Monthly Archive for August, 2003

Got to campus on a Friday, it was empty and boring. I did a few things. My Grad was terribly hot and stuffy and I couldn’t stand it, so I slept on the floor of the Student Union office. Monday there were suddenly a few people about, and I went into Web Services, saw Dave, etc. It was nice. Train to NY Tuesday, hung with Adam Wednesday, but complications with my car that are too boring to get into but deal mainly with interstate registration meant that I didn’t get to drive it back. Two weeks later and I still don’t have it, and now I’ve pretty much forgotten about it. Eh, who needs a car. Might as well cancel the whole thing. (Depressed? A little, we’ll get to that).

Drove back with Adam, having done nothing useful in NY besides see him. Didn’t meet up with Matt, didn’t go rafting, didn’t eat at Garden Catering. Oh well.

Back on campus. Switch from one housing to another. Moved all of Peter’s things, turns out we got the wrong rooms (i.e. ones with stuff in them). Went back to ResLife and got new keys, AGAIN wrong (I got the same room!). Grr. Eventually got everything worked out. Rooms are hot and musty and underground, with tiny windows with no screens, so we can’t open them, and bugs everywhere. Great. Yeah, Shapiro basement, very nice.

I move into the Village. It’s big, it’s empty, Adam is living there, as are 10 RAs and the quad director. So I just move in. It’s great. It’s amazing, clean, pretty, clean, colorful, clean, new and high-tech and nice. I’m there for a few days, I do various things (Web Services, Student Union, hang out). I get kicked out. Lori Tensor, who is in charge of such things, is furious with me, but eventually gets over it. The next day Josh Brandfon moves into the Village (legally). A few days later, so do five orientation leaders. A few days later, so do some more early arrivals, and some transfer students. And then I hear that there are a whole bunch of people squatting in the Village, but I’m in Shapiro basement.

I actually spend a night in Shapiro basement instead of the office. I go to sleep having been healthy for quite a while, but wake up the next morning very sick. I’m still sick. I don’t like being sick. I don’t like Shapiro basement. I want to be in my fucking dorm. I don’t want to move and move and move again, and not get to unpack, and not get to get things out of storage, and to have to live out of the same suitcase, and shower in dirty, icky showers, and deal with freshman move-in, which is what we did today.

Oh, and my phone didn’t work. I’m not in the system, it seems. I don’t get a phone. Finally got it all resolved today, and now I have a number, but I didn’t get voicemail. Eventually got voicemail, but the phone just keeps ringing and ringing, doesn’t actually transfer to voicemail. Wonderful.

What else? Trying to figure out how my Secretary budget makes any sense, and it doesn’t seem to. Talking with Igor about things, trying to get him to stop thinking exclusively about the Justice and branch out. Met Aaron Braver (from Walnut), yay! Used NetFlix to it’s full potential to watch about 12 episodes of Angel and really like them. Being constantly tired and sick and wanting to get better, and not sure if sleeping in this damn basement is helping things. Forgetting about my car, maybe when it comes I’ll be all happy and suprised.

Enjoying the absolutly beautiful weather. Wishing I had my camera, but realizing that it’s somewhere in Adam’s car (or room). Wanting to setup my speakers so I can have some music, since music is beautiful and wonderful and important, but my speakers are in storage.

Boy was I happy to be coming back to Brandeis. Boy do I like Brandeis. But boy have the last few weeks sucked.

But oh wait, I’ve been hanging out with Adam a lot, going off campus and such. And that has been very nice. And I went bowling the other night with Dave Stromes and Amy and Adam Batkin (now SuperJew) and this guy named Evan, and that was nice. So no, I’m not terribly depressed and angry and hating it, not at all. I just don’t like being sick and I don’t like being jerked around with housing. I want to settle. And maybe on Tuesday, move-in day, I will be able to, and maybe by then I’ll be healthy again, and maybe we can start over, and start off this year right.

I’ve been using a web browser called Safari for a few months now, it seemed like I should probably set up some bookmarks. I was looking through my old bookmarks and was trying to figure out what to keep. Hmm…Leah has a blog, I wonder if I should keep this link *clickity* oh, so she’s moved to another blog *clickity click* hmm, let’s see what she’s written lately:

I was brushing my teeth, and I somehow got distracted. Suddenly, I found myself brushing my nose. Boy, am I pathetic.

Yeah, I’ll put her in my bookmarks.

I’ve kept quiet because otherwise I know I’ll mention my living situation and then…eep! Stopping right now. More info on that at a later date.

So, let’s see. I’m finding new TV shows to watch, which is either good or bad, depending on what you think of my work ethic. Okay, so it’s completely bad. Oh well. Ordered a nifty TiVo ethernet card, so I’m gonna need to crack old TiVo open, install the thing, load up some software, register the MAC address, etc., etc., and then Nessus, our network security scanner, is gonna have a heart attack because I’m running telnet (telnet!) and who knows if SSH can even compile on that box. But yeah, TiVo does run Linux, which is why all of this is possible.

Adam and I went by the storage place, so I got some sheets. That was useful, since I managed to leave one of my other sheets behind in Grad and thus lost it… Sorry mom!

New computers haven’t arrived yet, or rather they are stuck in the Epstein stock room and Ray the Receiver won’t deliver them until Tuesday, mostly because he insists on being the only person in the entire school who is still using the old phone system, and thus it took me several days before I realized that he is, in fact, reachable, just not using the same phones that the entire rest of the school uses.

Speaking of phones, our network switching gear was having some problems whereby something like 30% or more of all incoming calls would not go through, and sometimes voice mail wouldn’t work…but students couldn’t be told, thanks to some new communication policies.

Hmm…what else. I’m working for Dave but not getting paid, I’m eating at Cappy’s a lot because there is very little on-campus food, and I got to hang out with Adam and Yanna, the über-cool playa (her word) from Detroit who has issues with handling credit cards.

That’s about it. In a few days maybe I can talk about the coolness that is the Village. I think its about the absolute best place you could possibly live on campus, so that makes me very happy.

Just watched the DVD of State and Main. It made me constantly laugh, so I liked it. It was light and uplifiting and that’s what I needed at that point. It wasn’t deep, but hey, choose two, right? Even cooler: the movie, set in a small Vermont town, was filmed in Massachussettes, mostly in Manchester-by-the-Sea, but also a bit in Dedham, and, my favorite, Waltham. Yippee!

On the plane I watched an episode of Angel and there was a random shout-out to a Brandeis professor. And while said professor doesn’t exist (and trust me, I checked), the fact that they mentioned my school gives me another buzz. Wow, I’d be on a constant high if I went some place like Harvard…

Just finished packing, and I found a card on my desk for one Robin Eisenberg, the guy who showed us Subarus at a local dealership. This guy is the nicest salesman in the world and I felt really terrible leaving after my test drive knowing that I would be buying the car in New York. If you are in the Southern California area and are looking at good ole Subbies, please do yourself a favor and call up Robin Eisenberg at (714) 689-2103 Ext. 3701. He works at South Coast Subaru, located at 2925-A Harbor Boulevard, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.