Love will steer the planets, and peace will guide the stars

The trip back to Santa Cruz last Monday, courtesy of my mom and Gene, was unnotable but good. I dropped my scanner when bringing my stuff in, and I can't get the lid back on, but it still scans, so c'est la vie.

The Greenpartment*, our new home, is pretty kickass. It's got two floors, and down here it's just me and Jake's room, and Dan's, so it looks like it'll be pretty easy to be reclusive if that's what one wants to do. Upstairs is Eric in another single, and Frank and Ryan in a double, though Frank is currently in Baton Rouge helping hurricane victims, and will be for at least several days.

Dan is the only guy living here I didn't really know before (I'd only met him a couple times), but he seems pretty cool. Some of the sparse conversation I'd had with him before revolved around Sandman, and we ended up having a neat talk about graphic novels while he perused my newly-arranged collection.

Right when I got here, I ran into Jake (my roomate once again) and Quincy, who was loitering in our Greenpartment. It didn't take long for Angelo and Nikki to come, and after a very halfassed meeting with our RA (I think Bundo's forthcoming arrival will go without incident), we went to Mission St for pizza, then came back and Angelo, Nikki, Jake and I went to Kresge to get free ice cream/sorbet (coconut sorbet is the Jesus of sorbets) and to watch "The Lost Boys", which all but the most unhip of you know was filmed in Santa Cruz.

It's a weird movie because it veers wildly between moments of genuine artistic and technical awesomeness (the shot of the dog chasing the mom which is then intercut with the kid running after the mom is pitch-perfect) and near-incompetent hilarity ("How do you like those maggots? Cause that's what you're eating, you know. Maggots. Not rice like we said. Actually just kidding, it's rice").

Tuesday there was a really shitty psuedo-First Rain where it drizzled for about 5 minutes in the early afternoon and 15 determined people got naked for 20 minutes and then went home.

Then the Dell-sanctioned guy came out to fix my computer. He put in a new motherboard and CD drive. The good news is that now the CD drive, sound, and even the touchpad work again. The bad news is the computer overheats after being on for about 20 minutes and then shuts off. He's coming today or tomorrow to fix it for real.

Ghun.


Later was Nikki's birthday party, which involved many cupcakes.

I came home, along with Angelo, and watched the pilot of Stargate SG1 with Ryan and Megan. I don't think it's much worse than the movie, and it was pretty enjoyable, but I don't think Stargate is really my thing.

Later still I watched They Live (the best socialist action scifi movie ever), which I had bought at Borders the night before, with Angelo, Jake, Eric, his friend Colin, Kailey, Natalie, Teresa, and eventually Nikki. It was weird to accumulate so many people suddenly, and I don't think all of them particularly liked it, but it was good times.

Then Angelo, Nikki, Jake, and I went to Saturn, cause we were hungry, and Nikki was hungry for cheese fries. Some homeless guy who spit a lot tried to tell us why women are bad, so I asked our waitress to make him leave, which she sort of did. Everyone in the restaurant sang happy birthday for Nikki and it was very amusing.

Wednesday night me, Angelo, Nikki, Quincy, Jake, and Dan played Risk, which went pretty well, though I got mad at Nikki for ruining my domination of North America, so I made my mission to wipe her out in Asia, rather than, say, win.
I found out that Dan is into Rhapsody's Rain of A Thousand Flames video, which is excellent and you should see, whether you love Rhapsody or absolutely hate them, because it is quite simply a beautiful thing.

The Dell guy was supposed to come back Thursday morning, but it turned out he couldn't make it before my class at 2. He said maybe he could come at like 6. Ghun.

Then I took a bus to Intro to Creative Writing, which is at Stevenson. For those of you who don't know the campus, Stevenson is about as far as you can possibly get from Porter while still being in the same zip code.

I made the trek from the bookstore bus stop up the hill to neighboring Cowell, then stumbled to Steveson, and had little trouble finding the room.
I congratulated myself on being 15 minutes early.

But...

The room was dark. The door was unlocked, but no signs of a class whatsoever.

I found the college office and got online--it turned out that what I have thursdays is not the actual class, but the discussion section, which doesn't start til next week.

The bad news was I went all the way to Stevenson for nothing. The good news was that there was time to get my computer fixed.

It took the Dell guy the same amount of time to get to Porter from Highway 17 as it did me from Stevenson. But we met up without incident and it turned out that his fight with Dell over parts had resulted in him getting 2-3 copies of all of them.

With the exception of my hard drive and battery, he replaced everything inside the computer, and (as of this writing) it all works spiffy.
So, I basically have a new computer for free, and it's kicking ass.

He was a pretty fun guy, though as we walked back to his car (I helped carry things) he pointed out which Porter girls he wanted to bang, which was a little uncomfortable.

Then it was off to Film 20A, which I went to with Jake while Angelo and Nikki happily attended their very important class, called Muppet Magic.
Our teacher is a somewhat effeminate New Zealander, and seems pretty cool.
We watched a bunch of silent movies, which prompted one guy so ask why they were all in fast forward.
*sigh*
We watched a really nifty movie by Thomas Edison about a machine that turns dogs into sausages and back again, which I think we were supposed to not like that much, but whatever, it was nifty. The idea is so bizarre but very similar to the Star Trek transporter or, for that matter, any computer, so it's interesting, and the effect was well-accomplished.

During the class I got a migraine which went from annoying to unbearable over the next hour. Angelo and Nikki came over with plans to make omlettes, and I wanted to buy Neil Gaiman's new novel, so we went downtown. I borrowed Eric's sunglasses so the light would hurt less, and kept my eyes closed on the bus ride.

Angelo went to a concert featuring The Unseen, and agreed to meet up with us in a few hours.

I bought the book at Borders (don't tell) and got coffee there too, which made me feel much much better. This could be a very bad sign, but for the moment, things are better.

Nikki and I had a nice time drinking coffee and chatting (my bookstore skillz make the poorly-run Santa Cruz Borders slightly painful, but interesting), then we went to Trader Joe's to pick up general food and omlette-making supplies. I bought a bunch of stuff, all of which was under $3, but it was several things, so I was worrried. But I only spent $20 of my mom's money, so it worked out.

The bus driver wouldn't let me on the bus without paying $1.50, cause I left my ID in the dining hall, and wouldn't let me on with the $1.25 I had, so I had to borrow a quarter from some random dude. He was really assholey about it, which I tried to repeat as loud as possible whenever possible for the rest of the trip back. But really, if I were a fucking bus driver, I wouldn't have much patience with people obviously richer than me with more prospects than me (that is to say, in college) being stingy with money.
So, he is in fact a colassal asshole, but I guess he's an asshole for a reason.

We came back and Kailey was over for some reason, and she played us a band called Harry and the Potters, who are really great.
They're kind of like if Blind Guardian sounded like Cake and their songs were about Harry Potter and they looked like this.

They are very good.

Then we made omlettes, which involved cannibalizing the cooking supplies of everyone who lives here. No one even knew what they had, because cooking supplies appeared to be mostly parent-chosen. We couldn't find a cheese grater, so I cut it up with my knife, which Nikki made smaller with Ryan's knife. It was a good system.
The omlettes were slightly gooey, but had good spinach and good cheese, so it was a victory all around. It was also the most egg I've eaten in like a year and I don't intend to do it again, but it was probably my best night back so far.

Saturday I saw The Corpse Bride, which I'll talk more about in a later post, probably, and reinstalled Windows to try to fix the last of my problems. This created more problems than it solved, such as an inability to play DVDs, go on the internet, or open my Flash files. The first two were solved fairly simply (though Quincy had to help me reinstall ethernet drivers we downloaded on Jake's computer), but still working on the Flash situation.

Unfortuantely, I can't get back to work on my comic until I fix it.

Ghun.

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*The reason for this name has long since faded into the mists of time.