7/5/09: More notes on the eve of my return to the classroom.

*4th of July came and went without me seeing a firework. Rain and thunderstorms and a lack of desire to watch fireworks by myself meant I didn’t bother. It was the one bad day of weather we’ve had here since I’ve arrived (it was forecasted correctly), weather is back to being fine today and the 10 day forecast looks really good. Instead of seeing fireworks, I did head to the theater and watch The Hangover. I’m happy for any excuse to see Ed Helms (Andy Bernard on The Office) act in new material during the summer; Helms does a good job, the movie is pretty funny. It’s got an insanely high IMDb rating that I don’t quite understand, it was no classic comedy by any means, but it was worth watching once. I’d give it a 6/10.

*Seriously, driving myself around this town is painful at this point. The layout of the town is actually pretty logical and shouldn’t be confusing (even if the plethora of one-way streets is annoying), but it seems like the road lane lines are in need of a new paint job or better lighting or something, because driving home from the theater last night was downright treacherous; I couldn’t keep track of my lane for the life of me. I keep telling myself I’ll adjust and get used to it.

*Seeing the Mariners win a series off the Red Sox (hopefully sweep, they’re leading in the 7th right now) sure makes me wish I could be turning on the games. I was definitely planning on springing for the sports package in the fall so I could watch Pac-10 football, but I might just have to add Fox Sports Northwest to my package now if the M’s are really going to stay in the pennant race.

*I’m done with my homework for the first day. Some of it felt really tough, but once the lightbulb would go off on my head and the material clicked, I found it fascinating. In general I think I’m going to enjoy learning this stuff, even if it’s going to be really difficult at times.

*Orientation looks like it’ll be an even less enjoyable day than realized. I thought it was going to be something like a quick 90-120 minute session in the morning, then we’d be done and start in on class in the afternoon. Nope; we’re going to be going strong straight through from 8:30 in the morning to 5:15 in the evening with just the occasional short 10 minute break thrown in. I really don’t mind working and doing stuff for that length of time, but being a captive audience member for that long is just excruciating. Oh well, orientation days are necessary evils. Unlike the safety meetings at work where I, the office worker, would learn how to go be safe out in the refinery (where I never went once in four years), this info will at least be useful.

*AT&T has been annoying to deal with. They didn’t give me all of the channels I ordered up front, and I had to place four different calls to them to finally get it fixed. The early indications are that I may have managed to not upgrade from Comcast. Is that even possible? At least out in these parts, Comcast and AT&T both compete for the cable market, so there’s no monopoly and I’m paying a whopping $80 less per month for essentially the same package (TV and internet combined) than I was in Bellingham.

Well, as previously mentioned, one of my classmates is hosting a barbecue that starts in a couple of hours, so this “I don’t know anybody” thing should go away soon now. Should be fun.