It's been one of those days.
Today was my first weekend since classes start. It's the time when I try and get into a rhythm to clean the house and work on projects for the coming week. Well, I am still in the process of cleaning and de-junking the house so my project today was to launch another assault on the front room. However, before I sent in the army, I wanted to at least start on a project that I've been meaning to play with for several months.
To start things off I was working in the guest room and starting a project that I had on a shelf since Josh, my ex-roommate, had moved in. A friend of mine had asked me to repair a book of fairytales for her. It's an older book from the sixties or seventies that was well warn and very well loved and the pages were literally falling out of the spine. The pages had to be cut free from the spine and separated and then repaired. Each page can take hours to repair - not for the actual repairs but for all of the time it takes to allow the cleaning agents and glue to dry. So once I had one page in the drying phase I could attack the front room.
While cleaning on the front room I got a call from Dan, the Fish. He was in the area and wanted to swing by and catch up before he headed back up to Athens. So I took a break when he got to the house. I hadn't gotten much information about "The Family" lately but assumed that things were progressing well and measured as most things (save for people screaming on a roof) tend to do. Heather was on her way to Indiana, Morgana was in preparation to move into the dorms and start her education at Ohio University, and Dan was gearing up to start classes in Lancaster.
After a while Dan had to go because he was needing to get back to Athens so he could change in time for his weekend gig as a drummer for Barbara's restaurant, Salam. Yes, my friends are just that cool. So I bid him fare well and started to attack the front room once more.
A bit later, Josh and his buddy, Mike, showed up to grab a load of Josh's stuff. They were in and out in only a few minutes but it was another small break. Once they were gone, the spot that was once occupied by Josh's box was cleaned and things were moved to accommodate the new, open design. (AKA: No More JUNK.)
Em wanted to come over lunch and I decided that I could use some of her AbFab (that's ABsolutely FABulous) sense of design with me moving things around in the front room. A few more boxes got cleaned before she showed up and I took another break to catch up with her after her first week of classes.
Most of the conversation, after the consumption of some pizza, was flavored with me cleaning and pitching junk from the piles of things in the front room. While in the last throws of sorting, I received a phone call from Josh's cellphone. It wasn't Josh.
Mike was calling me to let me know that he and Josh had been in a wreck; the word he was used was 'T-boned'. I'm not sure exactly what I asked him but it was something akin to "PUT JOSH ON THE PHONE." I'm sure it was polite and civil (in my usual manner) but there was no doubt in my mind that I could, at that very moment, teleport through the phone if only to make sure that Josh was ok.
Josh explained what had happened but there were a few words that popped into my mind and didn't want to leave. Words like: Jaws of Life, and Backboard, are hard to miss when someone's telling you that they're ok. I think he actually repeated that he was 'ok' a few times in between his description of how they had to remove the ENTIRE PASSENGER SIDE of Mike's car. Not the door, the whole side. That is, both the back door, the front door and the connective membrane of metal that would separate the two.
At that time, Josh was waiting on the results from his x-ray to see if anything was broken. Josh's mother works at the local hospital were he was taken (and is also skilled in the taking of x-rays) so she was right there with him. I asked him if he needed anything, but since he didn't know when they were going to tell him what was going on and his mom was there - he didn't need anything at the time.
So I got off the phone with Josh, told Em the basic jist, and then unleashed a torrent, nay - a stream of cleansing energy; that is to say that I cranked up my tidy genes and organized and pitched with more gusto. My friend was hurt but there was nothing much I could do for him at that particular moment. So, being the controlling person that I am, I decided to bring some much needed order to my house - whether the universe wanted to allow it or not.
A few minutes later Josh called me and asked if he could get a ride from the hospital. Mike's car was totaled and his mom couldn't leave work. So Em took off so she could get ready for work and I put the Saturnator's headlights (they're the closest things to nipples) to the wind and was off to SOMC.
Long story short....
.... Too late.
Josh is crashed in the guest room right now with the right side of his body aching and twinging with pain. There is no bruising after several hours and he's on some mighty good pain killers and muscle relaxers. He could have gone back to the dorms but his bed is the top bunk. He would not have been able to crawl up to the top with his body so whacked out of shape by the wreck. So, since I had just cleaned the guest room and such, ran him to get his 'scrip filled at Walmart and down to his dorm to get some clothes and piled him on the couch for a while. Mike's parents eventually came and picked him up so he could figure out what he will do because of the accident (he was sited for failure to yield to a stop sign).
After I got some chicken-rice down him so that he would have something on his stomach to help the meds work, I poured him into the guest bed so that he could try and sleep to let his body heal.
Yes, it's been one of those days.
-Tom
P.s. NSTIW: No Shit There I Was... How -else- do you begin a blog such as this?
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Bon Anniversaire
Yes,
it's that time once again.
With the start of the 2008-2009 academic year at Shawnee State University, I celebrate my birthday.
This morning I was up with the birds (couldn't sleep) and went down to campus for our first 'Professional Day' whereby the university's administration made several presentations about the growth of the campus and some other topics.
There were some interesting stats about this year: we're getting closer and closer to 4k students enrolled; a huge step for Shawnee. We've seen a huge jump in enrollment over the summer though I don't know the specific stats. I would guess that the increased enrollment was a result of the local, shrinking economy. More people are choosing to enroll for classes if jobs are scarce and they're going to Shawnee because we are generally less expensive.
One of the presentations today said that most students will have something close to $16,500 in debt when they graduate. This doesn't seem to be too bad for a four-year degree. When you're faced with low income and you need to improve your marketability for jobs, the cheapest solution is often the only solution.
The rest of the presentations were a bit wordy - they were more like lengthy lectures on topics that no one cared about. Even though a lot of the faculty would bemoan students for getting up and walking out to grab a drink in the middle of a class; checking their cellphones or talking to their neighbor - almost everyone was showing their boredom.
I love irony.
After the presentations, we were treated to a nice lunch of BBQ chicken and pork. I got to sit with a few other of the professors and a fellow adjunct from my department. I made the joke that maybe we should be sitting at the "Kid's Table" since we weren't full-time faculty.
It was a brief lunch and then I wanted to get some work done, but I found that there are now three other faculty sharing my office. One of which were using it so I just decided to come home and change out of my 'professor gear'. After a summer of living in little more than cargo shorts, t-shirts and Teva sandals, getting dressed in khaki's and a dress-shirt was a bit constricting.
Tomorrow night is the first night of lecture for me. I was hoping to teach during the day again, but my classes are all at night. Oh well, it just means that I can sleep in more.
There's not much more going on right now. I've been able to rearrange and clean the house a little and I'll probably jump into it again here in a few, but I wanted to get a post up.
I haven't been blogging much lately because there's not been much going on. Now with classes getting back into full swing that'll change.
See ya later.
-Tom
it's that time once again.
With the start of the 2008-2009 academic year at Shawnee State University, I celebrate my birthday.
This morning I was up with the birds (couldn't sleep) and went down to campus for our first 'Professional Day' whereby the university's administration made several presentations about the growth of the campus and some other topics.
There were some interesting stats about this year: we're getting closer and closer to 4k students enrolled; a huge step for Shawnee. We've seen a huge jump in enrollment over the summer though I don't know the specific stats. I would guess that the increased enrollment was a result of the local, shrinking economy. More people are choosing to enroll for classes if jobs are scarce and they're going to Shawnee because we are generally less expensive.
One of the presentations today said that most students will have something close to $16,500 in debt when they graduate. This doesn't seem to be too bad for a four-year degree. When you're faced with low income and you need to improve your marketability for jobs, the cheapest solution is often the only solution.
The rest of the presentations were a bit wordy - they were more like lengthy lectures on topics that no one cared about. Even though a lot of the faculty would bemoan students for getting up and walking out to grab a drink in the middle of a class; checking their cellphones or talking to their neighbor - almost everyone was showing their boredom.
I love irony.
After the presentations, we were treated to a nice lunch of BBQ chicken and pork. I got to sit with a few other of the professors and a fellow adjunct from my department. I made the joke that maybe we should be sitting at the "Kid's Table" since we weren't full-time faculty.
It was a brief lunch and then I wanted to get some work done, but I found that there are now three other faculty sharing my office. One of which were using it so I just decided to come home and change out of my 'professor gear'. After a summer of living in little more than cargo shorts, t-shirts and Teva sandals, getting dressed in khaki's and a dress-shirt was a bit constricting.
Tomorrow night is the first night of lecture for me. I was hoping to teach during the day again, but my classes are all at night. Oh well, it just means that I can sleep in more.
There's not much more going on right now. I've been able to rearrange and clean the house a little and I'll probably jump into it again here in a few, but I wanted to get a post up.
I haven't been blogging much lately because there's not been much going on. Now with classes getting back into full swing that'll change.
See ya later.
-Tom
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Merry Moving Day
Well, it's come.
Today is Moving Day.
Josh is in the process of gathering up his stuff to move into the dorms today around 1 p.m. We've already hauled most of his furniture to his parent's place and now he just has the little stuff that he'll take with him.
Well, I shouldn't say "little stuff", because he's got the idea that he's going to take a TON of things along with him. Josh plans on hauling all of his kitchen stuff with him so that he can cook in the dorms. He's never lived in the dorms and is operating on the idea that the dorms are just like an apartment.
The dorms are very similar to an apartment (two large bedrooms with three people each and a connecting living room) and there's a small kitchen area there for people to store food or to cook.
At 25 years old, Josh will be one of the oldest people in the dorms.
I'm sure that this will be a very interesting experience for him.
Once he's moved his stuff out, I'm going to be cleaning and rearranging the house a bit. The house has had a 'cluttered' feeling ever since Josh moved in. There just wasn't much room to put all of his stuff away so a lot of it sat in baskets and boxes in the front room. That combined with some stuff that I am storing for some other friends just junked up the front room.
Not that many people came over to the house, but the first thing that they would see was all of the stuff cluttering up the front room and it just bugged the hell out of me.
Oh well, that'll be fixed soon.
More later.
-Tom
Today is Moving Day.
Josh is in the process of gathering up his stuff to move into the dorms today around 1 p.m. We've already hauled most of his furniture to his parent's place and now he just has the little stuff that he'll take with him.
Well, I shouldn't say "little stuff", because he's got the idea that he's going to take a TON of things along with him. Josh plans on hauling all of his kitchen stuff with him so that he can cook in the dorms. He's never lived in the dorms and is operating on the idea that the dorms are just like an apartment.
The dorms are very similar to an apartment (two large bedrooms with three people each and a connecting living room) and there's a small kitchen area there for people to store food or to cook.
At 25 years old, Josh will be one of the oldest people in the dorms.
I'm sure that this will be a very interesting experience for him.
Once he's moved his stuff out, I'm going to be cleaning and rearranging the house a bit. The house has had a 'cluttered' feeling ever since Josh moved in. There just wasn't much room to put all of his stuff away so a lot of it sat in baskets and boxes in the front room. That combined with some stuff that I am storing for some other friends just junked up the front room.
Not that many people came over to the house, but the first thing that they would see was all of the stuff cluttering up the front room and it just bugged the hell out of me.
Oh well, that'll be fixed soon.
More later.
-Tom
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