Sundry Items

Usually family non-communication doesn't actually bother me that much because chances are that when there's an important piece of information going around (or rather, not going around), it doesn't directly affect me. For instance, the fact that Diana's pregnant, while totally awesome, wasn't a matter of life and death if I didn't hear it right at the moment that everyone else did. In the same way, almost every piece of Family News isn't something that requires my attention or participation right away, so I don't have to be devastated every time I hear something through the grapevine two weeks after it's happened.

That actually turned out sounding kind of heartless, but what I'm trying to say is that Family Non-Communication is just, y'know, whatever. I don't mind it all that much. However, if you get a boyfriend or decide to move to Africa to be a missionary, I'd rather hear it from your own lips than two weeks later through the grapevine, if you don't mind.

So you know how I returned here early after the wedding yesterday so I could do my laundry? It's a good thing I did, because I had so much laundry that the load was really big, which caused it to take two dry cycles to actually get dry (and even then the towels were still damp). The dryer costs a buck in quarters and the washer a buck twenty five, which means that I ended up paying $3.25 just to replenish my supply of clean underwear (which was distressingly low). The money situation in itself was a crisis of sorts as well, because I started out not having any quarters (or any cash at all), so I went to the ATM on campus, which if you know anything about ATMs, only dispenses money in increments of $20. I then took the ol' Andrew Jackson to my dorm hall's front desk to ask for some quarters, at which time they told me that they can't break twenties at the front desk. How messed up is it that the ATMs only give you twenties but the college won't break them? I just really needed quarters to do my laundry! So I went back to my floor and asked about ten people if they could give me change for a twenty, and everyone was so poor apparently that they didn't have any cash. By the time I was able to start my laundry it was 8:00, and it wasn't finished until half past ten. In hindsight I probably should have slept during those two and a half hours, but I have this rather ungrounded paranoia that someone will steal my favorite clothes between the time that a load is finished and I return to the laundry room, so I have to watch the clock and always be on time. So instead of sleeping like I should have, I sat in the hall library trying not to laugh uproariously at this show I was watching so as not to disturb the one other person who was actually studying in there.

So you know that case study paper on Isabel for my Ed Psych class I was telling you about? Well I just got it back and I got 24 out of 25 possible points on it. YEAH. I'm going to get an A in this class even if it kills me to do it. Here's what I love: when I get a good grade on a paper, the best thing is when the teacher hands it back and it's underlined, commented on or has pretty little stars by the sentences or ideas that they like the most in the paper. So later when I'm feeling morose about my academic ability I can read through it and get a self-esteem boost because my teacher thinks that I have good ideas about abstract and hypothetical thought processes in children who are going through the concrete operational stage of life.

Hooray, academia.

-Amy