All-day Athens

It was a long, mostly-productive day.

It began well, with a waffle from the complimentary breakfast! Totally hit the spot as I started making apartment phone calls. Painlessly checked out before my 10AM meeting with my advisor. I knew this was going well when I found a parking space right in front of the building.

The doctor is young, energetic (almost hyper). He showed me around the building, the campus, and a quick walk down Court Street. It was a chill conversation. I found out about his goals for the program, a little about the other MA (Southern female, more design-oriented). I expressed my interest in dramaturging Spring's Awakening, and tango research. I will be leading theatre history discussions (eek!) It occurred to me that he reminds me very much of Capt. Flying Toaster. On caff-EINE!

(in the historic quad looking towards Court & Union Sts)

Spent the rest of the afternoon running around looking at countless apartments. I saw some very nice ones. One dire dump. And a lot in the middle. I found 2 I like, 1 I could live with. Unfortunately, one agency is rather laissez-faire about showings. Pretty much they give you a list of availabilities and a map. You knock on the door and hope they believe your story about just wanting to look at the place. Most people were confused but let me in. They were pretty informative. I met a contraband puppy, a vampire-med student, and a couple of good-ole-boys.

Within a day, I had a very rough lay of the land. I could get around, just not super-efficiently. It was hot, but the place smelled so nice. When I arrived on Monday night, I noticed the mildly muddy spring smell in all the blue moonlight (in contrast to the amber of city lights). Walking around Court Street, I could smell patchouli (love me some hippies).

Around 4.30, all the places had closed. I was feeling a little boggled, so I was pretty happy to roll out of town. The 7 hour drive was not that bad in either direction. There were enough changes of route to keep me interested. But I am now coveting a FM transmitter for my iPod, since my CDs were boring me. And my windshield was covered in bug spatter. Like I had to stop every couple hundred miles just to clean it off. So after scrubbing it down with the squeegie, I had a constellation of dead bugs instead of spatter. Must wash car.

(I saw alot of this in the past couple of days.
Please note dead bugs.)

I couldn't really figure out what I wanted. I attributed this to being kinda bored and subjected to variations on the theme of "fast food". And I finally hit the spot with a double fudge chocolate chip milkshake from Steak & Shake. Ah. And there was like no traffic to contend with on the Dan Ryan!

Now to settle on an apartment, apply for loans, scare up some furniture...