Back to School

It was the first day of classes today. My only class is Thursdays at 3pm. I wish it was over; all of it. I'm not in the mood to do this school shit anymore.

Alt UTA movie night

We had a great turnout for the alternative UTA movie night. There were three new people and five return customers. Not too shabby for a violent kid's movie: Pan's Labyrinth. I found this in the children's DVDs not far from Muppet Treasure Island. I'm guessing that was either a clerk or patron mistake because the movie is not for the feint of heart.

BS class is over, got the BS grade

Well I can't really sleep. I don't know for sure if it's because of the really stressful day I just had, or the one that's about to begin. I just wish it was the weekend already so I'd have time to decompress. I got my BS B from the chickenshit class. Can't say that it's much of a shock, but the prof. hasn't written me back yet about the final grade. I'd like for him to tell me exactly why I got a B. I can't stand him just handing me one and expecting me to suck on it.

Some good news though. I won a scholarship to attend the National Recycling Congress in Pittsburgh. I'll be there, all expenses paid, Sept 20-24th. It should be kickin'. My b-day is the 19th and I plan on launching a party. That may make traveling on the 20th a bit difficult, but it's not that I haven't taken a flight while still recovering from a night of drinking...

I remember back in the day... 2003ish... I went to a student conference in Salt Lake City. The entire week was a marathon of drinking and workshops. The final night was the last lap. I went off drunk around 2am, came back to my room at 5. My roommates were finishing off all the "wounded soldiers" and I was enlisted to help out. We killed a room full of partially drunk beer then hit the hot tub as the sun came up. I'm not expecting a repeat at my b-day party, but it could happen. Hell, who knows, I may end up getting challenged at the Pittsburgh conference.

"Hey Tim! Yeah! Let's empty these cans so we can recycle them!"

Sometimes it's not easy being green.

Class in Chickenshit

That's not what I called it, but that's what it was all about. It was taking care of minor details on a meaningless quest to get them all in order. I turned in my final plans. There were three parts, detailing one site plan: a dimension page, a grading page, a landscape page. In all three I hid small easter egg surprises for my teacher. It's not that I felt any malice towards my prof. or his profession, but I didn't like whiling away the hours in the computer lab squinting my way towards a grade in front of a screen. I had to do more than copy straight some bullshit plans for an office building that has already been built long before I knew it existed.

The final sheet had a few, not so subtle, passive aggressive markings. Instead of filling out the entire landscape planting roster I made up stuff. I just didn't feel like doing data entry for an extra thirty minutes, copying verbatim a meaning list of stats: genus, species, common name, size, number, comments x50.

Fuck that. I filled out the Latin and vernacular, but I don't think landscape artists have a standard size "big," "huge," or "so-so" bush. Nor do I think that it's common to count the number of Crepe Myrtles as "more than a few, but not a lot," or my favorite, instead of writing a number, putting down "orange."

"How many, Tim?"
"Purple."