It is official! I withdrew from Chem class and picked up Archery instead.  It only goes half the semester but dude who cares it’s freaking archery. I’m very enthused about it, and I met yet another person! So far I am friends with like, three people. Which is fabulous. And I’m already recognizing random people around campus, and everyone is nice, which is weird.

So yeah, not that much going on for me, really. Today is a nice lazy day. Got up bright and early for Bio lab, which apparently they do not expect to take nearly as long as it’s scheduled to. We were let out after an hour but it’s scheduled for almost three. Then I have Archery, and at 5 tonight I have Information Literacy which sounds useless but fun. I like the teacher. So now I am happy! I can go to bed early and get up early and feel great and awake and not die. I wanted to take Rock Wall Climbing or Recreational Shooting too, but they’re full up. Sigh. Maybe next semester. I’m really happy with Archery, though. We learned how to assemble our bows and checked dominant eye, arm length, and pull weight. I’m apparently right eyed, 28″ and 25 lbs. Perfectly average. I tried the 30 lbs bow, but it was way too much, like trying to shoot a shotgun. Shotguns are so awkward. I’ve never gotten bruised from one, though. OKAY SEGUE

I actually have way more free time than I expected. I do have homework, though! It’s weird, how excited I am at the thought of doing my homework. I’ll do it in a minute here. But I have trouble filling up the rest of my free time. I’ll probably start doing the gym after Archery, and the rest of my classes have a long enough break between that I can fit in some homework, but mostly I’m catching up on TV. I stick my head into the room across the hall sometimes - Katie and Barbara are really nice and also really strange. Katie is a hippy vegetarian addicted to texting, and Barbara is a religious musician from Camden who always speaks her mind. Whatever is on her mind. It’s so random. :D

Whoa. I just ordered Chinese food all by myself, of my own free will, and I didn’t panic. Much. I mean I was nervous but I didn’t hyperventilate like I usually do. Maybe all this breaking out of the shell stuff is doing me some good.

I’m going to drop out of my chem class tomorrow. I’m not going to be a Chem major anymay, seriously, and dude I am so fucking tired of night classes after a long day to be followed by an early morning. The professor was wonderful, but my brain was so off that I couldn’t even figure out if toasting bread was a chemical or physical reaction. Christ, I know burning things is a chemical reaction. Ah well. In the morning I’ll see if I can get into a different Chem or what.

And now that I am full of tasty, tasty Chinese food, I go to bed. (Actually the food was pretty lame, I’m so not ordering from them again. For my Mu Shu pancakes, they gave me a stale package of spring roll wrappers. Yeah, that’s totally the same thing.)

Ha! I thought I had Chem tonight, but it turns out I don’t. I was not the only one that thought this. I will now tell you the epic ballad of Chem Class.

…Okay so the ballad format isn’t going to work. But basically when I first got my schedule, Chem class was the oddball. Most classes are three short lectures and a seperately-scheduled lab, but this class is two three-hour blocks of lab/lecture. On top of that, they’re in seperate classrooms. The original schedule claimed there were also different teachers. My current printout, from like two days ago, says I have a Williams for both. Phew, right? Well the email that says I have no Chem class today was sent by a Moreland. And indeed there was no class. So I guess we’ll see what happens. Yay, more time to watch Supernatural! :D

There was an Involvement Fair today, where various school groups and local folks offered volunteer, intern, and job stuff. I stopped by the Campus Safety booth and found out that any student can work for them - I thought it was just Criminal Justice majors! But they also require a two-week course in August, so uh. Yeah, not happening this year. And then I noticed some firemen! So I wandered over to find out what they’re doing at a college involvement fair, and it turns out they’re doing a mostly-online EMT class. I talked with them for a bit, and I ended up signing up to hear more about the class. He said they meet the first Friday of every month, so I don’t know if I can at all, but I hope I can! EMTs are way more interesting than Lambda Lambda Lambda or whatever. And if I do decide to switch to forestry for a major, I need to be EMT-certified to be a ranger. I also need to be able to be a police officer, but that’s what the gym is for. :D I’m excited! Nervous as hell, but I’m determined to crawl out of my shell and do some good. Good for myself and for the people around me. They said something about giving me a CPR course and then tossing me into an ambulance to basically hand the EMTs backboards and stuff, which makes me kinda panic, but I can see why they’d want to give you a trial by fire. If you can’t handle that much, you don’t belong at all. So yeah, wow, big things happening. I went out to the fair determined to sign up for something, but I was figuring it’d be like, the frisbee club or something. I’m really proud of myself for even taking the first step towards something so intimidating and awesome.

Oh man! I almost won some stuff in Bingo tonight. I was two damn numbers away from getting a 42″ TV. Damn. I sat at a table full of guys, which once again affirmed that I am way, way more comfortable and happy being one of the guys than trying desperately to fit in with the girls. I just suck at making friends with guys, other than the really annoying nerdy type that no one likes because they can’t shut up.

Today I was reading Tailchaser’s Song and I was overcome with the need to nap in the nice sunlight (for once, a south-facing room!) and so I did. It was lovely. And later tonight I get to see Iron Man! I’m very excited, even if it will keep me up past my bedtime. I’m actually thinking I might have to drop a class. This late Chem class is gonna kill me. I thought I was done with night classes after a long day, you know? We’ll see. I’ll give it a week or so. I have until the 3rd to switch classes, and until October 24th to withdraw. Plenty of time to see if it’ll work or not.

So. Here I am. Finally got the Internet working. It’s really nice here, although insanely hot. I think I made two friends - one’s a communter, and one’s in another dorm, but that’s fine. There’s about 50 girls on my floor, which is kinda insane, and I can’t buy stamps around here. I’ll need to find out if I can bus to a post office. And a grocery store - I want yogurt for my fridge. :)

I do have a single, and it’s enormous and empty and lonely. I’m thinking of saving up for a futon and then bullying people into visiting me. But anyway… I’m pretty tired, and my allergies are still getting to me, and they feed us too much. Seriously! But I was right, breakfast had giant mountains of scrambled eggs. Mmmm. They have a lot of salad and fruit as well, although I suspect the fruit will disappear soon.

My phone barely gets any service here. Sigh. So I will send out emails to everyone now, let them know I’m alive and what my mailing address is.

The laptop is fabulous. Everything is noticeably sharper, which is weird, and I haven’t noticed any real problems with it yet. There is a heat source under my left hand, which might get uncomfortable when I’m gaming, but the air circulation through that part is excellent so I don’t see it being a problem. Video is fabulous, playing FFXI is lovely (although the keyboard layout will take some getting used to), I’ve got things installed and am working on transferring over my files. There’s only one downside. I’m stuck with Vista. I will probably live. Geri’s got fabulous specs, and I stabbed the crapware with a rusty spork, so it’s not so bad. I did have to disable the thing that yells at you every time you start a program. It made me scream. Literally. Dad was rather startled.

I still need to install iTunes and McAfee, but I am lazy. Dad’s in the process of rescuing my stuff from my old hard drive. There’s 63GB of music. That seems a little absurd to me. And there are all these errors that make it stop in its tracks, so the 24-hour transfer is taking even longer. Ah well. I have two more days, right?

I’m pretty nervous, but I think I’m doing okay. Still getting everything all set, although I think I have 99.9% of what I need/want to bring with me. I certainly have everything bigger than a breadbox, so anything I forget can get mailed to me if it’s that necessary. I think mostly I’m worried about being the most mature person there, other than the teachers. I know I’ve got a long way to go as a person, but admit it, any kid fresh outta high school just isn’t going to compare.

In better news, my legs are now hairless. :D Maybe tomorrow I will de-hair the rest of me. Why am I so hairyyyyyy. I want to go live in the woods and be mistaken for Bigfoot. It would be hilarious.

Anyway, I have more work to do on this machine, and plenty of work to do on my room, so I shall do that. P.S. The laptop’s name is Geri. I did not mean for it to be a stripper name (to match the candy-red exterior) but rather to name it after one of Odin’s wolves. Yeah. Weird, that.

Finally got my military ID! Phew. Now what else do I have to do this week…

Tomorrow: Clean room, laundry.
Monday: Pick up photos, order books, call school about billing.
Tuesday: More cleaning and laundry, finish alcohol course.
Wednesday: PANIC and possibly more cleaning.
Thursday: 8:30am dr. appt., go to school
Friday: Move into school
Saturday: Panic over being old and poorly socialized among teens. UGH TEENS. Oh hey they’re showing Iron Man at night.
Sunday: PANIC for the forseeable future.

P.S. New laptop WHOO HOO

So I wrote a story, and it took over a year to get it all out, all 6k words of it, and I adore it and love to reread it (which is just plain unheardof for me) and it’s in the style I really feel is my own, although in retrospect it could use a little polishing, and, well. I posted it about a week and a half ago, and even crossposted it to various communities to get more exposure, and nada. Not a nibble. Someone downloaded some of the mp3s I attached, but not a peep about the story, no way to know if anyone read it at all. And today I posted in the Pride Thread, which is basically a nice thing someone does on Mondays to be positive and encourage others to be positive, and I said that I was feeling good about how I’m handling the disappointment of the poor reception to this story. I really didn’t mean it to sound like attention-whoring, but all of a sudden I get two comments, one of them particularly eloquent, saying that they love the story. There was quotations of favorite parts! There was compliments of my ability to handle tension in both the characters and the reader! It was wonderful. And I just checked on del.icio.us, and it got bookmarked by that person as well. I’m kinda boggled. I always am - people actually liking my stuff knocks me completely off-guard. I always strive for approval almost desperately, but I don’t know what to do with it when I get it.

So that was a nice way to recover from the surprise interview earlier in the day that was for Shan’s security clearance. It went well, but I was insanely nervous due to my complete inability to remember dates. But I also finally got the paperwork for getting my ID and health benefits, which is wonderful. Today was kinda a rollercoaster. I’m alright now, and I think I can finally get to sleep.

I just had this awesome dream where I was Christian Bale As Batman, except it was less with the Batman and more with the Eccentric Billionaire. So like, my childhood home was still my house, but somehow it was this awesomely old (but well-kept) Victorian, which had two staircases in the kitchen - one for the second floor and one for the closet. Don’t ask me why, it was a weird house. And there was a pool in the backyard, and we had an awesome party and Alfred gave me this shot of Vodka that was like, insanely smooth so I made Steph try it. And then it changed to third person and Bruce Wayne had to go beat up someone that was trying to break into the shed where all the Batman stuff was, and then that dude got dropped into one of the neighbor’s bags of grass clippings because it was cold out. Or something. It was weird, okay. But also totally badass.

I just lost three hours to surfing Etsy, and it was wonderful. There’s a lot of lovely professional stuff on there, but then there’s stupid crap like Fimo magnets or this - this unicorn made out of porcelain and 24-carat gold that looked like a 6-year-old made it in art class. And it had sold for $36. I just - what? That’s ridiculous to me. I can make better. I have made better. It makes me wish I had access to a kiln and real clay. I get all these neat ideas but I talk myself out of them. No one wants a wooden bowl with a real giant maple leaf embedded on it, I say. Making a wire sculpture is silly, and you don’t even know what gauge to use, I say. Sculpture, pshaw, you don’t have a kiln or real clay or glazes or any significant experience with sculpting, I say. I’m very good at cutting myself off at the knees, and very bad at remembering that making things makes me happy. And if I could sell the stuff for money, well, that would be pretty amazing. And I really, really like sculpting.

But all my angst aside, I really like Etsy. There’s someone on there making dissected frogs out of yarn! Coasters made of fonts! Earrings made of octopus legs! Creepy things in jars! It’s fabulous. I especially adore this little dude. Want want want want. If I had $10 right now you better believe I’d get him in an instant, and I will seriously cry if he’s sold before I have any spending money.