October 2010 Archives

Sunday
It's funny to read this and recall that I actually thought not leaving the dorm all day was sort of a good thing. It's obvious to me now, looking back, that I was depressed.

Secret writing:

Melissa is a very rare human being. And, (and after saying so I feel stupid saying this) she's a lot like I used to be. She's unsure of what she wants, is afraid of being categorized, and doesn't communicate her feelings very well. I feel blessed to have someone like her praying for me. I can't wait to see her on Friday.

Yeah...

So yeah, Melissa was coming to visit the following weekend with her dad, and I was really excited about it. And the praying comment is another indication of how depressed I was. Religion was one of the things we weren't in complete agreement on. I respected her faith, even admired it, but I didn't share it.

Monday
Peter still doesn't like change, but he no longer has to unless he wants to.

Friday
Yeah, even in college, 9:30 is pretty early to be passed out drunk.

The little note in green is interesting -- at that point, I had never (to my recollection) dreamed of flying. I know I've done it once or twice sinse then, but it's still very rare for me. On the other hand, I dream regularly of exploring some random house -- someplace familiar to me but not a house I recognize from real life. Sometimes there are other people there, sometimes I'm alone. Sometimes it's someone else's house, sometimes it's "mine." I find this fascinating.

Saturday
I made it to this game. Penn State was brand new to the Big Ten in '93, and this was the first time the Buckeyes played them. The game was pretty one-sided, and the Buckeyes stayed undefeated as a result.

Wednesday
Another fluorescent orange sticker.

Imagination --> Form --> Function --> Use -- That's the expanded view of "form follows function."

Thursday
It's funny to think that my philosophy prof thought we weren't arrogant enough. I suppose it makes sense, you have to show conviction in philosophy -- but what honors college student isn't arrogant?

Remember back in February I mentioned my plans for a coffee shop called Java Trench? I continued to think about it off and on, idly sketching and musing about little details. Here's the logo I worked up after many sketches. I still really like it.

Some fun quotes all over this page.

Monday
It's hard to imagine now, but letters were the prime means of written communication back in 1993. Email was really new -- not every one of my friends had email at their schools yet, let alone at home -- so you had to write it out on paper. Or call, obviously.

Tuesday
Ah, my LCIII. The second of a trio of doomed computers. The first was my previous computer, a Laser 128, which was an Apple II clone, made in the first brief period of Apple clones. The LCIII was a dead-end branch of the Apple tree -- I got it just a couple months before the Power PC chip made its debut, and it turned out that it was one of only two models that couldn't be upgraded to the new chipset. But it was the most computer I could afford at the time, so that's what I got.

The third doomed computer was one I bought my senior year -- a UMAXX S900, another clone from the even briefer period in '96 just before Steve Jobs returned to Apple and killed the licensing program. It was the most powerful Mac on the market when I bought it, and it cost $6,000 with a Radius rotating monitor and Photoshop. I took out a loan from my bank to buy it. It's funny to see that $1744.62 price tag for the LCIII and all the rest -- that's not far from what you'd pay for a midrange macbook now. I can't imagine paying six grand for a computer today.

(That big sticker is actually fluorescent orange -- stupid scanner.)

Saturday
I went out to my uncle's for Halloween, which was probably a mistake. I didn't know anyone, so it was pretty boring and lonely for me. But I'd told him I'd attend, so I did. At least we had a "good talk" afterward.

Sunday
Probably a quote from some homework or other. No idea the author or the context.

Thursday
Wow, packed page, conveniently divided into the thirds.

We learned in our intro to philosophy class that the early Christians grew their numbers by indoctrinating Roman housewives. There were books written in ancient Rome about how to deprogram your wife or other relative if they'd been brainwashed by Christianity.

In the middle are notes for my English professor. After a month of frustration, I took action and met with him to discuss ways to make the class go better. I wish I knew what I was supposed to find out about.

And at the bottom, one of my favorite stories from freshman year: walking home late at night through a mostly deserted campus, and seeing someone struggle to his feet in the bushes behind the student athletic center.

Friday
I no longer have recurring dreams about a pipe, but it sort of makes sense that I had them then. I took up smoking a pipe when I went off to college -- I took one that my dad had been given in a failed effort to get him to quit cigarettes -- and I was really keen on the idea of carving my own. I don't recall if I ever looked up what pipes symbolize in dreams, if anything.

Tuesday
Grrr! indeed. Colds suck. And sleeping on and off all day unsurprisingly results in not being able to sleep at night.

Most of the notes on this page are from The Portable Curmudgeon, a quote book I stole from my dad. It's full of sarcastic, withering, cynical, and generally negative quotes from a variety of sources. It's fun to flip through, whether you're in a bad mood or not.

Wednesday
Soumyaa was a really sweet, earnest girl in theater at BHS. She was a bit of an airhead, though, and got teased a lot for it. She knew that most of it was good-humored ribbing, though, as evidenced by her birthday note here. "Bonding, bondage, same difference" was her reply when a friend and I corrected her when she said something was a "bondage experience." Hilarity ensued.

"Jesus with an Oedipal complex" -- my, how provocative. I'm so deep and edgy.

I was up all night tonight, too, nearly staying up for two full days. Not cool, and not good for my spirits.

Sunday
"Sancta Simplicitas," sacred simplicity -- something from my philosophy class, I think.

Monday
Box of Trees was a cartoon that ran in the school newspaper, The Lantern, for at least a couple of my college years. I was very pro-designated driver back then (still am), and this strip really appealed to me.

As I said here, Brandon's first letter to me at school was a great respite from a lousy day. He set a precedent for length with this first one -- 16 pages was extra long, but not outside the realm of the usual for him. It was an inside joke between us to measure his letters as novels, novellas or pamphlets.

The David Rice and Luka bloom tapes were an added bonus. I had introduced him to Luka Bloom (as Kate H. had introduced me), and he had come across his second US album and taped it for me. David Rice was someone his friends at KCAI introduced him to. That first album, "Orange Number 8," went into heavy rotation on my stereo that year. I still play it on occasion.

Friday
I went to see Joy Luck Club as part of an assignment for English; Molly, who was a local, drove me and a couple of our classmates to a theater on the north side to see it. I really enjoyed the movie, and it affected me strongly at the time -- I'm a sucker for sappy movies -- but I found that its emotional depth didn't stick with me over time. I wrote my essay on that fade, and my prof wasn't enthused. I think if I'd gone farther with it, I might have done OK, but I didn't have time to get deep.

I'm sure Chris and I didn't just hang out in his room when we got back to his dorm. His was the dorm I really wanted, and I liked practically everybody I met there.

Saturday
I made sure to make it to the homecoming game. Even if you're not much of a sports fan, there's nothing like being in the middle of a packed stadium like that. The Buckeyes played well, and I imagine I went out to the bars or something to celebrate.

Wednesday
The religious stuff here was probably from my Philosophy class, but also possibly from my Faust class. Hard to remember.

My sleep schedule got so screwed up that I began having a lot trouble falling asleep at a normal hour. Today, it caught up to me, and I got to bed early. After less than two hours, Sin and our friend Tim accidentally woke me up, and I was so disoriented by the lack of windows that I thought it was morning.

By this point in the quarter, I was already so unhappy in the Stadium Dorm that I was ready to transfer to a new dorm, and even to a new school.

Thursday
Great E.M. Forster quote.

Monday
I guess we shot pool somewhere.

Tuesday
I went to a Connells show at the Newport tonight with my friend Amy. I didn't know much about the Connells, but I liked one of their songs and Amy was excited to go, so I got a ticket. The show was good enough that I bought a t-shirt -- but I never got any deeper into the band. Which was much like my friendship with Amy -- we liked each other, but never got much deeper than going to this concert.

Saturday
Twelve hours seems like a fair amount of sleep if you were up for 36 or so. And if you get up that late, it's natural that you'd go to bed at 4-something.

I don't really remember helping Tom specifically with countertops, but I do remember his workshop, which took up the entire three-car garage. It housed not only his woodworking tools but also his computer stuff. I just barely remember the guillotine -- the blade was sharp enough to slice a watermelon, and the release mechanism gave us some trouble.

Sunday
Sin and I decided after awhile to rearrange the room a bit, and lo and behold, there was my wallet. I had thrown it on my desk when I got home -- but it slid off and wedged behind one of the legs of the bunk bed, just out of sight until we moved the bed. So frustrating.

Thursday
Poor Steve. Couldn't tell a joke.

Steve was one of my closer friends from the dorm. He was a music major -- I want to say he played guitar. And Jenny was a girl from one of the other floors who Steve sort of liked and I thought was pretty cool. She claimed to be a wiccan -- a good witch, she'd say to people who were confused -- and had a calm demeanor and worldly attitude, despite never being further from home than she was at school.

I had an early morning shift in the cafeteria so I decided to stay up all night, and Steve and Jenny decided to join me. We hung out on the floor in my room and talked, played the question game and teased Steve about his (mostly nonexistent) love life, while a rotating cast of characters joined in.

At one point, Steve was whining that he didn't know when it was alright to kiss a girl, and I told him if he wasn't sure, he should ask. He was incredulous, so I asked Jenny if I could kiss her, she said "Sure," and we kissed. Steve was floored.

A some point Sin probably came in and went to bed, even as we continued on. Sin was somehow able to sleep through basically anything. He didn't care if the lights were on or if people were in the room. He'd just climb onto his bunk (he was on the top bunk) and almost instantly fall asleep. Usually with his eyes slightly open. It was a little creepy.

Friday
I made my first, I think, visit to my Uncle Tom's house tonight, to do laundry and hang out. He and his wife, Katrina (they weren't actually married, but were commonlaw) had an au pere to help take care of their son, Topher, who was both hyperactive and had a skin condition sort of like psoriasis. Katrina was a physician and Tom was nocturnal, so having an au pere to help with Topher was a must for them.

Somehow, despite being up overnight and only really eating breakfast, I managed to be up until 1:30am.

Tuesday
After my frustrating English class on Monday, I decided to meet with my professor during office hours the next day. I voiced my frustrations, and was pleased to find Livingston open to my complaints. It was his first quarter as a professor, and he was as new at OSU as I was. I came away hopeful.

Wednesday
Try as I might, I can't make out what's been blacked out on this page.

Sunday
After searching my room for my wallet (I could swear I tossed it on my desk when I got home) I retraced my steps back to the frat house. No dice, so I called my parents and they canceled my credit card.

I didn't write much about it, but I was definitely having trouble adjusting to college life. I think the Stadium Dorm contributed quite a bit to that. The lack of windows meant it was very easy to lose track of time -- you never knew if it was day or night, what the weather was, whether you were missing class or even a football game. It took a toll on students, who often would become depressed or just stop going to class or even leaving the dorm except to hit the bars on the weekends. My sleep patterns became very erratic and I was definitely teetering on the edge of depression, and the general bizarreness of dorm life didn't help.

Thinking back on it, it's awful that the Stadium was a scholarship dorm. Many of the students there were there on more than one scholarship, and a lot of them were there on a state program to help students from the extremely poor Appalachian region of Ohio attend school. Many of my floormates wouldn't have gone to school if not for it, and here they were in a situation that encouraged disengagement. A couple of my floormates didn't make it past their first quarter, and I bet a healthy portion of them didn't get past their first year. The dorm can take some of the blame for that. Fortunately, the dorm no longer exists -- the Stadium Scholars program is now housed in new dorms on 10th Avenue.

Monday
Oy, didn't go to math class again -- no wonder I ended up failing. You could tell which classes I was most interested in my first quarter by my grades: A, B, C, F.

My English class was the A. I enjoyed the class, but I grew frustrated with my prof. He said early on that he wanted it to be a discussion-oriented class, but then he frequently forcibly guided the conversation rather than letting it grow organically. This particular day, he kept me from finishing my thoughts, which was particularly annoying. After having such amazing English classes in high school -- enrollment in English was 150 percent the minimum requirement for graduation, indicating how good a department it was (arts enrollment was 300 percent, FWIW) -- I was disappointed to have a class that didn't meet those high standards. I resolved to do something about it.

Friday
I think Mike and I learned about International Sake Day (which really is October 1) from the Sysco calendar that hung in Baloney's. Not sure why we decided it was Hot Sake Day, but I'm going to guess that it was because it's fun to say "hot sake!" in an urgent voice. I don't think either of us had ever had sake, but I got to try some that night ...somewhere. I think at Brooke's house.

Brooke was a sophomore who was friends with someone I was hanging out with that night. We all went to see my cousin's band, and at least a couple people managed to get a little to drink. Brooke might have had more than others, or might have just had a low tolerance -- I don't think I ever hung out with her again after that night -- but at any rate, she was silly drunk as she took us up to her apartment near the northeast corner of campus.

I was really annoyed by the situation -- being sober and dealing with obnoxious drunks is rarely fun. But I got to know Chris, one of my friends from the Faust class, better, and I met Eric for the first time. He'd later become my roommate when I moved out of the Stadium Dorm (spoiler!). Shannon was also a future roommate, though I had no inkling of that at the time.

It's funny seeing that I called Neesham at 3am to bitch about the evening. When outside of college is that acceptable behavior? (I knew she'd be awake, both because it was Friday night and because she was as much a night owl as I was.)

Saturday
Going to bed at 5am meant I got up at 4pm. I managed to miss the OSU-Northwestern game entirely. This always amazes people -- how I could sleep through a football game with 90,000 fans cheering in the stadium above and to my side. Well, think about it: Ohio Stadium was built in the 1920s, almost entirely out of concrete. To support all that weight, the walls are several feet thick. The only thing I could hear during a game was a whisper of the roar of the crowds and the very highest notes of the band during halftime.

I felt bad missing a game. My parents bought me tickets, and thanks to the priority given to freshmen, I had awesome seats -- three or four rows back, near the 50 yard line.

I imagine my parents' and Melissa's reaction of "what's wrong?" was due to my grogginess after waking up so late.

The frat party was weird. Dane was a senior in architecture who lived on my floor to save money -- he was hardly ever home anyway, spending most of his time in the studio. He bought me a bottle of Popov vodka -- cheap swill, but I wasn't much of a drinker so I didn't know, and I didn't have much cash anyway -- and I drank almost the entire bottle at the party, which was in the basement of the frat house and was vaguely caveman themed. At some point I realized I was done, and left without my friends, stumbling across campus and possibly puking on the way. I definitely puked when I got to the dorm, and when I woke up I couldn't find my wallet. Crap.