Somewhat novel, today I had no class, so I lazed in bed for a while. That was nice. After my lazy start to the day, I headed up to the bus stop to catch the bus to UW. I watched the bus I was going to catch go past the end of the street when I was about ten steps from the end of the street (and it’s about five more steps to the stop from there). It was frustrating having to wait another quarter of an hour.

On the way to UW on the bus, I saw someone dressed up as a hotdog on the street… dancing. Why would a company want a dancing hotdog? Who would want to be a dancing hotdog as a form of employment? If the dancing hotdog got special hotdog discount, does that make it a cannibal?

Who knows.

After getting to university I walked to the library while on the phone to Anastasia, and generally had a chat with her. After that I went into the library to do some emails and print off my insurance form, which the ISO needed if I didn’t want to be charged for more insurance I really don’t need. However, when I tried to print I found I need a card to load in to even be able to access the print queue (which I didn’t have, and couldn’t delete the print job of). What about your Husky Card (student ID) I hear you say… well, no is the short answer. You need some other card which you load money on to. I don’t particularly think that makes sense actually, but to each university its quirks, huh?

I then went back to Schmitz to the ISO with my insurance PDF on my pen-drive, and this is where I got the whole printing thing explained to me. Bloody frustrating and overly complex, if you ask me. However, they were nice enough to print off my insurance form then and there, as they needed it (along with some other forms I had already filled out).

After that I went down a floor to the housing people, to see what I could expect on Monday. Sounds like the process is pretty simple – show up, read and sign lease, pay deposit and first month’s rent, then go collect keys and move in. Sounds good to me. ^^

I then went over to the CSE department to pick up the copied textbook chapters for Computer Graphics which my lecturer had printed off for those of us without a textbook yet. From there I went to the HUB to meet up with Marisa. We chatted for a bit and had some food, then we went over to the IMA (the sports centre) and toured ourselves all over it. It is unbelievably cool. It’s got half a dozen general use basketball courts, studios, an indoor swimming pool, a bunch of outdoor tennis courts, an indoor running track, lots of machines of various descriptions, free weights, squash courts, racquetball courts… it’s enormous and very cool. ^^ I’m hoping to find some kind of programme that’ll fit in with what I’m doing so I can go play basketball or squash on a regular basis.

From there it was back to the HUB and parting ways with Marisa, who was off to have dinner with a friend of hers that lives here in Seattle, and I went upstairs to meet up with some of the FIUTS people to go out to dinner. I was going to go out with Greg afterwards, but as you’ll see it ended up going a bit later than expected.

From UW the dozen or so of us walked for a bit then caught a bus over to Capitol Hill, and Broadway. I don’t really know what that means, but we were on the bus for a bit and ended up in a different part of town. We then all piled into the Broadway Grill for some dinner, although we had to ‘split’ our party in half (we sat at two tables next to each other anyway) to avoid some kind of mandatory charge for having lots of people. Weird. Anyway, I had chicken quesadillas to start, then burritos for the main. Pretty nice stuff, actually. I don’t think I’d rave about it or anything, but I wouldn’t object to eating there again. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying theirs as well.

After dinner it wasn’t back to UW as I had thought, but a bit down the road to a dessert house. Entirely devoted to chocolates, cakes, coffees, all that stuff. After checking my wallet, I had the crème brulè and a coffee. Throughout all of this I was having a great time talking to the people I was with, and just generally enjoying myself, which was great. ^^ When we got out of the dessert place, I realized I was just about late back to Greg’s already, let alone allowing for travel time! I rang Greg and let him know what the situation was as we walked to the bus stop and waited a few minutes. Some of the guys went off to have a drink, and the rest of us piled back on the 49 bus to UW, then I switched at UW to the 44 and back to Greg’s. I arrived about an hour after was polite to be back, so a big sorry (again) to Greg for putting up with my late entry with very good humour.

Ensue one of my chronic cases of insomnia, lying in bed and being able to get no sleep, no matter what I try and do to relax. I hate it when this happens, it totally messes with my body clock, usually right after I’m feeling rested and in some kind of rhythm. Figures.