Friday Five:
1. How old were you when you got your drivers license? 17. I could have had it shortly after I turned 16, but procrastinating on getting the certificate from my driving school made it later.
2. Did you get your own car right away, use the family car, or bum rides from friends? My grandparents had already given me their car to drive.
3. What was your first car and what was it like? It
is a white 1994 Volkswagen Jetta I call Mindy. She's been through several accidents, including mine last May. She has an enormous trunk, which I remember was especially handy when my grandma picked my family up from the airport years ago, when she was still driving it. She's also excellent on gas, but her brakes squeak.
4. How old were you when you got your first traffic ticket and what happened? I've never gotten a ticket. I actually don't even know if my accident restarted my provisional period. We had to file a police report so insurance would cover it, but I don't know if anyone told MVA. I would call and check, but that'd seem so awkward. "Hi, did I screw up last year? Yes, I'll hold."
5. What is your favorite car story, be it an accident, road trip, etc? I don't have any good car stories. My sole accident was traumatic, not funny. Besides my flat tire a few weeks ago, my driving life has been typical.
This time last week, I was bored. Now, I'm ready to declare this semester complete crap.
Saturday night, I watched
Gone in Sixty Seconds,
The Stepford Wives, and
The Blue Brothers in one of the guy triples with Tom, Scott, Ali, and Guy. I was up 'til 3 a.m., but I had fun. I find that since I've been living in the dorms, I like being around people a lot more than I used to. It gets so lonely in here sometimes. I study, I roam around the Internet, I go to class. I like going out with my floormates. They're cool people, and we're so cohesive.
I studied some on Sunday. My parents decided to just buy a tv and (gigantic!) refrigerator, since I had no idea when Joelle's would be arriving. They brought them up on Sunday, then drove me to the bookstore, where I manged to snag the last copy of
A Room of One's Own. Then I think I studied more.
I left Astro lecture and raced over to Woods for Women's Studies discussion. I was barely on time, though; I ran into one of the TAs in the elevator, and when I told her I was headed to her discussion, she said, "Yeah, I'm late, too." I hate being late, and now I'm almost guaranteed to be late every Monday. Lovely.
My Astro TA is German. Her name is Franziska (I knew a Franziska in middle school), and she described the phases of the moon as "vaxing" and "vaning". I love accents.
On Tuesday, I got up sort of early. I didn't have class until 11, so I thought I'd do my laundry in the downtime. I've been misjudging time lately, especially walking times, so I wound up washing right after breakfast, then drying later in the day. Not what I planned, but my hamper was emptied either way.
My ARHU section met for the first time on Tuesday. We have a different teacher, an American Studies grad student. The colloquium is actually on American social issues and culture, focusing on television as a cultural medium. The main tv show studied provides that section's nickname: the
Buffy class. I'm dreading the screenwriting project, but I think I'll be much more comfortable with that class's discussion than I was last semester. One of our readings this semester is a paper written by the teacher. Tell me, how are we supposed to critically analyze and discuss the writing of the person who's presenting it to us? How do you tell your teacher you fell asleep reading what he wrote? I don't think that'll happen, though; I glanced at the paper and it looks interesting. A quote: "If Buffy were black, she would be dead."
After ARHU, I went to dinner with some of my lovely floormates. I had my first Astro lab that night. We met in the Computer and Space Sciences building, and we just did some graphing and calculations from a computer program. We had to plot the position of the sun, and the program gave it to us in degrees-minutes-seconds. Dori (who used to live on the floor above mine, and was in my ARHU section last semester) and her partner were really confused. They read the angle as three separate numbers. I said, "It's not three numbers, it's degrees-minutes-seconds. Am I the only one who knows this?" I meant it as an actual question. I learned d-m-s in trig when everyone else (including Dori, from what I understand) was taking calculus. For a skill from the "dumb class" to come in handy was surprising. I think she took it as, "What, are you just dumb?" Not good. And I didn't get a chance to apologize. I still feel bad, but she may have forgotten. Next week, Astro lab will be at the university observatory, which is way off campus. Not walking distance. I either have to take the shuttle (which )isn't terribly reliable, and which only runs about every 40 minutes), or snag a ride. I might try the shuttle this week and see if I can get a ride from someone in the class. Sara and Crazy Mike have cars, but I don't want to ask them to go out of their way every week like that.
On Wednesday, the rush of work started to hit me. I came back after Astro lecture to try to get my reading done for later that day. I got through the poems, so that went fine. I was pretty much in the cold in Women's Studies, though. Luckily, it was lecture. The professor talked a lot, and I offered an opinion on what I had read (always a good thing to do), so that went much better than I feared it would. I took Andrew with me to Sign Language Club. I don't think he enjoyed it as much as I do (he's more clueless than even I was), but it was nice to have company.
Yesterday, I got up early to study. Like Tuesday, it didn't work out the way I planned. I did run into Iris and her neighbor at the Diner. (I've been eating with people a lot more lately. It's much nicer.) I got to the books later than I wanted to, but I managed to finish the articles for English 202. I started dozing off toward the end of the denser one. In class, we got into groups. The people in my group were actually pretty cool. I'd had a moment of clarity earlier that day, so my definition of enlightenment went over well. I managed to speed-read the first half of
A Room of One's Own just before class, only to realize mid-class that it was fruitless. We only discussed it for a few minutes, then we watched a video of an actress giving an abridged version of the book/speech. Definitely wasted my time. It was a good book, though. I want to finish it, but with all my work, I don't know if I'll be able to.
Today, I got up for Astro lecture and got there in time to turn in my homework. We got the answers after lecture, and I think I screwed up a few of the problems, which sucks. They will drop the lowest score, though. I came back, then went to pick up my Honors seminar reading (still no books!), then ate lunch very quickly. I went to the Union to sit at the Sign Language Club table for a few hours. I like volunteering, especially when I don't have to do much. The people with the drumming circle, Terpercussion, sounded like they were having fun. Sketchup, the sketch comedy group, was kind of funny but mostly crude. "Can you guess what Igor is? That's right, he's a fish-faced rapist!" The ballroom dancers looked best doing Latin dances. Right before I left, this martial arts-gymnastics group demonstrated. One of them had a spear. It was really cool to watch.
I came back to study, only to find Joelle fast asleep. I am so behind, I decided to just let her sleep and go to the study lounge. It was nice in there; most of the time it was just me. I went over two sets of notes, which is a decent chunk of the work on my to-do list.
Greg has stopped talking to me, maybe permanently this time. It was probably not a good idea to mention that he'd said at least three times before that he was going to stop talking to me. And he's still supposed to buy my other Astro book.
I foresee a lot of studying this weekend. And sleeping. So tired.
