive weekend at home.
For what it's worth, I did have a pretty productive weekend. I did a number of 'fun' things on my to-do list, like making a success board collage. I had been meaning to do this for a while: create a physical manifestation of all of the positive things that I should be saying to myself, to motivate myself to succeed. I finally sat down with some old magazines and went to town. If I can find the energy and motivation, I'll take a picture of it and post it here.
I also spent quite a long time working on my thesis this weekend. I mean, it's not like I had anything better to do, right? So I'd write and write and write, and then re-write, and then write some more, and then re-write. All for a mere 150 words. And then I'd send it to Damien, my faithful corrector, and he'd tell me that this word didn't work, or that verb was wrong, or the whole sentence didn't mean anything. I have about 300 words to show for my work this weekend, which is somewhat frustrating. Very rarely did I write a sentence that was correct from the start. I'm trying to be pro-active about it; I asked a colleague if she knew of any way that I could get better, and she suggested keeping a correction journal, with the date, the incorrect version, the corrected version, and the context. Hopefully things will progressively get easier as I learn to correct myself as I'm writing.
To add to the frustration, the guy upstairs has done nothing but make noise ALL WEEKEND. I'm starting to wonder if my aversion to noise is normal, or if i'm overreacting. It's gotten to the point where I want to go upstairs and either throw him out a window or strangle him [which of course i won't do, but i'm tempted!] I finally went upstairs last night to let him know that he was making tons of noise (his office is right above my room, where I was working), and he gave me that oh-so-wonderful french shrug and said, "not much i can do about it." I'm not sure what to do now ... the landlords have said that it's not their problem [ie they refuse to do anything], i can't afford to move at the moment, and I have too many research and reference books to make it feasible to work anywhere else. Oh, and I need an Internet connection when I'm working. I'm trying to just suck it up and deal with it, but it's getting increasingly more difficult. Any suggestions?
