Blah. It’s been storming and the air has that post front passage chill in the air.

I went out in Dogtown last night to celebrate the end of my first week of school, which is going great. I ran into Julie, who I used to bowl with when we were on the league at The Saratoga. She says hi. After bowling we sometimes would go to a local dive to get sliders. A slider plate is your typical breakfast sausage-egg-toast and hash browns platter, which is then covered with a liberal helping of chili so that you can’t see anything but chili. I went there last night on a nostalgic impulse. I ate. I have been regretting that decision all day. I think I have the exercise thing happening regularly, now we need to work on diet. My occasional White Castle/slider impulse is killing me.

I was on campus early this morning for a T.B. test and then I’ve been cleaning and kicking around all day, getting ready for the party and the guests tomorrow. My interview for the online teaching position was moved to Tuesday to accommodate one of my potential bosses, so that remains up in the air.

I’m in this weird position of having been rapidly accepted to the summer program with overrides such that my financial aid for the summer won’t be available until I am reaccepted for the fall. Hopefully that will happen this week. It’ll be next week at the latest. My GPA and GRE numbers are such that there is no doubt that this will go through, and I’m already in the program taking classes, it’s just a question of bureaucratic timing.

I have lots of experience working these things so I went up the food chain and got a dean involved yesterday to try and speed up the process. It is beyond frustrating to make the decision to go another 10 K in the hole and not be able to access those funds. She said, “Yeah, I’m calling in favors for several people in the summer session, so what’s one more.” I am rolling other debts into low interest student loans, but for the time being I am living in the land of creative financing. My instructor put two copies of our course texts on reserve at the library (you were right Angela) so I took my books back today and paid my car insurance.

Do you want a dark secret? I think Boston may be my favorite band. I used to date a girl who felt that way about Journey. She had a Steve Perry fixation. More Than a Feeling is playing on the radio right now so I thought I might confess. It has something to do with being a kid and driving around with my brother Kris is his cherry red Montego GT that was jacked up in back and tricked out all over. Kris is a pilot now. He has a talent for machinery.


I went and saw Star Wars at the noon showing opening day. My only comment is that Lucas couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag. If Tom Stoppard tried to save the script, I think he got his check for being on hand to pronounce the time of death. The first forty minutes are interminable. From there on out it is watch-able as long as no one is talking, but it is not in the neighborhood of good.