Tux, Tailoring, Transit Systems, and a Terrible Tuesday
Right. So it's been a couple of days. I could've updated sooner, but I figured I'd wait until enough had happened for me to make another substantial entry. While I'm certainly busy enough that technically I could probably find things to write about every single day, a lot of it is still day-to-day mundane stuff that isn't quite so interesting. So I figured I'd spare you my day-to-day ramblings and keep this as more of a digest of the actually interesting bits.
Sunday: Tux and Tailoring
So when last I wrote, I'd kind of previewed my plans for Sunday, or the two things I'd been considering doing: exploring the city or staying in and sewing. Ironically, I basically ended up doing neither. On impulse, in the morning, I decided to install Linux on my desktop PC. This is something I'd been planning to do for a while but was, even on this occasion, in no particular hurry to accomplish, which is why it was a rather impulsive decision. Anyway, after repartitioning my harddrive, I installed Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE instead of GNOME) and managed, surprisingly enough, to get it all working nicely right away. However, after that, I spent quite a while exploring the features and playing around with things, so that, before I knew it, it was 4 PM, and I hadn't even taken a showered or gotten dressed yet, not to speak of going out and exploring or getting any sewing done.
Once I finally took a shower and everything, I decided to go through all my old T-shirts and try and decide what projects I want to work on, which took quite a while. Then, toward the evening, I finally got to sit down and actually sew a bit; I tested out the machine and then, as my first project, I decided to try out a new style of skirt:
It's not quite complete because I still need to hem the white diamonds, but essentially, this is it. It was made using an XL gray Limp Bizkit concert T-shirt, with some scrap white fabric from other shirts. I was pleasantly surprised about how it turned out. While the color and the design on the shirt->skirt are not all that exciting, I like the way it's styled and the way the fabric falls. It's also quite nice because it's fairly wide but has a drawstring, which works out well when your body is shaped like mine, with inordinately large hips and a small waist. Unfortunately I'm not sure if I'll get to try this style of skirt again, since it requires an XL T-shirt and I don't have too many of those.
Anyway, that took me up until about midnight, so then I went to bed.
Memorial Day: Barbecue and Nara vs. the Bus System
I'd set my alarm clock for 9 AM on Monday, intending to get up decently on time so as to be able to still get some things done before heading out to the holiday cookouts. However, when the alarm went off, I didn't feel like getting up yet; I shut it off and rolled onto my other side. This is not too unusual for me on weekends, and not really a problem, since as a person with almost a phobia of oversleeping, 9 times out of 10, I wind up getting up within the next 30 minutes anyway. Unfortunately, this was one of those 1 out of 10 times when that didn't work; I fell back asleep, and next thing I knew, it was noon.
It should have been a sign that today was not my day. Should have been. Yet I decided not to heed it. After showering and getting dressed, I made a quick run into Oakland to go to CVS. I'd made it a personal resolution to start wearing contacts again more often, since lately I'm habitually too lazy to bother with anything but my glasses, and it's kind of a waste. Anyway, I'd opened a brand new pair of contacts the day before, only to discover that I was practically out of contact solution. So, off to CVS it was, where I also wound up buying peanut butter and pasta sauce to ensure that I will not go hungry this week. However, when I made it to the register, the lady there told me that she could not sell me my contact solution because everything by this brand had been recalled. This is, strangely enough, the second time that's happened to me with a contact solution. The annoying thing is that you can only start using a new solution when you start a brand new pair of contacts, for which it was essentially a day too late for me. So then I had the choice of either chucking a day-old pair and immediately starting with the new solution, or trying to make do with the remaining old solution for the rest of this pair's life (another 10-14 days). Sigh.
Anyway, that's rather trivial. Still, in a way, that should have been another sign. Back to the point of the story, though; Jet had invited me to his Memorial Day barbecue, which was to commence around 3 PM, and there was also a Donner House barbecue scheduled for 5 PM. I'd decided that if it came to choosing between the two, I'd go to Jet's; I have no real friends in Donner House (yet) and so attending that cookout would've been much more likely to result in great social awkwardness and inevitable reclusion. Not to mention that at Jet's there was more potential for food other than the very standard hot dogs and hamburgers. And, more importantly, it gave me an excuse to go off-campus, out of the CMU "bubble", and into a real neighborhood with actual people who aren't CMU students and/or between the ages of 17 and 24.
Jet's house is in the Edgewood/Forest Hills area, and he'd recommended taking the 67A bus. It wouldn't drop me off exactly at his door, but it was definitely the bus that would've brought me closest. I'd checked the bus schedule earlier that morning and had figured out that if I took the 3 PM bus, I'd get there around 3:30, which would still give me time to bake cupcakes to bring with me after I got back from CVS. However, as I travelled back from CVS to campus and noticed how eerily few buses seemed to be out on the road, it suddenly occurred to me that it was a national holiday, and that on such days, the buses operate on Sunday schedules. I raced back to my room and checked the schedule, and sure enough, I was right; the 67A was operating on its Sunday schedule, which means that instead of travelling all the way out to Oakland and Squirrel Hill, it went no farther than Wilkinsburg.
The 61A would be able to take me as far as Wilkinsburg, and from what I'd seen outside, the 61 buses seemed to be running on a fairly normal schedule (ie. running every 30 minutes or so). However, the 67A was scheduled to run only about every hour and a half, so if I took the 61A into Wilkinsburg, chances were good I'd have to wait a really long time for the connection. I looked over the maps again and realized that both the 61A and 61B stopped in Swissvale, which seemed to be at a doable walking distance from Jet's house -- a little less than a mile. So, in the end, I decided to forego my plan to bake cupcakes and just headed for the bus stop immediately.
Luck obviously not on my side today, I still wound up having to wait a good half hour until either a 61A or 61B (in my case it was the 61B) came by. I was actually a little excited, as I've never ridden either the 61A or B any farther than Squirrel Hill. Unfortunately, this meant that soon enough, the surroundings were all completely foreign to me, and while I was doing my best to pay attention to the roads and attempt to make my best guess as to where to get off, I still wound up missing my stop and having to circle around Braddock before being able to disembark in Swissvale again. Even then, I got off 1-2 stops before I probably should've, which increased the distance I had to walk. And, as I had failed to factor into my grand master plan -- most of the walking was uphill. Yes, I admit there are a few days a year when I do hate Pittsburgh.
I won't go into the walking too much, since there's not much to say. Suffice it to say that it was easily 85 degrees outside, sunny, quite humid, and I hadn't eaten anything yet all day, nor was I carrying water or any other kind of beverage. Getting stopped by the Forest Hills police because they thought I was soliciting just added to my not-quite-so-thrilling experience.
There are sayings, though, about food tasting all the sweeter when you've earned it and the like, and it was quite true; when I finally did make it to Jet's, every step uphill I'd taken was worth it. I ate a lot, and talked to Jet, and met his crazy-fun friends. Jet was the only one there whom I knew (other than Scott Summit, and that doesn't really count, because Scott Summit doesn't know me) yet I didn't feel invisible like I often do in such situations, which was nice. There isn't really much else to say; it was one of those "you had to be there" kind of things. But I enjoyed it. I'm really glad I went.
Rather than risking getting screwed over by the bus system again, I ended up catching a ride back to campus with Joannie and Grace. I didn't even realize how late we'd stayed; it was around 10:30 PM by the time I got back to Donner. This was a slight bit of a problem, since I still had homework.
I worked on a C program until around midnight, at which time I realized that I really, really should finally start on Matrix. Matrix homework is only due once a week, and I'd put it off because everything we'd done in class was a review of things I'd done in high school, and so I'd figured that the homework would take me no time at all. However, when I finally started on the assignment, I was dismayed to discover that many of the problems had very little to do with what we'd gone over in lecture, and I actually had to go back and read the textbook pages to figure out what was going on and what exactly the questions were asking. Long story short, before I knew it, it was after 5 AM, and I realized I'd be lucky if I managed to get in a full hour to an hour and a half of sleep. It was like this past semester all over again. Fantastic. (Yes, mom, I learned my lesson.)
The Tuesday That Felt Like a Monday From Hell
Thank God oversleeping isn't generally a problem for me, or today could've been disastrous instead of just bad. Luckily I didn't have too much trouble getting myself out of bed at 7 AM. Normally, I get up around 8, but today (of all days) I'd agreed to meet Jeanne, my other supervisor at CEE, at 8, and since it does take me a full hour to get ready and over to that side of campus... 7 AM it was. Strangely enough, I wasn't even too unusually tired, and Jeanne even told me, "You look so awake!" I am still way too used to getting too little sleep. It's a little disturbing.
There wasn't anything too particularly exciting about the morning. The only thing was that, because Matrix homework had taken me such an unexpectedly long time, I still hadn't finished my Concepts homework, which was due today as well. Luckily, I found time to do it during my lunch break, and it only took me all of 20 minutes to do anyway. I'm glad that at least, in that class, the amount of time it takes to do the homework is fairly predictable. Still, I learned my lesson. No more putting off assignments. I really do need to try to do the homework the day it's assigned, rather than the day before it's due. It's going to be hard, though, what with my work schedule.
Now that I'm officially working for Jeanne, I can easily work the hours that I want to. CMU won't let you work for more than 37.5 hours a week, so that's what I want to strive for. Unfortunately that does mean 7.5 hours of work a day if I don't work on weekends, and I have 4.5 hours of class a day as well during this session. So that's already 12 hours of my day, with no breaks for food. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to break up my work schedule. Chances are I'm going to have to wind up doing some of Jeanne's work on the weekends. I'm just hoping not to have to resort to that too much, since ideally, I'd like to reserve the weekends for myself. This week is going to be even trickier, since I didn't work yesterday, so I only have 4 days (or 6, counting the weekend) to work all those hours.
I didn't work for too long today, though, since I was just too tired to deal with it. I stayed at CEE until 6 PM, after which I went and ate and then headed to bed to try to take a 2-hour nap before starting homework. The nap was rather a bad idea, though, since I was a lot more awake before than after I woke up. I should've just tried to tough it out.
I did get work done, though -- I already finished the Concepts homework due Thursday, and worked on my C program a little. Tomorrow, I'll tackle Matrix and continue to work on the C lab. Sometime this week I also really, really need to clean up the room, as I have a feeling that Andrea won't appreciate my turning the entire room into my sewing studio when she gets here on Sunday. Normally I'm all about organized workspaces, but I'm terrible about keeping things clean when I'm in the middle of a project.
Well, that's about it. Even if I had more to write about, I lack the energy. I'm about to collapse back in bed. Sleep is a wonderful, wonderful thing.