...was actually not completely terrible, which was surprising considering how it started off (with me being unable to sleep until ~2:30 last night because some guy was watching TV in his room, and then a continuation of the usual "everything I try to do doesn't work" trend from the previous day.) By the time I got to my Sculpture class, though, it got a lot better. I made a random ball of wire (because I had no actual project-based work to do since I don't have my Muppet skull yet) and Professor Waldrop randomly played the Frito Bandito song (from old Fritos commercials) in the class, and people were randomly singing bits of it for the next couple hours afterward. XD
Printmaking went okay too; I have the resin (and spraypaint) on my plate again now, so I should be able to dunk it into the acid and start the aquatint process for real this time (and actually go through the whole process of multiple acid-dunks to get some parts darker than others this time, instead of just putting it in once and then taking it out to print it... and in the process destroying the resin/spraypaint layer that would make it possible to do more shading on it afterward.) So I'll probably get that done tomorrow or Saturday, not sure which at the moment. Also ended up bumping into a lot of people I knew at meals (...okay, mostly at supper... I think I had someone to talk to at lunch also, but somehow I can't remember who it was at this point... which is really weird), got a hug so strong that I was almost worried I'd get knocked over (the second time that's happened here!), and bought a balloon-bear (with balloon-flower) and sneakily gave it to Ruth by putting it in the Spanish classroom that they have tutoring in before she got there. That'd be the first time I've given someone anything for Valentine's Day since high school; I haven't seen her at all since then, though, so I didn't get to see her reaction and I don't know if she knows it was me who gave it to her just yet--I didn't put my name on it at all. XD
Also went to the "Maze of Time" meeting (one group among the school's creative-writing club) for the second time, and just like the first time it ended up leading to a ton of goofiness. And, in the case of Michelle and Clarissa, high-pitched squeaky fangirl rants about Naruto. XD I think I end up adding at least one new quote to my random quotes list every time I go to these things, heh. Not sure if I'll end up writing anything for the next one (the prompt is "marshmallows and chickens"), but who knows? Maybe if I get bored one day and don't have much (or any) homework to do I might write some random little thing about... chickens... and marshmallows. Or maybe just marshmallow chickens...?
I still have no idea when (or if?) I'm going to be able to go to the play that's being shown tomorrow and Saturday. I was thinking of going tomorrow since there's a dance on Saturday and they probably overlap with each other... but I don't know if I'll have anyone to sit with, which is a major problem due to my crowd-freakout issues. I do want to see this thing at some point, but.... it's looking like I might miss my only chance because I never really got around to asking anyone about it. Guh...
Friday, February 15, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Yeah... I hate weekends here.
If anything, weekends down at Carriage are even worse than weekends in the library mods. Carriage always seemed like this huge confusing place with so many people living there back when it was just a place I visited occasionally, but now that I actually live here it feels more like a tiny little abandoned ghost-town in the middle of nowhere, so far away from the rest of SVU that it might as well not be counted as "on campus" at all. I know some of my friends live down here, but somehow I never see them around; back at the library mods I'd occasionally bump into people coming to and from their houses, or somebody would come over and visit and do random stuff like watch movies or play board games or something... but that almost never happens down here. It's pretty depressing.
Friday wasn't as bad (I got to see the first Fullmetal Alchemist movie for the first time ever! and there was talking and assorted goofiness with a couple of my favorite people at supper!), but this Saturday has been pretty awful.
In other news... I actually finished another chapter of Organization XIII: Fangirl Extermination Squad for the first time in months. I actually started writing it earlier this semester but never got around to actually finishing it... until last night, that is. Now I can finally say I've gotten the story to 30 chapters, and it's gotten to the point where the big stuff is starting to get revealed (Yoshi's origin has been all but explained, and the hints to what's going on with Kisaki are almost to the "not really just hints anymore" phase now.) Right now it looks like Chapter 31 will probably go into a bit of Kisaki's backstory, though nobody really knows all of what's going on just yet... maybe another encounter with the Keybearers in that one, too, since there won't be too much action otherwise and they haven't had much focus in a while... plus the new-and-improved Keyblade Master Riku is overdue for a reveal. Chapter 32 will probably be the more direct continuation of what began in the most recent chapter--who or what Kisaki really is being revealed, and of course a real fight scene involving her (and a certain other member who hasn't had one yet!) and the introduction of another non-numbered member I thought up recently but haven't shown off yet. Wow... it's been a while since I knew exactly what I was going to do for the next two chapters of this thing! XD
Classes are going okay... aside from Printmaking, which took me forever to come up with an idea and then, now that I actually do have one, I can't even get anything to work. I was planning on doing the aquatint process today, but instead I somehow ended up screwing up the contact paper on the back of my plate and having to spray-paint over the back of it again to make sure that the other side is completely covered and safe from the acid (...because there wasn't enough contact paper left to just put a new sheet of that on there instead.) And of course, some of the spraypaint ended up on the wrong side, which means I'm going to have to clean that side off... and completely destroy the resin that I put on there today, bringing me right back to where I was before I started. Yeah... I shouldn't have even bothered to go to the art building today, I would've accomplished just as much by staying home.
And speaking of wasting my time on stuff that ended up accomplishing nothing... I had a random Wal-Mart trip today where, instead of getting a styrofoam ball to make a Muppet skull, I ended up with absolutely nothing because they were all out of both the 8-inch and 6-inch styrofoam balls. They did have smaller ones (I should have probably grabbed some to use as eyes), blocks, and cones (...I guess if somebody wanted to make a unicorn Muppet? or one with really weird giant pointy ears? XD), but I ended up buying absolutely nothing... except food from the Italian restaurant nearby. Probably shouldn't have done that, considering that I'm trying to save my money enough that I can make it through a whole semester without bumming more money off of Mom or taking more out of my savings account... but oh well, the food was good at least. Also used my debit card for the first time today, buying an 8-inch foam ball off of Amazon... and also a 12-inch ham and turkey sub from Subway. XD
Random weird moment of the day: a friend that I haven't seen much this semester gives me a ride to the cafeteria (a trip which was yet another in the series of "things I did today that accomplished nothing," by the way), and while we're talking in the car... she starts trying to convince me to ask a girl on a date. She wasn't really specific as to which girl, but still, she was way too excited about the idea of me going on dates... it was kind of weird, honestly. Weirder was the fact that she actually said she'd go on a date with me that night if she wasn't already going on one with someone else. Yeah... sounds like a "just trying to make me feel better" kind of thing, and that's always my first thought when someone says that sort of thing, but maybe was intended the other way... in which case I've heard that before (well, not those exact words but similar) and... it did not end well the last time. Cue late-2004 flashbacks. >_<
Hopefully it was just a "trying to make me feel better" sort of thing this time, and not a would-be-well-disguised-if-that-exact-thing-had-not-happened-before way of asking me out, or suggesting to me that she would want to at least. That would be weird... especially weird considering that this girl is going away on a Mormon mission and won't even be here next year... which is pretty much the only thing keeping me from asking at least two other girls on dates right now. XD
Friday wasn't as bad (I got to see the first Fullmetal Alchemist movie for the first time ever! and there was talking and assorted goofiness with a couple of my favorite people at supper!), but this Saturday has been pretty awful.
In other news... I actually finished another chapter of Organization XIII: Fangirl Extermination Squad for the first time in months. I actually started writing it earlier this semester but never got around to actually finishing it... until last night, that is. Now I can finally say I've gotten the story to 30 chapters, and it's gotten to the point where the big stuff is starting to get revealed (Yoshi's origin has been all but explained, and the hints to what's going on with Kisaki are almost to the "not really just hints anymore" phase now.) Right now it looks like Chapter 31 will probably go into a bit of Kisaki's backstory, though nobody really knows all of what's going on just yet... maybe another encounter with the Keybearers in that one, too, since there won't be too much action otherwise and they haven't had much focus in a while... plus the new-and-improved Keyblade Master Riku is overdue for a reveal. Chapter 32 will probably be the more direct continuation of what began in the most recent chapter--who or what Kisaki really is being revealed, and of course a real fight scene involving her (and a certain other member who hasn't had one yet!) and the introduction of another non-numbered member I thought up recently but haven't shown off yet. Wow... it's been a while since I knew exactly what I was going to do for the next two chapters of this thing! XD
Classes are going okay... aside from Printmaking, which took me forever to come up with an idea and then, now that I actually do have one, I can't even get anything to work. I was planning on doing the aquatint process today, but instead I somehow ended up screwing up the contact paper on the back of my plate and having to spray-paint over the back of it again to make sure that the other side is completely covered and safe from the acid (...because there wasn't enough contact paper left to just put a new sheet of that on there instead.) And of course, some of the spraypaint ended up on the wrong side, which means I'm going to have to clean that side off... and completely destroy the resin that I put on there today, bringing me right back to where I was before I started. Yeah... I shouldn't have even bothered to go to the art building today, I would've accomplished just as much by staying home.
And speaking of wasting my time on stuff that ended up accomplishing nothing... I had a random Wal-Mart trip today where, instead of getting a styrofoam ball to make a Muppet skull, I ended up with absolutely nothing because they were all out of both the 8-inch and 6-inch styrofoam balls. They did have smaller ones (I should have probably grabbed some to use as eyes), blocks, and cones (...I guess if somebody wanted to make a unicorn Muppet? or one with really weird giant pointy ears? XD), but I ended up buying absolutely nothing... except food from the Italian restaurant nearby. Probably shouldn't have done that, considering that I'm trying to save my money enough that I can make it through a whole semester without bumming more money off of Mom or taking more out of my savings account... but oh well, the food was good at least. Also used my debit card for the first time today, buying an 8-inch foam ball off of Amazon... and also a 12-inch ham and turkey sub from Subway. XD
Random weird moment of the day: a friend that I haven't seen much this semester gives me a ride to the cafeteria (a trip which was yet another in the series of "things I did today that accomplished nothing," by the way), and while we're talking in the car... she starts trying to convince me to ask a girl on a date. She wasn't really specific as to which girl, but still, she was way too excited about the idea of me going on dates... it was kind of weird, honestly. Weirder was the fact that she actually said she'd go on a date with me that night if she wasn't already going on one with someone else. Yeah... sounds like a "just trying to make me feel better" kind of thing, and that's always my first thought when someone says that sort of thing, but maybe was intended the other way... in which case I've heard that before (well, not those exact words but similar) and... it did not end well the last time. Cue late-2004 flashbacks. >_<
Hopefully it was just a "trying to make me feel better" sort of thing this time, and not a would-be-well-disguised-if-that-exact-thing-had-not-happened-before way of asking me out, or suggesting to me that she would want to at least. That would be weird... especially weird considering that this girl is going away on a Mormon mission and won't even be here next year... which is pretty much the only thing keeping me from asking at least two other girls on dates right now. XD
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Update on the kicked-out-of-my-own-house situation
Well, like I mentioned before, I'm currently living at Mod 335 in Carriage now after being inexplicably kicked out of my own house in the aftermath of Hurricane Stupid. Looks like Carriage will work pretty well as my new home here at SVU, at least for now; haven't had any issues with any of my housemates (there's even one guy I already know pretty well), and surprisingly the heat being set at 73 or 74 doesn't seem like it's going to be a problem either... this house seems to stay cool a lot better than the library mods, and my room stays pretty cool even when the heat has been set up to 74 all day. Of course, I usually keep my vent closed just in case, but sometimes I've actually had to open it at night and early in the mornings because it actually gets cold in here.
The walk up to the rest of SVU is kind of annoying sometimes, but that's only become a problem for my 10:00 class on Mondays and Wednesdays; I was six minutes late to class this time because of that. I guess it'd be possible to start the walk earlier, but it'd be hard to fit in breakfast too in that time unless I start getting up even earlier than I already am (...which is probably a very bad idea.)
In other news, it seems like I've recently been swarmed with Mormon girls trying to get me to pray or otherwise trying to convince me to believe in (at least part of) their religion. And yes, it's always girls; the last time I had a Mormon guy try to get me to pray, it was the last time the missionaries visited my room back at Craton and tried to "teach me how" (as if the reason I didn't pray was somehow not knowing how... okay, "elders," I'm not frickin' retarded, I just don't belong to your religion and have not had any sort of experience that would lead me to believe that prayer accomplishes anything.)
In case anyone who fits that description happens to be reading: sorry girls, I am not and will never be Mormon, so if that's what you're aiming for, just give up right now. I don't mind talking to people about their beliefs, my beliefs, similarities/differences, and that sort of thing, but it gets really uncomfortable when they start talking about their beliefs as if they are absolute truth and I can pick up on that weird-as-hell "they want to get me baptized" vibe. Look, I know you have your beliefs and you may be completely convinced of them, but don't go around saying you "know" that everything you believe is true (you don't know, you believe... they are two different words for a reason!), and don't even try to tell me that if I pray about it I'll definitely get an answer from God telling me that their beliefs are true. I've prayed before, occasionally even about that very issue, and I have never gotten a response. It was no different last year, and it's been no different the few times I've tried this year, so seriously... quit trying to get me to pray. So far, it has never done anything for me. If I ever try again and get a different result, then sure, maybe I'll believe that prayer has a point... but that isn't going to make me suddenly believe every last word of your religion is true! Prayer isn't exclusive to one religion, after all. Getting a response from prayer won't prove that Mormons (or anyone else) is right, only that the concept of prayer itself is.
EDIT: Sorry if anything written in the above paragraphs sounded a little harsh... but it's been happening way too often lately and it's starting to get a bit uncomfortable, especially with a few specific people.
I've also caught up on my last Printmaking project (and turned it in!) and started on my next one for that class--a pineapple with tentacles. Yep, a pineapple with tentacles... just like an octopus' tentacles. So far I have the plate etched once; haven't tried the aquatint stuff just yet but I will probably get around to that tomorrow or some other time later on this week.
And finally, in addition to winning second place in the Heart of the OHR contest, The K'hyurbhi Lands is now listed as February's "Game of the Month" over on Slime Salad! Go download and play it if you haven't done so already!
The walk up to the rest of SVU is kind of annoying sometimes, but that's only become a problem for my 10:00 class on Mondays and Wednesdays; I was six minutes late to class this time because of that. I guess it'd be possible to start the walk earlier, but it'd be hard to fit in breakfast too in that time unless I start getting up even earlier than I already am (...which is probably a very bad idea.)
In other news, it seems like I've recently been swarmed with Mormon girls trying to get me to pray or otherwise trying to convince me to believe in (at least part of) their religion. And yes, it's always girls; the last time I had a Mormon guy try to get me to pray, it was the last time the missionaries visited my room back at Craton and tried to "teach me how" (as if the reason I didn't pray was somehow not knowing how... okay, "elders," I'm not frickin' retarded, I just don't belong to your religion and have not had any sort of experience that would lead me to believe that prayer accomplishes anything.)
In case anyone who fits that description happens to be reading: sorry girls, I am not and will never be Mormon, so if that's what you're aiming for, just give up right now. I don't mind talking to people about their beliefs, my beliefs, similarities/differences, and that sort of thing, but it gets really uncomfortable when they start talking about their beliefs as if they are absolute truth and I can pick up on that weird-as-hell "they want to get me baptized" vibe. Look, I know you have your beliefs and you may be completely convinced of them, but don't go around saying you "know" that everything you believe is true (you don't know, you believe... they are two different words for a reason!), and don't even try to tell me that if I pray about it I'll definitely get an answer from God telling me that their beliefs are true. I've prayed before, occasionally even about that very issue, and I have never gotten a response. It was no different last year, and it's been no different the few times I've tried this year, so seriously... quit trying to get me to pray. So far, it has never done anything for me. If I ever try again and get a different result, then sure, maybe I'll believe that prayer has a point... but that isn't going to make me suddenly believe every last word of your religion is true! Prayer isn't exclusive to one religion, after all. Getting a response from prayer won't prove that Mormons (or anyone else) is right, only that the concept of prayer itself is.
EDIT: Sorry if anything written in the above paragraphs sounded a little harsh... but it's been happening way too often lately and it's starting to get a bit uncomfortable, especially with a few specific people.
I've also caught up on my last Printmaking project (and turned it in!) and started on my next one for that class--a pineapple with tentacles. Yep, a pineapple with tentacles... just like an octopus' tentacles. So far I have the plate etched once; haven't tried the aquatint stuff just yet but I will probably get around to that tomorrow or some other time later on this week.
And finally, in addition to winning second place in the Heart of the OHR contest, The K'hyurbhi Lands is now listed as February's "Game of the Month" over on Slime Salad! Go download and play it if you haven't done so already!
Friday, February 1, 2013
Kicked out of my own house for NOT being a violent psychopath.
Yeah... a lot has happened in the last couple of days. First, there was Hurricane Stupid--one of the guys in my mod randomly had the heat turned up to 72 when it was only 66 outside (and thus too warm to justify having the heater on at all, let alone higher than 70) and when I turned it back down for the second time he randomly threw a fit, yelling and screaming about how "everyone in the house" supposedly agreed to turn the heat up. "Everyone in the house," it seems, means "him and one other guy" in this case (despite the fact that 10 people lived in the house at the time and at least two of them had no idea that "the whole house" had agreed to turning the heater up)... probably what happened the last time he claimed that "the whole house" had gotten together and agreed to turn it up to 73 when it was colder out, too, considering that there were several people in the house that time, also, who had never heard of this supposed whole-house decision.
But anyway... some yelling happened, some insults and such were exchanged, and once it was pretty clear that this guy wasn't going to listen to reason I just went off to my room and got ready to go off somewhere else and not bother with his crap anymore. Instead, he comes over and stands in my doorway, apparently punching the walls outside the doorframe in the process (leaving a hole on one side and a dent on the other), and yelling at me from just outside my door. I'm pretty pissed off at this point, and I toss a cup at the wall out of frustration (important note: I did not throw it at the idiot yelling at me from my doorway, because if I had I would've hit him for sure--there was only 8 or 9 feet between us, and cups have some weight to them so they aren't that hard to toss in a straight line.) Apparently he thinks I was aiming for him and (somehow) missed, because the next thing he does is come charging across my room, tackling me, and slamming me into the wall beside my window... and then screaming at me for a minute or so. I didn't do anything but cover my left ear to prevent as much hearing damage as possible, and eventually he backed off and left the room.
Later on that day, I let my RA know about this after I found out about the hole in the wall (I wasn't planning on saying anything until I noticed that this guy had damaged school property in the middle of his steroid-fueled hissy-fit.) He came in and talked to me about it and it seemed like there weren't going to be any problems.
...until today, when I find that Joe Bouchelle wants me to come to his office for a supposedly-important meeting. I just know this is about Hurricane Stupid. Turns out, I was right; El Douchebag Grande is hanging out in the hallway when I get up there. More than two hours later, I find out what the school's going to do about this whole thing... and apparently the answer is "kick me out of my house and (as far as I can tell) do absolutely nothing to punish the guy who actually attacked somebody AND damaged school property." Of course, they didn't say a word to me about what would happen to this guy, so it's possible he has to pay a fine or worse and they just didn't mention it... but the complete-silence-about-the-other-guy's-punishment thing sure makes it look like they're doing nothing about him (the problem) and instead dumping it all on me (the victim.) Apparently they take my not-serious-at-all exaggerated comments that only someone who wasn't too bright could misinterpret as "threats" more seriously than an actual goddamn assault combined with smashing up a wall in a school-owned building. And apparently I'm on a "zero tolerance" policy as far as anything that could even remotely be mistaken for a threat in the mind of the dumbest dumbass goes... if one idiot claims they felt like I was threatening him (...and it's always a "him" here), I could get kicked out of school entirely. Wow. I really hope Doucheyus Maximus actually got punished for this, because otherwise they really can't even begin to claim they were being fair about this whole situation (they even tried to claim that they were treating me better than other kids in the same situation, which is bullshit because those other kids in the past that they told me about were actually making threats and there were signs that they may have actually meant them, plus I'm pretty sure none of them got attacked by some roid-raging meathead for nothing more than turning the heat down and breaking a cup... so it really isn't the same situation at all.)
But anyway... today hasn't been all that bad considering the massive overreaction of the school people to this situation (or at least to my end of this situation--they seemed to be underreacting pretty seriously to the other guy's end, considering that he actually broke the frickin' law. Assault! Destruction of property! Those are crimes! If I had taken it to the cops instead of an RA, this guy could be waiting for somebody to pay bail for him by now!) I was pretty much given a choice between moving to one of the hellish dorms (not gonna happen, I spent way too much time in Craton already), down to Carriage (a bit far of a walk to class every day, but similar to the mods in regards to crowding, living conditions, etc.), or to someplace off campus (the ghetto red apartments at the bottom of the hill in front of Main Hall were brought up as a possibility.) They decided I'd end up going to Carriage temporarily tonight (which I have done; I moved my stuff down here after the dance club meeting and I'm typing this from my new room in the guys' mod at Carriage right now!) and then have the opportunity to choose exactly where I would move to as a permanent residence sometime later. Right now, Carriage seems pretty nice; my housemates don't seem to be a problem so far (I know one guy here already and have met one of the others before once or twice), the room seems like a slightly bigger version of my room at Mod 2 (with a better selection of drawers for clothes and other stuff so I don't need to pile my books and such up on the top of the desk or stash my video games away in my closet anymore!) and the outside areas are really nice (wood floors, and the dining room is outside of my room instead of the living room, so chances are I will be further removed from the noise of the living room at night--if that's ever a problem--than I was back in my old place.)
I've liked the Carriage mod so far; seems like a nicer version of the library mod I used to live in, for the most part. Finding a place to stash my food may be difficult since the kitchen is pretty full as it is (I may need to keep the non-refrigerated stuff in my room), but since I don't even have my food here just yet (...I didn't have time to grab it before I left with all my other stuff, and the guy helping out with driving my stuff down here had to rush off somewhere else immediately afterward so I couldn't get a ride back to grab it after I got here) that's not too much of a big deal yet. Apparently the heat is usually kept turned up to 74 here, which sounds terrible... but apparently the rooms stay a lot cooler here than in Mod 2 (the heat is set to 72 right now I think and my room actually feels pretty nice, not overheated at all, more like 68-70ish than 72), so even with the heat turned up way higher than I would ever want it to be, the rooms will not get unbearably hot like they always do in the library mods.
I can only see two problems right now: one, there are guys playing video games and being kind of loud in the room right next to mine, and it's 1:30 in the morning... if I had classes before 12:30 tomorrow that would not be tolerated. Apparently it usually quiets down closer to 12:30 or 1:00 here, it's only on Thursday nights that some guys stay up later (due to not having early classes the next day), so it shouldn't be too much of a problem, though. The second problem, of course, is that I'm in Carriage, which is a 10- or 15-minute walk from anything on campus (even longer if you're headed toward Durham or the library or someplace else on that side.) But as long as I don't have early classes next year, it should work out pretty well. If it becomes clear in the next weekend and it will not work out so well, then yeah, I'll be moving off campus (probably to the ghetto red apartments)... but unless something goes wrong, I'll plan on living here at least for the rest of the semester if not for the rest of my time at SVU.
In other news... dance club meetings (three this week, in preparation for the Honor Ball!) went really well this week and I ended up dancing a ton and even learning a few new bits here and there. I'm also slowly getting less-behind on my Printmaking homework; I have half of my 10-print edition done now, so I should be able to get the rest finished tomorrow or Saturday and then hopefully get at least an idea for the next project. Still need to finish my Sculpture project too (all that's left is finishing the two rocks, re-coffee'ing the book to make all of it look consistently old and brown, and maybe doing a little bit of other stuff here and there to add some stuff to it), but there's less of that left than there is of Printmaking so it shouldn't be too hard to get both of those done before my next class.
There's also the Honor Ball (aka best-dance-of-the-year) coming up tomorrow. I didn't even attempt to ask anyone to go with me, but if it's anything like the last one I will be able to find plenty of girls to dance with throughout the night. And since it's all ballroom-type dancing and not random wiggle-dancing, I will actually be able to dance instead of just standing around!
But anyway... some yelling happened, some insults and such were exchanged, and once it was pretty clear that this guy wasn't going to listen to reason I just went off to my room and got ready to go off somewhere else and not bother with his crap anymore. Instead, he comes over and stands in my doorway, apparently punching the walls outside the doorframe in the process (leaving a hole on one side and a dent on the other), and yelling at me from just outside my door. I'm pretty pissed off at this point, and I toss a cup at the wall out of frustration (important note: I did not throw it at the idiot yelling at me from my doorway, because if I had I would've hit him for sure--there was only 8 or 9 feet between us, and cups have some weight to them so they aren't that hard to toss in a straight line.) Apparently he thinks I was aiming for him and (somehow) missed, because the next thing he does is come charging across my room, tackling me, and slamming me into the wall beside my window... and then screaming at me for a minute or so. I didn't do anything but cover my left ear to prevent as much hearing damage as possible, and eventually he backed off and left the room.
Later on that day, I let my RA know about this after I found out about the hole in the wall (I wasn't planning on saying anything until I noticed that this guy had damaged school property in the middle of his steroid-fueled hissy-fit.) He came in and talked to me about it and it seemed like there weren't going to be any problems.
...until today, when I find that Joe Bouchelle wants me to come to his office for a supposedly-important meeting. I just know this is about Hurricane Stupid. Turns out, I was right; El Douchebag Grande is hanging out in the hallway when I get up there. More than two hours later, I find out what the school's going to do about this whole thing... and apparently the answer is "kick me out of my house and (as far as I can tell) do absolutely nothing to punish the guy who actually attacked somebody AND damaged school property." Of course, they didn't say a word to me about what would happen to this guy, so it's possible he has to pay a fine or worse and they just didn't mention it... but the complete-silence-about-the-other-guy's-punishment thing sure makes it look like they're doing nothing about him (the problem) and instead dumping it all on me (the victim.) Apparently they take my not-serious-at-all exaggerated comments that only someone who wasn't too bright could misinterpret as "threats" more seriously than an actual goddamn assault combined with smashing up a wall in a school-owned building. And apparently I'm on a "zero tolerance" policy as far as anything that could even remotely be mistaken for a threat in the mind of the dumbest dumbass goes... if one idiot claims they felt like I was threatening him (...and it's always a "him" here), I could get kicked out of school entirely. Wow. I really hope Doucheyus Maximus actually got punished for this, because otherwise they really can't even begin to claim they were being fair about this whole situation (they even tried to claim that they were treating me better than other kids in the same situation, which is bullshit because those other kids in the past that they told me about were actually making threats and there were signs that they may have actually meant them, plus I'm pretty sure none of them got attacked by some roid-raging meathead for nothing more than turning the heat down and breaking a cup... so it really isn't the same situation at all.)
But anyway... today hasn't been all that bad considering the massive overreaction of the school people to this situation (or at least to my end of this situation--they seemed to be underreacting pretty seriously to the other guy's end, considering that he actually broke the frickin' law. Assault! Destruction of property! Those are crimes! If I had taken it to the cops instead of an RA, this guy could be waiting for somebody to pay bail for him by now!) I was pretty much given a choice between moving to one of the hellish dorms (not gonna happen, I spent way too much time in Craton already), down to Carriage (a bit far of a walk to class every day, but similar to the mods in regards to crowding, living conditions, etc.), or to someplace off campus (the ghetto red apartments at the bottom of the hill in front of Main Hall were brought up as a possibility.) They decided I'd end up going to Carriage temporarily tonight (which I have done; I moved my stuff down here after the dance club meeting and I'm typing this from my new room in the guys' mod at Carriage right now!) and then have the opportunity to choose exactly where I would move to as a permanent residence sometime later. Right now, Carriage seems pretty nice; my housemates don't seem to be a problem so far (I know one guy here already and have met one of the others before once or twice), the room seems like a slightly bigger version of my room at Mod 2 (with a better selection of drawers for clothes and other stuff so I don't need to pile my books and such up on the top of the desk or stash my video games away in my closet anymore!) and the outside areas are really nice (wood floors, and the dining room is outside of my room instead of the living room, so chances are I will be further removed from the noise of the living room at night--if that's ever a problem--than I was back in my old place.)
I've liked the Carriage mod so far; seems like a nicer version of the library mod I used to live in, for the most part. Finding a place to stash my food may be difficult since the kitchen is pretty full as it is (I may need to keep the non-refrigerated stuff in my room), but since I don't even have my food here just yet (...I didn't have time to grab it before I left with all my other stuff, and the guy helping out with driving my stuff down here had to rush off somewhere else immediately afterward so I couldn't get a ride back to grab it after I got here) that's not too much of a big deal yet. Apparently the heat is usually kept turned up to 74 here, which sounds terrible... but apparently the rooms stay a lot cooler here than in Mod 2 (the heat is set to 72 right now I think and my room actually feels pretty nice, not overheated at all, more like 68-70ish than 72), so even with the heat turned up way higher than I would ever want it to be, the rooms will not get unbearably hot like they always do in the library mods.
I can only see two problems right now: one, there are guys playing video games and being kind of loud in the room right next to mine, and it's 1:30 in the morning... if I had classes before 12:30 tomorrow that would not be tolerated. Apparently it usually quiets down closer to 12:30 or 1:00 here, it's only on Thursday nights that some guys stay up later (due to not having early classes the next day), so it shouldn't be too much of a problem, though. The second problem, of course, is that I'm in Carriage, which is a 10- or 15-minute walk from anything on campus (even longer if you're headed toward Durham or the library or someplace else on that side.) But as long as I don't have early classes next year, it should work out pretty well. If it becomes clear in the next weekend and it will not work out so well, then yeah, I'll be moving off campus (probably to the ghetto red apartments)... but unless something goes wrong, I'll plan on living here at least for the rest of the semester if not for the rest of my time at SVU.
In other news... dance club meetings (three this week, in preparation for the Honor Ball!) went really well this week and I ended up dancing a ton and even learning a few new bits here and there. I'm also slowly getting less-behind on my Printmaking homework; I have half of my 10-print edition done now, so I should be able to get the rest finished tomorrow or Saturday and then hopefully get at least an idea for the next project. Still need to finish my Sculpture project too (all that's left is finishing the two rocks, re-coffee'ing the book to make all of it look consistently old and brown, and maybe doing a little bit of other stuff here and there to add some stuff to it), but there's less of that left than there is of Printmaking so it shouldn't be too hard to get both of those done before my next class.
There's also the Honor Ball (aka best-dance-of-the-year) coming up tomorrow. I didn't even attempt to ask anyone to go with me, but if it's anything like the last one I will be able to find plenty of girls to dance with throughout the night. And since it's all ballroom-type dancing and not random wiggle-dancing, I will actually be able to dance instead of just standing around!
Friday, January 25, 2013
Assorted weirdness
Last night, I stumbled upon people printing out copies of the Paladin (the school's little magazine/newspaper thing) and one of them was printed with the wrong settings and turned out REALLY tiny. Seriously, they're normally about the size of a regular magazine, but this one was smaller than a graphic novel but still as thin as a magazine (the words/pictures were shrunk, but amazingly, still readable.) There was also a picture of a gun in there that made me think of a fusion of a revolver and a hairdryer at first glance, though looking at it again I'm guessing the "hairdryer" part on the front of the barrel was just supposed to be the rifling grooves on the inside of the barrel (it's at an unusual angle, not quite a regular side-view.)
Speaking of the Paladin, there's a list of "101 things to do before you leave SVU." Some of them make it obvious that this list was being built up looooong before this issue of the Paladin was printed (#30, "make a waffle topped with every ice cream flavor in the Dining Hall"--problem: the waffle-makers are no longer in the Dining Hall!), while others (a lot of others) are things that involve actually leaving SVU, and not always to places that are nearby or on trips that are actually required or given as an option for school (such as #58, "take a trip to Virginia Beach.") And of course, there's Mormon-y things (#51, have a Sunday evening scripture study group on the Blue Ridge Parkway) and things that only people who actually have some luck with girls/dating can do, such as #3 (kiss in front of the knight statue.) I'm actually surprised that there's only one of those on the list, considering how frequently "instant relationships" sprout up (and then rapidly shrivel away) around here. Heck, with the frequency it happens at, "get into a relationship that doesn't last more than a semester" could probably be on this list!
I also found out the other day that one of the few people I've met here who isn't Mormon is going to be baptized into the church pretty soon. Weird. This happened last year, too, though I don't know the girl who's getting baptized this year as well as I did the girl who did it last year. If this keeps up, I'm probably going to be the only non-Mormon in the school by the time I graduate. Or maybe not quite the only one, but pretty close. I'm definitely not going to be one of the ones who randomly gets baptized, at least!
Speaking of the Paladin, there's a list of "101 things to do before you leave SVU." Some of them make it obvious that this list was being built up looooong before this issue of the Paladin was printed (#30, "make a waffle topped with every ice cream flavor in the Dining Hall"--problem: the waffle-makers are no longer in the Dining Hall!), while others (a lot of others) are things that involve actually leaving SVU, and not always to places that are nearby or on trips that are actually required or given as an option for school (such as #58, "take a trip to Virginia Beach.") And of course, there's Mormon-y things (#51, have a Sunday evening scripture study group on the Blue Ridge Parkway) and things that only people who actually have some luck with girls/dating can do, such as #3 (kiss in front of the knight statue.) I'm actually surprised that there's only one of those on the list, considering how frequently "instant relationships" sprout up (and then rapidly shrivel away) around here. Heck, with the frequency it happens at, "get into a relationship that doesn't last more than a semester" could probably be on this list!
I also found out the other day that one of the few people I've met here who isn't Mormon is going to be baptized into the church pretty soon. Weird. This happened last year, too, though I don't know the girl who's getting baptized this year as well as I did the girl who did it last year. If this keeps up, I'm probably going to be the only non-Mormon in the school by the time I graduate. Or maybe not quite the only one, but pretty close. I'm definitely not going to be one of the ones who randomly gets baptized, at least!
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Wow... not even a month and I've already gotten into a habit of not updating this. XD
Yeah... I guess this semester just isn't eventful enough for me to have stuff to say every day (or even every other day) so far. But anyway...
Recently, I've started working on my first projects in both Printmaking and Sculpture. For Printmaking we're doing another batch of copper-plate intaglio prints, this time dry-point (carving directly into the plate with tools) instead of using acid. Also, I am amazed that I remembered how to spell "intaglio" and that the spell-checker on here doesn't mark it as a misspelled word. But anyway, my first plate is this weird idea I randomly had of a bunch of creepy featureless people walking in one direction (toward the viewer) in a huge crowd while one girl (who has hair, distinguishing her from the bald and creepy crowd) walks in the other direction with a spotlight on her. It's turning out pretty well so far. For Sculpture, I'm carving away chunks of a book (which has been "aged" by wiping coffee all over it) so that it looks like it has landforms like rivers, canyons, etc. sticking up out of it. So far I've coffee'd the book, dried it, carved a canyon out of it, started on a river, and drilled several holes into it (which have wire running through them to hold all the pages together and keep them from curling up on the edges.) More river-carving soon, and then probably a deep pit (maybe with lava at the bottom?) and some higher-elevation landmarks.
For Contemporary Issues, I'm reading a book about food poisoning (the case in 1993 where undercooked Jack-in-the-Box burgers made a bunch of kids horribly sick with E. coli.) I also have to do research on gun control for our final presentation/project
I've also learned how to play several different card games that I've never seen or heard of (for the most part) before, and discovered that Subway's ham and turkey sub is actually surprisingly good. I mean, I don't mind ham or turkey, but they're not my first choice on a sub usually (that would be salami, pepperoni, pastrami, etc... the Italian meats in general are great)... and yet the 6-inch turkey and ham sub I got with a "buy one, get one free" coupon for 6-inch subs last week was one of the best subs I've had there in a long time. To the point where I went ahead and got a full footlong version of it the next time I went. XD Seriously, it's this close to replacing my "usual" Spicy Italian (and already would have done so if it wasn't 50 cents more expensive for some odd reason...)
And, as I mentioned last semester, apparently there's a girl who might like me in some more-than-friends way... and I still don't know who she is. >_< But yeah, after some more talking with the girl whose boyfriend mentioned that he "knew" there was someone at that last dance who wanted to dance with me, I've managed to squeeze a few more bits of information out of her (including a few things I managed to learn without even directly asking--my private-investigator training seems to be holding up! XD) The only thing I knew before was that this girl was someone who was present at the last dance of 2012, which ruled out several people (including one I really like, unfortunately.) But now there's more than that; apparently, the mystery girl is probably someone who wasn't at SVU before this year (which rules out a lot of people I know, including one or two who I initially suspected might be the true identity of the mystery girl.) She also apparently described me as being really nice and fun to talk to, which means she has to be someone that I've talked to for more than just 15-minute intervals (which rules out a few of the girls I met last semester but didn't get to talk to very much, as well as anyone I didn't really get to know until after the dance.) I also got the girl I was "interrogating" to hint at the possibility that this girl not only wanted to dance with me but may actually like me in a not-just-friends way, by saying that she thought that "some things" need to develop on their own (when I asked why she couldn't just tell me who this girl is, or at least give me a good hint.) If this girl had no interest in me beyond just being friends, I don't think there'd really be a "thing" to develop, and it'd be unlikely that someone else who had talked to her about it would word it that way (or be so secretive about who the girl is.) Still doesn't really help me much, since I know a lot of girls and at least a few were girls I didn't meet until last semester... but it does narrow down the focus of my search a bit.
Right now I have two main "suspects"--two girls that I met last semester who were present at the dance (at least one of them stayed until near the end), who always seem to smile whenever I bump into them, and who I have talked to semi-frequently throughout last semester. One of these girls is actually someone I've considered asking on a date but haven't gotten around to it yet.
There's also two "maybes"--one being a "maybe" because I didn't talk to her quite as much as the other two last semester and she isn't as smiley around me as the other two, and the other because I didn't really get to know her that well until during the dance, so it's pretty unlikely that she already liked me in some way beforehand. On the other hand, I know for sure that the girl I heard this from knows the second unlikely "maybe," while I've never seen her talking to any of the other three... which kind of makes me wonder.
And in completely unrelated news... The K'hyurbhi Lands came in 2nd place in the Heart of the OHR contest! Yep, that's officially the best (by far) that a "real" game of mine has ever done in a contest (Fat Frog: The Movie did win the movie-game contest, but that wasn't exactly a "game" so it's not quite the same thing.) I'm honestly kind of amazed it did as well as it did; I knew Dungeonmen was going to win, but I never expected I'd come in second with the competition it had (I figured I'd get third, fourth, or maybe fifth if people voted at least somewhat objectively, and... somewhere a lot lower down... if the pattern established by Okédoké's way-worse-than-it-should've-gotten results from previous contests continued.) You can read it about over on the Hamster Burrow (the new OHR blog.)
Recently, I've started working on my first projects in both Printmaking and Sculpture. For Printmaking we're doing another batch of copper-plate intaglio prints, this time dry-point (carving directly into the plate with tools) instead of using acid. Also, I am amazed that I remembered how to spell "intaglio" and that the spell-checker on here doesn't mark it as a misspelled word. But anyway, my first plate is this weird idea I randomly had of a bunch of creepy featureless people walking in one direction (toward the viewer) in a huge crowd while one girl (who has hair, distinguishing her from the bald and creepy crowd) walks in the other direction with a spotlight on her. It's turning out pretty well so far. For Sculpture, I'm carving away chunks of a book (which has been "aged" by wiping coffee all over it) so that it looks like it has landforms like rivers, canyons, etc. sticking up out of it. So far I've coffee'd the book, dried it, carved a canyon out of it, started on a river, and drilled several holes into it (which have wire running through them to hold all the pages together and keep them from curling up on the edges.) More river-carving soon, and then probably a deep pit (maybe with lava at the bottom?) and some higher-elevation landmarks.
For Contemporary Issues, I'm reading a book about food poisoning (the case in 1993 where undercooked Jack-in-the-Box burgers made a bunch of kids horribly sick with E. coli.) I also have to do research on gun control for our final presentation/project
I've also learned how to play several different card games that I've never seen or heard of (for the most part) before, and discovered that Subway's ham and turkey sub is actually surprisingly good. I mean, I don't mind ham or turkey, but they're not my first choice on a sub usually (that would be salami, pepperoni, pastrami, etc... the Italian meats in general are great)... and yet the 6-inch turkey and ham sub I got with a "buy one, get one free" coupon for 6-inch subs last week was one of the best subs I've had there in a long time. To the point where I went ahead and got a full footlong version of it the next time I went. XD Seriously, it's this close to replacing my "usual" Spicy Italian (and already would have done so if it wasn't 50 cents more expensive for some odd reason...)
And, as I mentioned last semester, apparently there's a girl who might like me in some more-than-friends way... and I still don't know who she is. >_< But yeah, after some more talking with the girl whose boyfriend mentioned that he "knew" there was someone at that last dance who wanted to dance with me, I've managed to squeeze a few more bits of information out of her (including a few things I managed to learn without even directly asking--my private-investigator training seems to be holding up! XD) The only thing I knew before was that this girl was someone who was present at the last dance of 2012, which ruled out several people (including one I really like, unfortunately.) But now there's more than that; apparently, the mystery girl is probably someone who wasn't at SVU before this year (which rules out a lot of people I know, including one or two who I initially suspected might be the true identity of the mystery girl.) She also apparently described me as being really nice and fun to talk to, which means she has to be someone that I've talked to for more than just 15-minute intervals (which rules out a few of the girls I met last semester but didn't get to talk to very much, as well as anyone I didn't really get to know until after the dance.) I also got the girl I was "interrogating" to hint at the possibility that this girl not only wanted to dance with me but may actually like me in a not-just-friends way, by saying that she thought that "some things" need to develop on their own (when I asked why she couldn't just tell me who this girl is, or at least give me a good hint.) If this girl had no interest in me beyond just being friends, I don't think there'd really be a "thing" to develop, and it'd be unlikely that someone else who had talked to her about it would word it that way (or be so secretive about who the girl is.) Still doesn't really help me much, since I know a lot of girls and at least a few were girls I didn't meet until last semester... but it does narrow down the focus of my search a bit.
Right now I have two main "suspects"--two girls that I met last semester who were present at the dance (at least one of them stayed until near the end), who always seem to smile whenever I bump into them, and who I have talked to semi-frequently throughout last semester. One of these girls is actually someone I've considered asking on a date but haven't gotten around to it yet.
There's also two "maybes"--one being a "maybe" because I didn't talk to her quite as much as the other two last semester and she isn't as smiley around me as the other two, and the other because I didn't really get to know her that well until during the dance, so it's pretty unlikely that she already liked me in some way beforehand. On the other hand, I know for sure that the girl I heard this from knows the second unlikely "maybe," while I've never seen her talking to any of the other three... which kind of makes me wonder.
And in completely unrelated news... The K'hyurbhi Lands came in 2nd place in the Heart of the OHR contest! Yep, that's officially the best (by far) that a "real" game of mine has ever done in a contest (Fat Frog: The Movie did win the movie-game contest, but that wasn't exactly a "game" so it's not quite the same thing.) I'm honestly kind of amazed it did as well as it did; I knew Dungeonmen was going to win, but I never expected I'd come in second with the competition it had (I figured I'd get third, fourth, or maybe fifth if people voted at least somewhat objectively, and... somewhere a lot lower down... if the pattern established by Okédoké's way-worse-than-it-should've-gotten results from previous contests continued.) You can read it about over on the Hamster Burrow (the new OHR blog.)
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Back at school again!
Yeah... I'm back at SVU again. Have been for a week now, I just forgot to post anything here in that whole time. Of course, there hasn't been much to talk about for the most part... it's been a pretty uneventful week. Started off good but then got really average, sometimes dipping into horrible... not a great start for the semester at all. There's been some good parts, of course, but also way too many bad parts.
My classes seem like they won't be much of a problem this time around, though unfortunately I haven't been able to get my whistler needle (used for carving stuff for Printmaking) back from home yet (my sister inexplicably brought my woodcarving tools and my compass instead, even though I specifically described what the thing looked like... how that happened I have no idea, but eh), so I don't know if I'll actually be able to work on my Printmaking assignment this coming week or not. At least it won't be such an extreme homework overload this time around; most of my classes have very little (if any) homework, so it'll pretty much just be the two art classes taking up my time.
As far as other things go... so far I've re-learned a couple of dance moves I had completely forgotten since the start of last semester, discovered that free pizza isn't always a good sign, learned how to play a new card game (Skip-Bo), ended up randomly walking around Buena Vista with someone at 11:00 at night, watched another movie I had never seen before (Stranger than Fiction), and went to the worst SVU dance in history (I didn't get there until 10:30 and STILL ended up feeling terrible by around 11:00 or so... and whoever was DJing needs to get fired, because they seriously played EIGHT fast songs in a row at one point, with nothing slower mixed in, or nothing I can dance to at all.)
Not sure how next week's going to go... let's hope it ends up better than this one.
My classes seem like they won't be much of a problem this time around, though unfortunately I haven't been able to get my whistler needle (used for carving stuff for Printmaking) back from home yet (my sister inexplicably brought my woodcarving tools and my compass instead, even though I specifically described what the thing looked like... how that happened I have no idea, but eh), so I don't know if I'll actually be able to work on my Printmaking assignment this coming week or not. At least it won't be such an extreme homework overload this time around; most of my classes have very little (if any) homework, so it'll pretty much just be the two art classes taking up my time.
As far as other things go... so far I've re-learned a couple of dance moves I had completely forgotten since the start of last semester, discovered that free pizza isn't always a good sign, learned how to play a new card game (Skip-Bo), ended up randomly walking around Buena Vista with someone at 11:00 at night, watched another movie I had never seen before (Stranger than Fiction), and went to the worst SVU dance in history (I didn't get there until 10:30 and STILL ended up feeling terrible by around 11:00 or so... and whoever was DJing needs to get fired, because they seriously played EIGHT fast songs in a row at one point, with nothing slower mixed in, or nothing I can dance to at all.)
Not sure how next week's going to go... let's hope it ends up better than this one.
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