Begin Again

First day of school for the 2014-15 school year was yesterday, for Miss Anna Banana Fo Fanna and me. She's in 8th grade now. Me, a little hard to say. Junior-ish. Whatever.

Actually, the UT fall semester doesn't start until tomorrow. Austin Community College, where I have two classes, started up yesterday. But one of those is a compressed online course which doesn't kick off until 9/22. So, yesterday, I took off work at 3 PM, biked up to UT, declared my major as Rhetoric and Writing (not marketing; surprise!), and had my UT ID made.

Big mistake.

Campus has changed a bit since I was a regular there, and what I once knew as the Undergraduate Library (UGL) is now the Peter T. Flawn Academic Center (FAC). It's not a library at all anymore. There are computer labs, and it's where you go to get your ID made. Well, when I was a (cough, cough) sweet young thing, we called the UGL the "Ugly," and apparently this is where karma comes back to bite you in the ass, because when you're 45 and hydrate like a mofo and you bike to school when it's 101 degrees and have your picture taken at the FAC, well, "pretty" is not the first word that comes to mind.

Seriously, I might drive there Saturday and have them retake it.

Anyway, classes did start at ACC yesterday, so I showed up enthusiastically at my Texas State and Local Government class. Instead of feeling self-conscious about the fact that everyone else in class is younger than my second child I should just take shameless advantage of my inside knowledge as a state government employee and try to nuke the curve. This does concern politics, after all.

A young lady arrived early and was sitting front and center 30 minutes before the start of class. She was reading Ayn Rand. So all hope for the future either is or is not lost, depending on where you stand. Do I cancel out her effect? Or do we both contribute, equally detrimentally, to the current Texas political Gestalt? Discuss.*

I fired up the computer tonight to complete my first, practice, not-for-credit writing assignment for this class, and found an email from my Advanced Writing class at UT - one of my upper-division major requirements and a class I'm extremely excited about, although I also have to take an Intermediate Writing class (it's not a prerequisite) and it seems odd to do that one afterwards. I am wondering if I can just turn in my blog and get a B.

My writing professor has just gotten jury duty. Jury duty! So we can't have class tomorrow; it's a Monday-Wednesday class, so no meeting Friday; next Monday is Labor Day, so... Well, I have some suggested reading to tide me over, but I have to say I'm a little disappointed. Are university professors not exempt? Could he not have submitted a written excuse that would have blown the court's judicial socks off? I mean, you know, writing. Right?

He obviously isn't a state government employee.

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*Preferably in German