Things Are Good

Life is pretty good right now. It turns out I quit my job at the BAC slide library just in time – I only have two weeks of summer grad school classes left, and the homework and reading is just there, all the time. If I had to work at the BAC in addition to these classes, I think I’d be a crying little heap on the floor right now. I suppose what I’m trying to say here is that I have time to be a student again, and that’s a good thing.

Tuesday was my last day of work at the slide library. I worked my other part time job at Harvard on Wednesday, but Thursday, the next day when I should have gone to the BAC job, was just awesome. I visited the Acme book binding factory in Sommerville. For a bibliophile like me it was super exciting. I saw magazines being sewn into their big library periodical bindings. I saw paperback copies of Lord of the Flies and Twelfth Night being turned into uniform little hardcover class sets. I saw short runs of specialty books being made for a museum in Savannah. There were machines that put the covers on books just right, there were bolts of 22 different colors of book cloth. There were machines that measured books perfectly using light. In short, it was a neat place to be and there were neat things to see.

After class on Thursdays I usually eat lunch and go to work at the BAC. But I had quit that job, so I was able to go from the book bindery to Faneuil Hall with a classmate for lunch. The day was nice, and we sat outside and ate cheap lunches near the old state house. And I was happy about that. Afterwards, I went home and took a nap before I went back to school to do a couple of hours worth of homework. I picked up some comics on the way home, and when I got there my roommate Aral had made a big mess of Thai food and some chocolate strawberry truffle tarts. I ate the yummy Thai food, and then curled up in my blue bedroom and ate chocolate tarts and read comic books and talked on the phone to friends.

It just doesn’t get much better than that, does it? An exciting morning of learning new things, lunch with a friend, time for a nap and the freedom to do your homework at your own pace – followed up by comic books, chocolate tarts, and good phone conversation. I may not be the richest person right now, but darn it if I don’t have the kind of life I always wanted. I mean it! Graduate school is hard, and I have to scrape for money sometimes, but I really like where I am right now. It just doesn’t get much better than this.

Other things that happened:

My friend/ Simmons roommate Jennifer came over Wednesday night and Aral and I fed her full of good food because she’s still in the dorms. We had a good visit.

The Sea-Monkeys have started to make sweet lovin' in their tanks, resulting in many other little Sea Monkeys.

I learned my Myers Briggs type (ENTJ), how to re-case books broken away from their spines, "tipping" pages (how to make them stick back into books properly), a new way to make end sheets, how to define true maturity, how you can get better produce at the Korean market, and how to get paint off your wood floors.

And a bunch of other stuff, every single day.