Recipes for Friends

I feel like I should be done. May 29, 2007

Rowing is over. Veronica Mars is over. Most of my lectures are over. I feel like school should be over. But I’ve still got three more weeks. Three more weeks doesn’t sound like much, but when I consider that I’ve only been doing school work for the past 5 weeks, it seems like a lot. I still have a lot I want to do before the term is over, but instead of doing work so I’m sure I have time to do them, I daydream. And sleep. I’ve slept so much over the past couple days. I get tired reading, and rather than pushing through, I think I’ve got tons of free time now that rowing is done and I only have two lectures a week, so I’ll just take a nap. Not good.

Yesterday I finally got some reading done before I went to bed, but I should have gotten more done. And my tutor from my first tutorial told me to just focus on one reading for my questions because apparently students get really confused on it. So I barely have any reading for that, and the concepts seem pretty clear to me, so I feel a little worried, like there’s some complex part of the concept that I’m missing, but then at the same time, I think, well don’t need to do much more for that. I have no motivation. I’m ready for Melissa and Christi to get here so we can go around Europe. I’m ready to come home. I’m ready to stop spending so much money. This term has been so expensive. But I’ve still got three more weeks of work and two more weeks after that of spending more money, although at least it will be the euro instead of the pound.

Brendan is coming this weekend, so that will be fun. And at formal hall, we’re having our own table for rowing to celebrate. Then the next week, I’ll have two essays and have to present one of them, and after that one more set of questions and one more essay that I won’t have to present. Melissa and Christi come the weekend after Brendan. And Final Fling is that weekend too. And we’re supposed to have another rowing dinner just for the girls, and take pictures of both teams together. And Jennifer, Kristie, and I want to get to Stratford one day. I still need to call the box office and see if we can get cheap tickets for King Lear. And I have to see if David Harper has gotten my Student Aid Report, so I can hopefully sort out loan stuff before this summer. And my thesis. Too much to think about. I need to take it one thing at a time, but then I just think I’ve got plenty of time to get everything done. I need to get my motivation back, and remember that I’m not done yet.

BLADES!!!! May 26, 2007

WE DID IT!!! We bumped again today. Totally awesome. We did it before Donnington Bridge again. Never had to race past the bridge except on the first day when we weren’t chasing anybody. It was an amazing feeling. I don’t even know how to describe it. I think we’re all still in shock a little. So now we’ll get blades (second time in Regent’s history for the women’s crew to get blades), which we have to buy so it’s a heck of a lot of money, especially in dollars. I’ve considered not getting one, but then I think, how many times am I going to race for my school at Oxford and actually do the best possible? And what a great conversation starter a big blade in my house will be when I’m older. So I think I’ll just spend the money. This has been a totally awesome experience. Definitely worth all the hard work, ergs, pain, stress, everything. I’m so happy. We also got thrown in the river. That’s what you do at the end when you win, throw in the cox and the captain, only when we threw in Hannah, everybody else pushed the whole crew in behind her. And I lost my flip-flop in the river, which was very sad. My favorite pair. But I guess it’s worth it too. Okay, I’ll put up pictures later. Yay!!

3 down, 1 to go. May 25, 2007

We bumped again today!! Not as quickly as yesterday, but still before the bridge. I need to get to bed, so I’m not writing more now, but just wanted to put it up here. Tomorrow, we race one more time, hopefully to bump again, and finish a good Summer Eights, the first regatta we will have finished this year.

This is sort of what it looks like apparently. May 24, 2007

I actually never see anything, but here’s a picture of yesterday, I think. We were chasing the boat with girls with yellow shirts.

We didn’t even finish our start.

Today, I got up early and worked on my essay for Friday. Then I went to my tutorial and got another essay back with no comments. He said it was better at least, but I still have no idea what his idea of a good essay is. He gave us a copy of someone else’s essay, but he said it was too long. He just said it had some good opinions in it. Anyway, I came back and did some more work, then made some pasta before heading down to the river to watch our boys. They were third in their division. And the second boat bumped the first boat, but then they didn’t get out of the racing lanes like you’re supposed to, and our guys couldn’t get around them, so they had to stop. Well then the boat behind our guys, who they had bumped yesterday, rowed past them and bumped them. So we were all really confused because we were just hearing this over commentary, but we were really disappointed that our boys had gotten bumped, but it gave us a reality check that it could happen to us too. In the end, we appealed and got it. So the boys weren’t officially bumped, but they didn’t get a bump either.

So we waited a while and then got out when it was our time to do so. We warmed up and rowed up past the bridge. We waited around a while and were much quieter today. We really wanted the bump. So our start is 18 strokes, Ray calls 3 draws (3/4 length, 1/2 pressure to get the boat moving), 5 winds (full stroke, with full pressure and bringing up the rate), 5 lengthen (really working on getting the full length out of the stroke, but still keeping up the pressure and the rate), 5 hands (concentrating on keeping our hands in the right place and balancing the boat while keeping the length, pressure, and rate). Then we do a few up-one-down-ones, which is where we slow it up the slide and bring the rate down a bit, but keep the pressure up. We settle into a race pace, usually for around 30 strokes per minute. Yesterday on one of our starts, we got the rate up to 37 1/2 stroke per minute in our start, which is higher than we aim for, but as long as we keep it tidy, pretty good. So today, we got 15 strokes in, and Ray told us to wind it down. We were all a bit confused. We thought maybe something similar to what had happened to the boys had happened to us. But no, the boat in front of us had conceded. We had just started our hands strokes, and we had already bumped. It was awesome. Although, then we had all this adrenaline and energy, and all we could do was sit there and wait for the race to finish before we went the rest of the way up to the river to turn around. But it was so cool. So we’ve bumped twice now. Two more races, two more bumps, and we can get blades. We just have to make sure we don’t get too confident, each day is a different crew, and we’re just taking it one race at a time. But, how cool would it be if I came home with a blade?