Monday, March 29, 2004
Well, my internet is apparently borked, so I’m writing this in Word and will hopefully be able to upload it sometime soon. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it… “The domain name server lookup for the specified host has failed. The host is unknown.” It sounds like my IP address has changed or something, but that can’t be right. I didn’t even do anything… I was dicking around on Mirlyn (the UMich library search engine), and suddenly it kicked me off and announced that the server was inaccessible. I’ve no idea.
Egads, and I just realized my iTunes isn’t sharing… that’s a really bad sign. I had better have freaking wireless tomorrow.
Anyways, it’s been relatively eventful, for a weekend during which I planned to do nothing but work. On Friday night I was going to stay in and work the entire time, but the Jaded Reason was playing at the Michigan Union, so I went with Leslie, Sara, Matt, and Leslie’s friend Melissa to see them play.
They were excellent live, as usual. They played all their customary songs, plus a few I hadn’t heard before… two covers and one new original. They usually don’t play any covers, so it was interesting. They did a Queen medley which was freaking awesome, and something that they claimed was by Weezer… I wouldn’t know, but people were singing along, so presumably it was a known song. Dustin was flailing around with his bass like anything, and after every song they had to stop and find his glasses somewhere on the floor. Derek’s little brother was in attendence, with a group of his friends, and whenever Derek started to ‘rock’ his little brother and friends would start jumping up and down and semi-moshing. It was pretty hilarious.
Saturday I managed to resist all urges to leave the room (it was hideously nice out) and did work. Not as much work as I had planned on, admittedly, but I got some bio research done, some preliminary research for english, and some code tweaking for the website (including a hit counter on the homepage, so if everyone could visit and drive up my hits that would be just lovely). I ended up sleeping in a lot later than anticipated, and I spent probably far too much time on b3ta and 4rthur. Bah. But Supermoore is attempting to write a comic book, and I might end up illustrating it, which would be pretty cool, if it happens. Intercontinental collaboration, woo yay!
Today [edit: Sunday, that is] I had to do a multi-library run. I needed some more sound effects for my CFC final (that goddamn installation… I’m supposed to recreate the sense of the Michigan football stadium somewhere in the art school. It’s going horribly), and my professor had said that the Ann Arbor District Library had a great sound effects collection.
Unfortunately, I didn’t really know where it was. I had general directions, but no sense of how close to or far from campus it was, so I didn’t know how far down the roads I needed to go. I found it eventually… it’s pretty far down, almost all the way to Main Street and downtown Ann Arbor, so I kept thinking that I had gone way too far and must be on the wrong road. Thankfully it was a nice, relatively warm day... not a walk I'd fancy in bad weather.
Once I’d found it I asked a librarian and was pointed to the sound effects ‘collection’, which was actually just a section of 20 cds or so smooshed in with the classical cds. It also transpired that the entire sound effects collection was from the BBC, about 20 years ago. Fine if you want a CD of sound effects from the Czech Republic (which they had), but when she recommended this my teacher had clearly forgotten that they don’t play football in England. At least, not the kind of football whose sound effects I need for my project. And they had some crowd noise effects, sure, but they were all of crowds in function halls or classrooms, which is a very different sound from a crowd in an open-air stadium. Sigh.
Walking back I passed an otherwise completely normal-looking kid in a fantastically ridiculous black Stetson hat. As we passed he nodded to me and said, quite cheerfully, “Have a good day!” I was startled, but managed to reply, “You too,” with an air of vaguely confused geniality. He then smiled and said, “Nice hair, by the way,” to which I gave my usual, “Ah, thanks.” Very odd. I suppose he was just a friendly kid, but this sort of thing doesn’t happen in these days an’ times. Who knows, maybe he was one of those weird, amiable southerners one hears about.
I was also attacked by a fellow art student on the way back. I was walking along, minding my own business, which suddenly someone jumped on me from behind, getting me absolutely covered in the plaster dust which covered him. The bastard. I naturally began to swear loudly (Aarrgh! What the fuck are you doing?!?). This, plus the white plaster dust flying about, attracted quite a lot of attention in the street. Paul, you utter bastard. That is all.
I then had to penetrate the depths of the UGLi (Undergraduate Library, called the UGLi because that’s the abbreviation, and also because the building is monstrous). It wasn’t too bad, though, because while my internet had vanished before I could get a good list of books, I’d gotten the general call number area for Mozart books, so I was able to go there and find pertinent material with relative ease.
At that point I didn’t particularly feel like going back to the dorm, since I’d spent all of Saturday cloistered in there. So I went to Starbucks to have lovely coffee and do work. I was there for a couple of hours and actually got tons of work done, much more than I do most other places. Plus, you know, the coffee was good. Eh, I don’t care what people preach about the evils of corporate America, I still say that Starbucks is freaking great.
Around 6:30 I returned to the dorm, looking forward to a meal of microwave noodles and some more work getting done. But Leslie and Raquel came over and asked if I wanted to go out for Chinese food with them, so I did. We went to this place on South U that was quite good… I hadn’t had any Chinese food on campus all year, if you can believe it. Insanity.
After that we were walking by the Bubble Tea place, which is sort of a big deal on campus, but which none of us had ever gone to. The place was absolutely packed. Being the adventurous lasses that we are, we decided to go in and get Bubble Tea. I got something called a Snow Bubble, in almond (which I pronounced the correct way, ah-mond. None of this silly ‘L’ business). It’s pretty good… the almond is subtle but definitely present, it’s pretty refreshing, and the little jelly-like ‘bubbles’ are quite nice.
Although I now realize it’s probably got caffeine in it. This, plus the large coffee beverage I consumed earlier, is not going to make sleep tonight easy. Merde.
I have downloaded the whole of Mozart’s Requiem (from the iTunes store! Sheesh. I don’t do this ‘stealing music’ bit, not when it’s available from iTunes). It is obscenely good and I’ve been listening to it lots. I don’t like his little lighthearted bits… I’m all about the majestic pieces. Which is why I went with the Requiem. Even though, you know, he didn't write all of it... still good stuff.
What’s startling is that I’ve never really listened to classical music before. But this is terrifically good… I feel that I’ve been missing out and someone’s been keeping this music from me or somesuch. I only was prompted to get this after watching Amadeus for english class (an unbelievably good movie, you all need to see it right this very instant). First time a movie has made me have to go out and get music.
I should really go take some more notes on those books. I really hope my internet is working on the morrow… if it isn’t I’ll still try to upload this, either in the art school or Angell hall where there’s wireless access, or else I’ll try to access my desktop on a different computer in Angell hall and get it up that way (there’s a way to do it). Maybe I can get out of CFC for a bit to harass techie folk in the art school.
OK. Research time for me.
edit: Internet connection update. Wireless works, which is what I'm going to be using to post this. I'm in CFC right now and we get very good service up here. I went down and asked Andre the Much-Harassed Art and Design Tech Guy. He is our one and only refuge against complete technological anarchy up here. Every day we must pathetically plead for his services in art lecture, as the projector and/or computer conspires wickedly against us. Anyways, he was very nice and helpful. Turns out that it's either my room connection that's shot or the cable itself. We're going to hope it's the cable, because cat knows that would be easier to fix. I'll go back to the dorm and try to hook in using someone else's cable... if that doesn't work I have a magical number to call and I can whine at them until it gets fixed.
Wish me luck.
1:15 PM
|
|
