Where’s It At?

Guess what I got today…? My laptop, yeah, baby! It’s sweet, despite the fact that it doesn’t have FireWire (grr). So I shall be hunting down a IEEE 1394 to USB converter or something. When I have money.

Right. So, the trip. I shall go blow-by-blow, including the few pictures I managed to take.

It’s 680 miles from my apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina to the hotel room we stayed in in Terre Haute, Indiana. Somehow, that took us thirteen hours. Yes, 13. I did, however, manage to put the camera in the friggin’ trunk and not remember to take it out until a couple of stops later, at which point we were already near Versailles, Kentucky (pronounced “Ver-sails”, like a sailing boat, not the French pronounciation. I swear.), so I missed a bunch of the beautiful pictures of the mountains of North Carolina.

Much of the trip kinda looked like this, which is just some place after Versailles, KY (which I only know because the number of the picture was later than that…):

One really spiffy picture I got was of a phenomenon that occurred several times, also in Kentucky:

We had to take entirely too many stops, for too long, and my mother even let my father drive, which is a definite no-no in my book. So I climbed in the back-seat, thinking it would be better to eat the back of the front seat in an accident than the dashboard. Needless to say, my parents didn’t find this sentiment amusing. He only drove the stretch from Indianapolis to Terre Haute, so that wasn’t so bad.

Ali slept about five minutes of the whole trip, and spent the remainder annoying the shit out of Dad (who sat in the back seat), which was slightly amusing. It would have been moreso if the mere sound of her voice wasn’t enough to drive me nuts.

So after 13 hours and 4 food, gas, and potty breaks, we arrived at our hotel. My bed (which I ended up having to share with Ali):

There was massive confusion on my part regarding the clocks. When we visited the weekend of April 4, Mom and I didn’t have to change our clocks. Now, however, the local clocks are an hour behind. Lo and behold, they don’t do Daylight Savings Time here, so technically, we’re running on Central Standard Time for the summer. During the winter, we’ll be on Eastern, which I find very cool. I remember my Liberterian U.S. History teacher ranting briefly about how useless Daylight Savings is now, and it sort of stuck in my head.

Anyway, a late morning trip around Terre Haute revealed that my previous thoughts about the place were mistaken. Compared to Dallas, Fort Worth, or even Charlotte, Terre Haute is small. It is not, however, podunk. I’ve lived in podunk (Decatur, Texas), and this ain’t it. Terre Haute definitely falls under large town or small city categories. I decided to take a couple pictures of the city hall, just ‘cuz I thought it was purdy:

Another building, possibly a bank or something (of which they have a bunch), has cool Roman-style lettering that I thought was worth a picture:

Right. So, eventually, I got to visit Rose, after the too-long breakfast, dropping off the too-sick Old Man, and ditching the too-annoying Rat. Actually, we were just really cruel and left her with the Old Man in the hotel room. Bru-ha-ha! Anyway, my roommate got to move in some of her stuff early, due to the fact that she was at Rose for a 5 week Calculus course over the summer. So, the following is my room before I moved in all my crap (which did indeed take up all empty space in the car):

Then I proceeded to move in and kill the nice emptiness:

Needless to say, I wanted to take a few books.

My roommate, who I’m going to go ahead and call Bridget, is very nice. She’s… social, though. Never seems to be around, so we haven’t had any deep meaningful talks about our childhood and what-not. In fact, I think I know more about the other girls on my floor than her. She’s nice, though.

All the girls on the floor of BSB3 are very cool and nice. BSB stands for Bauer-Sames-Bogart, and there are only girls on the third floor. So we represent, most definitely (or is that “mos def”?). Ha ha!

I feel very comfortable here, actually. Except for the shower situation. Grr on public showers. Particularly for those of us that are very, very, body conscious. Dressing in the shower stall is only cool if there’s no one waiting, you know? And although I have been getting up entirely too early (I’m proud that I’ve been working out, though), I’d like to sleep in a little on the one day I can, namely Wednesday (the schedule is coming, soon; I know you want it). But everyone’s nice, and they give me privacy, and let me be a home-body (dorm-body?). My Resident Assistant and Sophomore Advisors (these are two sophomores that reside in a freshman floor and assist with homework and the like, since, between the two, they’ve probably had most, if not all, of your classes; Rose-Hulman rocks) are very cool, although at times too cheerful and loud. They’re just trying to get everyone involved and having fun, though.

Apparently, this year there was a dearth of applications from girls, so there are, like, 460 guys and like, 65 girls among freshmen. I shit you not. I’m the only girl with a Comp Sci major, and there are only about 14 freshman CS majors anyway.

Friday night, after the move-in, there was a dance. A dance. Why the hell would a school put 500+ complete strangers, most of them male and all of them geeks, together in a room and expect them to dance, or even really socialize? Imagine my surprise when it sort of worked. The break-dancers (remember, these are the Dance Dance Revolution type of geeks) started off the shindig, then everyone else, myself included, got involved. All along, the SAs (sophomore advisors) were egging everyone on, dragging them out on the dance floor, etc. It was fun. The band was apparently from St. Louis and wasn’t terribly bad. The drummer was hella sexy, as was the keyboard player (who wore shades and weaved theatrically like Stevie Wonder), but the guitarist and bassist were only mediocre in terms of skill. It’s an odd band that can pull off both Kylie Minogue and Rage Against the Machine quite well, but fail miserably at Eminem and disco, you must admit. I stuck around for about 2.5 hours, until after the fire drill that send us all outside. Um, yeah.

Saturday was pretty mediocre, with plenty of downtime for me to read more of The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende). I still love that book.

Sunday we took our mug shots for our student IDs, and although mine is still bad, it’s not bad enough to hide completely (I keep my North Carolina ID card face down in my wallet, so all you see is “NOT FOR VEHICLE OPERATION”). I also had the pleasure of watching “The Goonies”, a movie from the eighties that is something of a classic, apparently. The turn-out wasn’t as high as I expected, but it was a great movie that proved one thing clearly for me: Sean Astin was just as adorably cute as a kid as he is now.

Sunday night we also had an event called “Nite at the Races” (they’ve been sprinkling these “Missions” throughout Orientation, and attending a certain number of them qualifies you for a $250 gift certificate for the bookstore). The SAs from all the floors of all the halls each became a “horse” with a different personality (including an Oompa Loompa, a GI Joe and Jane, and some Gladiator chicks). You “bet” on one of five horses in a race (there were six races in all), and several names of folks were drawn from the winning horse’s pile and given Sam’s Club-size things. It was supremely funny to see our SAs run around in circles wearing costumes beating each other up. I swear, some of those fights and falls were worthy of Jackass. I didn’t think one guys was going to be getting back up, and he’d barely passed the starting line. I did manage to come home with a box of 24 Rice-Krispies Treats, which is pretty cool. Like I need the junk food. Freshman-15, anyone?

This morning, we were “orientated” for our laptops, then we finally received the beasts. Oh. I want to have this thing’s babies. Really. It’s a Compaq Evo N800w, and no, I don’t feel like linking to the Compaq site, so just rest assured this computer is worthy of my tender-lovin’-care. Bru-ha-ha! He doesn’t have a name yet, though. I’m be working on that. I may just call it The Sexy Beast.

So, after laptops and lunch, we registered for fall term classes. After realizing that I would have to overload every term (and pay the subsequent money for that) to double major in Comp Sci and Biochemistry, I frugally changed my mind. I’ll just stick with Comp Sci. The CS profs are very cool, and everyone just calls them by their first names, none of that Dr. So-and-so-steinburgschep stuff. Just yo, Don. That’s just CS, though. The jury’s out on the other departments.

So, the schedule. I guess I kinda like it, because I have a bit of time between major courses to decompress or sit in a lounge and study or start on homework or take a piss break (there are only five minutes between classes, and we have to pack and unpack laptops and get up and down the different floors of the buildings). The names of the courses have been changed to make sense to folks not at Rose.

TERM GRID	1 8:05	2 9:00	3 9:55	4 10:50	6 12:40	7 1:35	8 2:30	9 3:25
MONDAY	Physics I	Rhetoric in Science		Calculus I	Engineering Chemistry I
TUESDAY	Physics I	Rhetoric in Science		Calculus I	Engineering Chemistry I
WEDNESDAY				Calculus I		Engineering Chemisty I	Engineering Chemisty I	Engineering Chemisty I
THURSDAY	Physics I	Rhetoric in Science		Calculus I	Engineering Chemistry I
FRIDAY	Physics I	Rhetoric in Science	College and Life Skills	Calculus I		Physics I Lab	Physics I Lab	Physics I Lab

Right. So, I think I shall be busy this term. Quite. I still have to fit in a job (which I will find out about Wednesday) and a bit of a social life (hopefully). There are large amount of sexy beasts of the male gender around here, and plenty of them are hanging around our floor, which is full of most of the freshman girls at Rose. We’ve got something like 44 girls on our floor, while the other two buildings with floors of girls have only a handful. So BSB3 is quite where it’s at right now (especially since there’s a small party going on in the SAs’ room right now; and a much louder one downstairs).

I, however, must go to bed if I am to arise early enough to workout again and price my books. On the matter of books, I am very scared, as my roommate spent $600 on books, and I surely don’t have that much money.