I don't get emails anymore.

It seems to be a side product of not teaching anymore. I don't get emails sent at 12:13 am from students declaring that "Ms. Sween (they called me ' Ms.' when they did something wrong and they knew it) I didn't realize that paper was due TODAY, could I please have an extension" or "is that reading assignment you gave us two weeks to read and is due tomorrow mandatory?" My favorite was when someone missed class and I would get a message that went something like "Dear Ms. Sween, i am in your english 101 class that meets on mondays and wednesday's from 9-10:45. I was not in class today due to the fact that i was ill [hungover?!]. Did we do anything in class today? [No, of course not. We never do. Especially when YOU aren't there.]"
(brackets added)

Yes, I got a lot of those emails. I would laugh, shake my head, wonder what a certain crazy NY teacher of mine would do if I sent her such an email. I also got emails from my profs, and the has-nothing-better-to-do English secretary. "There are two VCR remotes missing from the office. Please return these promptly." "English office supplies are for classroom use only. This includes printer ink and paper. Please do not use these for personal use." "Somebody spilled pop in the computer lab." "Somebody used whiteboard marker on the smartboard." Ok, there were times when her emails made my day: "Vendors in AH 318. Will have food and beverages." "Potluck today in the English office." "Free faculty and staff BBQ on the mall at noon."

I would get emails from said vendors with food. They were always addressed to "Professor Sween." I didn't see a need to correct this; it made me giggle a little everytime I read about the lastest composition textbook, which I promptly ordered. I miss that too. About four days after the vendors were on campus, I'd suddenly get 3-4 new books. Like Christmas I tell you. Christmas for an English major, because I tell you what, if my brother got 3 books for Christmas he'd be slightly less than thrilled. I know this because I gave him a book last year. I gave his girlfriend a book too. One that I got for free from a vendor. See how I'm making this relate?

So email me and tell me precisely why your paper wasn't in this morning. It will make me happy.

Ach.

I should have seen this coming. My old roommates came down. They insisted we take a cab home so we could drink more at the wedding dance. We were heading to the dance club but decided to make a stop at the, um, dance club. Let's just say I now know Panko's pain.

Smith--I'm so glad you were up at 2am.

My summer of drinking has begun.

Yesterday I called the boy to pick up beer on the way home from work. He countered with an invite to Boomtown with his coworkers. What was supposed to be a nice beer or two after work (the boy's, not mine seeing as I have no job) turned into, like, five or six in a couple hours. Let's just say I ended up in bed by 8:30 last night. I think I got up at one point for cereal. Mmm...golden grahms.

P.S. VS's semi-annual sale starts today! Smith, wake up so we can go frolic among the half price panties.

Today I:

--did laundry
--washed dishes
--tried to clean office and realized I need, like, 8 more bookcases and my plans for selling my free copies of about 30 comp books on half.com will not work cuz they sent me instructor's editions. Damn it all, as that was supposed to be a bulk of my summer income.
--worked on my resume as the boy declared I must apply for one job a day. Give me a week and I'll be grovelling outside McDonalds. He told me I could be manager in three months.
--went to two groceries stores because one had nectarines for 99 cents and the other had pizza 4 for $10. Gots to save money if I'm not bringing any in.
--picked up wedding invites and decided, poor etiquette or not, I'm printing addresses on the computer. It's better than my handwriting anyway. Unless someone is fantastic at calligraphy and wants to write out, oh, 175 invites.
--felt sorry for myself for being a pathetic loser with no friends and no job.
--decided to dedicate my summer to drinking heavily.

I saw the boy's jaw drop when I heard her say

"the beer is complimentary." This after seeing a Shamu show that was ridiculously better than the Cinderella singing showtunes that greeted us at Disney the day before. Certainly any themepark sponsored by a major beer company is going to be better than a land of flat boatrides with singing puppets.

Highlights? Walking through the Clydesdale stables and seeing one very "excited" horse. This is the kind of child friendly scene I expected to see at Disney--you know, how they manage to sneak sex into every scene. "Why, we can't help that the horse's wiener is larger than your three year old and about to entangle him." Hung like a horse is given new meaning when you're referring to Clydesdales and not those wussy ponies that walk in circles at county fairs.

I went on a roller coaster similar to the Batman ride of Chicago Six Flags. No bottom, legs flying above your head on the many upside down flips. Had the ride been a minute longer my free beer would have been making a comeback. Seriously, it was that great.

Going to beer school and becoming an honorary beermaster. I have the diploma with my name on it to prove it. It's getting hung in a nice frame next to that Masters degree. My mom will be proud. I also got to sample mango beer, tropical fruit beer, and lemon limey beer. All were not good.

All in all it was a good day and we were itching to be back at the hotel. There was leftover Dominos in the fridge and a couple Bud Lites (yeah, I know). While waiting we made friends with some other folks from the hotel--a mom with three girls. We told her about our previous bus experience and prayed we wouldn't have the same guy. No such luck. He pulled up and announced the bus number. Being that our morning driver did not give us a bus number, we were not sure it was our bus. We asked. "No, not your bus" he declared. We waited. Our new friend wanted us to ask one more time. The guy already hated us. We made her do it. Needless to say, this was in fact our bus. We got on and waited as he yelled at a poor tourist who mistook this bus as the one he was supposed to be on. Our driver let him know how incorrect he was. Finally we got going. However, we were not headed back to the hotel. The mother, the boy, and I were getting nervous. THen we realized we were headed to Universal Studios for another pickup. Being that we had decided not to miss our stop this time, we sat towards the front and therefore had great seats for what was about to happen. The driver starts pulling into his designated spot. There are people sitting on the curb in front of said spot. The driver recognizes this and curses them. He pulls the bus into the spot. Though there was really no need to go to the very edge of the curb, the driver seemed to think this was important. He kept edging and edging. Soon we couldn't even see the folks sitting on the curb, though we knew they hadn't gotten up (in their defense, one was a larger woman who didn't appear like speed came easily to her). The bus driver stops literally no more than an inch from this woman. He stops the bus, gets off, and begins to yell at her. Now this is a large, black woman with an even larger feathered pink hat. She of course yells back. This goes on for awhile. The group realizes this is their bus. They get on. Then they get off. Then they get on again which makes for a very crowded bus. The driver is angry. He starts dropping people off at hotels. We've been on the bus approximately a half hour by this point. We get to a hotel, drop people off, and the driver realizes he can't go forward because there is a truck in the way. He gets off the bus and goes inside to yell at people. He gets back on the bus and attempts to back up the long driveway. This takes a couple tries. A few hotels later he drops off the woman with the pink hat. As she exits, the woman screams out that she is calling his boss and the police and that she was going to be sure he was fired. He says "Go ahead and call the police. I will wait right here." We had been on the bus for 45 minutes by this point. A guy in the back yells "No you won't." He then finds it important to get the support of the passengers. "You all saw what happened. She would not move." The nice mother from our hotel responds "It doesn't matter. Why don't you just drive." Her three year old chimes in: "Get going!!" I thought the guy was gonna flip. The mom reprimands her: "You don't speak to adults like that," but secretly we all agreed with the kid. A half block away we get to another hotel. There appears to be a very narrow turning radius. The driver backs up and tries again. Then backs up and tries again. Then backs up and tries again. We've been on the bus for an hour. We think about getting a cab. Driver makes it and thank God our stop was the next one. Nearly an hour and a half after first getting on the bus we are in our room eating pizza and drinking beer and deciding that we should call his boss too (we never do).

That was SeaWorld. Oh yeah, and there was this guy who totally looked like Santa. He had the full white beard (in summer, in Orlando), the hair, the tiny glasses, and a too-tight polo shirt in, you guessed it, red.

Stay tuned for: "The elephants in the room above me when I'm trying to work on my thesis"
and "A marathon of 'America's Next Top Model'"

Update from Orlando

The boy has left for his programming class and I am left to spend 8 hours by myself in Orlando. And not so much in Orlando, but a fifty dollar cab ride north of Orlando. And I'm using a computer thinner than Lindsay Lohan which is making this whole thing difficult to type. But for you, I will press on even though the space bar is about an inch big and I keep managing to hit the M key instead.MM

The flight down was ok. Sitting at the airport I realized the abundance of children preparing to board and I feared the worst. But for the most part they were quiet up until the last twenty minutes or so. This is not their fault. We sat on the runway waiting to take off for nearly an hour. It was midnight before we got into Orlando, nearly one before we got to our scary, scary hotel (more later) and almost two before the guy behind the desk decided to stop talking to us and hand us keys.

The hotel? I found it on the internet. It was under $40 a night and offered a "continental breakfast" and free shuttle to Disney. The continental breakfast? Warm orange juice, awful coffee, and some sort of pastry with frosting and raisins. The man behind the desk had promised us mini croissants in his 20 minute description of the place. MINI CROISSANTS! They were nowhere to be found.

We got on the shuttle for Disneyworld--Magic Kingdom. We were there as the doors opened and crowds rushed in. The boy refused to let me stop for the restroom I so urgently needed. "We have to hurry so we can get on Space Mountain before there are long lines." Unfortunately my map reading skills steered us not to Space Mountain, but to Adventureland. We settled for a ride on the "Pirates of the Carribean." I was displeased to see neither a Johnny nor an Orlando (though I was IN Orlando...). Plus the only thing scary was the scene with a pirate "pushing" a woman into a hole-type thing which clearing resembled a doggy-style kind of scene. Scenes like this appeared throughout the day. "It's a Small WOrld After All" ride? Filthy. "Snow White's Scary Ride"? Filthy.

The boy wouldn't let me go on the Dumbo ride. Or, rather, he said he'd wait for me to go on it alone. He also denied the Pooh ride. But it was his choice to sit through mechanical birds singing old Gloria Estevan songs. But I got him back when I declared it was imperative that I see the "Carousel of Progress." This was one of those times when they should really have a sign in front of the attraction to explain just how long the ride will be. This was Walt Disney's own invention--something he presented at the 1960 something world's fair. Right there was a red flag, but we still went in. From there we got a twenty mintue lecture on how far we've come since the invention of the record player. The boy fell asleep. I wished I had a penis so I could punch myself in it for having suggested this ride. All in all we've decided Disneyworld is a place for children and people with children. And maybe old people. Being that the boy and I fit into none of those categories, it was most definitely not for us. Oh, and the food is awful.

Oh yeah, and on the shuttle back to the hotel, we apparently missed when the bus driver asked if anyone needed to be dropped off at the Travelodge. We realized this when he was about a half mile past our hotel. He proceeded to yell at us because we were going to make him late. He could not turn around. We had to get off and walk. The Asian girls who we also knew were from our hotels apparently didn't hear him as well. Nor did they understand what was happening. We told them they better get off with us. We then walked our half mile through what is likely the ghetto of Kissimmee. Run down McDonalds to our right. Cheap, you-know-there's-semen-in-the-sheets motels to our left. Oh, but that's not the best story about that bus driver.

So that was the first day of our trip. Stay tuned for: Reflections From a Day and Sea World featuring: "The Clydesdale looks really 'happy'"
"Why all themeparks should be sponsored by beer companies"
"The bus ride from hell" aka "I wish he had just kicked us off like last night"

While sifting through my pile of three day old mail I came across not one but TWO rejection letters, including one for a job I was remarkably overqualified for.
Do I have at least an AA? Yes.
Do I have any experience with a college setting? I guess those last six years have sort of counted.
Do I have an understanding of how financial aid works? I know I'll be paying it back forever despite the fact that I'll never have a job that pays me enough to cover said loans.

What gets me is the fact that I didn't even get interviews. How can you possibly deny me based on what is written on a single sheet and a bullshitted cover letter?

And this was after spending hours with Mom discussing flowers and insisting that nothing at my wedding will be made of balloon shapes. Especially not a giant balloon bride and groom.

But there were some high points today. Girly high points. This morning I put on my super cleavage bra, crinoline, new hideous Payless shoes that are not open-toed, and with much struggle, by wedding dress. After lacing up the back of the dress a la nineteenth century corset, I saw what looked like a size 4 in the mirror (still with fat underarms because the sleeveless dress doesn't do anything to camoflage those babies). Later we splurged on manicures at the mall--her treat. And then I went home with perfectly poslished pink nails to open rejection letters. But they can all suck it cuz someday I'll make millions and tomorrow I'm going to Orlando though the money will soon run out...

Coming attractions:
Panko and I decide to whore ourselves out when the last of our stipends dissapate. I'm still deciding between crackwhore and porn star. I'll be holding auditions for pimp and fluffer/key light. This will have to be a double duty until I get some revenue.

Seeing as most of my friends have left me (Dodge: Thanks for the calls. You've validated my existence for another week), I've decided to leave too. So, I'll be in the cities, I'll be "Up Nord" to see my brother's fabulous place which my mom describes as "a starter home." This is similarly how I invision Smith's mother's trailer. (Which, honestly, was the reason I had a downpayment for this place, so give her some slack.) I will be back for a two day spat with my momma to dress shop, mow the lawn, do laundry, and pick up the dog, and then I will be in Orlando. Simultaneously, the boy will be in Vegas for "work" and then in Orlando for "work." I also plan to do some "thesis work" in Orlando. We'll see how productive that is.

So I'm not dead. If I had a vile of life (see Kristin's...oh wait, that's not there anymore), this would be the time to tell everyone not to search for it.

Peace out.