In the Beginning

(The above picture was probably the last photo taken of me in Chicago. It was taken in Ed Debevic's which is a 50's themed restaurant.)

After flying from Chicago to Atlanta, and Atlanta to Florida, I got down here on Thursday the 14th around 8:30pm. The first night I swung by my condo briefly, but quickly crashed in a hotel room with my dad, never having seen my roommate. (I have two, but one is out of town right now. The other has a house managing job at the theatre.)

Friday was car shopping day. I went to seven dealers. I actually preferred another car to the Verona I ended up with (it was a Hyundai with gorgeous interior that drove easily and was a couple hundred dollars less), but I trusted the one dealership over the other. I could tell that they put their cars through a stringent certification process, and that impressed me.

Once I realized that I’d been in town for more than 24 hours and still hadn’t seen my roommate Heather, I insisted that my dad and I drive to my condo and hang out there until she came back from house managing. When she arrived, she found my dad passed out on my bed, and me asleep in a ball on the floor. She gently woke me up, sad how cute she thought it was, and then the three of us had a lovely conversation for about an hour.

As people in my class accepted their offers, the faculty put photocopies of our headshots up in the break room so that the upperclassmen could become familiar with our names and faces and get excited about who was coming. Heather said that the other students had agreed that we had an extraordinarily attractive class. She also said that we “looked like a grad school class.” I’m not entirely certain what that means, but I think it’s a good thing. We’ve got a proper mix of people, instead of looking like we’d all be cast as similar types.

Saturday morning my dad left. I went out to brunch with my delightful roommate and two other “upperclassmen” (can you call them that? That’s what I’m calling them). It was a lot of fun. They were all friendly, nice, interesting, quirky people. And I love them.

The weekend was mostly marked by the move itself. As I said before, Greyhound was a blessing. All of my boxes arrived where they were supposed to, on time or several days early, and undamaged. 27 of my boxes and my guitar all got here by Saturday (even the things I’d sent on Thursday morning before flying here). I spent a couple of days just trying to get my room in some semblance of order.

But there was a problem going on through all of those days: I think my body hates Florida, and is rebelling against me as punishment.

WARNING: Do not read next 2 paragraphs if you are squeamish.

First of all, there’s something wrong with my gums. I’ve never had huge problems with them before, except for a bit of bleeding because I have a tendency to brush too often. But no. We’re talking seriously problems. On Friday when I woke up, they were bruised. I didn’t even know gums could be bruised, but mine were. Now they’re inflamed, bleed like crazy when I try to brush them, and hurt whenever I try to bite into anything harder than a piece of overripe cantaloupe. And to add to this mouth pain, I also have a canker sore on the tip of my tongue (I didn’t know you could get them on your tongue, but I sure have one there) which I keep accidentally biting. PAIN.

I also have inflamed lymph nodes. They were so bad on Sunday that you could actually see lumps in my neck. They hurt. They hurt even more when I turned my head or tried to swallow. I also developed a sore throat, a cough, and phlegm.
NOTE TO ANYONE WHO SKIPPED THE LAST TWO PARAGRAPHS: I had a sore throat and mouth pain.

On Sunday night I had a fever. I went to bed at 8pm. I tossed and turned all night. I finally made it to the doctor yesterday. He gave me a Z-pack and ibuprofen and sent me on my way. So far, I feel absolutely no improvement. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to ask him about the mouth pain, so I still have no explanation there.

Monday was also my first day of orientation, and my first opportunity to meet my classmates. I actually only met 10 of the 11 yesterday, as one of the girls got married last week and was still driving down (but I heard she arrived today, so hopefully I’ll see her later!). One of the girls I met won’t even be in our class for the first semester. She was in the program a couple of years ago and left after one semester for family reasons. She’s coming back now, but they’re refusing to waive her tuition for the first semester because she “already used” that money, and already has grades for the semester. She’ll be joining us in January, but she came down just to meet us. I’m glad she did. It gave me a better feel for what our class will be like as a whole.

And, oh boy, we’re going to be fun. We were talking, joking, and laughing the entire time.

We learned at orientation that it's possible (nay; likely) that we might have to be here for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, as well as Easter and during our Spring Break. Why? Because we might be understudying professional actors in the Repertory theatre. Or we might have to work the box office. Or house manage. It's all part of our graduate assistant positions. In case you doubted it before, I'd say that's a pretty great example of how my grad school is not the same as going to grad school for, say Communications. Ex #1 just graduated from grad school for Comm, and he told me "Don't worry, you'll have a lot of free time on your hands in grad school." Yeah, right! I don't even get weekends! The only day a week that I get off is Monday, because that's when the theatre is dark. The rest of the week I either have classes or I'm working.

We were supposed to go on a roadtrip today (Tuesday) through Saturday to our school’s main campus (the MFA Acting program is at a satellite location). We didn’t see the value of it initially (why tour their theatres and facilities if we’re never going to use them again?), but I was looking forward to the bonding opportunity. Being together on a bus for five hours each way? Would’ve been a great “getting to know you” experience.

We’re not going. Why? Because of a tropical-storm-turned-hurricane named Fay (which The Tattooed Mama wrote about, as she and I now live in the same town). Everyone is freaking out about Hurricane Fay, and they didn’t want us to drive in it, so they decided we’d have to stay behind and take shelter.

Yesterday happened to be the birthday of one of my classmates, so we used the night as a “Birthday Party/Hurricane Party”. It was fantastic. I got to talk to most of my classmates on a personal level as opposed to a preliminary introductory one. I know about how one adopted classmate met his birth father, and how another has spent the last two months at sea on a commercial fishing boat. I got to see one classmate’s African art collection, most of which she acquired during the year that she lived in Ghana.

One of my classmates has already begun assigning the rest of us nicknames. We have “O.D.”, “Killer”, “D-Train”, “Big Show”, and the like. My nickname? I think it’s rather appropriate. They’ve decided that I should be known as “Disco”, due to the fact that I was dancing throughout the evening. One of them thinks it should be spelled “Dis-Go”, which I don’t understand. I remember responding with, “Do I look like the kind of person who disses people and leaves? I hate you. You’re such a jerk,” and promptly left the room. Luckily, he got my joke and just laughed instead of getting offended.

I’m sad to leave nicknames like “Sunshine”, “Jitterbug”, and “Ninjela” behind, but I like the idea of having a fresh start. And as far as nicknames go, I think I could do a lot worse than Disco. It is, after all, rather appropriate.

One of the guys in my class has been down here since June. He told me that the upperclassmen girls had been referring to me as “The Hottie” and saying how beautiful they thought I was. That made me so uncomfortable, I can’t even tell you. I don’t think of myself as beautiful. I don’t think of myself as ugly, either. But I’m just… me. You know? And I’m not great at accepting compliments (I’m getting better, but that’s a hard one to take… especially when it comes second hand).

I was one of the last people at the party, despite being sick. I stayed out until 3am. A handful of them stayed later, but they were the people who were used to Mountain, Pacific, and Alaska time, so it was easier for them. Considering my illness, I probably shouldn’t have stayed out that late.

I didn’t drink. Limiting my alcohol consumption is on my list of goals for grad school. I made a lot of bad (nay; VERY GOOD) decisions while intoxicated in my last couple of weeks in Chicago, so I think I’ve gotten that whole drinking thing out of my system for awhile.

I will post my list of grad school goals at a later date, and then spend the next three years of my life slowly failing at all of them.

As I’m composing this, it’s 3pm on Tuesday, and we haven’t seen any sign of Hurricane Fay. *fingers crossed* In fact, we had stranger weather my first several days in town. Completely bi-polar rain, which I was madly in love with. It would rain for brief periods of time several times a day while the sun was still shining. Glorious. It helped to comfort me.

Speaking of comfort, thank you to everyone who responded to my last post with encouragement and advice. Some of you even offered to donate items to me, which is incredibly generous of you. The only things I need right now that I haven’t purchased yet are a yoga mat and a yoga blanket, and I think I need them by a week from today. If you have one lying around that you aren't using (I'd feel even weirder and guiltier if someone went out and bought me one or gave me one that they were using), please email me at angelaboration(at)gmail(dot)com. If no one does, then I'll order them ASAP.

My financial situation at present isn’t terrific, but it’s better than it was. I had less than $40 left in the bank. Through some creative money moving, I have enough to last me for a little while. I would be getting my first stipend check on September 12, but my social security card was lost in my move (Murphy’s law is running rampant on my life at the moment), so I’ll just get a double-wide check the last week of September. I should have enough to get by until then. I’ll be doing a lot of praying that no unexpected costs show up anytime soon, and that my gas tank stays mysteriously above empty without me having to fill it (a girl can dream).

You’ll notice that I have put additional AdSense on my page (despite the fact that it generates ZERO revenue). I had it up at the top, but that did nothing and it's ugly, so I've moved it to the bottom. I think most of the people who read this are on GoogleReader or BlogLines anyway, so I don't know why I'm bothering with ads, but whatever. Worth a shot, I guess.

I have also added a PayPal “Donate” button at the suggestions of a handful of readers (both in my comments section and in emails). It feels incredibly tacky to me, so I might take it down (especially since I'm no longer concerned about dying from starvation).

Anyway. It's been a rough start here, but I know that it's all going to work out in the end. Things have a way of balancing out. And the lost social security card, the mystery illnesses, the hurricane that may or may not show up... they're all going to be balanced by how incredible of an experience this is going to be. I can feel it.


Here’s to new beginnings!

~A~


P.S. Remember the saga of The Naughty Bartender? And how on his facebook page one girl had commented that she'd gone out to a bar with him the Sunday before, and I took it as a sign that he had been single? That same girl wrote on his wall on August 9th: "what do you mean you're single?/? when did this happen?" So, yeah. I guess that means his single status was fresher than I thought. Sadly, I didn't see him again before leaving Chicago (he wanted me to visit him at a bar one night, but I made plans with a different gentleman friend instead). But I think that's probably for the best. Even if it did make a damn fine story.

P.P.S. This is what my room in Chicago looked like while I was packing before the move.