3rd's the Turd

Is that how you spell turd? Remember "first the worst, second the best...?"

C needed her computer back. So I returned it on Tuesday. I suffered from the delusion that I had tax TOTALLY under control and didn't need to study that hard for it. So, I spent the first of the available two study days, running, working at about half-pace, and relaxing. Reality returned with only 1.25 days left. I'm now coming down from about 40 hours of frenzy. I went from believing I had tax under my belt to freaking out. For the first time this set of finals, I worked into the wee hours on the morning before an exam.

It didn't help that the computer gods continue to conspire against me. I did all of my charts/outlining on my desktop, in Windows, since formatting issues force me to be a traitor. The night before the exam at 9 pm, it blue-screened. [insert various curses at Bill Gates and windows here, although in fairness, it was a video driver error]. I spent the rest of the time before the final even more frenzied:

1. trying to recreate and recall several of the smaller charts that seemed to disappear with the BSOD.
2. cutting and pasting my charts into the blank pages of the code
3. installing the stupid exam software on my 3rd laptop (my new baby) for this finals period.
4. realizing I didn't have a USB floppy drive
5. finally going to sleep
6. getting up after about 4 hours of sleep
7. studying some more and making notes on the pages when I found more missing bits lost to the computer
8. going to Fry's to buy a USB floppy drive
9. booting my laptop in my car, in the parking lot of fry's and installing the floppy driver to make sure the hardware would work.
10. commuting to school
11. registering the exam software on-line, because it wouldn't let me do it 'til I had a floppy drive.
12. going to the mexican joint and repeatedly reassuring the adorable burrito-making-dude, that no, I wasn't his novia, but no, it wasn't because he was feo.

Anyhow, Tax is finished. I didn't really calm down 'til the exam began. Given my lack of sleep (since I never slept more than 4 hours before any exam in college) and the fact that there were problems with numbers and I had my trusty HP calculator, it felt like an engineering exam. Which was good. My adrenaline levels had been much too high for the day and half prior to the exam--can't be good for my heart (great for staying awake though...).

So now, I'm on the home stretch, and honestly, exhausted. There was NO CHANCE of motivating myself to take a run this AM. And possibly no need since the point is to be physically exhausted at the end of each study day, and boy, am I ever...