You deserve a better journaler.

I am sitting in a little desky cubiclish thing in a public area of the Humanities building, waiting to go to my first class at UW.  First up is a globalization-in-literature class, and then I have French 101 later on.  I've done my reconnaissance; I know where the classrooms are, where the nearest bathroom is.  I'm still finding semi-secluded areas to hide out in between classes.  That's a long-term project, but I have plenty of time to find the perfect wi-fi-infused hideyholes.

Three years ago, I bought a new Dell desktop PC and it had really bad heat problems and melted.  It still works but it is so slow it's hardly worth doing anything but internet surfing and word processing.  Then two years ago, I got an HP laptop for Christmas and it too has overeating problems, especially when the battery is charging.  The battery, now, only gets maybe twenty minutes to a charge.  So, with this batch of school money, I finally switched from PC to Mac with the purchase of a new MacBook Pro.  The battery on this thing lasts up to ten hours and it doesn't overheat.  It is magical.  Solid.  Everything worked right away, even with Mercury in retrograde.

I also bought my first computer program ever - I bought the new Adobe Creative Suite 5.  Thank goodness I'm a student.  That shit costs $1300 otherwise.  The only thing I lament so far is that Photoscape is PC only and I'm going to have to redownload all of my awesome fonts anew for the Mac.  But hey, Helvetica comes free on the Macs.  You gotta pay for that if you want it on your PC.

To familiarize myself with the new Photoshop, I did a one-day notice flyer.  Not bad for five hours worth of work.

The Humanities building is nice because I'm surrounded by musician's practice rooms, so there's pianos and whatnot playing in the background.

There are so many people around.  That's going to take some getting used to.  You know how I feel about people.  Charles Bukowski once said, "I don't have people, I just feel better when they're not around."

And you know, that's not even exactly true in my case.  Yes, I will agree with Vonnegut's postulate that maybe 12% of people live lives worth living, and it was Hobbes who said life for most people is, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." I'm infinitely amused by the statistic that 90% of people think 90% of people are idiots because I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.

I don't know what I'm saying.  There's an odd tack in the air, so very similar to the stick of pea soup before a storm and it is tricky, leading one down a path of profundity like a will-o'-the-wisp.  I've fallen for it again and here I am, alone and dumb, lost in the swamp.

Nevermind, the storm has come.

Daily Occurences

An overheard conversation:

Boy: Oh, you shouldn't have gone home.

Girl:  Oh, what did I miss?

Boy: Well, we went back to the house and drank some more.  Then we played with Duke for a while.  Then we listened to John Cougar Mellencamp on vinyl until the sun came up.

Girl:  Wow, that sounds fantastic!  I wish I'd've stayed!

Also:  I saw a man in the restroom pissing in the urinal with both hands tucked in his jacket pockets.  He was just thrusting his pelvis really far forward in front of the rest of his body.  In my 30ish years of pissing in public urinals, I've never seen anyone pissing without, uh, aiming.  Can I say he was "shooting from the hip" and not have it be a groaner of a pun?

In other news:  My lit class was good.  General globalization talk.  There are some free-market Randian people in there, so discussion should be lively.  The professor told me after class I made a great comment.  Yay!

French is french, I guess.  My teacher is a native French speaker, so that's good.  Man, I had no idea how much you have to choke on your G's when speaking.  This will be my hardest class, methinks.

Okay, off to catch the bus home!