Classes haven't quite started yet... but school seems to be off to a good start so far

Yep... first few days back in Buena Vista have gone pretty well.  Even though I haven't seen people I know too often yet (a lot of those who are still at SVU this year are here, but I think at least a few haven't gotten here yet) I haven't gotten to "dying of boredom" levels of boredom even when sitting alone in my house yet (and the one time I got close to that so far, I remembered there actually was something going on up on campus right then, so it didn't go too far before I found something to do.)

Friday (the day that got boring, mentioned above) I ended up going to the "Knight Games" thing that they have around the start of every year.  Turned out pretty good, at least mostly due to the fact that I bumped into a bunch of people I know up there (including a whole lot that I had not seen or talked to at all since the end of last semester.)  And of course, I got to see people get thrown off of a mechanical bull:

On Saturday there was the first dance of the year, which I wasn't expecting to be anything special (due to some people not being back yet, and the first dance being the one that nearly all the incoming freshmen go to as part of orientation... which means lots of total strangers hanging around.)  It actually turned out pretty good, though! Bumped into a bunch of people I knew throughout the time I was there (including some I hadn't seen before then), danced a little bit (during which I found out that I still remember how to do the cha-cha despite not practicing for months... and also one time a complete stranger actually came up and asked me to dance, which was a real surprise--I rarely even have people I actually know ask me to dance, let alone people I've never met before in my life!), and got to know a couple of new people.  There were a ton of complete strangers (I'm assuming mostly new freshmen, or returned missionaries that left 2 years ago or something...) there, though.  I wasn't expecting there to be that many, especially with the Mormons lowering the mission ages (I figured there'd be basically no 18-year-old guys coming in this year, since they'd all go on missions instead.)  The new people I talked to seemed pretty nice overall, though unfortunately one of them pulled out the early stages of a conversion attempt on me almost the instant she found out I wasn't Mormon... Okay, kids, I know your church has been pushing that "every member a missionary" thing a lot lately, but seriously, telling someone to pray about things and hoping they convert to your religion is not the best way to give a good first impression to people you've never met before in your life, or make them want to get to know you any better.  That sort of thing is kind of obnoxious even when my friends do it (and has, several times in the past, distanced me a bit from friends... none quite as bad as the one from way back in 2005, but still, there were a few people last year that suddenly become a lot more uncomfortable to be around after they went all converty on me), let alone people that I've only just met.

For some reason, though, the conversion-attempt girl's name is the only one that I remember.  It probably helps that I have no idea how to spell the other girl's name, and due to how ear-blastingly loud it was in there when I was talking to her I'm not even 100% sure how to pronounce it either (it was only after the end of the dance that I talked to the other girl whose name I can remember, so there wasn't absurdly loud music blaring in my ears the whole time.)

But yeah, the dance turned out pretty well.  And apparently there's another one next week, so hopefully that one turns out well too.


Unfortunately, it's looking like I won't be able to get a job for this semester after all.  The good thing, though, is that I might not even need one--now that I'm selling my old NES games on eBay, I might actually be making more money a week than I would have made from an actual job anyway (at least assuming that I was only working low-end part time hours.)  So far I've gotten about 80 bucks from my copy of Megaman 5, and I currently have DuckTales 2 up for auction... and the high bid at the moment is over $100 (with 3 days still left to go! O_O)  Along with two other games (one's been bid up to around $20, the other still at $10.)  Hopefully that should be enough (combined with my financial aid refund check and what I've already got in the bank) to pay for rent and electric bills.  If not, I've always got my main bank account back home to fall back on, but I'd rather not drain a bunch of money from that to pay for rent...