I'll start with the weirdest thing. I'm surrounded by complete strangers. It has been a long time since I sat somewhere and didn't see someone I knew from class, work, or the coffee shop. I'm writing this in the commons and looking over a sea of strange faces. I don't even recognize any of them from my classes. Not that I have had a chance to really meet anyone other then the people of my Japanese class. (Where class introductions and re-introductions happen every single class.) Although there is at least one other architecture student who shares my same schedule, and is in 3 of my 4 classes. He's the only other person (besides myself) I've seen wearing black pants on campus. Sadly he seems a bit stand-offish, and we didn't end up getting assigned to the same design team in my studio class.
What makes this particularly weird is the almost recognition of people in the face of strangers. I see people and for a second my brain thinks it's someone I know and my heart leaps into my throat, but every time it's wrong. Often it's people from my distant past. I've seen Caroline, Thea, Spott, Heather, Richard, Michael just in the last two days. It's unnerving and a little sad.
Onto the mundane...
Sunday it hit 94 degrees, yesterday it was 'only' 87, and today it's in the mid 70's. Even then stomping around campus with a sack of books is hard work. But being as I am in pseudo-desert it gets damn cold at night. There was frost on my car at 6 am. So you have to start the night with all the windows open, and then around 2 am get up and close them all. I'm still melting during the day. I would ditch the long pants if I could
Classes started yesterday and on Mondays I have 4 classes back-to-back with only 10
minute breaks (when the professor released us on time)I had to haul all my stuff
with me. My back is killing me. The classes themselves are fine; my Japanese
professor is excited about teaching, the design theory is huge, the studio class is intimidating, and the pre-calc class will be time consuming. The only crappy thing is my
financial aid is all screwed up so I'm paying for things out of my emergency fund
which has me freaked out. ( I just had to drop $250 on art supplies and
calculator...after $600 in text books... and I haven't even gone grocery shopping
yet and I have to pay rent in three days..) Only a timely loan from my father allowed me to pay tuition and buy my starter books.
Tuesdays I have a three hour break between classes, which I spent trying to untangle ye' student loans. That and getting done all the things I would have done if I had attended orientation instead of driving down the AlCan. (Like getting an ID, learning where to mail things from, etc...)
Lets see, my apartment looks like ass from the outside, but it is clean and spacious inside. It's probably 2.5 times the size of my old one. Add to that all the stuff I left behind or got rid of and I'm kinda rattling around in it. It's a four-plex and my neighbors consist of a single dad + 12 year old son, a Mexican family that has at least mom, dad and teenage daughter with and unknown number of additional family members. Yesterday there were 10 of them out there washing their cars. I don't know how many of them actually live there...
(They also appear to wash at least one car every day...) However, the real prize is the group of pot-smokers living underneath me. There are (so far as I can tell) at least three of them and a dog (really friendly boxer with a stupid spiked collar.) Oh and drum set. Whoever was playing the drums was pretty good. Fortunately they didn't play long, nor to late in the evening.
However, they apparently tie their dog up to the tree in the front yard (a major no-no according to the rental agent) and never clean up the dog crap.
Fun.
Lets not forget my rather strategic mistake of getting an apartment west of the railroad tracks and north of the airport. Actually, the 4 insane Yorkies in the house behind me wake me more often.
I also have potentially two jobs lined up. There is an opening for a part-time tech at Office Depot or I can get job as delivery driver for McKenzie River Pizza. It's their equivalent to Moose's Tooth... and it's damn good. There is a branch about 2 blocks from my house and the general manager is a TA in one of my classes. She'd be willing to hire me starting Thursday if I want. The pay is actually better then I'd make working as a tech on campus + tips. (Oh and major
discount of food.)
The drive down was fine except for father spoiling my dog. I neither got to go fishing nor stop at the Laird hot springs. We drove past them just as they were closing. We had some... heated ... discussions where our viewpoints diverge politically and the car was little tense following that but otherwise it was fine.
I think I've rambled enough... I just saw another heartache from the past and I think I'm going to retreat to the less crowded environs of the math building and reduce the weirdness.
