Have a Nice Day!

When the Smurf did I step on a pigeon?

Take note of what I just did right there, kiddies. That’s a very legit literary technique. I’m not sure what it’s called but the idea (well, my knowledge of the idea anyway) stems from Mick Foley’s autobiography Have a Nice Day! (which is quite possibly my favorite book ever). The opening line to his book is something along the lines of, “I can’t believe I lost my [smurf]ing ear!” The concepto behind this is to instantly draw the reader into the author’s world and engross said person immediately.
Of course, I realize that (1) “When the Smurf did I step on a pigeon?” isn’t quite as intriguing as “I can’t believe I lost my [smurf]ing ear,” and (2) any and all level of instant interest in my story has been dashed by my explaining this practice as I’ve completely taken you out of my world of pigeons, zombies, and bad popcorn and placed you into a boring, conceited academic one. And for that I apologize. So what I’m going to do now is restart my story as originally intended. But don’t get too excited because I really have no idea where I’m going with this post yet, so there’s a fair chance that it’ll end up just being a random amalgam of crap of whatever comes to my mind. Hopefully it’ll turn out as a moderately coherent thought. But anyways, let’s roll this otra vez.
When the Smurf did I step on a pigeon?

As per usual in that horrible business class that I partake in here, I’d crossed my legs (you know, like in a figure four kind of manner) in order to work on my hip flexibility a bit. As such, I noticed right away that on the bottom of my right shoe there was some sort of feather that was sticking to said zapato thanks to some sort of substance that I couldn’t properly identify. I’m not lying to you when I say that that’s exactly what I thought originally. Of course, I meant it jokingly (yeah, I joke to myself, and hence, I randomly laugh a lot too. I’m not crazy, I’m just easily entertained.) as I was pretty sure that I did not, in fact, step on a pigeon. That seems like something I'd remember. Although, I have been doing a lot of smack lately.
Although, those birds are quite prevalent here, so it’s probably only a matter of time before I actually do trudge over the top of one. And if quantum physics has taught me anything (which it hasn’t because I know nothing of the subject except from what I’ve read on Wikipedia and such) it’s that given an infinite amount of time, all possible outcomes will transpire. And since I’m pretty sure that I’ve been in Spain since the dawn of time, eventually I do have to step on a pigeon. Ok, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, if there’s an actual dawn of time, that implies that infinity doesn’t go in both directions. Thus, that doesn’t necessarily mean that my stepping on a pigeon has to happen very shortly. But then again, if time is just a series of successive moments which can be broken down into an infinite amount of increments, then infinity has already occurred, is occurring right now, and will continue to occur into… well, infinity. Wait. What the FRIGG am I talking about? Let’s move on, shall we? So yeah, due to this feather being on my shoe and the fact that this class I speak of is BORING AS CRAP, like a man at the library with a copy of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I checked out. Honestly, I was surprised that I’d made it this far (65 seconds into the start of the actual class) while still paying attention. I say this because of the brief convo I’d just had before the class started.

I had been talking to Ashley and had asked her where she was from, to which she replied, “Shakopee.” From across the room, Amanda heard this and mentioned how that was pretty close to Chaska (which is where I now assume she’s from). At this point I mentioned how much I love Chaska. This of course confused the peeps around me. Why would someone such as myself with no apparent ties to this town have this seemingly irregular affinity for it? Well, at least that’s what I imagine people we’re thinking. They most likely just wanted me to be quiet. Although, Amanda asked why. Right about here is where I broke into a short diatribe (do short diatribes exist?) about how much I friggin’ LOVE the McDonald’s in that fair city (mind you, this is all taking place in the Spanish tongue, if you will, so that just confounds the confoundment even more). In summary, everything about that place is perfect and it has some great memories attached to it. Let me tell you something, mis amigos, my first meal when I get back in 'Sotaville is going to be some double friggin' cheeseburgers. Probably three of them in fact. And you know what's the best thing about eating three double cheeseburgers? When you finish one, there's still two more. And you know what the second best thing about getting three double cheeseburgers is? They taste good. Durr. But apparently the people of that class don’t share my obsession with this fast food chain as no one really knew how to respond, and they just seemed somewhat confused in general. My professor especially had a completely perplexed look on his face. I looked over at him and nodded my head hoping for his assent or something to that effect. But rather, he just shook his cabeza as if trying to clear it of this nonsense I was speaking. On the plus side, I’m guessing that he’s now okay with the fact that I never speak in class as he's hopefully conjured up some sort of image of my just being a complete idiot. But whatevs, he can think what he wants as long as he doesn’t ask me to give my opinion on capitalism or whatever stupid topic he’s ineffectively speaking on that day.
So I spent the rest of the class period just basically ignoring what he was trying to teach. I copied everything he wrote down on the board into my notebook, though, so I’m pretty confident that given his linguistic abilities, my writing down of the notes and not paying attention is almost certainly more effective than both taking notes AND listening. Thus, I’m going to say that this was the most productive period for that class that I’ve had to this point. So yay for me.

A lot of my thoughts from this timeframe were centered around the fact that I had to register for classes later that day. At approximately exactly 3:00. Yep, sentence fragments are fine, even encouraged, in my writing. So take THAT, Ms. Church! *shakes head* So after this semester, I in theory only have three more left with somewhere between like 47 and 54 credits to take (depending on how everything works itself out). That’s between 15 2/3 and 18 per semester. A bit of a difference. Thus, I was trying to decide what type of killer I wanted my schedule for the next semester to be. Like killer good or killer bad.

The past two semesters (I wish I had a synonym for “semester” as I’m definitely overusing that word) I’ve been able to set up my schedule so I’ve only had to rock classes a couple times a week. Fall last year I no class on Monday or Friday and then last spring I was able to pull Wednesday off in addition to Monday and Friday. Tight. That makes for some hardcore Tuesdays and Thursdays, though, but it’s worth it. Now before you go about calling me a lazy bum, let me just say something. I was SOOOOO unbelievably busy that it was literally like I had class everyday. And a lot of it. Juggling homework, an absurd amount of meetings, all the Crusade-related stuff I do, TKD/training, AND a social life was nuts. I basically only slept 4 hours a night every night. But none of that matters, because there’s still something very mentally pleasing about only having class twice a week that pulls you through it all. Like I said, it’s worth it.

But the point is, I was thinking about how horrid I wanted this spring to be/how easy I wanted the following semesters to be. I know that I’m going to continue to roll with all the stuff I’d been doing in the past, and there was no doubt that some new stuff was going to happen as well (probably a job and hopefully hopefully hopefully training at another gym as well), so I needed to ponder this carefully. I was either going to rock 16 or 19 credits. Big old decision. Eventually (at around 3:00, I suppose), I decided that I was basically just going to destroy myself next semester and take the 19. This entails class from 8:15 am to 8:50 por la noche on Tuesdays and then (including the weekly Cru meeting) from 8:15 to like 10:45 on Thursdays. Epic schedule. 19 credits. 2 days a week. Good gravy I hope I don’t get smashed with like 6 midterms on one day. But whatevs, it’s all hood. Anything that happens like that has been brought on by myself.
My thoughts adventurally (as in a combination of “adventure” and “eventually” because that’s just how I do in life) shifted to the trip to the library that I’d taken that day with Danielle. She’d decided recently that she wanted to procure for herself a library card so she could get her hands on some good Spanish music. This sounded like a good idea to me, and thus, we HOLY CRAP A BIRD ALMOST JUST FLEW INTO MY ROOM!!!!!!! A pigeon, no less, it’s like they know that I’m writing about stepping on one of them… Like he just flapped his way at a crazy and loud clip toward my window (which of course is open because otherwise my presence in this room would raise the temperature to unbearable highs), got right up to it, and then figured out that this isn’t where he’s supposed to be. I guess it kind of makes sense, though, as there used to be like a hole-type area in the building across the alley from me where they would all congregate and such. Recently, that opening has been blocked off, so now they all kind of hang near that place and just basically look sad and confused. Poor little guys. Nonetheless, they needs to stay the heck up out of my room. That’s an adventure that I just don’t need on my hands at this stage in my life.
I know that like a month ago or so, a bat flew into one of the rooms here while some people were watching a movie in one of the classrooms. Erin actually killed it, though, in a fit of BAMF’ness that’s hard to describe properly. The short of it is that she was trying to direct him back out the window by scaring with her sweatshirt. Thus, she kind of snapped it at him to freak him out. Well… she did more than freak him out; she hit and killed him with the piece of apparel. Awesome. But yeah, so apparently flying creatures entering rooms here isn’t as unpossible as failing English is.
Anyways, continuing on, this sounded like a good idea to me, and thus, we both decided that after breakfast on Thursday (the day in question) we would go acquire some library cards and do it al up. This especially made me giggle because I don’t even have a library card in America Land. So yeah… I don’t go get books.

So we defs hit up the biblioteca action and got ourselves some card-age without too much difficulty (outside of the snobbish librarian there. Hm… snobbish is one of those words that really describes itself. You know what I mean? Like the word “snobbish” to me actually IS snobbish. Think about it. And don’t give me none of that “But that’s true for all words” crap, because it isn’t, son.). And shortly thereafter we were searching the shelves of a Spanish library for some solid música. I must say that the collection they have in that building is pretty friggin’ stellar. You could basically rep any type of music you wanted. Spanish, English, Latin, pop, English rock, country, movie soundtracks, and even English. Err’thing you could basically desire.
Danielle and I ended up really achieving in terms of the Spanish type this day as only one of the six (allowed three a piece, we are) CD’s we checked out was as such (sarcasm). She got a Salsa mix, some Michael Bublé, and a bit of Bob Marley whereas I pulled in Stevie Wonder, The Killers, and the soundtrack from Sweeney Todd (noice!). Perhaps the next time we go to this crazy place (which can’t be later than Thursday as we can only have them for a week), we’ll get some Spanish stuff… err… maybe not… I can assure you that right now I’m more than happy listening to Johnny Depp’s surprisingly really good voice as he sings about killing people with a shaver. Mix that in with my roommate’s ridonkulously loud Darth Vader-esque breathing, and I’m good to go (one might even say that I’m g2g). Seriously, the sounds emanating from that kid at this very moment make me think that his heart is only like 4 seconds away from literally exploding. You can’t be in good shape when lying down and watching some sort of Spanish sitcom makes you out of breath. Hm… I may not be the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but I bet I could quiet him down a bit with my electric razor… Just kidding, but seriously..