College Being

Well, while Chris works on the site update, I’m going to post the occasional thing anyway. Here again is a list of things that have been making me angry and/or contemplative in the last couple weeks.

• The best part about living with a bunch of people is when you walk into the kitchen/common area and start making food, only to realize that the two people who were already in there are discussing deeply personal relationship issues. And you just have to stand there while your steak cooks, listening to drama and feeling vaguely voyeuristic. I’m awkward enough already, I don’t need shit like this.
• Do you ever get little cuts inside your mouth? Like at the very bottom of the inside of your lip, right up against the base of your gums? And you can’t do anything but wait for it to heal? I hate that.
• One would think that it’d be really easy to find gifts for people in a foreign country, that my Christmas shopping would almost do itself. Unfortunately, unless you have a lot of friends who are really into tacky tourist crap, it’s actually just as difficult as doing it at home, with the added joy of disgustingly high shipping costs and exchange rates. I have a number of friends who are getting gift cards again this year; they’re the ones who are getting anything at all.
• I knew, in sort of a vague sense, that Harrod’s in London was expensive. I thought “well, it’s Christmas, if I can find something really good on sale for someone it might be worth it.” I went in and found a scarf that would be perfect for a friend of mine. It was £399. I had to double check to make sure I hadn’t mentally moved the decimal. For those of you in the US, yes, that’s a SCARF–a nice piece of fabric, for God’s sake–that would have cost me $800, a little over half the expected cost of my two weeks in Italy.
• It turns out that even though I tend to feel kind of lame eating alone in a restaurant that doesn’t have a menu over the counter, it’s actually kind of beneficial. I went to the Hard Rock Cafe tonight because I was in the mood for a huge-ass burger. The group of four people behind me had a wait of over two hours before they’d be seated. I told the host that I was there by myself; he said to go in and find a place at the bar. Bitchin’.
• As I was eating my deliciously huge-ass burger, two young ladies came in to try and find seats at the bar. There were two free seats, one on either side of me. I insisted on moving behind the pillar so they could sit together and order without a great deal of effort. They bought me a beer when they got their drinks. The lesson, guys: Be nice, you might get free beer.
• Everywhere in London is currently sold out of AA batteries, apparently.
• I saw a kid with blue hair sitting on the bus on the way home. On the back of his jacket was a patch that said “XS PUNK.” I’m still wondering if that means “Excess Punk,” “Extra-Small Punk,” or something else entirely.
• I hate to be the guy who comes out of his room on a Friday night to ask people to quiet down, but seriously dude, it’s 4 in the morning and you’re singing Anglican hymns. What the hell?

That’s about it for now, I think. I’m off to watch the Futurama movie.