Another Year...

and a load of the same bullshit.

I started school this week and within an hour of being on campus I witnessed the following exchange:

Woman with clipboard - "Sir are you registered to vote?"

College Schlumpf - "Vote for what?"

Unfortunately, this is nowhere near as frustrating as the crap that one goes through trying to attend Long Beach City College, at the hands of the school administration.

This is my 4th semester. I found out within 24 hours that I:

- would not be elligible for EOPS ( a form of state financial aid that gives me a book grant and priority registration) next semester
- should have received my book grant this term, but for some reason didn't. Sorry, we'll try and fix that this week.
- needed to stand in line to get an add number, even though all of our registration is done online. Which led to
- standing in another line, to fill out a second piece of paper, with the same info from the first form from the first line, and take both forms to a desk where I was enrolled in the class, but told I
- did not pay my fees. Yes I did, on campus, last week. Go upstairs and wait in a line at the cashier to find out I
- did pay my fees. yes, I know.
- finally got my book grant, for some reason this semester it was two hundred dollars, my books cost close to four hundred dollars.

Best of all, I thought I had done my best to research my instructors for these classes, to ensure that I wouldn't be stuck with any basket cases. For some reason, in spite of my research (which I have since gone back and double checked to make sure I hadn't switched up instructors on accident) I still wound up with two basket cases.
-

You know, just another Saturday night...

after a ten hour day of helping my brother clean out the parents garage in near one hundred degree heat, I left to head home as the sun sunk just below the horizon.

Exhausted, near delirious, I sought the only thing I could think of to pump life back into my veins...

Electric Light Orchestra.

Starting with the Xanadu soundtrack and ending up as I pulled into my garage in Long Beach with "Don't Bring Me Down", I transversed the road with my windows down, fist pumping out the window and the volume as high as I can get with me singing along as loud as I can. I think about what a spectacle I must be, and am only saved the sensation of embarrassment by the thought of myself walking down the street in my city and seeing some dude with a beard screaming along to ELO as he drives down 4th Street, pumping his fist in the air.

I walk through the door, feeling nearly human again and I shuck off my clothes, run a beer, pour a bath, and throw on what is without a doubt my favorite album of all time: "Souvenirs" by Dan Fogelberg. Quite a departure from the glossy showmanship of Jeff Lynne, this album provides the exact complimentary mood for taking a bath by candlelight. I sang along to the whole album while the kitten took turns sniffing the candle on the side of tub and pawing the path water up to her kitten elbow.

I thought that I had lost some of who I was capable of being while separated from my life in Europe, but apparently I am still entirely capable of being awesome.