You were an engine driver, I was a deep sea diver

One thing I had magically forgotten during my ten week 'vacation' from school was how hard school actually is.

I should have remembered when I found my notes from spring quarter and DID NOT REMEMBER those days. At all. I knew I had gone to class because I had all of my notes and papers in the notebook in my hands, but I didn't remember the lecture or if I had contributed anything thoughtful to the class that day. I was waking up by no later then 7 am every single week day, working eight hours and going to class eighteen hours and foregoing a social life for that education thing.

I am trying to keep everything balanced. It helps that I am on campus now, as much as I miss home. It's easier to go out and have a life when the life is a five minute walk from where you sleep and study.

This week started with plans to do EVERYTHING and has slowly narrowed to a few select things. I actually went to the formal sorority rush last night, only to drop out two hours later. I was going to miss every event they were holding this weekend and I could only imagine what the rest of the quarter was going to be like. OU, being on a quarter schedule, has tests soon after classes start; there was no way I could cram for my tests AND be a pledge AND work AND do all the other things I have to do, including sleep. Sleeping is so very important to my sanity, next to eating three meals a day and getting to read something non-school assigned at least once a day. If you ever want to know what I am like when I am drunk, just keep from sleeping. Once I hit about hour 22 of being awake, I will be just as insane and likely to fall over as anyone who is drunk. I've experienced this in the past and can only imagine how much more FUN it will be considering one of my jobs at work is calling people and leaving messages. 

If you ever order books from where I work and get a message where the caller says 'we are open until...' and then recites a phone number, then says 'you can reach us at 7 pm if you have any questions,' that is me. 

Just wait 'til I get a little further in Chinese.

Just like a brand new penny

Yesterday, the dorms here at ye olde university opened at noon, for all incoming freshman. Even though I already have 38 credits under my belt, I am still considered an incoming freshman, which is probably for the best. My parents and I, with the help of some volunteers on campus, moved in my boxes and boxes of stuff. Seriously, I am not kidding, I probably had over a dozen boxes. Granted, they were not large boxes, but still. 

Even more impressive?

In this relatively small room, I managed to get everything to fit. There is still a need for some re-organization, and I need to pick up some shelving and a TV stand, but it is actually a very nice little room. I remember my older sister's various singles always felt incredibly small, as if they had been designed by someone hoping to drive the resident mad. My single, by comparison, feels practically spacious. I have a practically walk-in closet, which I have many, many plans for.

You'd think I'd be feeling homesick at this point. I probably would at this point, except my family is a ten minute drive away. Also, I spent last night at home. Lets just say that my dinner decided that it didn't like that I had eaten it, and I felt way too awful to stay in an unfamiliar place, which still needed a lot of unpacking done for it to feel like home. I still don't feel a hundred percent today, but I feel far better than I did last night, when I was treading the fine line between not sleeping because I couldn't get my brain to shut down and being so exhausted that I could barely keep my eyes open. 

Everything feels possible right now - it's all brand new and simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. 

59 days, five hours and a decent amount of minutes

Last time I saw my guy, it was about exactly two months ago.

I firmly believe in the awesomeness of our long distance relationship, but I want it noted, somewhere by someone in our universe, that not seeing your significant partner person thing for a little over SIXTY DAYS? SUCKS.

Tomorrow, we are going to the Greek festival in Columbus, with a brief stop at Target so I can pick up a few things I still need for the dorms. (I like eating my cereal out of bowls and my sandwiches off of plates. Call me crazy. Could I get bowls at Wal-Mart or Kroger? Yes. But the ones at Target are a nice turquoise-aqua-y color that I really, really, REALLY like.)

Jon is going to meet us at the festival and then I am going to spend the weekend a little further north, hanging out with him.

Muahahahaha!

I mean, erm.... Hey, I've not seen my boyfriend in almost an entire quarter's worth of time. Indulge my slight madness. Please?

This little piggie went to market...

I have two younger brothers - one is fifteen and the other is nine. The younger of the two recently decided he wanted a guinea pig. When he sets his mind on something he wants, he focuses on it in a way that makes me hope that he doesn't become a lawyer one day - because I don't want to be on the wrong end of his focus.

An example of this happened about a month ago. Our fair city was holding a beer fest week, culminating in a festival on the main street that cuts through uptown; we don't call it 'downtown,' no, we call it 'uptown.' It's one of the ways we identify out-of-towners. That and the fact that they actually obey the crosswalks with the little flashing men and hands.

Anyway, Iz had made some jewelry to sell at Boogie on the Bricks. There was beer, which you didn't get in trouble for having as long as you stayed on the bricks, live music, food and vendors selling jewelry, soap and all the other things you find at events like that. He was hoping to make enough to buy a bicycle, as well as a long list of other things. I sat uptown with my parents and Iz and watched as my little brother proved that he would have made an amazing girl scout, had he been a girl: he caught peoples' attention, told them how he was hoping to make enough a buy a bike, and the bemused man, woman or couple would often walk away with a set of earrings or a little clay creature he'd made.

By the end of the day, he'd made enough to buy the bicycle he wanted.

So my family knew that it was a matter of time before we ended up at petland, picking out a guinea pig and all the things that go with the little things. The only problem is he wanted one sooner rather than later and the holidays are still months away.

Enter Facebook and its marketplace.

Facebook's marketplace, for the uninitiated, is a little like what I've heard craigslist is like. You create a listing, putting it under a label of choice, from 'free' to 'wanted' to 'for sale,' and wait for someone to contact you. I love the Facebook marketplace and often peruse it, hoping to see a cheap futon or something else. It's like going to a million micro yard sales, only you don't have to deal with the grumpy or indifferent people perched in their beach chairs, waiting for you to find something your willing to buy mixed in with all the pairless earrings and shoes that seem to turn up at yard sales.

One day last week, I logged into Facebook and the mini-feed that is your front page when you log in (I really hope all this explanation is unnecessary), the wonderful mini-feed, informed me that one of my friends had just listed his two pet guinea pigs. For free. Complete with a habitat and food and pretty much everything you need when you decide to become a guinea pig papa or mama.

I messaged him and to make an already long story short, my brother is gonna have his guinea pigs. The look on his face when I told him this was so worth it - I had told him he was going to get something he had wanted, had been reading up on and learning about and attempting to convince our parents would be a good idea, without having to lift a finger.

At least, not until they're here.

Thunder, leaks, crappy sleep, oh my!

Last night, a thunderstorm blew through town. A loud, moving the trees outside my window, gushing water thunderstorm.

Normally, I sleep through storms. The only thing that can wake me up is my phone buzzing, but that's because my phone is no more than two feet away from my face when it buzzes. Storms are not even in my room, so I don't even budge. In mid-May, a major storm blew through and my classmates discussed how they were forced to sit in the hallways of their dorms until a tornado warning expired. Lightning struck several trees and there was a brief touchdown at a lake a few miles out of town. I slept through the night.

Jon and I went camping, at this fighting event thing that he attends nearly every year. It was during the last week of June, and I'm afraid it's ruined my ability to sleep through storms.

June was an extremely wet month for Ohio. We were in a tent. Tents are not, apparently, completely and totally water PROOF. The rain turned a loaf of banana bread into mold, and messed up several novels I had brought with us. It also strained my already severely cracked patience; the camping trip will not be filed in the 'successful vacations' anytime in the future. I woke up on several occasions because I rolled over and found my foot suddenly cold and damp, the sheet on our inflatable mattress damp anywhere it touched the floor of the tent. I remember moving books that were at least slightly damp, and avoiding a part of my pillow because a few of the seams of the tent were also leaking.

So, last night, during the house rattling thunder, I woke up and thought 'I have to save the books!' I didn't think 'oh, a storm,' nor did I think 'ehhh...' as I normally do, instantly falling back to sleep. No, I had a panicked stricken thought, one that grates on me because it makes no logical sense, and, yet, that is what I woke up and thought. In reality, my books are fine and I don't have to avoid any part of my bedding to get a good nights sleep. But I'm rattled, and that feeling aggravates me.

Two am

When Jon and I first got together, I couldn't fall asleep until we'd had our good night phone call. If he was going out for the night, he would call me when he got home, and I would be in a fitful state of not-quite-asleep until my phone started buzzing. Part of it was habit - I'm not such a creature of habit that my routine can't be changed, but I am enough of one that I sometimes struggle to sleep if my routine is different. I can fall asleep anywhere, just let me brush my teeth, call my boyfriend and find a comfortable spot on the bed. That last one takes longer, but I will fall asleep eventually.

The past few weeks though, I've been out like a light not long after hitting the sheets. It doesn't matter if I know that I am going to get a call in hour - I'm out. When he calls, I wake up enough to have a conversation, usually one that I can't remember beyond the greeting, the good-bye and one or two words in between. I'm not good at having conversations when they require me waking up. I usually greet him with an over-enthusiastic "Hey!" that feels like it is louder than it probably is. Then I try to say that I wasn't that asleep, seriously, I was half awake when the phone rang. Nevermind that I vaguely remember looking at the phone and wondering why, exactly, it was there.  This is usually followed by a disbelieving statement from Jon, then lots of sleepy 'your pretty's and 'I love you's from me. I can only imagine what those conversations would look like if someone transcribed them. 

You can call me at two am and I'll swear I was still awake, but it's fairly likely that I won't even remember what I said in the morning.

The places you'll go

I am looking for bedding and rugs and towels and other various things I never really thought about me needing before on Targets website. I usually consider myself internet savvy - I can Google things faster than you can say 'hey, where'd the phone book go?' But on the rare occasion I try to utilize a websites search feature, it fails. Miserably.

I type in '6x4 rug,' hoping I'll find the rug featured in this weeks ad. I'm supposed to be getting things to make my room a wonderful living environment and that starts with a rug. At least, it starts with a rug in my head. I'm not really looking forward to living in the dorms, not one tiny bit, but I'm hoping that getting some bedding and things will change that. 

My search results in a few ugly rugs, rugs that look like people who own pets with digestion problems own for those occasions when Fluffy eats five pounds of granola. These do NOT look like rugs I would ever buy. So, I try a few other searches, after checking the bar at the top of the site to make sure I didn't miss a section labeled 'college 08.' 

Finally, I get fed up and go through the listings that drop down from those little tags at the top if you roll your mouse over them. Bed+Bath yields 'College 08,' of course. So, I find the rug sections, go through ELEVEN pages of thumbnails of rugs, to find that the rugs featured in this weeks ad?

They're only available in stores. Oh, and I never found the one I was looking for.

I really dislike trying to shop online.