Yesterday morning I woke up at 7:30 and bounded (well, as close as I get to bounding) out the door, ready to try my experiment of driving to USC first thing in the morning, because I have one class at 9am. I stopped for gas and started driving down Cahuenga at 8:10 or so. Traffic on southbound 101 --
(One of the reasons I'm getting all confused around here is that for 13 years I lived in an area where the important city was to the north. I have to keep reminding myself that Los Angeles is to the south. It's not as easy as you might think.)
-- was stop and go, so I felt pretty good about taking Cahuenga. Then, on the radio, I heard that there was an accident on northbound 101 at Barham. Sure enough, southbound 101 sped up at Barham: rubbernecking. I got on the freeway and sped the rest of the way to USC. I was there by 8:45, which was a lot faster than I was expecting.
During my day on campus, I wanted to register, pay fees, get my parking pass, and get a computer account. No problem, right?
I parked at the northwestern end of campus. The place to register was at the southwestern end. Okay -- I slung my backpack over my shoulder and hiked down there. No one was there, so I walked right in and got everything done. One of the clerks was very helpful and circled on a map the different areas I had to go to for paying, for my ID card, for my parking pass. The stops seemed to follow in an arc, so I felt as though I was going to get done with this quickly.
I walked to a building roughly between the registration building and the parking structure to get my USC ID. Problem: I couldn't get my USC ID, because they couldn't take pictures...some excuse about fear of the Michelangelo virus. (What?) So, if you hadn't taken your picture yet, you had to come back in the afternoon.
Fine. I left and walked to the bookstore. I wandered around for a while before asking, "Where are the textbooks?" It turned out they were on the third floor. And you couldn't just go to the section and pick up your books -- no, first you had to look in a book under the course ID to see which books were required for that course (and if you didn't know the course ID, you had to look in another book to match the course ID with the course title). It turned out that the only textbook listed for my classes was The Writer Got Screwed, a new book about business and ethics in Hollywood, which was also available at Bookstar for 20% off.
So I headed to the northeastern edge of campus, to the King Hall of Olympic Champions to pay the Olympic-sized fees for fall semester. The day was getting hot, so I had started perspiring. But I was quickly getting done.
I went back to the parking structure, which was where I had to go to buy my parking pass. Here there was a line. I got in line and waited in the heat for over an hour before finally getting into the building and paying the equivalence of a month's rent for nine months' work of parking for my car. Yowsa.
I walked to a nearby computer center to get a computer account. They said I had to go another computer center, this one back on the northeastern side of campus, by King Hall. I was nearing exhaustion now, but the end was in sight.
I got to the second computer center, where I was told:
After stopping in the bookstore to get the Primer, I stayed in the student lounge long enough to fill out the application and drink a Diet Pepsi. I realized that the area to get the USC ID card was in the next building, so I headed over there to see how the picture-taking was going.
They were back in business, and they had a line. I waited there, took my picture (I don't get the ID for another couple of days!), and then started back to Jefferson Hall. I dropped off the application and headed to the library. I thought I was going to die in the heat by this time -- it was well over 90 degrees and somewhat humid out.
After finishing up at USC, I called Tiffany (heretofore known as "Portia") for lunch. We met at her place in Santa Monica and went to Jake and Annie's. The food was good but the service stunk. We had a good talk. One of the things she told me about was this dream she had that showed a photo like a high school year book picture and had the name USAN MYN underneath it.
I told her I wanted to get out an anagrammer program to see what it spelled.
"I think it means anonymous," she said.
I liked the name Usan Myn so much I wrote it down.
We headed back to her place at 4:30. I was really tired and wanted to go home to nap.
"You know, traffic's going to be really bad at this point," she said. "You're welcome to hang out here."
"I'll just lie down for a little bit," I said.
Two and a half hours later, when I finally woke up, Tiffany told me she had made plans for us to get together with Allison and Adam. I went out and bought Ben and Jerry's. Allison and Adam arrived with Schoolhouse Rock videos (we all sang along with the Counting by Fives song and "I'm Just A Bill") and gin, Hawaiian Punch, and Cheetos. I didn't drink any gin, but I did have some Hawaiian Punch. We all relived our childhoods (except for the gin part).
I got home at 11:30 and the idea of sitting down and writing was not very pleasant. So I didn't.
This morning I spent an hour getting my PPP account at USC running (yay! I have endless Internet access! no more logging in, quickly getting mail, uploading web pages, and logging off again! no more ugly, evil AOL browser! yay!). Then I drove off to Beverly Hills to meet with Edgar. He gave me the info about being a script reader and we had lunch at Baja Express. We might go see a movie tonight -- my first weekend alone in Los Angeles...arriba arriba!
I did some shopping in downtown Studio City, which is not much fun because of the parking situation (which sucks). I bought the textbook at Bookstar and a few other things at Thrifty. And then I came home, eager to post this and to browse the web like I haven't been able to in a while. A week, in fact. Phew.
But it might be time for another nap.