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Yesterday I heard a shout from the stairwell, followed by a string of swear words. "What's wrong?" I asked, coming into the hall.

"Oh, I tripped and spilled this thing." It was my roommate. He had been carrying his part of the Indian food that She just finished making upstairs and his leg had gone funny since he just ran the marathon so he tripped and spilled about a fifth of the rice on the plate onto the stairs.

She came into the stairwell and walked by him and went into his room. I got out a broom and he and I swept up the rice. The Indian food smelled so delicious, I expressed how sorry I was that he'd spilled it and he said the same. He told me what a good cook she was, probably loud enough so she could hear.

Once he went into his room I could hear her start arguing with him. "I just finish making a beautiful dinner for you," she began, "and you had one hour, ONE HOUR and all you had to do was set up the placemats, and you didn't. Do you want me to spill rice all over your bed?? You can't do anything!! You can't even walk up a flight of STAIRS! You're so CLUMSY!!"

But they made up later.

This morning I came into work and my coworked looks like he was run over on Exhaustion Street by a truck with tires treaded with Depression. That's what we use instead of snow tires during the Providence winter, in case you didn't know.
I asked him what was up and he said that his girlfriend had called him at 4:30 in the morning last night. That's only 1:30 in the morning for people in California, aka her. She'd called because she had a paper due the next day and she was stressed out and she didn't know what to write and she wanted him to comfort her and give her ideas. Few ideas are to be had by someone who has just been woken up at 4:30 in the morning in the last few weeks of the semester.


So what is the moral of the story here?

That you should treat your significant other significantly worse than you would ever treat anyone else? That you make of them extremely selfish and ridiculous demands and talk to them in a discourteous tone of voice and say to them hurtful things that you would never even think about doing/saying, even to a perfect stranger, even to your worse nemesis?

An aside: I'd probably put up with a zillion crazy demands before I'd let someone talk to me in a discourteous manner.

To be fair, it is impossible to get my roommate to do anything. He always says he will, and then never does. If he did all the things he promised to do, I would have a working fan, a space heater, a shower curtain, a captured mouse, the trash taken out, a new car antenna, and a can of mace. Most of these things I do have, but because I eventually did them myself. The only thing he did get me in a timely manner was my bottle of Tylenol when I was sick a couple of weeks ago, probably because I looked like I was going to die within the hour and the drugstore is across the street. So the fact that he had an hour to put out the placemats and he didn't would be quite annoying to anyone who has known him. But come ON. Getting mad at him because he FELL UP THE STAIRS? I'd also be a lot more sympathetic if he didn't make them both dinner at least 50% of the time.

And as for my coworker's girlfriend, ok, so I wouldn't really be mad if my boyfriend called me at 4:30 in the morning. I would be worried! I'd be totally out of it at first, then I would be worried, and then when he told me why he was calling (if his reason was the same as hers), I'd be like, "what?" I mean, if he were in some totally random time zone and he didn't know what time it was here or that was the only time he could call, I'd be happy to hear from him- I'd probably rather talk to him at 4:30 in the morning than anyone else... and if it was a drunk dial then I would be like, "silly goose" and then I'd go back to sleep... but in California it's always three hours behind, and it's Tuesday night. The only answer to give is simply, "what???" followed by the classic,

"Do you have any idea what time it is?"

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So I'm thinking I need to get out more. You know, make some friends outside of the department, seeing as the only thing that department people do is drink beer, do work, and complain about doing work.

I'm in the market, as they say, for a nice group of friends. How do I go about that? Well, I'm thinking mebbe I should join a nice club. It's a little difficult seeing as it's almost the end of the semester and then all those lazy undergraduates will go home for the summer, but it's not too early to be thinking about what kind of club I'd like to join.

I'm trying to meet several criteria:

1. People that do this activity would make good friends
2. This activity is something I actually like to do
3. Won't take up a HUGE amount of time, but still meets often enough so I can get to know people.
4. Isn't the kind of activity where whatever you are doing prevents you form actually getting to know or talking to the people with whom you are doing the activity (i.e. ballet)
5. Friendly towards graduate students

Here are some options, mostly based on criterion number 2:

German Club
Argentine Tango Club
Salsa Club
Taiko Drumming
Mariachi de Brown
Climbing Wall club
Yacht Club
Breakdancing Club
Christian Fellowship

There is a kinda cool-looking gospel choir thing but they talk a lot about the Black Church in their description so I kinda get the impression that I wouldn't be that welcome, due to the color of my skin. Same with all of the ethnic clubs except for the Swiss one and the German one. Maybe the Celtic one, but those people tend to be rather exclusive, too.
Christian Fellowship would be cool, but I happened to know that one of my former students goes to that pretty regularly, and I wouldn't want him to think I was stalking him....

Sucks that they don't have a drawing club. Or a movie-making club. That would be RIGHT-ON. So now that we've gotten a list of potential clubs, let's discuss the kind of people I would likely meet in each of these clubs:

German Club
Huge nerds
Argentine Tango Club
girls who are very full of it/sketchy guys/guys who don't brush their teeth
Salsa Club
Same as above; possibly no guys at all
Taiko Drumming
Japanese people/very pale white Japanophiles slightly more athletic/social than those in the Anime Club
Mariachi de Brown
Mexicans/Trumpet players
Climbing Wall club
Hippies
Yacht Club
Yuppies
Breakdancing Club
Koreans
Christian Fellowship
*Super* *Nice* people/People who say obnoxious things like "How is your Walk?"

Hmmm....

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Too close to home... a little too close to home.

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When the sun shines
We’ll shine together
Told you I'll be here forever
That I'll always be your friend
Took an oath I'm gonna stick it out 'til the end
Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we still have each other
You can stand under my Umbrella
You can stand under my Umbrella
(Ella ella eh eh eh)
Under my umbrella
(ella ella eh eh eh)
Under my umbrella
(ella ella eh eh eh)
Under my umbrella
(ella ella eh eh eh eh eh eh)


.... yeah... it's raining.

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