my favourite author is chuck palahniuk…by far. he has the most interesting books, he’s insane i think. he wrote an article/response to everything that happened last month. i’m not sure what my opinion on it is…initially i was sort of disturbed by what he had to say. basically it was a recount of his day on sept 11th. then i kinda began to understand that being in oregon, one is very far removed from everything that happened. i still find it hard to accept that life, as chuck described it, in oregon on sept 11th seemed to be very normal. conversations regarding pornographic internet sites, abuse of perscription medicine, and an overall lack of empathy for what was going on….it doesn’t really sit well with me. while i understand that life can’t and didn’t stop due to what happened i find it hard to believe that some people didn’t stop to rethink their entire life, future, and think about how trivial most everything else is/was….i’m not quite sure how one goes about surfing the internet for websites about beastality when your entire world is changing. alot of what chuck said in his article, i saw his point… the repetitve showing of the same 5 camera angles of the airplane, the same shots of the towers collasping, over and over to the point of exhaustion…

perhaps the “normality” of their actions in oregon were a coping mechanism that was different than the coping mechanisms of those of us so much closer…i suppose it is hard to relate to such a thing when you have virtually no connections to the place…but it’s not like i had so many connections either…a few friends in the area, i’ve only visited the city once…and the fact that i have friends all over the country who reacted in a way much like my reaction, or my area’s reaction as a whole….i dont know what i’m saying really…i just think their reaction was much more abnormal in their continuation of their “normal” lives…and that sorta bothers me.

i give up. you can read chucks letter at chuckpalahniuk.net

 

my word of the day is “oracle”….not sure why. i was leaving the building after class, past a class still in session where the proff said something about so and so protected the oracle.. and since then it’s been stuck in my head, and i’ve used it a few times. lol.

wellll the townhouse saga continues…can’t remember if i mentioned it or not, but at least 4 weeks ago a worker came in, sawed a big hole in the wall, moved the smoke detector about 10 inches to the left of where it had been in the family room, and reinstalled it. spackled over the old hole, plus the new hole, and then left. 2 weeks after that, right before fall break I think, our roof leaked into our closet (every townhouse had this problem)…2 workers knocked on the door to see what kind of water damage had been done, said they’d be in to paint the inside of the closet ceiling. i asked them if they were going to also paint over the spackled holes of the smoke detector. again, right before fall break, a worker shows up to look at the closet, this time to assess if we had the right parts installed so they could put our closet doors in, we didn’t have the parts. he said we’d get the closet doors over the 4 day break. we come back from break, nothing has been done… nothing painted, nothing installed (there were other things that they were supposed to do including fire extinguishers, finishing the cabinets, something with the storage rooms…)….fine

so yesterday i emailed the director of the complex, asked when we’d get our closet doors. she said she didnt know but would let the workers know about it….this morning, danielle discovers her window is leaking, because it was not properly installed and there is a crack between the windowsill and the wall, where water is pouring in onto the window ledge next to her bed…calls emergency maintence, who said they would let the contractors know. ok…i leave, get back from class, there is a worker ready to install our closet doors. YAY! – not. the doors are installed…they are the most piece of shit doors i’ve ever seen. oh they are the same doors installed in all the other houses…except our doors have big areas of paint that have been scraped off, mud caked on the doors, other various scuffs and scratches…completely UNFINISHED…no one has been here to fix danielle’s window…nothing that requires paint has been painted. what is the purpose of emergency maintenence if they don’t come right away to fix the problem. they didn’t come right away to get our hot water to work either….

so i emailed the complex director again, thanked her for getting us closet doors, but told her that we’d rather not have them if the workers are going to leave them there looking like complete shit. no response yet. we are going to take pictures of the doors in the event that in the next 7 months no one returns to our house to paint them….

and then there’s the parkinglot problem. all last year us future residents were concerned about parking, considering that most of us are seniors, most of us have cars for things like student teaching and internships…we (apparantly stupidly) figured that we’d be provided our own parking lot. we’ll we were wrong. yes a parking lot was constructed, but no it is not exclusively for us. while we were all annoyed at that, what can we do? they assured us there would be plenty of parking for the townhouse residents since they built the new lot. well is there enough parking? of course not. did we all anticpate this problem LAST YEAR, of course we did. i’m not quite sure how the residence life people did not forsee a parking problem, when the lot that has been built for us is closer to the south side of campus than the townhouse complex….there is nothing preventing lazy freshman from parking their cars in OUR lot, and walking across the street to their building. that leaves no spots for us. well fine, there is also another parking lot below the fields in front of the town houses. it’s about a 5-10 minute walk from my door to the lower parking lot. last night leah was forced to park in the lower lot, because there were no spots in OUR lot….and it was 10:00/11:00 at night, and none of the parking lot lights were on… so that means a small young girl walking through a dark parking lot late at night…how is that safe? not too sure…

we’re paying so much extra to live in these townhouses, PLUS we all had to pay an extra 100$ to park on campus, i think the least they should do for us is to provide us a parking lot that is 1. exclusively ours 2. much closer to our buildings than the present lot. There is an ENTIRE field in front of the town houses that could be EASILY turned into a parking lot. Why they’re not doing this? not too sure. they claim that they are leaving the field there to be used as an athletic field, as it has been used the past however many years… thats fine and great except in 4 years going to school here i never once saw anyone playing any sports on the field….we also have about 5 other fields to play athletics on….big expanses of green grass that are perfectly fine….WHY CANT THEY JUST THROW SOME ASPHALT ONTO THE FUCKING FIELD AND MAKE A PARKING LOT FOR US?! I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW THEY CAN THINK ADDING 20 PARKING SPOTS TO A LOT 10 MINUTES AWAY WOULD HELP US AT ALL! AND HOW DID THEY NOT SEE A PROBLEM IN THE FACT THAT EVERYONE ELSE – FRESHMAN, COMMUTERS, NORTHSIDE RESIDENTS – WOULD TAKE ALL OUR SPACES?! COMMON FUCKING SENSE TELLS ANYONE, EVEN PEOPLE WHO DONT GO HERE, THAT SPOTS CLOSEST TO CAMPUS ARE GOING TO BE TAKEN BY COMMUTERS… THAT MEANS OUR PARKING SPACES!!!

i don’t even feel any better after that rant….fucking a.

 

ooooh yeah, another townhouse problem…the heating and air conditioning….i wont get into the AC issue but the heat….it is now cold out side. so our heater decided to automatically turn on the other day, and it was extremely sweltering in here. so we turned it down. fine. the brilliant contractors, and architects, whoever, decided the best place for the air ducts is on or near the ceiling. that’s spectacular when you’re dealing with AC, but how does that work with heat? please tell me. because this means that katies bedroom, which is on the 3rd floor near where the furnace is, gets the majority of the heat…the 2nd floor where i live, gets some heat, and the first floor gets none. there is no hot air coming out of the vents in the family room. it is 5 degrees warmer in my bedroom than it is in the family room. where is the thermostat? in the family room….so that means that the heat will always be going on because it is so fucking cold down there, while the rest of the house is boiling hot…. smart builders. how am i so uneducated in the craft of building and construction yet i know you cant put heating ducts on the ceiling, with the furnace on the 3rd floor, and expect the house to be heated properly?