San Marcos, Antarctica

"Rice cakes are made from sofa cushion stuffing and hate..."  -@YesThatAmy- (via twitter)



Good morning everyone.  This is very unusual for me, starting a post at 3:30 a.m. CST when not coming off of a shift at work.  I apologize for not posting yesterday, but I was making good use of my time since I entered Monday's ramble here.  For those of you following my Las Vegas trip write-ups from the edge of your seat, part five of that series will be my next entry, and I will follow that up with my NFL Conference Championship Game predictions on Friday.  This entry is thus another ramble for you, covering various topics and nonsense.

For starters, San Marcos, Antarctica is FREAKIN COLD!!!  Currently the temperature is 32 degrees, and the wind chill is sitting at 25.  The depressing thing is that for the next WEEK, the forecast is highs in the low 60's, with lows STILL in the 30's...  In the past it has not been unusual to have a random day or two where the lows dipped into the 30's, but for days on end...  BRRRRRRR...  Of course you still see the people who are wearing t-shirts and sandals, or short skirts, and you think, "wow, they're gonna get sick..."  When you think it through, you realize that they're the ones who are ultimately going to be responsible for passing that stuff around and making EVERYONE sick...

So I was driving at the very top of North L.B.J. Drive this morning (yes, the very same area where the new apartments are going up), and I noticed the most amusing sign.  I am sure that this must have been there on Monday, and I just failed to see it then.  There is a "sidewalk closed" sign (the kind that looks sort of like a hurdle, blocking the path of the whole sidewalk) as you approach the construction of the new apartments.  The good part is that sidewalk on that side of the street literally ends not more than ten yards later, so yeah, if you picture the sign, and then ten more yards of sidewalk...

Okay, so I'm out paying my bills (see, I was being productive), and when I get to the strip mall where I have to pay my phone bill (this is the one that is home to Hastings, Jason's Deli, etc... for those of you who are familiar with San Marcos, Antarctica), I notice the Institute of Cosmetology.  The Institute of Cosmetology had never previously caught my eye.  Where EXACTLY is this prestigious bastion of higher learning located you ask?  You can find it right in-between the Dollar General store and the Advance America/Cash Advance  outlet.  I guess with all of the new readers that I'm getting, I should be careful about who I tease, because you KNOW that ultimately I'm going to upset someone:  "Hey, I GO to IOC, home of the Fightin' Manicures, and we're DAMN PROUD of it!!..."  :P

Anyway, fast forward to this evening, and I was on campus at the library for the first time this semester.  I checked out a few books on writing (I obviously need them), and then I started thumbing through The University Star (the campus newspaper).  At this point, my week was made...  :)  At an earlier juncture in this blog, I stated that one of my goals was for the phrase 'Bikini Hill' to catch on.  People will say they're going to "the river" - they'll say they're going "to Sewell".  You don't hear 'Bikini Hill' as often as I'd like...  :)  Well, Ariella Hannon wrote a column for the university newspaper titled, "Hard Work, Planning Necessary For Successful Semester."  This is a direct quote from that article:  "While lying out on Bikini Hill and getting a tan may be tempting, it will not help your GPA."  Now as true as that is, keep in mind that the IMPORTANT PART of that quote is that Ariella used the phrase 'Bikini Hill'...  ;)

In addition to working at Harper's/Slackers/The Veranda (which counts as one job), it looks like I was successful in finding some additional future employment (more on that later), which is something else productive that I have been doing since Monday, and another great excuse for me typing this entry right now as opposed to yesterday when I was supposed to...  For those of you who have any experience living in a college town, the start of the semester is about the WORST TIME to look for a job because EVERYONE is looking for a job...  It's now obvious that I have survived the much-dreaded month of silence that separates the fall and spring semesters in town, and now I need to make it to spring, where we'll finally see an end to this unusually cold weather in San Marcos.

I hope that you have a great day, and I'll see you tomorrow with the next installment of my recent trip to Las Vegas.