Back to the homepage.
Back to the index.

Date: February 8th, 2020.

Time of Writing: 10:00 PM.

Weather: Cold and windy.

Mood: Nice.

Day Overview: Let's start at the start. Of the day. Midnight. I'm chilling in my room, minding my own business, still feeling sad, and this goes on for a bit because of course no feeling has the courtesy to leave when its welcome has been worn. I start writing, because I don't really know what else to do, when I get a text from my roommate that he's having a girl over. Naturally, this makes me want to clear out of the room. I take my computer and head over to the common room, and it's about 1:00 AM at this point. It's pretty cold there, and so I got a seat as far away from the window as I could. People are partying, because of course they are, and pretty soon one of them who's been shouting a lot that this is the best night of his life and he can't believe that this is happening walks through, and immediately apologizes to me for making so much noise. I tell him he's fine, it's okay, and he passes through the other door. The common room has two doors, one opening to each side of the floor. After he exits, there is momentary quiet before he starts shouting again, revelatory in his excitement.

Not too long from then, yet more people come into the room. Among them is Joe, my floormate at the end of the hall who was throwing the big party on that night. He went through the same radio training program as I did. His roommate Franko did as well. They passed the exam and did well on it, but didn't get the right amount of service hours. Joe and I talk for a while about radio while the kid from earlier - his name is Tim - sits over next to me and comes down from his revelation. They thoroughly interrupt my writing, but that's alright, I don't mind. Franko comes in next, and we talk for a bit about writing, creativity, and the courage to share your work with people. It was a good talk, and I felt I got to know him a bit better. After he left, I finished my writing and, knowing that my roommate wasn't quite done, decided to go look for somewhere else to hang out. And of course I couldn't choose something that made sense, like the 19th floor lounge, no, I had my laptop, I was going to go hide in the laundry room. Nobody would ever party there, right?

Right?

Wrong. I walked over to the laundry room, pulled the door open, and found, sitting in the dark, four people. Some dude was sitting on the dryer with an acoustic guitar, a couple of other guys were standing around talking, and a girl was sitting on the washing machine.

Are you in here to do laundry? she asked, Or to hang out?

Needless to say, this was absolutely not a question that I was prepared to answer. I stuttered for a couple seconds, and then finally spit out that I was coming in here to hang out, and I didn't have laundry, I had a laptop. Soon after me a couple more people came in and things got crowded. The girl on the washing machine scooted over because there was room, and asked if anyone wanted to come up there and sit next to her. There was a moment of pause. I considered my options. Either I would hold my laptop and stand around like a loser, or I could put it on the machine and sit next to her.

My brain doesn't function correctly when it comes to social situations. I have a theory related to the stupid way my brain works in that I believe I do pretty competently when I know something is going to happen or when I expect to have a certain kind of interaction, and I do very poorly when I am caught off guard by an interaction I did not expect. For example, I jump around and get crazy at concerts because I expect that to be what I'm doing. I don't expect people to be partying in the laundry room, so I panic. I freak out. I short circuit. My normal way of thinking just caves in.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that when she elbowed me and told me her name was Seven, I almost fell off the washing machine.

Seven like the number. I didn't question it. I thought she was telling some kind of joke and rolled with it and just gave her my name. We were deep into the singalong at that point, having gone through several shitty covers of Wonderwall and Blackbird and drifted from five people to eight to twelve all crammed in the laundry room, and when we were halfway through Seven Nation Army and shouting and beating the pipes and the top of the washing machine like drums an RA came in and asked us what the everloving fuck we were doing. Vibing, we said. Just hanging out. In the laundry room? Yes. This was not the RA from my floor, I saw him disappear into his room earlier, but instead an RA I didn't recognize. She told us all to go back to our rooms, and we left. I grabbed my laptop and followed the group down the hall, into Joe and Franko's room. It was already pretty full. Joe had passed out in bed. There was another kid passed out on the floor. The party was winding down, but the noise levels were still up. We tried to quiet down, but the RA from earlier was still making her rounds. She came by and told us that we had a noise complaint - or rather, she told Franko, who answered the door dutifully. She wanted to write us up.

Most of the people in the room at the time did not attend the university. They came from out east in the city, and they were just here for the weekend, or the night. This gave Franko an idea. He told the RA to wait a moment while he told us what was going on, and came back around and said that they needed to write up who was here. With fourteen of us roughly in the room, he wanted to let only a few leave - enough for the RA to be satisfied, but not enough to get everyone in trouble. Like an idiot, after a few people left I stepped forward, and Franko told me to stay put. When all was said and done, the room only had me, Seven, Joe, and the kid on the floor left inside. Seven and I stood in front of a closet together. She nudged something near my foot, and it took me a bit to realize she wanted her bottle of water. Water, I should say. Eventually because I'm an idiot she just got it herself.

And then, with the worst possible timing, the kid on the ground started to wake. He stumbled to his feet, and started teetering around the room. Panicked, Seven and I tried to signal to him to be quiet. It took a bit, but he understood and sat down. In just a few minutes, the rest of the party was back in the room. Franko explained that the reason he didn't have us written up was that the only other people at the party that lived here were Seven and I. He called her Seven, too. The party died right after, and we left, Seven back upstairs, and me to my room. I mentioned what happened to my roommate.

You met Seven???

I swear I'm not making this up. Apparently he met Seven at a frat party a while ago. Said she was really funny. Her name actually is Seven, says it on her ID and everything. Huh. I wonder if I'll ever run into her again.

After I got to bed and woke up in the morning, the day went really smooth. Attended a meeting of the tabletop club, hung out there, saw a GURPS manual in all its mathy glory, went up the hill to play Vampire: The Masquerade, and then I hung out with my friend Jackie and her roommate Samara. We got dinner and then checked out some of the residence halls that we could potentially live in next year. The one that I had strongly been considering for a place to live next year, didn't have a pool table, and that's a big minus in my book. Oh well, at least I crossed some options off the list. When I came back just an hour and a half ago, I found that the new roommate had moved in. His side of the room looks nice, he's got some good books and an XBOX and a cactus and things. I hope we get along well, I haven't met him yet, just his stuff so far.

On My Mind: This post is probably over 2,000 words by now, so I'm just going to keep it brief by saying that I'm really somewhat concerned about what I'm doing for housing next year. The friend I want to room with is rooming with somebody else, and I don't really want to room with the both of them. We could potentially get a fourth and get a quad, but I really don't know how I feel about that. Plus, they want to live in a different part of campus than me, and there's basically no way I can convince them to go anywhere else.

Consumed:

Produced: I mentioned earlier that I wrote some stuff early this morning. Overall, I added probably a few hundred words to a story draft that was 5,000 words long. It was a meta thing, and I think it was a good effort on my part. I won't go into more detail, because I don't really feel like it.

Other Thoughts: Thank you for reading my stupid adventures as a stupid college freshman. Today's post was... pretty long. Yeah. I got my first Neocities follower today!! If you're reading this, hello, I see you and I appreciate you. I got nothing else to say, so, peace out.