The most adorable post I may ever make.

For the past two weeks I've been almost constantly at my friend Emily's house. Partly because she has instant Netflix, so we sit and watch horrible horror movies or Doctor Who for hours.  And partly because she has a new puppy.

The dog, Sophie, may or may not be the next regeneration of the Doctor. Which means if she meets my dog, it might be a little messy.

I like Emily's house.  She lives in the middle of town, whereas I live in the middle of nowhere, and it's hard to make fun of movies like The Beast Within (which you should check out, by the way) when you're the only one suffering through it.

And, for a while, we partied like rock stars.
  
And by rock stars I mean nerds. Whatever.

Today is my last day at IU.

Freshman year has gone by fast.  In a haze of classes, dorm food, and almost unashamed boredom I have spent two full semesters here.  I am still shocked every day to see that the beauty that initially made Bloomington my first choice for school has not faded away. The coming summer months make the place greener, fresher, lovelier.

But I am ready to go home. I have lived too long with a room mate (not that she's a bad person, I am just a private one) and I have had enough of classes for now.  I miss my family, my friends, my dogs, my familiar bed - 

But that is where I stop.  This bed has become familiar to me.  When I go back for weekends or holidays this is the bed I want to sleep in. The people in my classes, the teachers, have become welcome sights. I might not have my own pets, but I do have squirrels and chipmunks that will almost stand still long enough for you to pet them.

And - I'm not going to lie - living away from my parents has been fun.  Part of that might be because I haven't had to do chores, but I think it's also shown that I have responsibility. I'm not dead. I'm not addicted to drugs. I haven't gone to jail. I enjoy living away from all of that, from the same town I've been a part of since I was six.

And I've made so many friends here, from so many different places.  They are not my friends from home for sure, but they're just as good, and now I have to leave them for four months.  I am being stripped of the people that I have spent nearly every day of an entire year with.  They are some of my best friends now, some of my favorite people to talk to and gossip with and drink coffee on a cold day with.

I'm not sure how I'll be able to cope.

Why is IU so lacking in things to do?

I haven't posted in a while, and I apologize for that.  And now I'm going to be all hateful, and I'm sorry for that as well.


The only thing I've heard about 'round the IU campus is sorority related.  I am not in a sorority.  I never want to be in a sorority.  I don't see their point, except to make it a little easier to get wasted.  Which is pretty easy anyway, especially around here. 

My room mate is in a sorority, as is everyone else in my dorm it seems.  And I sit here, on the internet, forever alone like a 4chan meme.  I hear about the formal that my room mate's house is having,  I hear our neighbors gossiping about their awesome parties and their legion of sun-tanned sorority sisters.

I know I've made this point before, but I want to outline it again, in case it wasn't clear enough the first time: my room mate has conversations about drinking and parties; my friend and I walked around one of the Halls on campus looking at exhibits of taxidermied amphibians and birds. My idea of a cool night out involves going to the art museum or watching reruns of Doctor Who on Netflix.  Sororities do not concern me so much.

The other thing going around is religion.  My parents did not make us go to church.  The first time I remember attending one was around fourth grade, with a friend of mine.  So, when rumors fly around about Religious Anything I tend to ignore them.  However, when I heard that there was going to be a talk called "Jesus and the end of Religion" I decided to see what it was about, hoping for a legitimate talk about how religion could change.  I had hoped for a talk about what religious people thought was wrong with religion and how they thought it could be improved.  I will not deny it, I think there are some things wrong with religion, but I also believe that with some help things could get better.  They did none of these things, however.  Without going into detail, I will tell you that I was uncomfortable and angry the entire way through the seminar, and I now owe my friend my soul for making her attend the horrible thing in the first place.

So I say again, there is nothing going on around campus that is worth my time.  So instead I did this.

'Our Fun' and 'Their Fun'

Today, for what I believe is the first time, I realized the major difference between my roommate's idea of hanging out and my idea of hanging out.

It's Friday. A good day, Friday. The end of the week, the first time I can actually stay up past midnight.  The bad part about Friday is that my first class is at eight in the morning. I wake up at seven so I can make my leisurely way to class, my roommate is still asleep, and I tiptoe around as best I can.  Her first class is at eleven, so she can stay up till way past my bed time at one frat house or another.

One other good part about Friday: I'm meeting a friend for lunch.  And she has promised to show me something cool.  A TARDIS graffitied on the side of Ballantine Hall, one of the biggest buildings on campus.  We meet finally and she shows me this beautiful thing.

BELIEVE

We go to Subway, where we talk about how time is nonlinear, how the whole concept is merely human invention, how you can remember things that haven't even happened to you yet.  High-class information, here.

When we leave, we continue to talk, and our conversation soon turns towards vampires. Not like Twilight, don't worry.  Instead we speak about the many creation theories of Dracula.  She believes it was the influence of an other-dimensiony particle, and I say it is a genetic mutation.  Eventually I have to go back to class, where two more of my friends and I talk for twenty minutes about the advantages of knowing a second language (one of them knows three and is working on her fourth)and the discrepancy of hand gestures around the world. 

Eventually class is over and my friend and I go back to my dorm- to do something cool, I know that's what you're thinking.  What did we do, you ask?  We played sheet music, her on violin and me on piano.  Her song is this lovely piece, Czardas:

And mine, the beautiful Raindrop Prelude:

(It gets really good in the middle) 

This is what my friends and I do.  For fun. BAM! Done before six P.M. 

My roommate does this:
On Thursday, goes out to party, coming back at one or two in the morning.
Turns disapprovingly towards the wall when I rise at seven.
Leaves as soon as I come in at 6:30 to START partying.  
Will not return till two, three maybe (it IS Friday night, after all).


I feel like a WINNER.

Ah, college.

My Physics discussion leader has a hat like Indiana Jones.

my Physics professor is female.

My Math teacher is German.

My Piano teacher is Russian.

My Japanese sensei is, well, Japanese.

One of my friends is Chilean/German/Italian.

I can eat almost any kind of ethnic food I could ever want, at any time of the day.

I can go to the museum that is ten minutes away (seven if I walk fast).

I can see a show at one of the three or four auditoriums ON CAMPUS.  That's not counting the ones 'round Kirkwood.

If I had my druthers (and it wasn't snowing) I could sit by the wall of the art museum and stare as colors are painted across it by a lit totem.

It's pretty sweet.

The transition.

Yesterday for breakfast I had a Super Omelet.  Two eggs, some onion fried up in olive oil, tasty mystery herb from the bottom drawer of our fridge, three kinds of cheese, and some tomatoes with jalapenos.  To add to the awesome I had biscuits. Good biscuits, too.  Then I packed up my stuff for a leisurely drive up to Bloomington.  All was well.

Today for breakfast I had a choice between granola bars, pop tarts, or microwaveable oatmeal.  There is something wrong here.

I could have gone to the food court, but it was closed. My room mate said it would open today, though. 

I did not eat breakfast.  I was too sad.  So instead I decided to search out my classes.  I never like to be late, no matter what I happen to be doing, and especially not to my first day of classes.  There's a certain amount of embarrassment in that that I cannot deal with.  So I walked around till noon, finding buildings with names like Swain West.

I walked back to my room, barely able to feel my various appendages.  I walked to the front doors of my building carefully, since it seemed that a bunch of birds decided to have a Seed-eaters Anonymous meeting last night and they forgot to bring Port-o-Potties, or whatever those are actually called.

By the time I got there, successfully avoiding the bodily emissions, I was starving.  I thought to myself, "Surely the food court will be open, it's already noon!"

The food court, even the C-Store downstairs, did not open till three in the afternoon, I was told by a convenient sign taped to the doors.  I stared at the sign dejectedly before heading back to my room.

For lunch I ate soup.  Microwaved soup.  For dinner I will probably eat microwaved mac and cheese.  If I didn't think it would be too awkward I'd bring my own bag of potatoes, and if it wasn't against the rules I'd bring a crock pot.  But it is awkward and it is against the rules.

I would have gone to Kirkwood for lunch, but few of my friends are here, the ones that are are busy, and the ones that aren't busy live on the other side of campus or up a gigantic hill and have decided to be secluded today.

But classes start tomorrow and I have a lunch date with some friends.  So I'm not bitter.

This is real life, y'all

I am poised in front of the TV, shaking out my arms to loosen up.  Three of my friends stand beside me doing the same.  My brother is sitting in the chair, refusing to participate.

The four of us are staring intently at the screen, waiting for the little woman to begin dancing.  Our Wii remotes are grasped firmly in our hands.  The tension rises, like this is America's Got Talent and not my living room.  Suddenly, the beat to Le Freak by Chic begins and we start to flail around wildly, attempting to please the little animated dancer.  About thirty seconds in, I am convinced that the dancer is possessed.




We were not nearly this cool.


As the song ends and I finish in a spectacular fourth out of four, my brother hops up and chooses a classic, Louie Louie, as performed by Iggy Pop.  About halfway through he gives up, and slowly the rest of us die off as well.  Lame and gasping for breath, we decide that perhaps we should karaoke instead.  It uses less energy.

We threw Beatles Rock Band into the Wii and By the end of the night all five of us were screaming nigh incomprehensibly into the two microphones and my brother had transformed into George Thorogood for some reason.



We weren't nearly this cool either.


It was a good day.