I'm not sure what the problem was today, but I suddenly turned into SuperKlutz. First, walking down the stairs with Eddy after Spanish, one of my worn-down flip-flops lost its traction and boom! down I went, smack on my bottom. And then boom, boom, boom again as I skidded down a few more steps, like the world's bumpiest slide. I thought I was going all the way down, and the cluster of gasping girls at the bottom of the stairs apparently thought so too, but somehow I stopped. Bruised tailbone and a couple of scrapes, but otherwise okay.

Then, not even a half hour later, I was biking to the station to catch the train to Waddinxveen and had my historic First Wipe-Out of 2005. In fact, I think it's the first fall since that time during freshman year when my Wal-Mart bike's pedals locked up and I went over my handlebars in front of the psychology building and landed in front of a car. (First time I've ever been grateful for the 20-mph speed limit.) Anyway, this time it was my own fault, but still. There was a big cluster of just-released-from-school high schoolers in front of me, biking about as slow as humanly possible, and since there were no cars coming, I decided to go ride in the street for a minute in order to pass them. So I did, and I passed them, and then I wanted to get back onto the bike path. There were two 'on-ramps' within my line of sight, and I made a rather late decision to take the first one (keep in mind I was biking quite fast, not wanting any cars to come behind me), so when I careened back up onto the path, a combination of speed and none-too-good hand brakes meant I wasn't able to cut the turn as sharply as I needed to. Meaning I could not avoid the bicycle parked neatly in the rack outside a store, and boom! down I went for the second time that day. Entangled with not only my own bike, but the one I crashed into. And, of course, as I was picking myself up, the high schoolers rode merrily - and slowly - on by. Sigh.

Anyway, there's no permanent damage, but I have a massive bruise on my left thigh, some small ones on my right thigh (it looks like I got poked by some sticking-out things, like brake handles or something), minor scrapes on both knees, and a moderate scrape on my left forearm, plus a sore tailbone from the stair incident. Wonderful, the walking wounded.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Further notes:

1.) I finished the whole 4000m in Waddinxveen today! I've had several 3900s and 3950s (then the water polo teams started jumping in and I had to get out), but this is the first time I've actually finished all 4000. We started two minutes early, which may have been the reason, or maybe the Albuterol puff (since we're starting to suspect I have exercise-induced asthma) had something to do with it too.

2.) On the same note, I'm going to have to start swimming in Waddinxveen only on Tuesdays - I unfortunately don't have E14 per week to spend on trains. But it's okay, because I can run or something on Thursdays instead of swim, since I want to do the River Run in March (annual 15k run in Jacksonville, sponsored by Gate, a really famous event and really widely participated in).

3.) We didn't get our Spanish tests back, but based on the class review and the stuff the teacher was saying, I'm just about the only one who did a significant portion of it correctly. People can't master the construct of imperfect subjunctive plus conditional for some reason. I learned that way back in Nitza's class, so today's review was a piece of cake for me. The grammar has never been my problem (with the possible exception of distinguishing between preterite and imperfect in a few dubious situations) - it's vocabulary and speaking practice that I need. We have an oral at the end of the semester which is worth 30% of our grade. Yikes.