It's the end of one long fucking day. It wasn't a bad day. It may
just be tainted by the fact that my head is clouded by the remnants of
a splitting headache.
So anyway, the day started promtly at 6:45 am this morning. The phone
rang, and while I'm usually quick to answer in hopes that only Rodzilla
calls that early, lately it's always been my roommates girlfriend. Why
she calls so early I do not know. All I know ist that if I pick up and
it's her, I have to trudge the 60 or so feet to Howard's room to get him.
I don't know what she just doesn't call his cell phone for the luvagod.
So today, I decided, fuck it, I'm not picking up the damn phone.
Luckily for me, my roommate Alice was up and about, because it was indeed
Rodzilla on the other end. A nice little pleasant surprise. We chatted
for a little over 13 minutes, as the tmer on her phone indicated.
I like talking to her at odd hours, but the trouble is I can rarely remember
what we talk about when I'm so groggy. But I do remember a general feeling
of pleasantness. She's doing well, if anyone is curious.
So I slept intermittently for the next 6 hours or so. James called
a few times, and I think someone called for the Danish girl visint Alice.
I didn't sleep very well after Rodzilla called. So i pulled my ass
outta bed around 1, because I had to go back to Roosevelt Islan to complete
my research for my lame-ass story on the Tramway. The girl from class
I was going with, Kathy, was supposed to call at some point, but
I wasn't sure when, so I figured it was the afternoon so I should get up.
But by 2:30 she hadn't called. So to kill some time I called Caryn, also
from class, who had gone in to see the head of our program to voice her,
well actually all of our, disappointment over how the classes were going.
As predicted, the professor wasn't too helpful, from what Caryn says.
While I was on the phone with Caryn, Kathy finally called. By the
way, there are too many people with a "K" sound in their name in my class.
Caryn, Kathy, Katey... it's all very confusing. Anyway, I finally
met up with her at NYU around 3:30. After well each did about 100 other
things, we finally got to the Island around 5 I think. So brought
my little recorder, and we went around soliciting the opinions and thought
total strangers. Some were very helpful, while some were not.
Some told us nice little things and others told us a lot more than we cared
to know. I hate just walking up to strangers with my stupid tape-recorder
and telling them I'm a journalism student. I feel like I'm just invading
their privacy. One women that I talked to, who told me a lot, was insanely
paranoid. She works in the token booth, and I asked her if she ever
got suspicious or paranoid of anyone who came by. She said that she's not
only been suspicious of many people in the past, but that I
was making her a little sacred myself. Her final words to me were,
"Now you made me hafta lock my door." As I thanked her and waved goodbye,
she yelled through her microphone, while people were waiting to buy tokens
"I'm gonna remember your face!" Christ.
So after that, Kathy and I went down to Chinatown to grab a bite to eat.
We ended up in this pretty bad restaurant. Behind me was an odd-looking
man with long hair and a frilly shirt and a cape. Sort of bedazzled,
the cape was. I hope it was for Halloween's sake. He was a grade-A
weirdo, that's for sure. Anyway, I suppose it was an ok time.
I like the fact that I'm getting to know some of the people in my program.
When first when to school, my mom's parting words were "Try to make some
friends." And by "school," I mean GRADUATE school.
So there's a good indication of how my mom sees me. We chatted about
our Americanized parents (she's Iranian, I think. Some sort of Persian),
and girlfriends and boyfriends, and other normal-people things, as opposed
to how much we hated or liked aspects of our jounralism program, which
is what most people, myself included, seem to be doing these days.
It was nice to have a normal conversation, i guess. It's kinda weird,
though, because I feel like the people that I talk to from school are a
bit more than aquaintences, but not quite real friends. I guess it's
somewhere between a working relationship and true-friendship. BUt
it's nice to have people to talk to that can relate to the awfulness of
what a lot of grad-school is turing out to be. But it's still better
than the real world, if only fr the long holiday vacations.
Anyway, I don't know if it was the bad Chinese food or the smell or what, but I started feeling violently ill shortly after we left the joint. My head was absolutely throbbing. We came back to The Pad, and she listened to the tape and took some notes, while I tried various different sitting positions to cure my headache. I picked up the mail and was disapointed that there was no mail for moi. But as I was shuffling through it, out fell the long-awaited letter from Rodzilla. I waited to after Kathy left to read it, mostly because I wanted to give it my undevided attention. I like to immerse myself in whatever it is I'm doing. Espcailly if it's something of a "treat." It's sort of like going out to get some fast food or something, and not eating any of it until I get home. That's one thing about Rodzilla that drives me crazy. We'd be sitting around, and I'd be like "let's go get some tacos" or something, and by the time we get back, she's all finished with hers. If i'm watching TV and think "tacos would sure be nice," I mean, they would be nice while watching TV. I'm not going to compromise my vision for a little instant gratification. If I'm lookinforward to something, I want it to be exaclty as I envisioned, with no exception or disitraction. I want to savor it. Boy, that was a really long explanation of why I didn't want to read the letter while Kathy was here. Basically, I guess I wanted something to look forward to, since I had no plans after the letter. Yeah, that's it.
The letter was really nice, if you must know. Without getting into
detail, it was pretty much all I could ask for. it certainly
improved my mood a biit, and may even be responsible for reducing my hellish
headache. But that's more likely the Advil's work.
Still, it could be the letter...
DA&R
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