what a bizarre week.

my sweetie got acute food poisoning on monday night. rancid shrimp in a salad roll, he speculates. he called from work at about midnight that night explaining that he was spewing from both ends and asked if i could go get him some ginger ale while he gingerly made his way home.

on my way out to the gas station -- the only place around that might be open at that hour -- and as i was walking down the sidewalk, i see a skunk dart out from the bushes and come barreling straight for me. i skirted around me at the very last possible moment; i think it might have been about 40 cm away or less. i don't think i've ever been quite so close to a skunk before.

just what i need, i thought, to be sprayed on my way out to get ginger ale for the ailing husband.

anyway, monday night was sleepless; certainly, it was much worse for my sweetie than it was for me, but horrible sounds of vomiting every twenty minutes made for a sleepy nori on tuesday.

i had tuesday off, actually -- our tech project wasn't to start until wednesday, when i had to give my presentation on content management systems. i joked that it was just like a reading break, only a fifth as long. i spent most of it nursing my sweetie back to health, which was interrupted by a meeting with BCAMP, in which i was pretty much told that there was no place for me there and that i really should consider other internship options.

well, poo.

i tried working on my CMS presentation, which ended up quite the piece of garbage, especially when compared to LC's awesome presentation on wikis. however, i did manage to get an entire research article laid out and sent out for proof.

wednesday, i finally got to find out whom i'd be working with in tech. turns out i'm shafted with the smelly guy again -- who was utterly ineffectual in our last project and was, as you may deduce, smelly -- but the rest of my group seems pretty solid. our goal is to find a way to automate the process of catalogue production by flowing ONIX-compatible XML data into a commonly used layout program like quark or indesign. last year's group got pretty far with the project but couldn't quite make a fully functional package. i got stuck being project manager, which is fine, i guess, but i'm just afraid that i'm not really going to end up giving it my all because i feel so burnt out.

this week, i also decided on my history paper topic: the history of ink. i'm not entirely sure what angle i'll be taking on it -- and i have about six books that i asked my sweetie to get me from the ubc library to read yet, but i ran the topic by my instructor, and she was entirely too enthusiastic about it. unfortunately, on thursday, i found out that smelly guy apparently wanted to take on that topic as well, and wanted to coordinate presentations on the same day.

so unimpressed i was. i don't want to have to coordinate anything with him.

anyway, the week ended fairly well, with a few of us heading out to drink on friday night and plan a kitshy 'yearbook' for our class, complete with an elementary-school-type class photo with our prof standing by us and one of those white-lettering-on-black signs reading 'mpub class of 2005,' individual photos with incoherent call-outs to our peeps, favourite quotes and inside jokes, an autograph page, and tally of our upcoming 'most likely to...' survey.

tonight is oscar night. in keeping with three years of tradition, at least one of S&A is coming over for dinner and to watch the program; however, none of us have really seen any of the nominated movies, so the whole affair is really just an excuse for me to take sunday night off. i guess i kind of need it. within the next week, i have a tech paper due and i have to get started on this history presentation worth a rather substantial chunk of my mark.

~sigh~. okay, here i go.