Second Day of Classes

So how likely is it, four years after working/schooling at North that I would run into one of the coolest people I ever met there here at the UW in one of my classes. Four years, and I run into Consuelo in my Archaeology class. The girl I thought was awesome who likes to "blow shit up" just started here, has the same major, and we're in a fucking class together. Mind blown.

In the first two days I have already learned two very important lessons:

1. I hate stairs.
2. Use a map with the course offerings BEFORE registering and settling on classes.

Science fact: Did you know if you take a large woman with a cold and send her marching up staircase after staircase through thickets of other students and across wide campuses that she'll sweat and cough profusely through her first two hours on campus?

Next lesson to learn: how to be succinct in writing science facts.

FAIL!

It took us an HOUR to go from the last few hundred yards' stretch of 520 to the fourth light along Avondale, a trip that usually takes two minutes in good traffic and maybe fifteen minutes in really bad traffic. Why? Well, the construction that's been going on for a few months now doesn't help, and there was apparently a stalled vehicle that had been pulled alongside the road, but what really held us up? Aliens landing and claiming people in a long line? A certain politician was in town and we were all invited to a punch-a-thon? Nope. Someone needed to be towed and having only one lane both at 520 and further down the road turned everyone in the right lane into assholes who thought they should all sneak ahead four or five at a time in front of each car in the left lane? You guessed it!

ONE HOUR. Although, I wish we could have recorded the conversation the three of us had while waiting. My clutch may never be the same.

Oh, and for your politically-minded people, which if you're of voting age in the U.S. you should be, ozarque posted her discontent at the Federal bailouts being proposed (or demanded). See here. The subsequent threads are equally enlightening. Quotes include:

That claim is coming from the same source that said we were facing imminent peril from Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction -- the same source that said immediate war was the only way to fend off that peril. Which wasn't true. The source was lying that time, and the resulting mess has been catastrophic.

-AND-

It's even better (worse) than that. When asked where they'd gotten the $700bn figure, here's what happened:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

I agree with gira who recently said, "I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that revolution cannot and will not come until the vast majority become so fed up that they are willing to sacrifice everything to revolt and then rebuild."

I think I always knew it, but when I first read those words, I sat stunned and realized how very much I am one of those people. I yearn for revolution, cry out and even protest against what's happening in this country, but I'm too attached to what little security I've managed to bring together in my life (and in Ana's) that I'm not willing to throw it all away on a cause that will likely mean nothing unless most of the country joins me in it.