A Day in the Life of Thomas
Today, perhaps in a mockery of my normal posting pattern of a huge post every month or two, I decided to take notes on what was going on throughout the day and make a huge post just a single day after my last entry. I think it turned out alright, though I got a little less diligent about making note of what I was thinking or doing exactly towards the end. Without further ado...
8:40 AM - Slept through my first broadside of alarms. Well, that's not exactly accurate. What I do is my subconscious is trained to leap out of bed with upper body strength and quickly slap the complex series of buttons needed to disarm all three of them that I have set to go off within a minute of each other. Then I plunge back into bed and am basically just as much at rest as I was a moment earlier. But still, it breaks the ice and maybe gives my conscious mind a shot.
9:10 AM - The second barrage hit, this time I was conscious enough to be motivated by the knowledge of my interview later in the day and dragged myself up. Found some decent clothes that weren't too smelly, bemoaning my forgetting to do laundry the night before, washed up a little, brushed, deodorized, etc. Used my clippers to trim the neckbeard and do the edges on my muttonchops, at least, though still haven't made the decision to lose either them or the goatee and stick with one. Almost got sucked in by the chair and computer and made late, but I forcibly dragged my unwilling lower body up with my upper body. Grabbed a teabag of green tea for the road, since I don't like the stuff they have at the office.
9:30 AM - Commune uneventful. Train prompt. Guy in the Canal St. station managed to slip past all my honed defenses and slip a Jesus pamphlet into my hand. I still need more training. While walking, "God Knows" came up on my ipod and I found myself mouthing along to the lyrics in the elevator. Immediately felt like an enormous nerd, but didn't stop.
10:00 AM - Got into work, set my computer to start booting up and went to go get breakfast from the kitchen. The postworks employees, the TV on CNN, and the papers were all talking about the pope, who was currently starting his speech at the white house. I'm sorry, but I just can't see him without picturing a black hood and some purple lightning and him all being "FULLY OPERATIONAL BATTLE STATION"
10:15 AM - Computer finally finishes booting up and I can begin the process of launching Firefox, opening Word, and playing the audio file I need to transcribe.
10:25 AM - Start work transcribing. This is old hat now. For a couple weeks now, a lot of my work has been working on transcribing phone interviews with scientists for the special on the Phoenix Mars Mission they have in preproduction. It's fairly interesting material but still gives me a headache after a while of typing it. Today's is an irritating one, the guy talks fast, mumbles a bit, and is quiet on the phone. I have to turn it way up to hear him clearly, which means I nearly blow my eardrum whenever one of the interviewers speaks, since he has a much better phone mic and a loud, loud voice.
11:00 AM - Meeting starts for Evolve in the conference area right behind me. Loud enough that I have to start listening to a lot of stuff I'm transcribing at least twice to hear what's being said accurately.
11:15 AM - Get a headache from my crappy monitor and all the typing and make up some excuses to myself to go walk down the hall and stretch my legs.
11:20 AM - Hear that Jason, one of the other interns, called in sick today. Yesterday Nandini, the other intern I work with did likewise. This is making me kind of nervous.
11:36 AM - A guy walked into the office and dropped a lunch menu for a sushi place on my desk. I read through it and was happy, it looked good. No more expensive, unhealthy subway lunches for me! Then I checked the address. The restaurant's all the way up in the west village near NYU! If I were going that far I might as well just use the meal plan. Why the hell were they dropping off a menu on the 12th floor of a random office building nearly a mile away?
12:00 PM - Just as I get used to the meeting noise, they break and it dissolves into loud side conversations and moving chairs around, making it even harder to hear.
12:01 PM - I keep subconsciously capitalizing "Data", which makes me think of Star Trek.
12:30 PM - Evolve calls another surprise meeting. Good news, the studio likes one of the first episodes and signed off on the rough cut. Much applause. Sarcastic comments are traded about how now they just have to go over budget and time on all the other episodes, since that seemed to work for this one. Someone shouts, "Let's go get some beers, we're done here!" and the meeting breaks up.
12:40 PM - I suddenly realize it's getting much later than I thought and I head out for lunch without a real clear idea of where I'm heading.
12:47 PM - Fight my way through the usual crowd of black and hispanic youths outside the corner deli at lunchtime to grab my usual copy of the Times. Don't these damn kids have school or something?
12:50 PM - Decide to try a pizza place I once heard a couple guys in the lobby say was really good. It's up by the hardware store where I learned you can get a crowbar for only $10. (What a steal!) Quietly sing along to "With or Without You" on the way. An old lady looks at me a little funny, I think. I miss having a car I could sing in like a huge tone-deaf idiot.
12:55 PM - Famous Ben's Pizza is pretty damn good. A little expensive for New York pizza, ($6.25 for two plain slices and a can of soda) but about as tasty a slice as I think I've ever had, and they had an old timey cash register with the flippy numbers instead of a digital display! Rad. Got to remember the location. As I feared, I spilled something down the front of my nice black shirt right before my interview, but it's just a little Pepsi, it doesn't stain, no big deal.
1:10 PM - I finish my lunch before my newspaper or my lunch break. The pizza joint is crowded, so I move outside and sit down on a bench by one of those chess tables across the street. It's a beautiful spring day, the sun is out and warm, the sky is clear and blue, a cool breeze passes. I love this time of year. There is a basketball court on the corner next to me. Some kids are playing what looks to be four separate games of wall ball. Man, that takes me back. Only game cooler was four square. I notice a couple sticks of Big Red on the bench next to me. I could go for some gum, but those are really suspect.
1:18 PM - A young woman sits across the table from me and starts eating lunch. I stop occasionally watching the wall ball in case she thinks I'm glancing at here or something.
1:21 PM - Is she putting jelly on a salad?
1:35 PM - Finish reading paper, in the process of which I learn that there's a democratic debate tonight. Why didn't I hear of this? Now I have to make the decision of whether I want to skip some of Hong Kong cinema to watch it. I don't care about tonight's screening, and I could probably sneak off, but I guess I probably shouldn't. I could watch it later, but it just wouldn't be the same without liveblogging on the forums. It lacks the same excitement. Anyway, I head back towards the office.
1:47 PM - Back at the office, I return to transcribing with a fresh head. The end is in sight.
2:53 PM - Mark my place in case one of the other interns wants to take up what I started and pack up. Got a little more than halfway through transcribing a fifty minute interview. Could be better, I guess. About 00:32:00 of interview transcribed (oh god, I wrote it as timecode completely by reflex)
3:00 PM - I head out for my interview. Normally I stay on Wednesdays till five, so I have time to get dinner before my 6:45 class, but thanks to my 3:30 inteview I'm leaving early. I use Elena's sharpie to label my freshly made reel and pick up my $40 stipend. (only two days worth due to last week's career fair.)
3:05 PM - This woman in front of me can't swipe her metrocard right. Fucking tourists.
3:07 PM - Board a C train and sit down for the ride to Penn Station.
3:08 PM - Remember that I forgot to use the bathroom on my way out like I meant to.
3:16 PM - Arrive Penn Station.
3:22 PM - Find the place. It's kind of at the intersection of the Times Square Area, the Garment District, and Hell's Kitchen. About a block south of the New York Times and the Port Authority Terminal, and a couple blocks north of the only White Castle in Manhattan.
3:25 PM - Walk in a fashionable 5 minutes early and start the interview after they lead me to an editing suite. It goes pretty well, I think. They talk about my technical experience a good bit, asking about my work on Protools, on Avid, how well I understand email systems, photoshop, dreamweaver, etc. I would rate myself as being personable and well-qualified for the position, but who knows. They had some more interviews to do and said they'd get back to me. I hope I get the position, though I do kind of worry about running into too much stuff I'm not familiar with or being stuck at the unpaid intern level and not being able to move up into a paid position. I don't want to be a burden on Mom and Dad.
3:50 PM - Walked out and headed generally northish.
3:53 PM - Whoa, that guy just now totally looked like Orlando Bloom.
3:58 PM - Couldn't hold it anymore and did something I once swore to myself I would never do again. I used the Port Authority bathrooms. Thankfully, the Janitors had just done their job so it was only moderately disgusting.
4:00 PM - Leaving the restroom, for some reason, I got the Nyan Nyan dance song from the new macross series stuck in my head.
4:01 PM - Walked over towards Times Square and gave Mom a call to tell her how the interview went and chatted with her a bit. While chatting I go people watching in Times Square and see a guy who looks kinda like Heath Ledger.
4:30 PM - Got off the phone and went into the 42nd street subway station.
4:33 PM - I just lost the game.
4:36 PM - There's a blues group playing in the subway tunnels. Suddenly I have a craving for Maddy's.
4:41 PM - Got on a downtown R. Scored a seat.
4:47 PM - Get off at Union Square. There's a booth out in the park advertising "Fresh Local Honey". I've never seen a single bee in my years in New York. I wonder if I should call them on their bullshit?
4:54 PM - Arrived at Forbidden Planet and dropped off my bag at the front. Begin to peruse the stacks.
4:55 PM - Hey, since when has Forbidden Planet had a life sized fake Yoda?
5:05 PM - Spidey was fighting and losing to a big Mayan death god or something. Then a bunch of hobos randomly showed up out of nowhere and threw a bunch of Molotov cocktails at the angry god of death, defeating him. One of them then shows up later in the issue with a sign that says "Lost my booze saving Spider-Man, please help out".
5:20 PM - Next issue of Robin is about the ressurected Spoiler or whoever is dressed as her. The blurb/caption under next issue's cover just said "Rosebud was his sled!" I see what they did there.
6:36 PM - All of a sudden realize that the time's flown by and I have nine minutes till class. I quickly make my obligatory purchase (Oh! My Goddess 28, I don't think I have it.) to ease my guilty conscience about reading most of the new comics without buying them, pick up my bag, and head out. Trying to make it in time, I set my ipod to a playlist with a lot of fast music on it and concentrate on matching my footsteps to the tempo. Works pretty good for the length of "What Planet Is This", but then "B4U" starts and I start to lag behind from fatigue. At least it didn't shuffle to something like "Through the Fire and Flames".
6:40 PM - Saw a car labeled as the Grand Prix Driving School. Grand Prix? Not the image I want to conjure for my driving school, thanks. I give the car a wide berth.
6:47 PM - Take the odd-floor elevator and the stairs instead of going down to the evens and walking back, and thus make it to class in the nick of time, just as it started.
6:52 PM - My calves hurt.
6:55 PM - "Making a martial arts film is the dream of every Chinese director" Okay, whatever you say.
6:58 PM - I notice a girl across the room, a rather heavy girl, wearing very unflattering short shorts, pink with white polka dots, and her legs of a pastiness on the level of how John's used to be.
7:01 PM - I didn't even notice that her jacket was blue with white polka dots, holy shit.
7:06 PM - Two laptops not doing work related things, at least three nodding off, two texting, and I think I saw a DS. She's really good at making this uninteresting.
7:47 PM - We get a break before the screening. I make my decision to skip it, since it's Wong Kar Wai, who I've never really been a terribly huge fan of, to be honest. I wanna catch the debate. I sign the attendance roster and slip out.
7:52 PM - Looks like I just missed the bus. Bollocks.
7:57 PM - It occurs to me I missed dinner due to losing track of time in Forbidden Planet.
7:58 PM - Make rash decision to dash across Broadway to the McDonalds. I know it's a damn fool idea, but I was hungry, in a rush, and I don't have much in the way of groceries at home right now.
8:01 PM - Dash back across the street, weaving through traffic.
8:04 PM - Get two bites off before the bus comes. I correctly gauge its stopping point to within three or four feet, despite its clever tactic of shadowing a useless Route D bus, and am the first one on. Score!
8:07 PM - Nearly spill my drink. Stupid bumpy roads and shitty bus shock absorbers.
8:10 PM - Just noticed my soda doesn't have any ice in it. Damn it.
8:16 PM - Arrived at the dorm, skipped checking the mail due to full hands and a desire to not miss any more of the debate.
8:19 PM - Get tangled in a mess of my bag strap, my headphones, and my jacket while trying to take all of them off at once. Scramble for the remote and turn on the remote to see Obama rather brilliantly defending against a question regarding the "bitter" non-scandal. Then Hillary gives a response that, I don't really want to say it, but I gotta say, it's true, was kind of bitchy. Anyway, time for a burger.
8:26 PM - I swear, every debate Clinton seems like she's trying harder to bore a hole through Obama's skull with her eyes. In the early ones it was nice and genial, if perhaps a bit of a fake smile, but now it looks like she's trying to activate laser vision or something. Maybe that's her strategy for victory?
8:33 PM - Jesus they're being hard on Obama. Questions on the bitter thing, Wright, the flag lapel thing, and some bullshit tenuous connection between him and some guy from some radical 60's terrorist group that was cooked up and suggested by Sean Hannity?
8:45 PM - This debate is the biggest sham I've ever seen. Nothing but the biggest bullshit gotcha non-issues they can find. The only way this could redeem itself is if someone punches out George Stephanopoulus or whatever. Enough with the bullshit questions.
8:46 PM - Oh man, I gotta admit, though. Obama pointing out that Bill pardoned a couple of guys from the same organization the jackass moderator was trying to link him with during his term in office was a total ice burn, well played.
9:45ish PM - John gets back. He needs to study for a kanji quiz, but the debate's almost over, thank god. They moved onto some real issues at last, though they're still being confrontational and as assholeish as possible. I would've expected this level only from Fox News.
10:00 PM - Debate over, we switch to the new episode of South Park, about the entire internet going down. It's pretty good, but not super great.
10:30 PM - South Park over, I retire to my room for a half hour till the daily show to let John study. Give up on finding working live MSNBC stream, poke around the internet for a bit. Mostly blogs and Digg.
11:00 PM - Daily show comes on, it's okay, I guess, I only kind of half pay attention to it. Since they tape too late to have debate stuff, they focus on the Papal visit.
11:13 PM - John says, "I'm a bankhead nigga, I'll take yo cookies" and suddenly it's high school all over again and my thoughts turn to our prom king.
11:30 PM - Colbert report is alright, they had a good bit with him messing around in the Constitution Center.
12:00 AM - Turn off the Tv and go back to my room. Spend an hour or so doing internetty things, SA, blogs, 4chan, etc. Watch a video of Michelle Obama on Colbert the other night that I'd missed.
12:55 AM - Take one of my overly long, late night showers. Refreshing.
1:40 AM - Get out and sit down to type this up, staying up way too late in the process considering the time of my class tomorrow morning. Ah, well, I'll try tucking an alarm or two in unexpected places and maybe that'll help me get out of bed in the morning. I'll probably go to sleep after this, though, instead of doing my usual pre-bed wind down of light internet or something. Lately I've been exploring Nico Nico Douga, finding some pretty good videos I hadn't seen before on there. Probably not tonight, though. It's late.
Anyway, hope this wasn't too obnoxious, and I dunno if I'd do it very often, if ever again.
8:40 AM - Slept through my first broadside of alarms. Well, that's not exactly accurate. What I do is my subconscious is trained to leap out of bed with upper body strength and quickly slap the complex series of buttons needed to disarm all three of them that I have set to go off within a minute of each other. Then I plunge back into bed and am basically just as much at rest as I was a moment earlier. But still, it breaks the ice and maybe gives my conscious mind a shot.
9:10 AM - The second barrage hit, this time I was conscious enough to be motivated by the knowledge of my interview later in the day and dragged myself up. Found some decent clothes that weren't too smelly, bemoaning my forgetting to do laundry the night before, washed up a little, brushed, deodorized, etc. Used my clippers to trim the neckbeard and do the edges on my muttonchops, at least, though still haven't made the decision to lose either them or the goatee and stick with one. Almost got sucked in by the chair and computer and made late, but I forcibly dragged my unwilling lower body up with my upper body. Grabbed a teabag of green tea for the road, since I don't like the stuff they have at the office.
9:30 AM - Commune uneventful. Train prompt. Guy in the Canal St. station managed to slip past all my honed defenses and slip a Jesus pamphlet into my hand. I still need more training. While walking, "God Knows" came up on my ipod and I found myself mouthing along to the lyrics in the elevator. Immediately felt like an enormous nerd, but didn't stop.
10:00 AM - Got into work, set my computer to start booting up and went to go get breakfast from the kitchen. The postworks employees, the TV on CNN, and the papers were all talking about the pope, who was currently starting his speech at the white house. I'm sorry, but I just can't see him without picturing a black hood and some purple lightning and him all being "FULLY OPERATIONAL BATTLE STATION"
10:15 AM - Computer finally finishes booting up and I can begin the process of launching Firefox, opening Word, and playing the audio file I need to transcribe.
10:25 AM - Start work transcribing. This is old hat now. For a couple weeks now, a lot of my work has been working on transcribing phone interviews with scientists for the special on the Phoenix Mars Mission they have in preproduction. It's fairly interesting material but still gives me a headache after a while of typing it. Today's is an irritating one, the guy talks fast, mumbles a bit, and is quiet on the phone. I have to turn it way up to hear him clearly, which means I nearly blow my eardrum whenever one of the interviewers speaks, since he has a much better phone mic and a loud, loud voice.
11:00 AM - Meeting starts for Evolve in the conference area right behind me. Loud enough that I have to start listening to a lot of stuff I'm transcribing at least twice to hear what's being said accurately.
11:15 AM - Get a headache from my crappy monitor and all the typing and make up some excuses to myself to go walk down the hall and stretch my legs.
11:20 AM - Hear that Jason, one of the other interns, called in sick today. Yesterday Nandini, the other intern I work with did likewise. This is making me kind of nervous.
11:36 AM - A guy walked into the office and dropped a lunch menu for a sushi place on my desk. I read through it and was happy, it looked good. No more expensive, unhealthy subway lunches for me! Then I checked the address. The restaurant's all the way up in the west village near NYU! If I were going that far I might as well just use the meal plan. Why the hell were they dropping off a menu on the 12th floor of a random office building nearly a mile away?
12:00 PM - Just as I get used to the meeting noise, they break and it dissolves into loud side conversations and moving chairs around, making it even harder to hear.
12:01 PM - I keep subconsciously capitalizing "Data", which makes me think of Star Trek.
12:30 PM - Evolve calls another surprise meeting. Good news, the studio likes one of the first episodes and signed off on the rough cut. Much applause. Sarcastic comments are traded about how now they just have to go over budget and time on all the other episodes, since that seemed to work for this one. Someone shouts, "Let's go get some beers, we're done here!" and the meeting breaks up.
12:40 PM - I suddenly realize it's getting much later than I thought and I head out for lunch without a real clear idea of where I'm heading.
12:47 PM - Fight my way through the usual crowd of black and hispanic youths outside the corner deli at lunchtime to grab my usual copy of the Times. Don't these damn kids have school or something?
12:50 PM - Decide to try a pizza place I once heard a couple guys in the lobby say was really good. It's up by the hardware store where I learned you can get a crowbar for only $10. (What a steal!) Quietly sing along to "With or Without You" on the way. An old lady looks at me a little funny, I think. I miss having a car I could sing in like a huge tone-deaf idiot.
12:55 PM - Famous Ben's Pizza is pretty damn good. A little expensive for New York pizza, ($6.25 for two plain slices and a can of soda) but about as tasty a slice as I think I've ever had, and they had an old timey cash register with the flippy numbers instead of a digital display! Rad. Got to remember the location. As I feared, I spilled something down the front of my nice black shirt right before my interview, but it's just a little Pepsi, it doesn't stain, no big deal.
1:10 PM - I finish my lunch before my newspaper or my lunch break. The pizza joint is crowded, so I move outside and sit down on a bench by one of those chess tables across the street. It's a beautiful spring day, the sun is out and warm, the sky is clear and blue, a cool breeze passes. I love this time of year. There is a basketball court on the corner next to me. Some kids are playing what looks to be four separate games of wall ball. Man, that takes me back. Only game cooler was four square. I notice a couple sticks of Big Red on the bench next to me. I could go for some gum, but those are really suspect.
1:18 PM - A young woman sits across the table from me and starts eating lunch. I stop occasionally watching the wall ball in case she thinks I'm glancing at here or something.
1:21 PM - Is she putting jelly on a salad?
1:35 PM - Finish reading paper, in the process of which I learn that there's a democratic debate tonight. Why didn't I hear of this? Now I have to make the decision of whether I want to skip some of Hong Kong cinema to watch it. I don't care about tonight's screening, and I could probably sneak off, but I guess I probably shouldn't. I could watch it later, but it just wouldn't be the same without liveblogging on the forums. It lacks the same excitement. Anyway, I head back towards the office.
1:47 PM - Back at the office, I return to transcribing with a fresh head. The end is in sight.
2:53 PM - Mark my place in case one of the other interns wants to take up what I started and pack up. Got a little more than halfway through transcribing a fifty minute interview. Could be better, I guess. About 00:32:00 of interview transcribed (oh god, I wrote it as timecode completely by reflex)
3:00 PM - I head out for my interview. Normally I stay on Wednesdays till five, so I have time to get dinner before my 6:45 class, but thanks to my 3:30 inteview I'm leaving early. I use Elena's sharpie to label my freshly made reel and pick up my $40 stipend. (only two days worth due to last week's career fair.)
3:05 PM - This woman in front of me can't swipe her metrocard right. Fucking tourists.
3:07 PM - Board a C train and sit down for the ride to Penn Station.
3:08 PM - Remember that I forgot to use the bathroom on my way out like I meant to.
3:16 PM - Arrive Penn Station.
3:22 PM - Find the place. It's kind of at the intersection of the Times Square Area, the Garment District, and Hell's Kitchen. About a block south of the New York Times and the Port Authority Terminal, and a couple blocks north of the only White Castle in Manhattan.
3:25 PM - Walk in a fashionable 5 minutes early and start the interview after they lead me to an editing suite. It goes pretty well, I think. They talk about my technical experience a good bit, asking about my work on Protools, on Avid, how well I understand email systems, photoshop, dreamweaver, etc. I would rate myself as being personable and well-qualified for the position, but who knows. They had some more interviews to do and said they'd get back to me. I hope I get the position, though I do kind of worry about running into too much stuff I'm not familiar with or being stuck at the unpaid intern level and not being able to move up into a paid position. I don't want to be a burden on Mom and Dad.
3:50 PM - Walked out and headed generally northish.
3:53 PM - Whoa, that guy just now totally looked like Orlando Bloom.
3:58 PM - Couldn't hold it anymore and did something I once swore to myself I would never do again. I used the Port Authority bathrooms. Thankfully, the Janitors had just done their job so it was only moderately disgusting.
4:00 PM - Leaving the restroom, for some reason, I got the Nyan Nyan dance song from the new macross series stuck in my head.
4:01 PM - Walked over towards Times Square and gave Mom a call to tell her how the interview went and chatted with her a bit. While chatting I go people watching in Times Square and see a guy who looks kinda like Heath Ledger.
4:30 PM - Got off the phone and went into the 42nd street subway station.
4:33 PM - I just lost the game.
4:36 PM - There's a blues group playing in the subway tunnels. Suddenly I have a craving for Maddy's.
4:41 PM - Got on a downtown R. Scored a seat.
4:47 PM - Get off at Union Square. There's a booth out in the park advertising "Fresh Local Honey". I've never seen a single bee in my years in New York. I wonder if I should call them on their bullshit?
4:54 PM - Arrived at Forbidden Planet and dropped off my bag at the front. Begin to peruse the stacks.
4:55 PM - Hey, since when has Forbidden Planet had a life sized fake Yoda?
5:05 PM - Spidey was fighting and losing to a big Mayan death god or something. Then a bunch of hobos randomly showed up out of nowhere and threw a bunch of Molotov cocktails at the angry god of death, defeating him. One of them then shows up later in the issue with a sign that says "Lost my booze saving Spider-Man, please help out".
5:20 PM - Next issue of Robin is about the ressurected Spoiler or whoever is dressed as her. The blurb/caption under next issue's cover just said "Rosebud was his sled!" I see what they did there.
6:36 PM - All of a sudden realize that the time's flown by and I have nine minutes till class. I quickly make my obligatory purchase (Oh! My Goddess 28, I don't think I have it.) to ease my guilty conscience about reading most of the new comics without buying them, pick up my bag, and head out. Trying to make it in time, I set my ipod to a playlist with a lot of fast music on it and concentrate on matching my footsteps to the tempo. Works pretty good for the length of "What Planet Is This", but then "B4U" starts and I start to lag behind from fatigue. At least it didn't shuffle to something like "Through the Fire and Flames".
6:40 PM - Saw a car labeled as the Grand Prix Driving School. Grand Prix? Not the image I want to conjure for my driving school, thanks. I give the car a wide berth.
6:47 PM - Take the odd-floor elevator and the stairs instead of going down to the evens and walking back, and thus make it to class in the nick of time, just as it started.
6:52 PM - My calves hurt.
6:55 PM - "Making a martial arts film is the dream of every Chinese director" Okay, whatever you say.
6:58 PM - I notice a girl across the room, a rather heavy girl, wearing very unflattering short shorts, pink with white polka dots, and her legs of a pastiness on the level of how John's used to be.
7:01 PM - I didn't even notice that her jacket was blue with white polka dots, holy shit.
7:06 PM - Two laptops not doing work related things, at least three nodding off, two texting, and I think I saw a DS. She's really good at making this uninteresting.
7:47 PM - We get a break before the screening. I make my decision to skip it, since it's Wong Kar Wai, who I've never really been a terribly huge fan of, to be honest. I wanna catch the debate. I sign the attendance roster and slip out.
7:52 PM - Looks like I just missed the bus. Bollocks.
7:57 PM - It occurs to me I missed dinner due to losing track of time in Forbidden Planet.
7:58 PM - Make rash decision to dash across Broadway to the McDonalds. I know it's a damn fool idea, but I was hungry, in a rush, and I don't have much in the way of groceries at home right now.
8:01 PM - Dash back across the street, weaving through traffic.
8:04 PM - Get two bites off before the bus comes. I correctly gauge its stopping point to within three or four feet, despite its clever tactic of shadowing a useless Route D bus, and am the first one on. Score!
8:07 PM - Nearly spill my drink. Stupid bumpy roads and shitty bus shock absorbers.
8:10 PM - Just noticed my soda doesn't have any ice in it. Damn it.
8:16 PM - Arrived at the dorm, skipped checking the mail due to full hands and a desire to not miss any more of the debate.
8:19 PM - Get tangled in a mess of my bag strap, my headphones, and my jacket while trying to take all of them off at once. Scramble for the remote and turn on the remote to see Obama rather brilliantly defending against a question regarding the "bitter" non-scandal. Then Hillary gives a response that, I don't really want to say it, but I gotta say, it's true, was kind of bitchy. Anyway, time for a burger.
8:26 PM - I swear, every debate Clinton seems like she's trying harder to bore a hole through Obama's skull with her eyes. In the early ones it was nice and genial, if perhaps a bit of a fake smile, but now it looks like she's trying to activate laser vision or something. Maybe that's her strategy for victory?
8:33 PM - Jesus they're being hard on Obama. Questions on the bitter thing, Wright, the flag lapel thing, and some bullshit tenuous connection between him and some guy from some radical 60's terrorist group that was cooked up and suggested by Sean Hannity?
8:45 PM - This debate is the biggest sham I've ever seen. Nothing but the biggest bullshit gotcha non-issues they can find. The only way this could redeem itself is if someone punches out George Stephanopoulus or whatever. Enough with the bullshit questions.
8:46 PM - Oh man, I gotta admit, though. Obama pointing out that Bill pardoned a couple of guys from the same organization the jackass moderator was trying to link him with during his term in office was a total ice burn, well played.
9:45ish PM - John gets back. He needs to study for a kanji quiz, but the debate's almost over, thank god. They moved onto some real issues at last, though they're still being confrontational and as assholeish as possible. I would've expected this level only from Fox News.
10:00 PM - Debate over, we switch to the new episode of South Park, about the entire internet going down. It's pretty good, but not super great.
10:30 PM - South Park over, I retire to my room for a half hour till the daily show to let John study. Give up on finding working live MSNBC stream, poke around the internet for a bit. Mostly blogs and Digg.
11:00 PM - Daily show comes on, it's okay, I guess, I only kind of half pay attention to it. Since they tape too late to have debate stuff, they focus on the Papal visit.
11:13 PM - John says, "I'm a bankhead nigga, I'll take yo cookies" and suddenly it's high school all over again and my thoughts turn to our prom king.
11:30 PM - Colbert report is alright, they had a good bit with him messing around in the Constitution Center.
12:00 AM - Turn off the Tv and go back to my room. Spend an hour or so doing internetty things, SA, blogs, 4chan, etc. Watch a video of Michelle Obama on Colbert the other night that I'd missed.
12:55 AM - Take one of my overly long, late night showers. Refreshing.
1:40 AM - Get out and sit down to type this up, staying up way too late in the process considering the time of my class tomorrow morning. Ah, well, I'll try tucking an alarm or two in unexpected places and maybe that'll help me get out of bed in the morning. I'll probably go to sleep after this, though, instead of doing my usual pre-bed wind down of light internet or something. Lately I've been exploring Nico Nico Douga, finding some pretty good videos I hadn't seen before on there. Probably not tonight, though. It's late.
Anyway, hope this wasn't too obnoxious, and I dunno if I'd do it very often, if ever again.