Day Two = Day One in Reverse
Today started out horribly, and grew to a glorious crescendo of good, making it a near total reverse of yesterday, which ended on a crappy wet note. So.
I arrived yesterday at about ten, and barely found parking, until someone pulled out about two minutes into my search. Not bad, huh? I figured if I got there an hour earlier, there would be a lesser parking problem. You may laugh. Go ahead, you've got permission.
I arrived on campus today at nine, according to plan. I arrived in my office (two minute walk) at about nine forty-five. I finally turned into a total bitch and cut two people off to get a front line position behind a girl who was unlocking her trunk. They honked, and I flipped, but who got the parking spot? Huh? That's right, losers! *I* did. Next time, you'll learn to be assholes too.
Now isn't that sad? The commuter lot is a dangerous place, and would be even if only nice people used it. Invariably, those nice people will mutate into evil cheating SOBs during the hunt for parking. There is barely enough room for two small cars to pass each other between the rows of lucky bastards who got there first, and in Texas, men have problems with small genitals and therefore drive big trucks. Even women suffer from the desire to compensate, and adopt hulking SUV's much earlier than necessary to cart around the kiddies.
So there are the narrow passages. Also, the people driving on the perimeter go quite a deal faster than anyone should drive in a crowded parking lot, so merging into their traffic (yes, it's traffic) is risky. There are people zipping in from the street as well, and you've got to watch out for them. Top it off with mobile obstacles, and you have a potentially lethal situation.
Walking across the parking lot (I managed to snatch the last space on the end of the farthest row, by some miracle) was almost as long a walk as that between the parking lot and the English building. Anyone think I ought to get there at eight on Thursday? I think I'm going to try. Otherwise, there will be violence, probably unintentional, when I miss (or rather, when I hit) one of the dozens of obstacles in my path. There has already been a case this semester (two days old!) of a pedestrian getting clipped. They sent out a notice on driving safely. Seems to me, the peds should be wearing orange jackets while they're out where the cars are. I'd invest in orange. I'm a ped myself, once I leave the car and begin my trek.
So, I arrived, after much frustration and more swearing (getting to be a bad habit, perhaps, this speaking out loud thing - I always swore, just did it my mind), in the English building. I then took a very brief glance at the elevator area, where people were camped a' la Star Wars opening week, hunkered down against the walls playing cards to pass the time. I took the stairs. With luck, I'd have been in the fourth car to go up, and this elevator isn't something worth waiting for.
The office was open, and one of the IT guys was there, fixing the unfortunate occurrences of yesterday. See the post. I'm not getting mad again by talking about it. I refuse. He asked which computer was mine, and I told him; he apologized, and we discussed the problem. Apparently, the computers in the building automatically shut down at five thirty each day. This is, to my mind, unacceptable. I'll be using it then, and the next time it deletes my information, I'll go postal. He reset it to warn us when it was going to shut down, and give us 30 seconds to cancel the shut down. He also reset the time to seven. Not bad. We'll see if it works. I doubt it will, and you'll find out why later.
Before class, I ate the breakfast I brought (strawberries and raspberries, followed by piece of toast) and graded another paper. Not bad. There aren't all that many around, which is unfortunate since I have to grade a certain number, regardless of availability. I went to class, which involved wading through a mess of students, all camped out as for the elevator.
An aside: I am actually quite impressed by the students' desire to get to class so early. As much as half an hour before class, they are there, either to get the seat they want, or to talk to the prof, or just to be there. I like the dedication implied. It seems rarer everywhere else, just because it's so rampant here.
Back to the thread: I found the room okay, although it was TBA until I walked into the room. It was never posted, and there were two room numbers circulating in the mill; I chose one and was right. Hurrah. I am continually shocked by the speech habits of our professor. She seems to favor the hard "g" sound. Guh. In fact, she likes it so much, she often substitutes it in words for the other sounds. A few examples scribbled in my notes (hope she never collects those): "Are students gegging it," "a reaging assignment," and my favorite "pegagogy." This is frustrating to me, although I feel sort of guilty for the internal cringes I get when she speaks. I watched her mouth today, and she doesn't open her jaw much when she speaks. She appears to have something of an under bite, but I don't see that accounting for the guhs. But many tuh and duh sounds are turned into guhs.
There is a lot of writing involved in this class, and lots of reading as well. But that can be applied to all four classes, so it means nothing. I won't go any further into this class, because the blog's getting (gegging) long, and I'm only at noon.
My feminism class will be a blast, but it will be a lot (LOT) of reading, and involves some very complicated writing, from what I can see. Still, fun. She handed out chocolate. I can't dislike a class where there's chocolate involved. goes against my nature. Or something.
During the break between classes, we discovered (that we indicates my office mate with the nasty computer, and me) that our nasty computers had reverted from their fixed state into their natural state of not letting us log in. Smurfs. They're in the very air, and I taste them when I get frustrated.
But that's okay, because I sent off an email from my own computer explaining that we would like fixed computers that stayed that way, or new computers. Their choice. But this had to stop. In any case, instead of our other class, we were told to attend the Freshmen Convocation. It was ... a Convocation.
Dan Rather, author of the "Rather book" you might recall from other posts, was asked to be there, but was too busy to speak at a Convocation where every student present had read his book for class. So he made a video to send here, in which he pretended to be present. The video apparently took a lot of time to make, or wasn't sent, or something, because no version of Dan Rather showed up. I wasn't fond of him from reading his piece of crap book, but now I have less respect for him than he probably deserves. His loss. Not mine.
Then there was the official rendition of the school song. It's a symphony piece. It sounds like a cross between an opera and romance song from two hundred years ago. A very gentle, rolling tune, with wistful language and dynamic musical score. All while we're waving our fingers in the air like guns. Like that makes much sense.
On an up side, they fed us. A semi-nice barbeque, without the sauce (a good thing in my book, as barbeque sauce makes me nauseous). I had beans and meat. And a soda that I never opened, which is now in my fridge.
From there, I went home, and was followed by a grinning man in a white car. He stared at me as we were driving along (I could tell in the rear view mirror), and followed my every move, lane to lane and all that. Luckily, when I turned onto Slide during a solid green, the on-coming traffic cut him off, and I went down a side street, going home a different way in case he turned up behind me farther along. While that was creepy, I can pretty much write it off as paranoia. Unless I see him again and he grins like that. Then I worry for real, instead of simply being cautious.
And there you have it. My day, in a nutshell. It's a big nut, I admit. But I could have gone into my classes more, and then you'd only be half done now. Or you'd have left. But I really don't feel like typing more, and I have some very difficult things I need to do right now; things that should have been done earlier and closer to the event. But they do need to get done, and now that I am not angry about the event, I can do these things without harming/upsetting people, hopefully. Ah well. Talk later (as in tomorrow).
End.
I arrived yesterday at about ten, and barely found parking, until someone pulled out about two minutes into my search. Not bad, huh? I figured if I got there an hour earlier, there would be a lesser parking problem. You may laugh. Go ahead, you've got permission.
I arrived on campus today at nine, according to plan. I arrived in my office (two minute walk) at about nine forty-five. I finally turned into a total bitch and cut two people off to get a front line position behind a girl who was unlocking her trunk. They honked, and I flipped, but who got the parking spot? Huh? That's right, losers! *I* did. Next time, you'll learn to be assholes too.
Now isn't that sad? The commuter lot is a dangerous place, and would be even if only nice people used it. Invariably, those nice people will mutate into evil cheating SOBs during the hunt for parking. There is barely enough room for two small cars to pass each other between the rows of lucky bastards who got there first, and in Texas, men have problems with small genitals and therefore drive big trucks. Even women suffer from the desire to compensate, and adopt hulking SUV's much earlier than necessary to cart around the kiddies.
So there are the narrow passages. Also, the people driving on the perimeter go quite a deal faster than anyone should drive in a crowded parking lot, so merging into their traffic (yes, it's traffic) is risky. There are people zipping in from the street as well, and you've got to watch out for them. Top it off with mobile obstacles, and you have a potentially lethal situation.
Walking across the parking lot (I managed to snatch the last space on the end of the farthest row, by some miracle) was almost as long a walk as that between the parking lot and the English building. Anyone think I ought to get there at eight on Thursday? I think I'm going to try. Otherwise, there will be violence, probably unintentional, when I miss (or rather, when I hit) one of the dozens of obstacles in my path. There has already been a case this semester (two days old!) of a pedestrian getting clipped. They sent out a notice on driving safely. Seems to me, the peds should be wearing orange jackets while they're out where the cars are. I'd invest in orange. I'm a ped myself, once I leave the car and begin my trek.
So, I arrived, after much frustration and more swearing (getting to be a bad habit, perhaps, this speaking out loud thing - I always swore, just did it my mind), in the English building. I then took a very brief glance at the elevator area, where people were camped a' la Star Wars opening week, hunkered down against the walls playing cards to pass the time. I took the stairs. With luck, I'd have been in the fourth car to go up, and this elevator isn't something worth waiting for.
The office was open, and one of the IT guys was there, fixing the unfortunate occurrences of yesterday. See the post. I'm not getting mad again by talking about it. I refuse. He asked which computer was mine, and I told him; he apologized, and we discussed the problem. Apparently, the computers in the building automatically shut down at five thirty each day. This is, to my mind, unacceptable. I'll be using it then, and the next time it deletes my information, I'll go postal. He reset it to warn us when it was going to shut down, and give us 30 seconds to cancel the shut down. He also reset the time to seven. Not bad. We'll see if it works. I doubt it will, and you'll find out why later.
Before class, I ate the breakfast I brought (strawberries and raspberries, followed by piece of toast) and graded another paper. Not bad. There aren't all that many around, which is unfortunate since I have to grade a certain number, regardless of availability. I went to class, which involved wading through a mess of students, all camped out as for the elevator.
An aside: I am actually quite impressed by the students' desire to get to class so early. As much as half an hour before class, they are there, either to get the seat they want, or to talk to the prof, or just to be there. I like the dedication implied. It seems rarer everywhere else, just because it's so rampant here.
Back to the thread: I found the room okay, although it was TBA until I walked into the room. It was never posted, and there were two room numbers circulating in the mill; I chose one and was right. Hurrah. I am continually shocked by the speech habits of our professor. She seems to favor the hard "g" sound. Guh. In fact, she likes it so much, she often substitutes it in words for the other sounds. A few examples scribbled in my notes (hope she never collects those): "Are students gegging it," "a reaging assignment," and my favorite "pegagogy." This is frustrating to me, although I feel sort of guilty for the internal cringes I get when she speaks. I watched her mouth today, and she doesn't open her jaw much when she speaks. She appears to have something of an under bite, but I don't see that accounting for the guhs. But many tuh and duh sounds are turned into guhs.
There is a lot of writing involved in this class, and lots of reading as well. But that can be applied to all four classes, so it means nothing. I won't go any further into this class, because the blog's getting (gegging) long, and I'm only at noon.
My feminism class will be a blast, but it will be a lot (LOT) of reading, and involves some very complicated writing, from what I can see. Still, fun. She handed out chocolate. I can't dislike a class where there's chocolate involved. goes against my nature. Or something.
During the break between classes, we discovered (that we indicates my office mate with the nasty computer, and me) that our nasty computers had reverted from their fixed state into their natural state of not letting us log in. Smurfs. They're in the very air, and I taste them when I get frustrated.
But that's okay, because I sent off an email from my own computer explaining that we would like fixed computers that stayed that way, or new computers. Their choice. But this had to stop. In any case, instead of our other class, we were told to attend the Freshmen Convocation. It was ... a Convocation.
Dan Rather, author of the "Rather book" you might recall from other posts, was asked to be there, but was too busy to speak at a Convocation where every student present had read his book for class. So he made a video to send here, in which he pretended to be present. The video apparently took a lot of time to make, or wasn't sent, or something, because no version of Dan Rather showed up. I wasn't fond of him from reading his piece of crap book, but now I have less respect for him than he probably deserves. His loss. Not mine.
Then there was the official rendition of the school song. It's a symphony piece. It sounds like a cross between an opera and romance song from two hundred years ago. A very gentle, rolling tune, with wistful language and dynamic musical score. All while we're waving our fingers in the air like guns. Like that makes much sense.
On an up side, they fed us. A semi-nice barbeque, without the sauce (a good thing in my book, as barbeque sauce makes me nauseous). I had beans and meat. And a soda that I never opened, which is now in my fridge.
From there, I went home, and was followed by a grinning man in a white car. He stared at me as we were driving along (I could tell in the rear view mirror), and followed my every move, lane to lane and all that. Luckily, when I turned onto Slide during a solid green, the on-coming traffic cut him off, and I went down a side street, going home a different way in case he turned up behind me farther along. While that was creepy, I can pretty much write it off as paranoia. Unless I see him again and he grins like that. Then I worry for real, instead of simply being cautious.
And there you have it. My day, in a nutshell. It's a big nut, I admit. But I could have gone into my classes more, and then you'd only be half done now. Or you'd have left. But I really don't feel like typing more, and I have some very difficult things I need to do right now; things that should have been done earlier and closer to the event. But they do need to get done, and now that I am not angry about the event, I can do these things without harming/upsetting people, hopefully. Ah well. Talk later (as in tomorrow).
End.
posted by Rehkmira @ 20:41
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