I miss the South already

NP: Read the post below....

I'm in Rochester for the first day of what will be a three-week research tour of the Thomas E. Dewey collection at the local university here. I left the 423 at 4:26 am and made it up here about an hour before I was supposed to check in to my apartment. Let's talk about that, shall we?

I am in a graduate housing apartment. Now, with it being summer, there are only two kinds of students who live in graduate housing in the summer: asian students and asian students. These are, of course, students from overseas who have restricted visas. They also work about 3 times harder than American students, graduate or otherwise. Gainesville has its own neighborhood for foreign students (not on purpose...it just happened that way), plus they are probably 90% of the population of graduate housing. Bottomline: my neighbors will be quiet since they will likely be working harder than I will be.

Now, let's talk about my living quarters. Its very spartan, which is fine. I didn't even bring a TV so that I can bear down and get a lot of work done. However, the place is sorely lacking one thing that I can not live without: air conditioning. I thought it was a cruel joke when I came up here and could not find the thermostat and then noticed that there were no air ducts anywhere in the place. Normally, that wouldn't be a big deal I guess, but it turns out that the ROC is currently in the midst of an upstate NY heat wave. The Buffalo Top 40 station was saying that it was supposed to tie the record high of 94 today. Needless to say, I'm roasting like Kenny Rogers right about now.

To combat this, I went to Home Ghetto and bought "The King of Fans." Now, this isn't an NWO Bob clone designed to be placed in the front row to fire the house up at a CW show, but rather it is a 20 inch metallic fan that is as loud as Matthew Lesko's other suit. That's why nothing is playing above...because I can't hear myself think. It is also cooling off about 25% of the room....which is the 25% of the room that I will be occupying tonight.

Other than that, the place seems pretty nice. They have a Subway and a Starbucks right next to each other half a block away, so I have some place to go at night and cool off. I also found a big Regal 18 about 3 miles away, so I have something to do on the weekends. I'll let y'all know about the library after I go there tomorrow....like you care.

Now, more random thoughts:

Wal-Mart in the north is as bad as Wal-Mart in the South. I almost got clocked twice in the parking lot by cars and once in the store by a mad-buggy-driving woman.

Old elevators really smell.

System of a Down really sucks.

The new Blackeyed Peas song is terrible...and unfortunately terribly catchy.

George Carlin is a closet Republican. Eat me Josh.

Man, it is really hot in here.