We got another letter from Nick today, complete with a couple of pictures
(his roommate has a camera)!
It was a pretty quiet week here this week. Zack and his buddies reassembled
up his Green DeSole last week, then drove back out to Hyshem for another
week of farming. He gets back tonight, then he and a crew are heading out
early tomorrow to drive down to Iowa to go tandem sky jumping! For $200,
you too can strap yourself to a stranger and jump out of a plane. It
started as a 2 year together anniversary celebration for Zack and Jessie
(she has always wanted to skydive), and has expanded out to a bit more then
10 people.
Even though Zack is not here, I get regular visits from his buddies. Got a
pair of them out in the garage now painting their caliper breaks to make
them look cool. They are all psyched about their skydiving adventure
tomorrow. Various parents are a bit nervous, but are resigned to the fact
that their children grown up and independent. At least when it comes to
jumping.
A group from my department at work took Wednesday morning off and scrapped
and re-painted a deck at the home of a local charity, as part of a IBM
community work program. Given our equivalent combined hourly pay rate, that
was one expensive paint job, but it was a fun, team building event.
Mom and Dad, I forgot when you called that I we have our 2nd semi-annual
'Geeks -vs- Docs' chess match (IBM -vs- Mayo) scheduled for next Friday. I
can try to dig up a substitute for that if you have already firmed up plans
with Charles for that night.
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Winter [mailto:Nicholas.Winter@oberlin.edu]
Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 11:08 AM
To: Laurel Winter
Cc: bruce@misterhouse.net
Subject: Life within Oberlin
Lo.
College is like the best ever, I'm more happy now than I've been since I was
a woodpecker, and I have the luck of a creamless bagel: not only did I get a
corner room, but I pretty much got the sweetest floor in the sweetest dorm
(all first-years). Everyone is interesting and hangs out all the time and
random conversations between lounge denizens about whatever frequently last
until five and everyone has sooo much music and there's frequent
table-rolling through the halls (and down the stairs where you jump over
them like in Donkey Kong)! But like on 2nd floor, I've heard, no one leaves
their rooms and when they do, there's just mad drama all the time. Plus
there are ghosts down there.
Also, somehow I managed to score 16 credit hours' worth of classes but not
have to spend more than a few hours per week doing homework. All the other
people are always moaning, "Ohhh, I should be doing my hoooomewoooork," and
I figure they just have a lot of homework that day, but then they'll have to
do even more the next day, and the next week, and so on forever. Whereas I
seem to have none: chemistry is all review for me at this point so I don't
need to do problems, computer science is easy to grasp with no problems to
do outside of lab, poetry is just reading a few poems each week and writing
one poem (which takes a long time but that's not really work), and Go class
is further from work than chunky peanut butter from a red balloon. The only
class I have to really do anything for is Words that Matter, reading a
miniscule amount and writing two two-page essays a week (or one five page
essay), but I figured out how to do those swiftly instead of laboriously.
The secret is kung-fu. Seriously, the last paper practically wrote itself
because it had Jet Li in it (it was about the excellent film Hero (and the
use of language in it or something silly like that)).
So when everyone else is too busy working to play Soul Calibur II or throw
the spikeball around, I borrow DVDs from other halldudes. So far I've
watched: Bottle Rocket (lame), Get Shorty (okay), Monty Python's The Meaning
of Life (not as funny as the other ones), Amadeus (aurally pleasurable),
Koyaanisqatsi (visually pleasurable and sleep-inducing), Dark City (sweet),
and Waking Life (undeniably, unmitigatedly, undulatingly awesome). I'll like
raid Bill and Nick1's room for a DVD and they'll be working, and then I'll
watch it and come back for another one and they'll still be working, and so
on, and each time they'll be like, "You seriously don't have any work to do?
I hate you." And then I went and wrote the same paper they'd been working on
the whole time (they're in my Words that Matter class) and came back and
they were still doing theirs. Poor dudes tried to write their papers on
Beowulf instead of Hero.
I've also watched Amelie, 10 Things I Hate About You, When Harry Met Sally,
Labyrinth, Sweet November, Return of the Jedi, The Lord of the Rings: The
Two Towers, and Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro just from wandering into
the lounge or scoring free movies shown in a lecture hall. And in the local
movie theater, I've seen The Manchurian Candidate, Without a Paddle,
Fahrenheit 9/11, and Hero (twice; it's the most beautiful movie ever!), all
for $8 total. Life is good and movies are cheap, so I have extra money to
buy stuff with. I went to the store and bought a 5 1/2" styrofoam ball, a
12-pack of rubber bands, a 100-pack of wooden skewers, a 20-pack of tacks,
and a deck of cards. I left the cards in the lounge, stabbed some cardboard
to the tackboard with the tacks, wrapped the rubber bands geometrically
around the ball, and then stabbed it with a bunch of the skewers, creating
an awesome spike ball which the RA made me take down from the ceiling
because it would set the building on fire or something.
I'm eating well, eggs, apples, bagels, and powdered-sugared, cream-filled
long johns forming the majority of my diet (guess which one I eat the most
of!). Working in the dining hall is cool because I wash dishes during
breakfast, and almost no one gets up early enough to eat breakfast, so it's
whistling time. Except for last Thursday, something smelled extremely foul
by the incoming dishes area so I had to watch from afar until someone
deposited a tray, then take a deep breath and rush in to wash it and run out
before I ran out of air. I got a paycheck for $35.86, I'm gonna be lazy and
not deposit it until forever though.
The recharging power cord thing for my razor is lost, I think it traveled
with me not. My razor is out of bloodlust and rarely works, so I'm getting
like beardified. Oh, woe.
I'm trying to convert my friends to the ways of the shoeless, but they are
mostly stuck in their ways and will not walk without wearing woeful
wrappings on their feet. My feet are free and joyful, though. The only time
I have to wear shoes is working in the cafeteria and when blowing stuff up
in the chemistry lab.
I've attached two pictures: one is my glorious ball of spike and the other
is my roommate (he is sick and just got up, plus he's undead).
-----------------------
Bruce here again. Fear no longer the beardified Nick. I mailed him his
razor power cord earlier this week, along with the last few episodes of ER
that he has not seen. Some parents send their children care packages of
home baked cookies. I send razor cords and home burned ER DVD's :)
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