Saturday, September 11, 2004
Well, Michigan lost to Notre Damn today, 28-20. Frell frell frell. I don't really want to think about it. The guys across the hall are currently replaying the game on their ESPN football video game. Judging from the vindictive shouts emanating from there, I would assume that, in their version, Michigan is winning rather spectacularly.
I watched the game in Shelby and Amanda's apartment, along with Beth, Katie, and Amanda's boyfriend Eric. Their apartment is really nice (although this could be, in part, because they're both so good at keeping it clean) and the location is amazing. They're right on the corner of State and Washington... literally two or three doors down from the State St. Theater. Le wow.
Also sending me into delighted shock was the fact that they had cooked food for everyone. Amanda made hotdogs, and baked beans (not out of a can), and corn bread, and homemade rice crispies treats. Shelby made a fancy and delicious dip for the chips. I was sitting there, partaking of this veritable feast, thinking to myself, "Man, I've been living off of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and microwave noodles. They have asparagus in the fridge!" Clearly I am not yet worthy of an actual kitchen.
Last night was madness in the form of a house party that inconveniently was not in Ann Arbor. It was fun, I got to catch up with some art school folk, and it was laid-back enough that I didn't begin to hate humanity (as is likely to happen at, say, a frat party). However, it meant getting driven all over creation and not getting back to the dorm until around 4 am. Cue tiredness. Cue lack of homework completion. It looks as though tonight and all of tomorrow are going to have to be given over to work, but that's what I get for having a good time on Friday night and footballing for most of today.
Classes continue to be tolerable, probably because it's early in the year. I fail to see why I have this much homework on the first weekend after classes began, though. Doesn't exactly bode well. My first bio lab is on Tuesday, and it's going to be either great or miserable. It could be great because it could be really interesting and fun. It could be miserable because I could have no idea what I'm doing, and I could get stuck with a horrible lab group. There's also the pleasant prospect of the dissections. I don't mind them in and of themselves, but our professor told us on Friday that we were all going to come out of labs stinking to high heaven, and that we might want to change around our social schedule so we don't have to see anyone for a while after a lab. Not something I wanted to hear. Especially since I have a class right after lab.
The art classes are fine. My CFC ('context form and content'... 20-person, 3-credit class that everyone has to take) teacher is making us take all our notes for the year on a giant roll of tracing paper, because 'regular paper constricts your thoughts, but a roll of paper encourages you to just keep going, keep thinking, keep creating!' At first I was highly dubious, but I have to admit it's a terrible lot of fun and I am now tempted to take notes for all my classes on rolls of tracing paper. It is a bit impractical (you have to unroll the whole thing to look through your notes), but the idea has its merits.
In ADP ('art design perspectives'-- everyone in the grade is in one big lecture) we're going to be doing readings and papers and things the whole way through, but we have one big project that's going to take us the entire semester. It's supposed to be a kind of digital photojournal thing, with the topics chosen at random by each student from a large pile of completely arbitrary subjects. I got 'light pollution'. This has the potential to be pretty good... I already know a little bit about the subject, and it makes for really interesting visuals. But it's going to be difficult to get good pictures for it. They're all going to have to be at night, pretty much, and capturing ambient light in the sky at night is tough. We'll see. Some people got 'litter', which is almost too easy, but then again other people got things like 'famous images in windows' or 'nature stores-- not hiking or camping supply stores', so I guess I can't complain.
Drawing looks like it's going to be awful. I have no need to learn how to draw sculptural schematics, nor do I particularly want to do so for 8 weeks. Thankfully this class switches over to Digital halfway through the semester, and we're learning Maya (a 3D program) in that, so I'm kind of excited about it.
Speaking of computers... I got up nice and early on Friday, because the art school tech guy, Andre, had announced in a mass email that he was going to have a Mac expert come in on Friday for a sort of 'computer office hours' event. As you may or may not recall, my computer had had a mental breakdown over the summer, freezing with frequency and causing me to resort to such drastic measures as reloading Panther. This, unfortunately, had done something unspeakable to my programs, essentially trashing their preferences and registrations, so that I couldn't use some of them (like GoLive or Acrobat) at all, and others could be used only incompletely (like Photoshop or Illustrator).
Anyways, I went up north, clutching my computer case tightly, hope in my heart and dread in my eyes. I was somewhat reassured by the sight of the Mac tech guy, who was very nice, very friendly, very knowledgeable, and incredibly cute. Cripes. Computer tech people are not supposed to be that cute. Or to wear black shirts with the Mac logo on that are really, really tight. But in a good way. A very good way. Ahem.
Andre was there as well, and between the two of them they decided that the thing to do would just be to get rid of all my old programs, and load in new ones, complete with proper registration and all. They also decided, since I was in anyways, to upgrade all my Adobe programs. So I now have the entire brand-spankin'-new Adobe Creative Suite, and I may assure you that it is quite spiffy. Everything works as smoothly as a Ravenclaw's charm, and you can take a moment to quietly suffer in jealousy right now.
Yesterday the Red Sox won, apparently... they weren't televising it here, so I couldn't see it. Sniffle. They were showing the Yankees game, so I watched that instead. Ah, a Yankees loss. Such a truly lovely thing. They're not televising any Red Sox games here until Friday, when the series against the Yankees starts. I think the Saturday game is on too, but it's unfortunately an afternoon game, and Michigan is home that day. Well. I love the Red Sox, and they're playing the Yankees, but given the choice between a Sox/Yanks game on TV and a Michigan football game in person... there's really no competition.
I will, however, be watching the Lions game tomorrow. It's in Chicago. C'mon, Lions. You can win this one! Start the year on a positive note! We all want to see your silver-clad asses in the Superbowl this year, so you'd better get working now. Harrington-- you have weapons now, use them! Bly-- intercept and make us proud! Rogers-- for cat's sake don't get hurt! Jeff Backus and James Hall-- you went to Michigan! Represent!
Yeah, I made a Joey Harrington desktop image. If you'd like to use it for your desktop, drop me a line at samcat@umich.edu for the full-sized image. Make sure you tell me what screen size you're using, since the one I have right now is made for a Mac at 1280x854, which I think is a screen size used by nothing else in the world. But it's easy to resize, so don't sweat it if you're on a PC or something.
A few days ago I was sitting in my room, innocently printing out the ridiculously long chapter one of my lab manual. My door, as is usual, was open. I heard a knock. Looking up from my computer, I was somewhat startled to see, at my door, a giant electric blue walrus with a rainbow top hat. The walrus waved genially, and informed me that there was a Battle of the Bands going on right as we spoke down at Palmer Field, and I really ought to go check it out. I smiled bemusedly, my brain still catching up with the facts, and thanked the walrus for letting me know. He said he would see me around and waddled off down the hall.
A few minutes after he went out of sight, my hallmate Nate came charging down the hall at top speed. I heard a loup thump, and then a yell of triumph.
"GUYS! I TACKLED THE WALRUS, I TACKLED THE WALRUS!"
I think I am starting to like Couzens Hall a little bit.
8:46 PM
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