I'd rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station...with my tongue.

Well, we had our first meeting of the semester today. Ummm...sure; I guess it could have been worse. And I even got a word in edgewise. A couple of times, even. Go figure.

Though when it ended, I wasn't heartbroken.

Oh, can't you see what I'm trying to say, darlin'... I'd rather have my blood sucked out by leeches...

Though I did get an offer of help in gathering up all of my crap to re-submit, and that was very nice. :-) Help--when it is actually *helpful*--rocks. And this help was helpful. Everything's in and done.

And then I decided to stay late at the school and use their computer lab. I guess for no real reason at all, other than I was looking forward to working alone and walking around campus after dark, something I don't always get to do. Well, ever. I usually have urgent crap that has to have been done yesterday. I still did, but...I don't know. They have this area that is almost park-like, and it just looks very pretty and...civilised. Can't help more than that. The grass is short, the trees are pruned, the sidewalk area is lined with streetlamps (not enough to be obnoxious), the buildings have a nice lighting effect from lamp-y things in the flowerbeds surrounding them, and it's in the direction of the Observatory, so the view has stayed unobstructed (I guess intentionally, though I am not 100% up on how observatories work), so if you walk out into a grass clearing away from the lighted areas, you have this beautiful view of the sky, and benches, too.

I mean really, it's gorgeous. The only thing it's missing is little lights in the trees, and it would be perfect. I love walking there at night, and especially when it's cold. It's not cold now, but I stayed for that. I would have taken my laptop out there and worked, but it was too hot, and there's something about working in the lab that makes me actually *work*. Well, stay on-task better, at least. Not that I usually have a problem, but...I need less breaks, I don't do so much personal stuff...all of that. It was kind of a reward, or me-time, or whatever.

I do this kind of thing when I'm feeling out-of-sorts; I had a weird dream last night, and it set the mood for my whole day. I dreamt that I was in New Orleans (a/k/a, Venice of the South), and I had to save Squooshable from the hurricane, but I didn't have a place to stay, or money, or a car. Or a freaking cat carrier, and Squoosh was being squirmy. And none of the shelters or anywhere else would let us in because they didn't take pets. So I was going to have to find a way to break in to somewhere, and then re-secure it so that Squoosh couldn't get out, and that was going to be difficult to do whilst holding Squoosh the whole time, 'cos I had nothing to put him in (I was looking for something to put him in, too). And I didn't have food for either of us, on top of everything else, so I had to get some of that for us, too. So I woke up upset. And tired from all that walking around, carrying a squirmy Squooshable. Sigh. And I know that by getting upset over it I'm minimising all the disaster that people who are there were and are going through, but I can't help what I dream about. That's why I'm happy that I don't remember my dreams usually; they're almost always bad, big, complex, with horrible things in them; terrible problems that have to be solved, huge disasters, and so on. For whatever reason, for quite a while I've been spared having to remember them, and that rocks. And I would have figured it out and saved Squoosh and myself if the alarm hadn't gone off. I'm pretty resourceful.

What also pisses me off is that since I didn't get to think through it, if anything like that ever happens, I won't have many good suggestions already prepared. Bastard alarm.

Butsoanyway.

So as I'm driving home, Son-Friend calls; his cat had disappeared a few weeks back, and shown up with an injured tail. I paid for the vet (I made him go to Dr Vet), and his Snowball (a black cat, which illustrates more about S-F's personality than I can) is on antibiotics and has a tail bandage and so on. Dr Vet decided to try to save the tail first. But S-F has run out of bandages, and ::drum roll:: has no money. So I met him at the store near my house. Seventy dollars later (bandages, plus some Son-Friend food), I get to go home.

Sigh.

And I still have to help him with his rent for September, and finish buying my textbooks, and I'm of course still waiting to get reimbursed for my travel expenses. I can hear my bank account balance dropping like a god damned pachinko ball.

No, I didn't say anything to him about it; I wouldn't ever. It's my problem, not his.

If I ever run away from home though, I'm going to remember to bring a cat carrier. A big one, so that I can keep them all in one carrier (in my dream, Romeo and Weebie were with Meg, and I figured that if I died, she would take care of them), and a rolly-cart thing to lug it around on. And a big golf umbrella. And food. And something to secure the umbrella to the rolly thing. And...

Well, I've got to hammer it out *sometime*. And running away from home has an appeal at times...