Weekend Update

I had a good day on Tuesday. My sociological theory class meets that day, and despite its being a required course, I enjoy it. The professor is kind of a hoot: this week, he explained in detail why an orange Air Jordan tennis shoe is analogous to Da Vinci's The Last Supper. And it totally made sense. Cell phones go off pretty frequently in this class, and every time one does, I expect Herr Professor to do a little dance, but for some reason he never does.

Another reason why I liked this Tuesday was the way I spent my afternoon- I went shopping, just for the fun of it, and as I rode by the Co-op on my bike, I was treated to the sounds of some twentysomething guy playing the fiddle and singing in a startlingly authentic manner. I wasn't brave enough to stop and listen- I just rode on by slowly, savoring the moment.

Thursday was a different kind of good. I went to a fast food restaurant for lunch in order to do my homework for a different class. The assignment? Observe fast food workers and write two pages about what you saw. I wrote three. I also ate a burrito.

After lunch and class, I went to the student exchange office and was videotaped as I babbled and rambled at the speed of light on how great it is to go on exchange. I laid awake for hours the night before, thinking of the many things I wanted to tell the people planning on going out into the world: how great it would be, how many friends they would make, the things they would learn about themselves, funny stories about my own exchange, warnings of pitfalls to avoid. In the end, I'm pretty sure I sounded like a raving lunatic, making wild leaps from one topic to the next without pausing for breath. But I only got three minutes! And I had so much wisdom to impart! They're going to send me a dvd so I can keep evidence of my horrible public speaking skills to show my friends and family. Hopefully they'll edit out the first thirty seconds or so where I wreck my train of thought before it even leaves the station, and simply stand there giggling and saying "I'm sorry! Can we start over?"

Disgusted With Myself

Living in this new house, with these roommates that are roughly my age, I've been exposed to much more radio music than I've been used to listening to for at least the past three years. Not that I am against radio music or rock music in general. I've just been in the habit of listening to my iPod and therefore my specifically purchased music for a long time now. So it's been a long time since I've listened to a lot of Top 40 type music, but now I do!

I've heard most of these songs before, in passing, but now I'm hearing them over and over again, I've begun to like some of them. "Some of them" being Unwritten, by Natasha Bedingfield, and Waiting On the World to Change, by John Mayer. Also some other ones, but you get the picture (or maybe not. Maybe you listen to way less radio than I do). It's not that they're bad songs, it's just that they're not *my* kind of songs, and they're so terribly common and obvious.

I guess my problem is that these songs are okay songs that the music industry has told me to like. I like to feel like I'm an independant thinker, so when I am tricked into buying into what is sold to me, I feel vaguely disappointed and annoyed.

Random bit of KoL Happiness

Huzzah! I found some of the new content! Without looking at spoilers! I feel totally cool and stuff. And there's so much to do! And I haven't even seen all of it yet! If I was good at poetry, I'd write you all a haiku, but since I'm not, I'll just grin and gloat for awhile.

Landmark Day

Last night, a friend of mine came over and he ushered me into adulthood. That's right, folks. You heard it here first: I have a resume. It was like pulling teeth, trying to make my job experience sound useful, but we did it. Or rather, *he* did it, and I took dictation. Anyway. It was still hard.

This exercise wasn't just for kicks. I needed a resume in order to apply for a job this morning. I'm not going to tell you what it is, cause I don't know if I have it yet, but as soon as I have news, you can be sure that you, the internet, will be the first to know. Cross your fingers for me.

Favorites

Favorite part of the group dinner date tonight?
:The part where my date and my roommate's date (they happen to be roommates, too) left early, cause they were seriously cramping our style. As in, they sat next to Each Other on the couch (instead of next to us, their Dates), and talked only to each other about football except for when they were bragging to the general assembly about their various proofs of coolness.

Favorite thing said during the evening?
:In a desperate attempt to create a conversation of general interest during dinner, my other roommate pipes in with, "Once, I joined the Communist Party!" Even this comment could not save the evening.

Favorite art project made this afternoon?
:That one that my communist roommate and I did in the backyard with the photosensitive paper and the weeds.












Favorite dessert we had tonight?
:It's a toss-up between the delicious cheesecake made by roommate #3 and the delicious chocolates made by me. But probably the cheesecake.

Favorite totally hypocritical statement made by me?
:"I hate it when nobody updates their blogs!"

I'll be Bach

I'm sitting here, on my roommate's computer, typing this first post in a long time. For those not in the know, I've moved. I'm living downtown in this great little house, with this great backyard, and this great way-closeness to school which I take advantage of every day when I ride my bike to class. Take that, high gas prices!

I'm on my roommate's computer not because mine is broken or lost, or anything like that, but because as I may have mentioned earlier, my computer hates blogspot dot com, and refuses to load any website that includes that name. This is also the reason why it's been so long since I've posted- I'd pretty much forgotten that it exists, since I can't ever see it myself. Anyway, I'm back.

I'm loving the new living situation, because I've got fun roommates who do fun things- we switch off weeknights for cooking duty, and there's always friends over, and we're thinking of doing hikes every saturday (two of us already went on one, and it was pretty fun), and it's nice to go grocery shopping together, and three of us have a class together on thursday evenings so we carpool, and they all think the chinchillas are fascinating and great.

This summer, I was a little worried about my classes this semester because they're all upper level sociology classes, a situation I've never had before. My fears seem to have been needless, however: two of them are taught by grad students and are therefore not terribly hard, and the other two are pleasantly paper-free. In fact, I've only got the one class that has an actual long paper due, but he's chopped it into bits that are due every once in a while, so you can't do the entire 15 pages the night that it's due, so it's really not that bad at all. I've already got the first part done! The other classes have things like weekly reading responses (only a paragraph or so each week), once in a while-type memos (write three pages about watching a video online!), and, uh, I think that's it. Except for exams, you know. So I'm absolutely way less stressed and worried about this semester's workload now that I'm in the middle of it. Hurray for my school being a "party school!" I can get good grades becase we've got crazy grade inflation, not like the University of Parts Unknown, which gave me a harsh harsh taste of reality for the past year.

Well, I know you've all been checking my site every day, waiting impatiently for me to post a long, rambling vomit of words that isn't all that entertaining. Now that I've discovered the joys of stealing the roommate's computer (except that all she has is Internet Explorer (shocking, I know!)), I will perhaps get back to my regularly scheduled short and possibly interesting posts in the future.