It's Sunday—er, Monday—and I have my math 161 final in under 6 hours. I…haven't studied. I haven't studied all weekend. Old high school ways just don't change in one quarter of college, at least for me. I think I'll be fine—in math, that is. Political science on Tuesday, however, is something that is actually going to take discipline and control on my part. I did it for the midterm—I overdid it for the midterm—and it paid off.

When I was supposed to be studying today, I was working out with a friend at the RPAC. I never work out (unless running is working out), so it wasn't easy. I did some upper-body workouts on the cool machine things that I assumed I used correctly. (I tried to follow the diagrams as best I could.) I was pretty sore; I actually tried to do push-ups after working on the machines and my arms collapsed under the weight of my tenuous build.

Our shower situation got worse. If you turn one on, it's freezing. It used to work just to turn them both on—two warm showers. But not anymore. It doesn't even help to turn the sinks on anymore. The only thing that brings the shower water beyond my preferred drinking temperature is flushing the toilets. Counterintuitive, I know—but it works.

So as a spontaneous suite project fueled by the fear of cold showers, we tried to fashion a device or think up a concept that we could implement that would result in hot showers. Jokingly, a suitemate brought in a plastic shopping bag, and filled it with hot water from the sink. (He had to turn on 3 sinks to produce hot water.) He then hung the hot water-filled bag on the shower head, gashed a hole in it, and there you go—a variably pressurized shower substitute. Too bad it takes more than a few gallons of water to shower, and too bad the idea is ridiculously impractical.

We then tried it with a garbage bag. It was hilarious when we found we had filled the bag up too much to move it to the shower. Fearing a tear, we pretty much left in laughter, leaving a suitemate to hold the bag upright. We're not that mean; we came back. We got the bag to the shower and decided we were stupid to even think this would be anything more than entertaining. (That's actually all I thought it would be.) We let the water out in the shower; it was pretty anticlimactic.

Finally, we had an idea. (No one liked my impractical idea of siphoning water—somehow—from the sinks to the showers.) So here it is: we rigged an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine that finishes in the shower stall as as strip of duct tape. You pull that tape and the toilet flushes. Hot water is then yours.

(I have pictures of all of this, which I'll upload at a more convenient time.)

Needless to say, we're all quite proud of our innovation. Although, we only have one free stall now for any non-shower-related bathroom business. I say it's still worth it; I can't live with cold showers. Good thing I'm outta here Tuesday, as soon as I finish my political science final at 5:18 p.m.