Mount What-a-freaking-mess.
So, I've been here at Montclair since Sunday, living the bizarre life of an on-campus college student. The room I have is really huge, apparently it's designated for a person in a wheelchair, but, since I guess the quota of wheelchaired people is low for this semester, I got this room. After a week of fighting for a single room, mind you. I requested a single room, was assigned a double, and after writing a lengthy letter to the person in charge of housing assignments, got the palatial estate. Since then, it's been constant fighting.
So far:
1. The air conditioner in the room is broken. Rather, it spews out hot air, even when set down to 50-degrees.
2. It took an argument to get the mail-key, as they said they already gave one out to "Loquanda." Even though there's three people in the apartment thingie - Travis, Alex, and myself. No Loquanda. Then, they gave me the key for box #157. I soon discovered there was no box #157 in my building, and had to go back and get the right key. They scolded me because I walked out a first withouth having signed for the key. I told them that I wasn't signing anything until I made sure I had the right one.
3. After mailing in a change of plan form over a week ago, my meal plan still wasn't changed. I only wanted the 50-meal per semester plan, which I probably still won't use all of (so if anyone wants to come visit, we can pig out on awful all-you-can-eat college food {more on that later}). I go to the meal plan office, and they say they never got the form, even though I mailed it out Priority Mail. Five minutes later, it was fixed.
4. Meeting with an assistant dean turned out to be like talking to a block headed Wal-Mart manager.
5. Getting back to my car, I find I got a parking ticket... for parking in the lot assigned to my building. I had no time to get a pass over the previous day and a half, so I left the form with my housing assignment in the window. They ignored it. Going to the parking office today, I find out that somehow, all of the spots at the apartment complex ("The Village at Little Falls") are sold out, and were sold out in October, but they never bothered to tell me. How the (*Q@#$& can you assign someone a room, and not have a corresponding parking spot? For the same damned price as the permit to park in the proper lot I should be in, I'm now to park in a lot a half-mile up the road.
6. It rained like all get-out yesterday. I wore Chris Daley's awesome rain cape, which kept my shoulders dry, but the wind drove the rain, which soaked my trousers, boots, and blew my jeep cap off and right into a puddle.
There's also been hell getting my financial aid together, counselor crap, and book buying bullpoop.
I have been having an interesting time exploring college food. I've never really had it before last month, so I've been using a few of those 50 meals on taste testing this week. The following exchange occured between me and the guy working the grill in the Blanton Hall dining room on Tuesday evening:
*cheap, crumpled, and greasy piece of paper with bad MS Word clipart says "Today's Grill Special: International Burger"*
Jason: "Hi. What's the 'International Burger'?
Fry Guy, as he squishes one of the 10 burgers that are frying in front of him, which spits grease: "Oh, it's just a burger with provolone cheese on it."
Jason: "Ah."
I tried it anyway, and loaded it with onions and pickles. It was okay. Yesterday was the "Buffalo Chicken Meltdown" which was a piece of chicken turned a bright, unnaturally orange from the buffalo wing sauce enfused in it, topped with some sort of cheese slice thing.
Today, I had a bowl of potato leek soup with a new kind of hard cider I found called "Hardcore." Obvious I should be drinking something called "hardcore", eh? It's rather good. Not Magner's, but the closest to it.
The area in Montclair in awful. I haven't explored much of the town around here, but Rt. 46 is the Devil's Highway, with construction going on along every inch of it, which makes travel completely hazardous. Turns to get into shopping plazas appear, and the exits are blind, which are gambles on your life. It's just by sheer luck that Annie and I made it into an A&P. Farther down 46, towards New York City, the highway is lined with several strip joints and adult video stores. "SportsSexy" is along the southbound side of 46, in Little Falls, and "Pleasure Plus Video" is near Garfield.
Marc, if your song about Jersey were about this area and most of North Jersey, I totally agree with why you hated the place.
I miss the pine trees and the rolling hills of Monmouth. Most of all, I miss Annie. *SIGH* She's away in England this week, with her father and Bob Conroy, playing and singing around Northern England and Scotland. She's also having fun running through original medieval ploughmarks in Whirram Percy and other abandoned medieval villages.
I'm in the computer lab in the student center which looks like the bioresearch building at the beginning of "Outbreak." My parents ordered a sweet computer which is tricked out for video editing yesterday when I came home for the night, which I should have in a week. I'll try to pop in now and again until I get it.
If anyone would like to send any mail, I would very much appreciate it, as it is very lonely here. I'm adrift in a sea of numbskulls and I'd like a little bit of intelligent insanity and friendship. My apartment mates are nice, but there isn't the real click of true friendship. I miss all of my friends.
My address is:
Jason Wickersty
Montclair State University
Count Basie, Apt#1G
Montclair, NJ 07043
Blarg.
So far:
1. The air conditioner in the room is broken. Rather, it spews out hot air, even when set down to 50-degrees.
2. It took an argument to get the mail-key, as they said they already gave one out to "Loquanda." Even though there's three people in the apartment thingie - Travis, Alex, and myself. No Loquanda. Then, they gave me the key for box #157. I soon discovered there was no box #157 in my building, and had to go back and get the right key. They scolded me because I walked out a first withouth having signed for the key. I told them that I wasn't signing anything until I made sure I had the right one.
3. After mailing in a change of plan form over a week ago, my meal plan still wasn't changed. I only wanted the 50-meal per semester plan, which I probably still won't use all of (so if anyone wants to come visit, we can pig out on awful all-you-can-eat college food {more on that later}). I go to the meal plan office, and they say they never got the form, even though I mailed it out Priority Mail. Five minutes later, it was fixed.
4. Meeting with an assistant dean turned out to be like talking to a block headed Wal-Mart manager.
5. Getting back to my car, I find I got a parking ticket... for parking in the lot assigned to my building. I had no time to get a pass over the previous day and a half, so I left the form with my housing assignment in the window. They ignored it. Going to the parking office today, I find out that somehow, all of the spots at the apartment complex ("The Village at Little Falls") are sold out, and were sold out in October, but they never bothered to tell me. How the (*Q@#$& can you assign someone a room, and not have a corresponding parking spot? For the same damned price as the permit to park in the proper lot I should be in, I'm now to park in a lot a half-mile up the road.
6. It rained like all get-out yesterday. I wore Chris Daley's awesome rain cape, which kept my shoulders dry, but the wind drove the rain, which soaked my trousers, boots, and blew my jeep cap off and right into a puddle.
There's also been hell getting my financial aid together, counselor crap, and book buying bullpoop.
I have been having an interesting time exploring college food. I've never really had it before last month, so I've been using a few of those 50 meals on taste testing this week. The following exchange occured between me and the guy working the grill in the Blanton Hall dining room on Tuesday evening:
*cheap, crumpled, and greasy piece of paper with bad MS Word clipart says "Today's Grill Special: International Burger"*
Jason: "Hi. What's the 'International Burger'?
Fry Guy, as he squishes one of the 10 burgers that are frying in front of him, which spits grease: "Oh, it's just a burger with provolone cheese on it."
Jason: "Ah."
I tried it anyway, and loaded it with onions and pickles. It was okay. Yesterday was the "Buffalo Chicken Meltdown" which was a piece of chicken turned a bright, unnaturally orange from the buffalo wing sauce enfused in it, topped with some sort of cheese slice thing.
Today, I had a bowl of potato leek soup with a new kind of hard cider I found called "Hardcore." Obvious I should be drinking something called "hardcore", eh? It's rather good. Not Magner's, but the closest to it.
The area in Montclair in awful. I haven't explored much of the town around here, but Rt. 46 is the Devil's Highway, with construction going on along every inch of it, which makes travel completely hazardous. Turns to get into shopping plazas appear, and the exits are blind, which are gambles on your life. It's just by sheer luck that Annie and I made it into an A&P. Farther down 46, towards New York City, the highway is lined with several strip joints and adult video stores. "SportsSexy" is along the southbound side of 46, in Little Falls, and "Pleasure Plus Video" is near Garfield.
Marc, if your song about Jersey were about this area and most of North Jersey, I totally agree with why you hated the place.
I miss the pine trees and the rolling hills of Monmouth. Most of all, I miss Annie. *SIGH* She's away in England this week, with her father and Bob Conroy, playing and singing around Northern England and Scotland. She's also having fun running through original medieval ploughmarks in Whirram Percy and other abandoned medieval villages.
I'm in the computer lab in the student center which looks like the bioresearch building at the beginning of "Outbreak." My parents ordered a sweet computer which is tricked out for video editing yesterday when I came home for the night, which I should have in a week. I'll try to pop in now and again until I get it.
If anyone would like to send any mail, I would very much appreciate it, as it is very lonely here. I'm adrift in a sea of numbskulls and I'd like a little bit of intelligent insanity and friendship. My apartment mates are nice, but there isn't the real click of true friendship. I miss all of my friends.
My address is:
Jason Wickersty
Montclair State University
Count Basie, Apt#1G
Montclair, NJ 07043
Blarg.