Rawrgh. I'm having an irritating time settling in this year, as I've probably touched on to some of you by now. It's not the classes, but the dormmates. (That and the briefly debilitating cramps on move-in day, thanks body!) There isn't any one person/group who's especially loud but rather it seems everyone in the area is somewhat noisy, such that it adds up. But that's okay. There are two main problems:

1. My room is built with old doors leading to the rooms on either side. While these doors are out of use and bolted over, they stil serve to let more sound through than a solid wall.
   
   
2. The girl on one side of me has some kind of superbly awful respiratory infection or something that leads to some seriously nasty coughing/gagging fits. Now, look, I realize that if the girl is sick it's not her fault, and she likely isn't enjoying it herself. I have sympathy. Yet, at the same time, I've been awoken in the middle of the night by this horrid retching every night for the first week and boy howdy that gets old fast. I got this weekend off because she went home for the three-day weekend; we'll see if she's gotten any better by the time she returns.

It turns out I get stressed fairly fast when I can't sleep uninterrupted, which I suppose makes sense considering how I usually am about being woken up unexpectedly. (I've taken to giving people warnings and apologies in advance if they have to do it.) Anyway, I'm surviving. With a fair bit more comfort-buying in my life than usual, but still. Whee Legos.

So then, classes:

Eng 358, Non-Western Literature. Interestingly, I have the same teacher for this that I had for both U.S. Ethnic Lit and Intro to World Lit last semester. Soooo I'm expecting more of the same. (And not just because she's assigned a couple of the same authors.) I also have her for...

Eng 301, Women & Literature. I'm beginning to see a pattern in the classes this woman teaches.

Arts 140, Drawing 1. So I never did have any better ideas for that random elective slot. I hope that this will prove to be a good idea. It's two hours long and I'm always apprehensive about classes that involve actual skills which are not my major. You know, I feel like at any moment I could inadvertently break some sort of esoteric Art People taboo and be chased from their island with spears. ...That came out a lot more condescending, and possibly vaguely racist, than I meant it. Enh, art people, they should just go back to their own country anyway.

GComm 217, Electronic Desktop Publishing. I don't really know what the hell this class is but apparently I need it. Well, to be more accurate, I need either it or another class with that one teacher I have problems with; this class seems less interesting to me and doesn't fit into my schedule as well, but I just don't think I have the energy for another semester with that guy. Anyway, from what I can tell this class is actually about Adobe InDesign. You know, I'd heard they made programs besides Pirated Photoshop, but I never thought to see one such beast in person! (Acrobat doesn't count due to excessive hatred.)

Now, as vaguely foreboded, I think I'm going to make an animated sprite icon featuring an Ogre Battle valkyrie. ...By which I mean I've already done most of it. Who or what should she be attacking?

So for my next semester (which will also be my last semester ever, according to plan) I've got a completely wide-open elective slot.

...W-what the hell do I do with it? Suggestions?

For the latter half or so of break, I kept inexplicably waking up at about 6 AM every morning. I'd like to hope that this will not continue at school, but to be honest it'd probably round out to me being more awake in my classes. Damn wakingness.

And now back into things with two major assignments due this week. When did these bastard teachers get the idea that it's okay to assign work over break? They are mistaken.

I finally picked up Phoenix Wright 3 (for some reason, I was a month off on the release date for a long time, or I would've gotten it ages ago, honest!). I'm approaching the end of case 3. The writing really is getting better and better, aside from an increase in me raging at the screen: "You idiots, it was obviously that guy! Stop dicking around with these stupid tangents and put two and two together alfuckingready!" But it's ever so worth it just watching the characters interact by now. I have a side note, though: is it just me, or is this whole series slightly plagued with technical problems? I'll grant that I got the first game used, but all three of them for me have been fairly touchy about being detected by the DS, and they've even had a few mid-game freezes. I mean it's never really been a problem, but it just strikes me cause I almost never have any problems with any other DS games. What's going on over there, Capcom?

I think I'd like to try some of that Zelda as well, but they didn't have it. M-maybe if I spend all my money now I can somehow escape the siren call of the Wii later...