The Things We Do

Since politics is boring, and I really don’t care about it as much as I’ve seemed to the past few days, I have decided to be an actual personal blogger today. This is a story about my life.

I rarely, if ever, wake up before 7:00. And by rarely I mean exactly never. Except this one time. Last Saturday. I was forced to get my ass out of bed at about 4:30 so I could take care of something. No, not something for me. Something for The Boy. I haven’t talked much about kids of late, mainly because I’ve been boring fools with political stuff and starting crap with intellectual inferiors, but they are still around, in case you were wondering. Both of them. And The Boy is getting to the point where I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do with him in the summers soon. In fact, I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do with him this summer. Crap.

On Saturday, I drew the short straw. Actually, last year Christy went, so this year I made this fuss about not being able to go and whatever, but I was just joshing. So I get up at like 4:30 and throw some clothes on. I grab the iPod, the latest issue of Wired, and a lawn chair. As I did all of it, I made sure that a shitload of noise was made. Heh. I go to the car and drive my ass up to the university to camp out. The place was the Continuing Education Building. The reason was Kids University. It’s a summer program that lasts seven weeks and is for kids from second to eighth grade. Something like that. Each week, the kids get in a different class. The classes range from science stuff to rock climbing to football to kayaking. I would have loved it when I was a kid. The Boy loves it now. He sits down and picks the classes he wants and we write them down on a signup page. Then some poor sap gets up all early to get in line.

The signups begin at 7:00. I roll in at about 5:00. I’m the 74th person there. Are you freaking kidding me? At least there was some guy there handing out numbers on notecards to people as they arrived. Apparently last year it was a mad rush to get in the door when they opened, so earlier people were sent to the back and didn’t get the classes they wanted. Did I mention classes fill up quickly? It’s too dark to read my Wired. So I throw the iPod on, with the Björk mix (I never actually create mixes, I just put all artists’ work in one playlist, so when I want Fiona Apple, I get Fiona Apple without having to scroll through the damn “Artists” folder). I listen for about 30 minutes before I realize at least half of the stuff I have of hers is missing. Damn iTunes and its “o” versus “ö” sensitivity. Oh well.

Just after 5:30 they open the doors. We all line up in the building and start wrapping around the little Disneyland-style ropes and people set up camp. People were pretty orderly with their numbers and stuff so it was decent getting in line. Except we had moved too far inward so we kept getting pushed back. So we wound up (we being my comrades in the “70’s”) right next to a table. The only damn table not being used in the entire room. It was against the wall, and I was against it. And everyone else sat down. So I stood. For an hour and a half. Shit.

At least inside the lights were on so I could read while listening to my music. When they finally began signups, at 7:00, the line moved quickly. I was out of there by 7:20. Nice. Then I walked over to Manzanita Lake and took some pictures, like the one up top. But I have no idea if I got the classes we wanted. Oh well. We’ll get a letter in the next few days letting us know. Thanks for reading.