Sunday, August 17, 2008
Life in the Dorm
I moved in yesterday, and so far it hasn't been too bad. I had some trouble setting up my computer because the monitor didn't want to work right, but that's probably the worst thing that's happened to me since I moved. Luckily it was just a bad driver and my boyfriend helped me fix it over the phone. It's working fine now, as you might guess.
I was expecting my bed to be uncomfortable, but I slept surprisingly well last night. However, that may have been due to the fact that I had gotten almost no sleep at all the night before and because I didn't get around to going to bed until after 1 AM. I was up that late organizing my belongings and making sure that everything was unpacked and put away. I probably should have gone to bed earlier and worked on it today because I'm kind of bored right now, but the girls in one of the rooms down the hall were so loud that I probably wouldn't have been able to fall asleep if I'd gone to bed earlier anyway.
The shower was also surprisingly decent. I didn't have high expectations for it, but it had pretty good water pressure, and it never seemed to run out of hot water. However, I did wake up pretty early this morning and I'm pretty sure nobody else was using the bathroom while I was in the shower, so that may have something to do with it. My only complaint is that it was difficult for me to shave my legs in the cramped space, but I think after classes start I'm going to start shaving my legs at night, when I won't have to be somewhere at a particular time.
Well, my roommate should be arriving soon, so I'll write more later~
I was expecting my bed to be uncomfortable, but I slept surprisingly well last night. However, that may have been due to the fact that I had gotten almost no sleep at all the night before and because I didn't get around to going to bed until after 1 AM. I was up that late organizing my belongings and making sure that everything was unpacked and put away. I probably should have gone to bed earlier and worked on it today because I'm kind of bored right now, but the girls in one of the rooms down the hall were so loud that I probably wouldn't have been able to fall asleep if I'd gone to bed earlier anyway.
The shower was also surprisingly decent. I didn't have high expectations for it, but it had pretty good water pressure, and it never seemed to run out of hot water. However, I did wake up pretty early this morning and I'm pretty sure nobody else was using the bathroom while I was in the shower, so that may have something to do with it. My only complaint is that it was difficult for me to shave my legs in the cramped space, but I think after classes start I'm going to start shaving my legs at night, when I won't have to be somewhere at a particular time.
Well, my roommate should be arriving soon, so I'll write more later~
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Surprise!
Another update today. :3
The fuse in my cigarette lighter was broken, so the car dealer replaced it for me and now my GPS works fine. :3 I used it to drive home, and I'm thinking about using it tomorrow when we drive to the airport, but I probably won't rely on it too much because the roads to the airport have been under construction for a while and the GPS might not have them registered on the map correctly. I think I might do some comfort shopping after I drop my boyfriend off, and that'll probably be a good way for me to get used to my GPS, even though I don't really plan on buying anything.
By some miracle, the mochi I ordered from Amazon a few days ago arrived today, and I'm surprised and a little disappointed that it tastes very similar to the half-assed mochi that I cooked in the microwave myself ages ago. I guess it would probably taste better without the extra flour coating it, but without the flour the mochi would be very sticky, so I understand why it was necessary. I'm glad that it arrived today at least; I was worried that it wouldn't get here until tomorrow and then my boyfriend wouldn't have been able to try it. I don't think he particularly cared for it, but at least he got to try it. Personally, I think I'm going to stick to mochi ice cream from now on. I will finish the stuff I bought (and share it with anyone who wants some) because I spent good money on it, but I probably won't buy it again.
In other news, I've been having the worst time trying to download Granado Espada. If it weren't so pretty, I would probably have given up on it by now. I've tried to download it from two different websites today. The first one was a zip file that took forever to finish and then turned out to be corrupt, and the second one was a downloader program that crashed halfway through the download and then tried to start over when I ran it again, even though the completed parts of the download were right where it left them. :\ There are some forces at work trying to prevent me from playing this game. I'm also a little worried by an awful review of it that I found on Google earlier today. However, since it's free, I'm not going to pass up trying it myself just because of a bad review, even though it'll most likely end up being a waste of my time either way. That's what I'm looking for, after all. :3
Oh, something interesting happened the other day. I was looking at a floor plan of my dorm building to see how far my room was from the bathroom and other places, and out of curiosity while I was looking up my room assignment, I also went to look at my roommate status again, and I noticed that they changed my roommate assignment. It made me wonder why they made the change; did my first roommate decide not to attend VCU, or did she find another place to live? Or did VCU Housing swap her with somebody else because they thought that based on our major programs, she'd get along with somebody else better or vice versa? I guess I'll never know, but I secretly hope that my roommate will be an art major or share some common interests with me, even though that isn't very likely. I'll be happy even if that isn't the case, as long as we can get along.
Well, that's all for now. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be done downloading this thing so I can start wasting my time playing it.
The fuse in my cigarette lighter was broken, so the car dealer replaced it for me and now my GPS works fine. :3 I used it to drive home, and I'm thinking about using it tomorrow when we drive to the airport, but I probably won't rely on it too much because the roads to the airport have been under construction for a while and the GPS might not have them registered on the map correctly. I think I might do some comfort shopping after I drop my boyfriend off, and that'll probably be a good way for me to get used to my GPS, even though I don't really plan on buying anything.
By some miracle, the mochi I ordered from Amazon a few days ago arrived today, and I'm surprised and a little disappointed that it tastes very similar to the half-assed mochi that I cooked in the microwave myself ages ago. I guess it would probably taste better without the extra flour coating it, but without the flour the mochi would be very sticky, so I understand why it was necessary. I'm glad that it arrived today at least; I was worried that it wouldn't get here until tomorrow and then my boyfriend wouldn't have been able to try it. I don't think he particularly cared for it, but at least he got to try it. Personally, I think I'm going to stick to mochi ice cream from now on. I will finish the stuff I bought (and share it with anyone who wants some) because I spent good money on it, but I probably won't buy it again.
In other news, I've been having the worst time trying to download Granado Espada. If it weren't so pretty, I would probably have given up on it by now. I've tried to download it from two different websites today. The first one was a zip file that took forever to finish and then turned out to be corrupt, and the second one was a downloader program that crashed halfway through the download and then tried to start over when I ran it again, even though the completed parts of the download were right where it left them. :\ There are some forces at work trying to prevent me from playing this game. I'm also a little worried by an awful review of it that I found on Google earlier today. However, since it's free, I'm not going to pass up trying it myself just because of a bad review, even though it'll most likely end up being a waste of my time either way. That's what I'm looking for, after all. :3
Oh, something interesting happened the other day. I was looking at a floor plan of my dorm building to see how far my room was from the bathroom and other places, and out of curiosity while I was looking up my room assignment, I also went to look at my roommate status again, and I noticed that they changed my roommate assignment. It made me wonder why they made the change; did my first roommate decide not to attend VCU, or did she find another place to live? Or did VCU Housing swap her with somebody else because they thought that based on our major programs, she'd get along with somebody else better or vice versa? I guess I'll never know, but I secretly hope that my roommate will be an art major or share some common interests with me, even though that isn't very likely. I'll be happy even if that isn't the case, as long as we can get along.
Well, that's all for now. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be done downloading this thing so I can start wasting my time playing it.
Labels: car, dorm, gps, granado espada, mmorpg, mochi, roommate
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Orientation and stuff
It's been a while. I probably should have updated this sooner, but I finally caught the summer fever and got lazy about things. I've been stressing about things with VCU and the apartment situation, but I've also been playing a few videogames, which have been taking up most of my free time lately.
My orientation went well, and so did my brother's orientation. However, with him being a freshman and having the two-day orientation rather than the one-day session that I had, I think his orientation was slightly better than mine. That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy a few extra benefits by attending his orientation, though. I was able to get two free VCU t-shirts at his orientation (compared to the zero I received at my own), and I was able to attend the bus tour for parents and guests at his orientation, though I personally think that tour would have been more beneficial to the students than the parents. I was also able to walk around the campus and ride around on the shuttle bus to see how I would be getting to all of my classes while my brother was registering for his classes.
Well, I guess I've written enough about his orientation, but I haven't really said anything about my own orientation. To be honest, I think one of the most exciting parts of my orientation was getting to walk by myself from the art foundation building to one of the dining centers on campus. Of course, it wasn't my first time walking across the campus, but it was the first time I'd done so by myself, and it was pretty exciting to be able to figure out where to go by myself without having the help of another person or a group of people who already know where they're going.
It was also pretty exciting to finally register for my classes; it really started to give me a sense of being an actual student of VCU and not just an applicant. However, it wasn't a very organized process; I was expecting a one-on-one session with an advisor who would tell me what classes to take, but instead we got a computer lab full of students and maybe five advisors who didn't all exactly know what we should have been taking. I'm also a little concerned because one of the credits that should have transferred to VCU didn't transfer, and I don't exactly know why. However, the advisors recommended that I skip that requirement in case it transfers later.
I was impressed that my drawing classes at my community college both transferred, though. They transferred as credits for VCU's drawing studio and project classes, but I'm taking the drawing and project classes at VCU anyway because they'll help me keep full-time status and because I want them. My community college drawing classes were great, but since they were at a community college and not a full-blown art school, there weren't a lot of resources for models and other things like that (even though their new easels are quite nice :3), so I think that I would benefit from a drawing class at VCU.
After my orientation we drove around the neighborhoods where the apartments I was interested in were located, and surprisingly most of them weren't in such great neighborhoods. We ended up eliminating all of the apartments that I hadn't been able to make appointments to see prior to the day of my orientation, plus two of the four appointments I had already made.
The two apartments that we actually looked at were okay, but in the end I decided that the best choice overall would be to get the dorm. A lot of factors went into my decision, but in the end I think the two biggest things it came down to were the question of whether my boyfriend could keep up with his half of the rent without a secure job yet or any backup money, and the fact that I probably wouldn't be happy living in either of the apartments for the whole 3-4 years I'd be at VCU. The apartments only offered 12-month leases, and it would have been either very difficult or very expensive for me to try to find a better apartment later.
So I'm going to be in a dorm for my first year at VCU, and I'm going to look into getting an apartment in the spring so that I'll be able to grab one right as graduating or transferring students move out. If for some reason that isn't possible, I might try to get into one of the apartment-style dorms for upperclassmen for the next school year.
As far as other things in my life go, I'm really behind on updating my website, and I haven't really drawn anything since my last CafePress design. I just haven't felt like it, but it probably isn't such a bad thing. I'll be in artist boot camp starting on August 21st, so it's probably not such a bad idea to take a break so that I'll feel rested and ready to work when classes start. If I feel like it, I might draw my characters a bit before the fall semester starts because I'm not going to let myself draw them at all during the semester, but I'm not going to pressure myself to keep drawing just to stay busy. However, I will try to update my website to add my latest drawings sometime this week.
Oh, I mentioned that I've been playing videogames, right? Well, I put Silent Hill Origins on hold because I started itching to play Final Fantasy X-2 again. I started a New Game Plus, but I kind of rushed through it because I really just wanted to finish getting 100% (I had 99% previously) so that I could get the good ending, but for some reason I didn't get it. I got pissed off about that and started playing Final Fantasy X instead. I started getting really excited about totally owning Yunalesca this time around because she gave me so much trouble in my first game, and I beat her last night. Now I'm at the point of the game where all of the sidequests are available with the airship, but I'm already getting bored with it and I want to play something different. It's frustrating because I really wanted to get that AP trick so that I can over-level Yuna and make her hit harder than Auron, but I'm also impatient about getting the items that allow me to do that trick. I think I'll take a break and play something different and maybe come back to FFX when I'm ready to do that.
Well, that's about all I wanted to write today. I'll try to start updating more regularly. :3
My orientation went well, and so did my brother's orientation. However, with him being a freshman and having the two-day orientation rather than the one-day session that I had, I think his orientation was slightly better than mine. That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy a few extra benefits by attending his orientation, though. I was able to get two free VCU t-shirts at his orientation (compared to the zero I received at my own), and I was able to attend the bus tour for parents and guests at his orientation, though I personally think that tour would have been more beneficial to the students than the parents. I was also able to walk around the campus and ride around on the shuttle bus to see how I would be getting to all of my classes while my brother was registering for his classes.
Well, I guess I've written enough about his orientation, but I haven't really said anything about my own orientation. To be honest, I think one of the most exciting parts of my orientation was getting to walk by myself from the art foundation building to one of the dining centers on campus. Of course, it wasn't my first time walking across the campus, but it was the first time I'd done so by myself, and it was pretty exciting to be able to figure out where to go by myself without having the help of another person or a group of people who already know where they're going.
It was also pretty exciting to finally register for my classes; it really started to give me a sense of being an actual student of VCU and not just an applicant. However, it wasn't a very organized process; I was expecting a one-on-one session with an advisor who would tell me what classes to take, but instead we got a computer lab full of students and maybe five advisors who didn't all exactly know what we should have been taking. I'm also a little concerned because one of the credits that should have transferred to VCU didn't transfer, and I don't exactly know why. However, the advisors recommended that I skip that requirement in case it transfers later.
I was impressed that my drawing classes at my community college both transferred, though. They transferred as credits for VCU's drawing studio and project classes, but I'm taking the drawing and project classes at VCU anyway because they'll help me keep full-time status and because I want them. My community college drawing classes were great, but since they were at a community college and not a full-blown art school, there weren't a lot of resources for models and other things like that (even though their new easels are quite nice :3), so I think that I would benefit from a drawing class at VCU.
After my orientation we drove around the neighborhoods where the apartments I was interested in were located, and surprisingly most of them weren't in such great neighborhoods. We ended up eliminating all of the apartments that I hadn't been able to make appointments to see prior to the day of my orientation, plus two of the four appointments I had already made.
The two apartments that we actually looked at were okay, but in the end I decided that the best choice overall would be to get the dorm. A lot of factors went into my decision, but in the end I think the two biggest things it came down to were the question of whether my boyfriend could keep up with his half of the rent without a secure job yet or any backup money, and the fact that I probably wouldn't be happy living in either of the apartments for the whole 3-4 years I'd be at VCU. The apartments only offered 12-month leases, and it would have been either very difficult or very expensive for me to try to find a better apartment later.
So I'm going to be in a dorm for my first year at VCU, and I'm going to look into getting an apartment in the spring so that I'll be able to grab one right as graduating or transferring students move out. If for some reason that isn't possible, I might try to get into one of the apartment-style dorms for upperclassmen for the next school year.
As far as other things in my life go, I'm really behind on updating my website, and I haven't really drawn anything since my last CafePress design. I just haven't felt like it, but it probably isn't such a bad thing. I'll be in artist boot camp starting on August 21st, so it's probably not such a bad idea to take a break so that I'll feel rested and ready to work when classes start. If I feel like it, I might draw my characters a bit before the fall semester starts because I'm not going to let myself draw them at all during the semester, but I'm not going to pressure myself to keep drawing just to stay busy. However, I will try to update my website to add my latest drawings sometime this week.
Oh, I mentioned that I've been playing videogames, right? Well, I put Silent Hill Origins on hold because I started itching to play Final Fantasy X-2 again. I started a New Game Plus, but I kind of rushed through it because I really just wanted to finish getting 100% (I had 99% previously) so that I could get the good ending, but for some reason I didn't get it. I got pissed off about that and started playing Final Fantasy X instead. I started getting really excited about totally owning Yunalesca this time around because she gave me so much trouble in my first game, and I beat her last night. Now I'm at the point of the game where all of the sidequests are available with the airship, but I'm already getting bored with it and I want to play something different. It's frustrating because I really wanted to get that AP trick so that I can over-level Yuna and make her hit harder than Auron, but I'm also impatient about getting the items that allow me to do that trick. I think I'll take a break and play something different and maybe come back to FFX when I'm ready to do that.
Well, that's about all I wanted to write today. I'll try to start updating more regularly. :3
Labels: apartments, art, dorm, drawing, orientation, vcu, videogames, website
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Stress
I've had a rough week. Monday evening my mom and I went shopping, and I discovered that I'm too small to fit a size 2 or 4 in ladies' jeans, and an extra small in an Old Navy skirt is actually a little loose on my hips. That's pretty pathetic, considering I'm not that small. I'm short and petite, but I'm not nearly as tiny as some of the girls that I used to wait on at work. I think I'm starting to see why sizes like XXS and 00 actually exist.
I did find a cute pair of metallic pink flip-flops though, and my mom offered to buy me one of two pairs of shoes that I've been admiring online for a little while. It's either this one or this one. I can't decide which one I really want, though. I might have her buy me one of them and then buy the other pair myself.
Tuesday I started calling about the apartments that I wanted to look at, but only two of my original five choices actually had an available apartment, and one of those two didn't even set up an appointment with me because the apartments were going so fast and it was too far in advance for him to set up an appointment with me. I'm planning to call back about that one (and a few others) tomorrow and see if it's still available.
Two of the four appointments I managed to set up are for two-bedroom apartments. One of those two is almost surely out of my budget and it's fully furnished, but the other one sounds like a better value. One of the appointments is for one of the one-bedroom apartments from my original list, and it's actually the apartment that VCU's off-campus housing representative recommended to me as the best of my original choices, but it wasn't my favorite of the original choices. The other appointment is for a couple of different places, but judging by some of their online listings, I don't know if I'm going to want them or not. They seem kind of dumpy and they don't offer all of the features that I want, but I don't think it'll hurt to just look at them.
I might even end up in a dorm, if I'm not satisfied with any of the apartments I see. I applied for on-campus housing after talking to the housing representatives at VCU about my problems. They said that there was a lot of space left in one of the dorms on the MCV campus, which is about two miles away from my classes, and there's a free shuttle bus that runs between the two campuses. They also said that it would be a good idea to go ahead and sign up because it would be a good backup plan for me.
Living in a dorm might be a better option than an apartment, actually. At this point I think the cost of a dorm with a meal plan would be almost the same as the average costs of living in an apartment and buying groceries every week, and I wouldn't have to worry as much about going out of my budget because I wouldn't be buying groceries regularly. It would be a relatively safe environment for me, and living in a dorm might also make it easier for me to make friends. My boyfriend wouldn't be able to move with me, but I think that there'd be less financial stress on him if I lived in a dorm, too.
I guess I won't know what will happen with my living situation until after I look at the apartments, but I'm glad that I at least have a backup plan if I'm not happy with any of the apartments.
I did find a cute pair of metallic pink flip-flops though, and my mom offered to buy me one of two pairs of shoes that I've been admiring online for a little while. It's either this one or this one. I can't decide which one I really want, though. I might have her buy me one of them and then buy the other pair myself.
Tuesday I started calling about the apartments that I wanted to look at, but only two of my original five choices actually had an available apartment, and one of those two didn't even set up an appointment with me because the apartments were going so fast and it was too far in advance for him to set up an appointment with me. I'm planning to call back about that one (and a few others) tomorrow and see if it's still available.
Two of the four appointments I managed to set up are for two-bedroom apartments. One of those two is almost surely out of my budget and it's fully furnished, but the other one sounds like a better value. One of the appointments is for one of the one-bedroom apartments from my original list, and it's actually the apartment that VCU's off-campus housing representative recommended to me as the best of my original choices, but it wasn't my favorite of the original choices. The other appointment is for a couple of different places, but judging by some of their online listings, I don't know if I'm going to want them or not. They seem kind of dumpy and they don't offer all of the features that I want, but I don't think it'll hurt to just look at them.
I might even end up in a dorm, if I'm not satisfied with any of the apartments I see. I applied for on-campus housing after talking to the housing representatives at VCU about my problems. They said that there was a lot of space left in one of the dorms on the MCV campus, which is about two miles away from my classes, and there's a free shuttle bus that runs between the two campuses. They also said that it would be a good idea to go ahead and sign up because it would be a good backup plan for me.
Living in a dorm might be a better option than an apartment, actually. At this point I think the cost of a dorm with a meal plan would be almost the same as the average costs of living in an apartment and buying groceries every week, and I wouldn't have to worry as much about going out of my budget because I wouldn't be buying groceries regularly. It would be a relatively safe environment for me, and living in a dorm might also make it easier for me to make friends. My boyfriend wouldn't be able to move with me, but I think that there'd be less financial stress on him if I lived in a dorm, too.
I guess I won't know what will happen with my living situation until after I look at the apartments, but I'm glad that I at least have a backup plan if I'm not happy with any of the apartments.
Labels: apartments, dorm, shoes, shopping, vcu
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