You remember that scene in Dumb and Dumber, where Jim Carrey asks the mobster in the truck if he knows what the most annoying sound in the world is? Well, turns out it isn’t Jim and Jeff screaming in unison after all. Turns out it’s the sound of a guy drilling a hole through my balcony at 8 o’clock in the morning in an attempt to remove a drainpipe. The sound of metal against concrete has been resonating through the building all day and it’s driving me nuts. And they’ve just started! There’ll be construction guys on scaffolding outside my window for several weeks doing God-knows-what disguised as renovation of the balconies for reasons unbeknownst to me. I was trying to watch television while eating breakfast and I couldn’t hear a damn thing, so I’m a bit cranky right now.

We don’t have Lilith Fair here and people like Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, and Juliana Hatfield don’t play shows here, so when someone like Jonatha Brooke stops by I go see her (I went with Jan, who took a bunch of pictures). Supporting her last night was Tina Dickow, who’s like the local version of Ani Difranco, doing an acoustic solo show. It was okay, but not nearly as good as the times I’ve seen her play with her band.
Jonatha Brooke has played here a couple of times and has a connection to music department at the university, so just like the last time I saw her here there were a lot of aspiring musicians in the crowd. She has a huge personality and is both charming and funny and tells a lot of fun stories in between songs. The show wasn’t that different from the show she played here in March, but it was good all the same. One of the highlights was that she played Nothing Sacred on request (which I haven’t heard her perform before) and even though she forgot a couple of chords it was still pretty cool. And she stuck around afterwards and signed CDs which was cool as well.

Monday I worked at the opening of the new Isis Katrinebjerg Center and I had a bit of an accident. I was carrying a stack of plates on by left arm and a stack of glasses in my right hand and as I tried to get around some guy eating hors d'oeuvres I walked into one of those glass walls they have next to doors. I slammed my right hand into the glass, which meant the glasses I was carrying shattered and I was left holding half a glass filled with pieces of broken glass. I had to get the plates and broken glass away, so I rushed out to the kitchen and tried to set everything down without breaking more stuff and started washing the glass of my hand. By some miracle I only got a small cut on my finger, so I started cleaning up and packing the glass in newspaper and threw it all away. And it wasn’t until then I realized what could’ve happened. My hand was hurting, not from the cut, but because I’d hit the glass wall pretty hard. I thought about what would’ve happened if I’d put my hand through the glass wall or if the broken glasses had fallen on my arm. And frankly that freaked the shit out of me. When I was 16 a friend of mine was running around chasing another friend. The one being chased ran out a door and slammed it behind him. The chaser put his arms out, so he wouldn’t get hit by the door in the face, and put both his arms through the door’s window. Both his arms got cut really bad and he was rushed to the hospital. So the rest of the day I was in a weird mood and I couldn’t help being a bit shocked by the whole thing.
Oddly enough my Mum called later and told me they’d seen me on TV. I watched the local news later and while someone was being interviewed at the reception you could see me walking around in the background. Imagine if someone had caught me on camera walking into the glass wall? It might not have made the news, but I’m sure it would have made the blooper reel for their Christmas party.

I went to Peter’s party this Saturday, which was fun. There were a lot of people there I hadn’t seen in a while (most of them people I used to see at school) and the party was still rolling when I left after five, so it was a big success. I’d taped the last game of the World Series, so I watched that Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as Game 6, but it was okay and it was cool that David Eckstein got to catch the final ball. He was one the players I was impressed by the most throughout the Series, so it was a cool way to end the game.

I’m supposed to be working on my thesis these days, but I haven’t even looked at it in ages. It’s getting embarrassing, so in order to get moving I went to a seminar yesterday, where I got some tips on structuring ideas and writing. One of the things that’ll hopefully keep me motivated is that I talked to Peter and one or two other guys about getting together once in a while to evaluate what we’ve written so far. So hopefully the upcoming deadlines will be what I need to get my ass in gear.
I’d forgotten how much fun it is to hang out at school. After the seminar we had lunch and sat around and talked. When you don’t have classes you don’t get a chance to sit around and talk to people on a regular basis, so it was cool to do that again. I think I’ll start going down to the school library a couple of times a week just to get out of the house (especially with all the construction going on) and get some reading done. And you wouldn’t believe how many cute girls go to the school I go to. I said hi to a bunch of people yesterday I hadn’t seen in ages, so it was almost like a homecoming or something.

I’ve been listening to the new Beck and the new Ryan Adams CDs this week and I’m not really feeling them yet. There are definitely some good songs on Demolition, but it hasn’t blown me away yet. And the Beck CD hasn’t really gotten under my skin either. But I haven’t given up on them yet.