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And just as quickly, the weekend is over and things are normal again. Well, except that someone just left my room... to do homework. I guess doing poorly on two midterms can be decent motivation to actually do work around here. I'm sort of torn right now between writing a huge-long entry about this weekend (which would take me awhile) or sitting down to finish my reading for Hum and maybe work on my Bio paper. Of course, if I do that chances are I'm going to forget everything I meant to write down. Yup... looks like big-long entry for me!
The train was late late late. Well, by an hour and a half. It was supposed to arrive at 7:40, and it didn't get in until 9:10. The up side of this was that I got to sit around the boarding lounge (mostly illegally, since I wasn't a "ticketed passenger or accompanying guest" technically) reading Nietzsche. I was the picture of bored intellectual college-studentism. I had some McDonalds apple pies and orange juice, and listened to this crazy old guy who was loitering in the boarding lounge (much like me, only I probably looked less suspicious) get kicked out by the police. They kept talking to him and trying to get him to leave voluntarily, but he wouldn't do it, and eventually they just had to arrest him. When they did, he started yelling. I feel really bad but it was so hard to not to laugh because he sounded just like the peasant guy from Holy Grail that yells "I'm being oppressed!" He yelled that, too... along with "Help! He's hurting me! He's twisting my arm! He's beating my head against the wall! Don't you care about America?!" (They were standing in the middle of the lounge, so it was terribly clear that his head was not being beat against the wall). This was Act I of many in this weekend's theme of Screwing With My Emotions. Finally it was time for my sister to get off the train, so I stood by the glass doors watching for her, and somehow she got past me, but on an off chance I happened to look off to my right on the other side and she was walking by. We caught the 28 after a teeny bit of running for the bus (yet another theme of the weekend), and got back to the dorm with about fifteen minutes to spare before my first class. I dragged my sister to Bio with me, and she only fell asleep once (something many people in that class do not often accomplish). I don't blame her... she didn't sleep on the train, and Bio is boring. Then we went to lunch to partake of some particularly dismal BJ food (what the heck has been up with it this month?! they've even stopped half-trying!) and watched someone pout about their bad midterm grade. I skipped track practice, which turned out to be a rather good thing because I wouldn't have wanted to leave my sister in the room alone for the afternoon. We went to teatime for a little bit, only to discover that two people were already drunk (may I note that it was only 3ish?). Eventually the redder of the two drunks migrated his way into my room and layed around on the floor complaining and wallowing in his drunkneness, destroying our French magnetic poetry. Beautiful first impression for my sister. Finally around 7 (after everyone had sobered up enough to go out) we went to dinner downtown at this verily strange little Italian place. My sister was introduced to our haphasard ordering style (pick stuff, share everything), but refused to try the calamari. I don't understand what it is, but we have had calamari every time we've been out here, I think. Nuts. Then we got back and basically hung out a bit... my sister fell asleep in my bed, which was fine with me... I ended up sleeping on the fouton, which was weird but comfortable. I had this absolutely epic dream that had an actual plot (but still didn't make a whole lot of sense), which I will write out later on.
And then it was Saturday. We all got up at about 10. After a bit of lazy laying-about and such, my sister and I got on the bus to go to the dining hall. The bus did not leave. The bus sat there for twenty minutes because the driver hadn't shown up. Holy CTA-ness, batman! I am so sick of the buses not running when they're supposed to! Anyway, we sat there for twenty minutes, then the bus driver decided to start giving out emergency transfers so we could go "catch another bus to get where you're going." I figured out this would work out well for us, since we were heading to Belmont later in the day, so my sister and I got off, and my linguist-friend grabbed another transfer for my roomie, and we walked to the dining hall. Luckily it wasn't too terribly cold. As we walked he talked about random stuff, we invented a way to speak/sing braille, and then he began his usual Russian folk songs for the remainder of the journey. When we got to the dining hall my roomie was always there because (of course... thank you CTA) the bus had actually left about ten minutes after we gave up and walked. But we still had our free transfers, so it would be cool. Free trip to Belmont, what the heck? So at 1:30 we caught the bus back to the Shoreland... 1:50 we actually get back to the Shoreland, and my roomie decides to check her mail. She got flowers from her boyfriend and her dad, which she had to arrange and find vases for. Nuts. We didn't get out of the room until 2:10, which was cutting it awfully close to catch the 55 and make it to Belmont before our transfers expired at 2:28. We barely missed the 2:15 55 bus, so we had to wait. It was 2:25 before the bus came on the other side of the street, so we ran across to catch it, figuring we'd at least save the 25 cents it costs for the transfer (it would help if I mentioned that to get to Belmont you have to take the 55 bus down to the Red Line, and then take the Red Line to Belmont). So we rode the 55 down to the museum and back up to 55th street before finally heading over to the Red Line. I figured since you can buy transfers on the bus, it would be a lot cheaper... 25 cents each as opposed to 1.75, so as we were getting off of the bus I asked the driver if I could have 3 transfers since we were getting off and I forgot to buy them when we got on. He said sure. I put my dollar in. He looked at me weird and said "Three transfers?" "yeah" "That's six dollars you know." So I gave up and said nevermind, because I knew I couldn't explain to him that we were getting off the bus, and I figured it was sort of fair since we hadn't actually paid to get on anyway. Except that now I'd had to pay a dollar more than I would have had to had I just done things properly. For some reason the encounter with the driver threw me off pretty thoroughly, and while we were on the platform waiting for the train to come, I kept thinking about how much the traffic looked like it was just heading off into Cleveland, and how the area looked like most of Youngstown anymore... and it just sort of freaked me out... like I hadn't gotten away from anything, here it was again. Haunting me. Telling me I'd never get out of it. Then I got on the subway and watched how the further north we went into the city the whiter the crowd got. The train got rerouted so we technically took the brown line to Belmont, but it was the same thing anyway. As we went north, the buildings got closer and closer to the tracks, and it was really weird. I kept thinking how nice it would be to have a house or an apartment or something. Even if it was right next to the L. We got off at Belmont, and when we tried to cross over to the other side of the platform, there were two people at the bottom of the stairs having some sort of huge argument over something that sounded like money, and one guy was sitting/laying on the stairs, so we had to turn around and use the other stairs down to the street. I imagine it freaked my little sister out even more than me. We wandered around looking at the "thrift" stores... which can't be considered thrifty because the stuff is still expensive, and they sell Diesel and such. We went to a pretty cool poster store that had strange posters... like a poster for Spirited Away in French, and a poster for Amelie in Japanese... both of which I wanted rather badly, but couldn't get for fear of being considered a poser. Soon after that I decided that it's harder to be considered a poser if you are just confident about what you like and why you like it. The Amelie poster was just really cool looking. I wanted it. Therefore, I should be able to have it. Simple. Anyway... after that we walked past this used book store, and I just got this feeling that they probably had the Voyage of the Space Beagle, this book that my sister's been looking for (and that I've been searching for for her) for about a year now. So we went in and wandered up and down the aisles.. the place had tiny aisles and it just reeked of eccentricity (eccentricity smells like old books, and old books smell good). We asked the owner, and he told us to check the science fiction section. After a bit of debate over the guy's last name, we found it! I was so happy! The search was over. Then, randomly, we looked up and there was a whole section of Douglas Adams books... including the original radio scripts. Which I just had to have. They also had the Deeper Meaning of Liff, which I wanted terribly, but didn't have enough money for. That is definitely a place I will go back to. Yay bookstore! We wandered around a bit more looking at shoe stores and music stores, but ended up heading back around 5:30 so we could make it to girls night. I used up the last bit of money I had on my CTA card (even though I'd put ten on Friday before we went downtown), and we headed back. La. My roomie and I went to the Co-op for groceries and smoothie supplies and I ended up spending more than I needed to (but that's alright once in awhile) and I microwaved dinner for my sister and myself. I ended up going over to girls night to hang out, while my sister had to deal with certain people in my room playing Castlevania... but apparently our resident gamer was verily nice to her (I'll have to give him a hug or something later) and let her play FFTactics on his gameboy advance. Then she watched Fight Club and we eventually went to sleep.
Today, we got up (well, I got up) at 10. We didn't feel like going to brunch, so we sat around and ate bagels. My sister sat around online, and I read a few chapters of Dubois. We talked a bit about going downtown, but my sister was too tired. So today was spent being semi-productive as far as school work goes. Then we went to dinner at 6 (because (Wow!) the bus was late). Dinner was appropriately boring and bland. We got back, packed up, had enough time for my sister to meet a few of the MUNUC people who had been at Hahvahd all weekend, and then we went to the trusty corner of Hyde Park and 55th to catch the 28. We rode downtown and my sister interviewed me about who my favourite people here were. I felt bad that she hadn't gotten the chance to see more of the city, but since we didn't do much shopping at all she still had about 70 dollars left so if we're lucky my mom will let her come visit again sometime. We had to sit in the train station for about half an hour before the boarded the train, which was plenty of time for me to become insanely paranoid about them not letting her ride the train because she didn't have an ID... but I haven't gotten a call yet so she ought to be alright. After she left I basically felt like crying because I was so homesick. But I knew it wasn't a good idea to wander the streets of Chicago any later than necessary, especially while looking all vulnerable by crying... so I left. I had to wait about 15 minutes for the 28, which was plenty of time for me to get all paranoid about it running a different route at night. Chicago is sort of scary late at night and early in the morning, because there is basically no one on the streets. It's abandoned. I don't understand a city that's only occupied 12 hours a day, it doens't make any sense. I guess I shouldn't have been as scared as I was, because it's not random people walking down the street that get you so often as it is people in alleys and in doorways and all. The traffic was busy enough and the bus stop was light enough that I didn't have to worry about it too much. I still stood there trying to look relatively tough and invulnerable, though (I be I looked ridiculous). As I was walking back down 55th to the Shoreland, I felt.. I don't know... sort of homeless. I really, really want a place that's home now. I want to either go home now, or live someplace where I don't have to take two and a half hours out of my day for lunch or dinner. This will be fixed by either a kitchen or a car... the kitchen is far more likely, so I think I'll have to hope for that next year. I missed the study break by a bit, which was a shame. But ah well, so it goes sometimes.
And behind those cuts is one heck of a lot of writing. Woo. I am so tired right now, I probably won't get much reading done at all. And I still need to shower. Oh well, at least I did something this weekend. Darn it for being so emotionally confusing, though. I think I've almost immediately gone back into the college is completely seperate from home mode, though. Good though, if it'll help me deal with the rest of this quarter. I am going to be so homesick now. Screw my plans to randomly hop a train to Toronto over spring break. I'd have to find someplace to stay, and pay for food, so I probably couldn't afford it anyway. And I want to see my family, now! Strange as they are. As opposite as we are to so many of the families people here come from...
It sounds like this story has a moral. It should be obvious to me, but it isn't.
Actually, today's real moral dilemma is whether or not I should buy the Xenogears manga being sold on eBay... because though I'd love to look at it, massive amounts of effort would have to be put into translating it (sounds like a summer project to me). And I'd love to get my hands on a copy of Perfect Works, but even though the pictures are awesome, I'm not sure if it's worth it if I can't read it. Darn my unilingualism!
The train was late late late. Well, by an hour and a half. It was supposed to arrive at 7:40, and it didn't get in until 9:10. The up side of this was that I got to sit around the boarding lounge (mostly illegally, since I wasn't a "ticketed passenger or accompanying guest" technically) reading Nietzsche. I was the picture of bored intellectual college-studentism. I had some McDonalds apple pies and orange juice, and listened to this crazy old guy who was loitering in the boarding lounge (much like me, only I probably looked less suspicious) get kicked out by the police. They kept talking to him and trying to get him to leave voluntarily, but he wouldn't do it, and eventually they just had to arrest him. When they did, he started yelling. I feel really bad but it was so hard to not to laugh because he sounded just like the peasant guy from Holy Grail that yells "I'm being oppressed!" He yelled that, too... along with "Help! He's hurting me! He's twisting my arm! He's beating my head against the wall! Don't you care about America?!" (They were standing in the middle of the lounge, so it was terribly clear that his head was not being beat against the wall). This was Act I of many in this weekend's theme of Screwing With My Emotions. Finally it was time for my sister to get off the train, so I stood by the glass doors watching for her, and somehow she got past me, but on an off chance I happened to look off to my right on the other side and she was walking by. We caught the 28 after a teeny bit of running for the bus (yet another theme of the weekend), and got back to the dorm with about fifteen minutes to spare before my first class. I dragged my sister to Bio with me, and she only fell asleep once (something many people in that class do not often accomplish). I don't blame her... she didn't sleep on the train, and Bio is boring. Then we went to lunch to partake of some particularly dismal BJ food (what the heck has been up with it this month?! they've even stopped half-trying!) and watched someone pout about their bad midterm grade. I skipped track practice, which turned out to be a rather good thing because I wouldn't have wanted to leave my sister in the room alone for the afternoon. We went to teatime for a little bit, only to discover that two people were already drunk (may I note that it was only 3ish?). Eventually the redder of the two drunks migrated his way into my room and layed around on the floor complaining and wallowing in his drunkneness, destroying our French magnetic poetry. Beautiful first impression for my sister. Finally around 7 (after everyone had sobered up enough to go out) we went to dinner downtown at this verily strange little Italian place. My sister was introduced to our haphasard ordering style (pick stuff, share everything), but refused to try the calamari. I don't understand what it is, but we have had calamari every time we've been out here, I think. Nuts. Then we got back and basically hung out a bit... my sister fell asleep in my bed, which was fine with me... I ended up sleeping on the fouton, which was weird but comfortable. I had this absolutely epic dream that had an actual plot (but still didn't make a whole lot of sense), which I will write out later on.
And then it was Saturday. We all got up at about 10. After a bit of lazy laying-about and such, my sister and I got on the bus to go to the dining hall. The bus did not leave. The bus sat there for twenty minutes because the driver hadn't shown up. Holy CTA-ness, batman! I am so sick of the buses not running when they're supposed to! Anyway, we sat there for twenty minutes, then the bus driver decided to start giving out emergency transfers so we could go "catch another bus to get where you're going." I figured out this would work out well for us, since we were heading to Belmont later in the day, so my sister and I got off, and my linguist-friend grabbed another transfer for my roomie, and we walked to the dining hall. Luckily it wasn't too terribly cold. As we walked he talked about random stuff, we invented a way to speak/sing braille, and then he began his usual Russian folk songs for the remainder of the journey. When we got to the dining hall my roomie was always there because (of course... thank you CTA) the bus had actually left about ten minutes after we gave up and walked. But we still had our free transfers, so it would be cool. Free trip to Belmont, what the heck? So at 1:30 we caught the bus back to the Shoreland... 1:50 we actually get back to the Shoreland, and my roomie decides to check her mail. She got flowers from her boyfriend and her dad, which she had to arrange and find vases for. Nuts. We didn't get out of the room until 2:10, which was cutting it awfully close to catch the 55 and make it to Belmont before our transfers expired at 2:28. We barely missed the 2:15 55 bus, so we had to wait. It was 2:25 before the bus came on the other side of the street, so we ran across to catch it, figuring we'd at least save the 25 cents it costs for the transfer (it would help if I mentioned that to get to Belmont you have to take the 55 bus down to the Red Line, and then take the Red Line to Belmont). So we rode the 55 down to the museum and back up to 55th street before finally heading over to the Red Line. I figured since you can buy transfers on the bus, it would be a lot cheaper... 25 cents each as opposed to 1.75, so as we were getting off of the bus I asked the driver if I could have 3 transfers since we were getting off and I forgot to buy them when we got on. He said sure. I put my dollar in. He looked at me weird and said "Three transfers?" "yeah" "That's six dollars you know." So I gave up and said nevermind, because I knew I couldn't explain to him that we were getting off the bus, and I figured it was sort of fair since we hadn't actually paid to get on anyway. Except that now I'd had to pay a dollar more than I would have had to had I just done things properly. For some reason the encounter with the driver threw me off pretty thoroughly, and while we were on the platform waiting for the train to come, I kept thinking about how much the traffic looked like it was just heading off into Cleveland, and how the area looked like most of Youngstown anymore... and it just sort of freaked me out... like I hadn't gotten away from anything, here it was again. Haunting me. Telling me I'd never get out of it. Then I got on the subway and watched how the further north we went into the city the whiter the crowd got. The train got rerouted so we technically took the brown line to Belmont, but it was the same thing anyway. As we went north, the buildings got closer and closer to the tracks, and it was really weird. I kept thinking how nice it would be to have a house or an apartment or something. Even if it was right next to the L. We got off at Belmont, and when we tried to cross over to the other side of the platform, there were two people at the bottom of the stairs having some sort of huge argument over something that sounded like money, and one guy was sitting/laying on the stairs, so we had to turn around and use the other stairs down to the street. I imagine it freaked my little sister out even more than me. We wandered around looking at the "thrift" stores... which can't be considered thrifty because the stuff is still expensive, and they sell Diesel and such. We went to a pretty cool poster store that had strange posters... like a poster for Spirited Away in French, and a poster for Amelie in Japanese... both of which I wanted rather badly, but couldn't get for fear of being considered a poser. Soon after that I decided that it's harder to be considered a poser if you are just confident about what you like and why you like it. The Amelie poster was just really cool looking. I wanted it. Therefore, I should be able to have it. Simple. Anyway... after that we walked past this used book store, and I just got this feeling that they probably had the Voyage of the Space Beagle, this book that my sister's been looking for (and that I've been searching for for her) for about a year now. So we went in and wandered up and down the aisles.. the place had tiny aisles and it just reeked of eccentricity (eccentricity smells like old books, and old books smell good). We asked the owner, and he told us to check the science fiction section. After a bit of debate over the guy's last name, we found it! I was so happy! The search was over. Then, randomly, we looked up and there was a whole section of Douglas Adams books... including the original radio scripts. Which I just had to have. They also had the Deeper Meaning of Liff, which I wanted terribly, but didn't have enough money for. That is definitely a place I will go back to. Yay bookstore! We wandered around a bit more looking at shoe stores and music stores, but ended up heading back around 5:30 so we could make it to girls night. I used up the last bit of money I had on my CTA card (even though I'd put ten on Friday before we went downtown), and we headed back. La. My roomie and I went to the Co-op for groceries and smoothie supplies and I ended up spending more than I needed to (but that's alright once in awhile) and I microwaved dinner for my sister and myself. I ended up going over to girls night to hang out, while my sister had to deal with certain people in my room playing Castlevania... but apparently our resident gamer was verily nice to her (I'll have to give him a hug or something later) and let her play FFTactics on his gameboy advance. Then she watched Fight Club and we eventually went to sleep.
Today, we got up (well, I got up) at 10. We didn't feel like going to brunch, so we sat around and ate bagels. My sister sat around online, and I read a few chapters of Dubois. We talked a bit about going downtown, but my sister was too tired. So today was spent being semi-productive as far as school work goes. Then we went to dinner at 6 (because (Wow!) the bus was late). Dinner was appropriately boring and bland. We got back, packed up, had enough time for my sister to meet a few of the MUNUC people who had been at Hahvahd all weekend, and then we went to the trusty corner of Hyde Park and 55th to catch the 28. We rode downtown and my sister interviewed me about who my favourite people here were. I felt bad that she hadn't gotten the chance to see more of the city, but since we didn't do much shopping at all she still had about 70 dollars left so if we're lucky my mom will let her come visit again sometime. We had to sit in the train station for about half an hour before the boarded the train, which was plenty of time for me to become insanely paranoid about them not letting her ride the train because she didn't have an ID... but I haven't gotten a call yet so she ought to be alright. After she left I basically felt like crying because I was so homesick. But I knew it wasn't a good idea to wander the streets of Chicago any later than necessary, especially while looking all vulnerable by crying... so I left. I had to wait about 15 minutes for the 28, which was plenty of time for me to get all paranoid about it running a different route at night. Chicago is sort of scary late at night and early in the morning, because there is basically no one on the streets. It's abandoned. I don't understand a city that's only occupied 12 hours a day, it doens't make any sense. I guess I shouldn't have been as scared as I was, because it's not random people walking down the street that get you so often as it is people in alleys and in doorways and all. The traffic was busy enough and the bus stop was light enough that I didn't have to worry about it too much. I still stood there trying to look relatively tough and invulnerable, though (I be I looked ridiculous). As I was walking back down 55th to the Shoreland, I felt.. I don't know... sort of homeless. I really, really want a place that's home now. I want to either go home now, or live someplace where I don't have to take two and a half hours out of my day for lunch or dinner. This will be fixed by either a kitchen or a car... the kitchen is far more likely, so I think I'll have to hope for that next year. I missed the study break by a bit, which was a shame. But ah well, so it goes sometimes.
And behind those cuts is one heck of a lot of writing. Woo. I am so tired right now, I probably won't get much reading done at all. And I still need to shower. Oh well, at least I did something this weekend. Darn it for being so emotionally confusing, though. I think I've almost immediately gone back into the college is completely seperate from home mode, though. Good though, if it'll help me deal with the rest of this quarter. I am going to be so homesick now. Screw my plans to randomly hop a train to Toronto over spring break. I'd have to find someplace to stay, and pay for food, so I probably couldn't afford it anyway. And I want to see my family, now! Strange as they are. As opposite as we are to so many of the families people here come from...
It sounds like this story has a moral. It should be obvious to me, but it isn't.
Actually, today's real moral dilemma is whether or not I should buy the Xenogears manga being sold on eBay... because though I'd love to look at it, massive amounts of effort would have to be put into translating it (sounds like a summer project to me). And I'd love to get my hands on a copy of Perfect Works, but even though the pictures are awesome, I'm not sure if it's worth it if I can't read it. Darn my unilingualism!
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I'm not sure what it is with BJ this quarter... last quarter it wasn't that bad at all. Maybe it's because (I think I heard that) they're going to tear the dining hall out and replace it with something more like Bartlett. I'm not sure when that's happening, though... probably in a few years, so certainly shouldn't be giving up yet.