I've always been a B student

But here, if you're a B student, you flunk out. A grade of a B or lower triggers a meeting with the graduate student advisor. I'm trying not to think about this.

I have a housemate. His name is Aaron. He's a composer and he plays punk rock drums. He's also a nerd and writes a lot of MAX patches. His girlfriend is a food critic, so hopefully, he can cook. At the very least, he likes Compari. He's been away from school for four or five years, so he's as tweaked out by hordes of freshman as I am. Some of the straight-though people lack life experience in minor, but surprising ways.

My upstairs neighbor works swing shift, so I'm going to inquire about what times s/he sleeps or is away from home. It would be nice to have a punk band practicing in the living room.

My stuff arrived a few days ago. I'm somewhat unpacked. The house is filthy, so I have to scrub out cabinets (which seem to have grease stuck to them from the last several years) before I can put things in them. I got tired of this yesterday and made the mistake of starting to sponge off some of the blinds. Apparently, the blinds are supposed to be white, not brownish beige. I'm going to hose them off in the front yard. But everytime I look at the hood thingee over the stove, I feel really happy that it is no longer caked with gunk. I may end up focussing on this for the rest of the semester.

I've been oriented at least twice now. There may be another required orientation. I think I know what classes I ought to take. I have not yet taken a language exam, but I will be allowed to test in Esperanto. I managed to make a case that it was useful for international communication. I now feel like I ought to start using it to communicate internationally. Do any of you know any Ligoj de Verkistoj de Serioza Muziko?

So I have two course numbers for academic courses I should take. Someday soon, I may go look up the names of these courses and find out what they're about. I'll also be taking beginning gamelan. This seems to be adequate. Ron will be returning shortly and can tell me if I'm screwing up. Ron is the guy that I'm TAing for and seems to be my advisor. I'm supossed to write a mess of music too, but I dunno if this is part of my two courses, since I don't know about them yet. I guess I could look them up. Music 510 is Graduate Proseminar in World Music Studies, which doesn't seem to be about anything. And Music 508 is Graduate Seminar in Composition, which seems to be a composition class. Okie dokie. And Beginning Gamelan.

All this orienting is making me nervous. at least, since there's no graduate tution, I'm not being assessed late fees. but I could go for some mellon balls. Please mail me a sofa. (Unless the mailing of a sofa would somehow affect my finances, in which case, please don't mail me a sofa.)