2004-10-02 - 10:35 p.m.
SO! It's been a long time since I've updated. In fact, the longest hiatus from diaryland I've yet taken.
What can I say, I've been busy.
Also Josh is graciously letting me use his computer since mine cannot be hooked up to the internet, for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, let alone fix. Josh and I also have very different sleeping schedules, and the times I'd probably be on the computer writing in here are times he's sleeping.
Of course, I can't complain. I'm lucky to have internet access at all.
College so far has been very easy and fun. My classes aren't particularly challenging, but the information is new enough to make it enjoyable and worthwhile to attend. I learned, for instance, that 17 people have fallen to their deaths off of the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Also I learned that they've found 4 billion year old rocks in both Canada and Australia, which came in handy a couple nights ago playing Trivial Pursuit, the question being which country of the Western hemisphere has 4 billion year old rocks.
So I'm already finding some practical applications.
These are my first few weeks of college, so you'd think I'd want to record this particular month for posterity's sake if no other month in the past year. Thus, even though I'm tired, I'm going to try to collect some thoughts.
This past weekend Jimmie was here. He actually left a short two and a half hours ago. I already miss him; it was a great trip and we had a lot of fun together. We mostly played video games and watched movies. We also watched the debates together. I was happy that Jimmie sat down and watched them with me, something he would ordinarily rather have poked his eyes out than watch. Josh watched the end of it with us, and thank God! because President Bush's closing statement included a line that went something like "I have climbed the mountains of fear and now look down into the valley of peace" and Josh interjected "and we will soon have the one ring" which I still can't stop laughing about. The comparison is too funny. It really sounded like Bush was confusing the quest for Osama Bin Laden with the quest for the one ring to rule them all.
Jimmie and I also went to the Melting Pot tonight, which was delicious.
I'm really glad Jimmie visited. Every time we have a great time together it reassures me that this relationship might actually work out in the long run. Which is nice.
Something I've become completely irritable about is the so-called group "Students for Kerry" whose president is an ignorant asshole. I went to their first meeting and signed up to volunteer at certain times, including a 6 hour block of time on Thursday, starting at 7:30. That Thursday I took the bus downtown (which was an adventure in itself considering the bus the COTA bus website directed me to take didn't actually stop anywhere on the street I was on) and I got to the hotel I was supposed to meet people at about 15 minutes late. I was the only one there, except for one guy sleeping in a room full of luggage. I wandered around aimlessly for awhile and tried to call the guy in charge, and eventually just sat down in the luggage room and read "Why do People Hate America" for awhile. An important question.
Later on that guy woke up and we sat and talked for awhile, and then he had to go to class so he left at 9. I still had no idea what I was doing there. At 9:30 the president of this group shows up with his entourage and everyone starts moving luggage. I just stood around and felt kind of pissy that 1) I was being ignored and 2) why weren't these people there at 7:30? Later on I was talking with one of the women in the entourage and she said that the president called everyone to let them know the time had changed to 9:30. She called this guy over and told him that he had neglected to call me.
If you were the president of this group, what do you think you would do? Apologize? Explain why you didn't call? Try to figure out what happened so the miscommunication wouldn't happen again?
This guy chose none of these options and instead decided to roll his eyes and tell me that I deserved it because I was reading "Why do People Hate America." The entourage then proceeded to discuss why people do in fact hate America, expressing the opinion that it's because everyone is jealous. Normally I wouldn't have minded this small minded approach to the question, except I had just talked to some of them about how wrong that idea is and why.
So after an entire morning of being ignored and insulted, I left.
I had some other misadventures with this group before I finally decided to call it quits, which might be a story for the next entry. Suffice it to say that this election is important to me, and I was willing to work with a collection of assholes as long as I was getting the pro-Kerry message out.
I shouldn't say they were all assholes. Most of them seemed like cool people. Just misguided.
Last week I went to a talk on Afghanistan and was served a surprise free meal catered by a local Turkish restaurant. That same day I went to volunteer for a different group that is also pro-Kerry called "Downtown for Democracy" which is everything that Student's for Kerry isn't, namely welcoming and organized. I anticipate doing more volunteer work with them this year. I really liked the two people I met there, and I like their goal, which is to get the 18-34 year olds to be informed about the issues and VOTE. The candidates and media can afford to ignore this demographic because it's been shown that the 18-34 yr olds don't vote. Hopefully Downtown for Democracy will accomplish changing just a little bit of that.
Tomorrow I hope to write more about my parents driving out here with me and graciously helping me move. Also about my (new) nose ring.
�
