It's snowing, it's blizzarding...

Somehow that doesn't have the same ring as "it's raining, it's pouring".
In any case, that is what it has been doing all afternoon and evening. So much so, in fact, that we decided not to brave the elements in order to go to dinner. Instead, we made the poor pizza delivery guy come to us. The we sat around in the nice warm, dry lounge and talked about random things, such as habits our brothers have regarding their use of the bathroom. Later, we watched in amusement as Anastasia, acting on my suggestion to push M into a bush, slipped and soaked her pants. It didn't help, I'm sure, that she was wearing flip flops. Then, the two of them got the idea to drag me outside and dump me someplace cold, but I was able to thwart their evil plans by holding onto the wall, with my feet. (Some guy in the lobby was laughing at us, but we will deal with him later.) I locked M and myself in the outer stairwell while she was taking out the pizza boxes, so we had to run around to the front door anyway, and I was only in my socks. Oops. Hopefully it will keep snowing enough so that I won't have to go to Spanish tomorrow. And now, one fun thing to do when there is a fresh coat of snow on everything: draw pictures/write messages on the windows of cars.

Oh My Aching Head

I don't know why I was so ungraceful yesterday, but somehow I managed to run into various things with various parts of my head, in fairly rapid succession. First, I hit the back of my head on a fire alarm. Then, while putting my sheets back on my bed, I ran into my lamp with my forehead. And later, while sitting in the back of Jess's bug, I hit the side of my head on that piece of plastic that I hit my head on every time I am in her car. So why then does my elbow hurt this morning, but not my head?

CB, Part 2; In Which Secrets Are Revealed, Alaskan Food Preferences Are Discussed, And The Amish Are Involved In An Accident

This guy is just too much fun to make fun of, in the nicest way possible, (to take a phrase from a friend). Since my last post on this topic, Professor Brown told us that he likes to smoke a pipe in his office and used to be given matches and a rock to play with as a kid. Now for a few quotes:

"They get paid to do this, so make sure you bother them a lot." (on the subject of asking librarians for help)

Alaskans find the following to be a delicatessy: "rotten walrus meat reminiscent of cheese" and "fish so rotten that their bones are the same consistency as the rest of them"

"What does the middle finger have anything to do with the act of effing?"

He also admitted that the story about the bar fight in Australia was not true, but he warns that it is still not a smart idea to slam your glass upside-down on the counter when you are done. He turned his powerpoint presentation into a "psychadelic light show" by playing with the connecting cord. It ended up being a neon green color, as opposed to the complex color schemes that he usually has in his shows, along with different movement patterns for each set of words on each page.

He did tell another travel story, which had little to do with the external location and which he swears is true, about when he was in Chicago and witnessed a heated argument between a man and a telephone pole.

On another occasion, he shocked us with stories of Amish buggies getting run over by inconsiderate drivers. Then he went into an elaborate description of the Yale library, with specific detail to the archives containing rare documents and books, which are in a special room that has the ability to drop nine stories into the ground in case of a nuclear attack. He wanted to know what would happen if anyone were in the room when that happened. Are there also emergency food supplies?

Today, we covered Christian pop culture, including Veggie Tales and a very scary evangelical hard rock group whose name I can't remember at the moment.

Stay tuned for further developments...

My Life, as seen from today

So, my boss had an emergency appendectamy and I am now in charge of her department. Ok, so not entirely, but we don't know when she will be back. What I want to know is if this means I get a raise...?
I forgot to read my philosophy before class today, so I went to the bookstore and stood there for a while to read the chapter, since I am too cheap to actually buy my own copy. Unfortunately, I had forgotten everything by the time I got to class. However, we had a lively discussion that did not depend on having read anything, and it was even interesting enough to make me forget how much my head hurt.
We took a Spanish test this morning, and I think I did okay, even though I was watching something in French last night with French subtitles and thought that would create problems.
It snowed about three inches last night, and whoever was plowing the sidewalks couldn't walk in a straight line and went over the grass some, and it was slippery, but I still made it to class before the teacher.
The food at lunch today tasted better than usual, after a weekend of inediblity, but it still made my stomach hurt. Maybe I was eating too fast, or the subject of discussion was inhibiting my digestive enjoyment...
We were supposed to go bowling lasst night, but Sarah was writing a paper and needed me to talk her through it over the phone, and I was too tired to go anyway. Instead, we hung out in 220 and listened to Jess obsess over her newest object of fascination, who knocked on the door while we were talking about him.

Can I please just have a few days off so I can sleep? Can I please find some way to sleep?

Disappointments

For the first time since we have been at college, we took advantage of the Rec Center game room while we had some time to spend before the play began, because it was too cold to walk back and forth from the dorm. This experience, however, was not as exciting as it might seem, for as much as a variety of games exist in the Rec Center, there were a few problems. There is a couple dart boards, but no darts. There is a ping pong table, but no balls. There is an air hockey table, which works and has the right equipment, but is precariously balanced on wobbly legs. We played pool for a while, and that worked alright, so I guess it wasn't all bad. And they do have free bowling, but of course that is where everybody else was.

Bonus thought of the day: Why does chicken salad have to look so much like tuna salad?

The Wider World

On Wednesday, I briefly attended the Study Abroad Fair, long enough to pick up a number of packets with pretty colored pictures and a cute koala bear on the end of a pen. Oh, and I got to hear some really nice accents. Because I like koala bears and accents, I have decided to look into studying abroad sometime in the future. The countries I have, and will continue to, look at include England, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and France. Of course, actually going abroad is contingent upon finding both a large amount of scholarship money and a travelling companion.

The Greek Life

One might ask what I was doing attending a wallyball rush for the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity on a Tuesday night instead of practicing ordering food in spanish. The answer remains even a mystery to me, but a few things should be explained in order for the above to make sense. First of all, the fraternity is a service-oriented frat, and although everyone is known as a "brother", it is coed. And although I thought I would never find myself even watching something refered to as "wallyball", I discovered that it really is volleyball, only played on a racquetball court, with an unlimited number of people and hits per side. So, anyway, Sarah and I are now informal rushees.

Charlie Brown

I know he told us not to call him that, but it is too tempting not to, and besides, he is not going to be reading this. (I hope.) Anyway, CB is my Sociology professor, for those of you who don't know, and I have decided that he is quite a character. And since lists are a fun way to express almost anything, I shall make a list of all the habits and interesting things that he does and says.

1. Every name he calls on the attendance list sounds exactly the same.

2. He told us it is okay to pass notes during class, as long as we don't talk to each other.

3. On the second day of classes, he thought it was a Tuesday and came in half an hour later, was suprised to find that only four of thirty-six people had left, and told us he would have left a long time ago if he was a student.

4. One out of every four examples he gives involves a story about drinking in some bar in some random place. So far we have heard about Milwalkee and Australia. By far the more interesing was the story that took place in Australia, where apparently he didn't have enough sense not to non-verbally announce to everyone in the bar that he was the toughest son of a b. and get into a fistfight that left him with a scar.

5. His second favorite topic to use in examples is betting references.

6. As a freshman in college, he changed his major six times; his future plans went from baseball player to accounting to guitar-playing in a band. He left school for a year to work in the lumber industry, then returned to discover that he was meant to be a teacher.

7. He uses phrases such as "shaking your head yes", "the nice thing about suicide", and "not to brag, but I was good".

8. He gave us an assignment to challenge societal norms: next time you are at the grocery store, take items from someone else's cart instead of the shelves. If they get upset, innocently say, "Oh, I didn't know you had already paid for this."

And these are only in the first week and a half of classes. Just wait to see what else he does...

My Past Life

It's official. According to the experts, this is it. A description of who I was in a previous life:

Come on out of your shell — in your former life you were a turtle name Gifford. The details are a bit sketchy, but we do have a brief summary based on public records: You were born in a small pond beside a saloon. Despite having an exceptionally athletic father, you seemed to prefer sunbathing and mud baths to more active pursuits. Contrary to the rumor, your favorite color was never green, but actually blue. Few people knew that you were a talented poet because most of your work was destroyed during a flash flood that swept away not only your library, but your entire community. Fortunately you had the pluck to survive, settle down, make some eggs, and live happily ever after with your wife Melinda and your 20 offspring.

Today's Highlights and a Question

Hearing our sociology professor's version of "Meet the Parents" as part of a series of examples that only vaguely related to the topic of discussion, but took up a lot of time from what was left after the room required rearrangement by the male part of the class

Analyzing Little Miss Muffet according to child development theories, such as those of Freud, Erikson, and Piaget as a short break from our discussion of cat milestones

Putting stickers on books, which caused some lady to have a fit and loudly demand of some other lady why I was doing my job (in other words, i may be putting different stickers on those same books next week)

Discovering a suspicious-looking two foot square something, that presumable belongs to my roommate, sitting on my desk

What does "getting crunked" mean?

First Day

First day of classes, Spring 2005:
After a slight detour to find the too-small classroom, we were introduced to our sociology teacher, Charles M. Brown (please do not call Charlie). He is, by his own admission, a pathological liar and not always to be believed. He gave us several reasons why he is not a jerk, told us stories about what bad things happen to people who do not follow the rules, and asked several difficult questions about how many semesters we have had here.
Next up was Spanish, which was to be found in its scheduled location. Another completely filled classroom. Apparently this teacher has a reputation for actually being able to teach. She might be the only one from the department possessing this extraordinary power. We reviewed some basic Spanish, during which time I could only think in French. Our homework assignment is to know the first 8 chapters which we supposedly covered last semester.
Child Development (yes, another full classroom), seems like it will be quite interesting, taught by a professor obsessed with the correct spelling of her name and who hates boring students.
Finally, a break for lunch and to check out the over-priced texts in the bookstore. A daily visit to the library, to see if I could borrow my texts from there, and then on to my last class of the day, Philosophy.
Or more specifically, Moralism and Existentialism. We wrote the syllabus during the second half of the class, after listening to the professor describe various people and movements with many examples, most involving sex or chocolate. This is by far my smallest class, with only ten students, and has an interesting mix of all grades.
The rest of the afternoon included a brief meeting at the library, where we were informed that the city wants us to make even less money than we do, a stop back at the dorm for a brief rest, and a lively dinner. We watched CSI and Supernanny in the evening while catching up on the last two months, and trying to find websites that sold the cheapest textbooks.
And that's all for me. I get to relax today, with only one class, and then some work in the afternoon. Not too bad. The sun was even shining, which made it even better. Now if only my roommate could keep the room temperature somewhere less than 90 degrees...