Life in Shorts

While the weather's still nice enough to snub the campus shuttle and walk to and from classes everyday, here is a summary of the past week in shorts--because everyone knows that the news looks best in briefs.

APARTMENT

I've heard that it's "well loved."  I've heard that it has "character."  I've also heard that it gets mice in the winter.  Between "deteriorated to the brink of ruin" and "distressed chic," the condition of my apartment lies closer to the latter (until any remaining cabinet doors fall off), but the rent would seem inflated if it weren't standard for this neighborhood.  My bedroom door won't close, and the front door often won't open, but for nine months, it's home.  Pictures are to follow.

ROOMMATE

Nice, very nice.  I owe her one already; she woke up yesterday to the hysterical metallic rattle of my attempt to open the aforementioned front door and was kind enough to put me out of my misery by opening it.

CLASSES

Italian Conversation and Comprehension, Issues and Approaches to Studio Art, Philosophy of the Person, Exploring Catholicism, and, uh...that one brand new physics course ambiguously titled Structures of the Universe.  

My eyes glazed over during my first Foundations of Physics lecture as the professor displayed a table of fermions, bosons, quarks, and leptons (note:  my spellchecker is having a fit right now).  He coolly ran through the types of quarks (up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange) and reminded us that if asked for an example of a fermion or a boson, we can name drop electrons and photons, respectively.  Obviously.  In the social circles in which I run, bosons are all we talk about.  Right.  I knew quirks could be both charming and strange, but I did not know that quarks could be either charm or strange.  All I had to do was approach the professor (if he's a Jesuit with a Ph.D., would I call him Father or Doctor?) and identify myself as a Studio Art major, and he gently directed me toward the Physics Department to transfer into a class where students admire Hubble telescope images and discuss how they feel about their quarks.

PEOPLE

I hardly know many people yet, but those I do know all come from California.  I don't seek them out; the Californians are just so plentiful and accessible that I can't help running into them.  My roommate is from California.  People who sit next to me in class are from California.  I traveled to Massachusetts just so I could meet people from the state directly below mine.  What puzzles me is why any Californian would surrender a balmy winter for a New England winter.  There must be cushy scholarships involved.

MISCELLANY AND MARGINALIA

I saw a wild rabbit running across the front yards of apartments alongside the noise and bustle of Commonwealth Avenue.  If I think Comm. Ave. is loud, imagine the implications of hearing it with giant ears.

The local R&B station has a DJ who calls himself the Freakin' Puerto Rican.  I saw his advertisement printed on the light of a taxi that serendipitously pulled up next to our rental car the day I arrived.

There is a bench on campus donated by--I must look again to reassure myself that I wasn't hallucinating--The Misery Club.

Someone, please explain to me what a grinder is in Boston.

Almost all freshmen live in an assemblage of dormitories located about three miles away from the main campus, a concept reminiscent of a quarantined area or leper colony.