Cafe #20: Melissa Cake Shop

Date: Friday, 8 June 2007, 4.00pm
Location: Smith Street, Fitzroy
Coffee: latte, poor - $2.50 (Greek sweet yummy)
Reading: Plato's Philebus

It feels good to be writing a blog again. I handed in my last bit of coursework yesterday - an exam for the Semiotics and Post-structuralism class. I am relieved to have the coursework over and should be able to blog more regularly again. I enjoyed taking classes but writing short essays is antagonistic to my grand thematising and meeting deadlines (which I did meet, while many others asked for extentions) and word counts (which I never met) stressful and not conducive to handing in my best work. I am excited about a next couple of months full of of reading and thinking about how to narrow my thesis topic.

It has been a stressful couple of weeks, finishing my last essay, the exam, losing my wallet and the cardholder I wear around my neck and breaking up with A. (This blog is probably not the place to discuss the latter. Suffice it to say I am getting used to the idea of myself as a more melancholy person. Perhaps that will go away soon or perhaps that is what life is meant to do to you?)

On Wednesday evening I went to a party in St Kilda with the folks in CCLS after working on my essay through the afternoon. I was out until 3.30am with a couple of very drunk men, a not-so drunk gal and a boy sober like me. I had a lovely time, chatting, drinking red wine and dancing to Blondie in C's apartment and to alternative rock at Cherry bar, but I was ready to go home by 2.00am afer we were thrown out of Cherry at closing hour. I did not go home in order to share the price of a taxi northwest with two others. The drunk blokes wanted to keep partying but after another hour of unsuccessfully searching for an open club in between fits of existential angst on the part of D, which saw him laying on pavements or floors, dragged around by J or throwing himself into a dumpster full of building materials or tipping over garbage bins, I was glad to go home. I admit to being somewhat amused with D's antics, his touchy-feely embracing of life and rapid alternation between optimism and nihilism, but I was also partly bored and exasperated, ready to leave to sleep on the floor for the night. I haven't been around someone that drunk in a long time, but he had his charms. The only problem with the evening was that when I got into the cab upon leaving C's apartment, I no longer had my purse. It must have fallen out of my bag. I am hoping it is at her place, but C hasn't been home to check.

On Thursday I had a lunch date with R, which was lovely - fake-meat noodle soup in the Target Centre - except that when I arrived at Parliament Station to go back home to finish my essay I realised my student card and yearly Met ticket were no longer hanging off my neck. It was very distressing, not only because I needed to be essay-writing rather than retracing my steps and asking security guards and staff if they'd found a blue cardholder, but because the best way I know not lose stuff is to keep it around my neck (unbelievably I still haven't lost my mobile phone). I haven't lost a key since college, when my senior house resident at Bard suggested the strategy after I kept locking myself out of my dorm room. The Metcard can be replaced for $12 but the Monash student card replacement fee is exorbitnat - $60 or $70. I filed a police report in the hopes that rumours of a fee discount with presentation of said report will prove to be true. I wouldn't care about the student card except that it is my library card as well.

I should remember not to leave the house when I haven't had much sleep and am stressed out. This is always when disaster strikes and every time I tell myself I shouldn't leave the house.

On Friday A arrived and we had a lovely weekend: with the Saturday coffee group that I've been inducted into (thanks to Ann), to a folky/bluesy gig with Ann, to Transport bar at Fed Square, the Moroccon Soup Bar, gelati with E, to the markets to meet A. I am distracting myself from the deep grief over the end of my relationship with A by socialisation. J is coming to play with me on Sunday, which I'm very much looking forward to. In the meantime, now I shall head off to Santucci's in Carnegie to see if any of the women I met a couple of months ago are haning out there tonight.