Ahh..summer. Wait, it's over! No! Come back, come back!
So back to Ripon I headed, after a fabulous summer in Sandusky (yeah who would have thought Sandusky would have equaled fabulous??) that I definitely did NOT want to come home from! I heart Ohio! Well, not Ohio, but definitely my coworkers and friends, and of course that constant barrage of Snoopy movies!
Sigh, Ripon, you just aren't the same.
I got my pictures back today after an uneventful trip to Oshkosh (because lord knows I have to take my film to Oshkosh, even though I COULD have taken it somewhere in Ripon, but what's the fun in that, and hey, who actually wants to go to class? not me...i already skipped the first one! i am off to a great start in attendence this year! hoopa!). My pictures are great, and it made me sad all over again...I miss everyone!
So Ripon, here I am again...LAST YEAR! Wouldn't it be great if it was the last semester?? I should have just graduated along with everyone else last year...but who really wants to be out in the real world this soon?? Weren't we all freshmen like, a year ago?? Arguh.
So, like I had promised, I'm going to start at the beginning of the summer, and go through the end. Not in one posting, naturally, but in a few here and there, yadda yadda...
My day to move to Ohio starts at 4:30AM, and we're on the road by 5:00. It was NOT a good way to start the day. The trip down was eventless, process-in procedure painless, blah blah blah...and I'm assigned a room. In the dorms I definitely did NOT want to live in. The dorms that I was assigned to are on Point (situated across from the Hotel Breakers and behind the Corkscrew. Yay). Not to mention there isn't air-conditioning, and it's about a million degrees out there, at least so I've heard. Sigh. Well, not to be discouraged, even though Cedar Point logic for assigning me to Gold Dorms (henceforth referred to as Gold) is pretty shitty.

Human Resources: Do you have a car?
Me: No.
HR: Well, then you'll be living in Gold.
Me: I don't want to live in Gold.
HR: Well, you don't have a car, so we're putting you in Gold, because otherwise you won't have a way to get to work.
Me: But isn't there a shuttle bus?
HR: Yes, but we're putting you in Gold anyway.

So off to Gold I head, and am assigned a room, and a key, and head up the stairs with my first armload of crap. Finding my room was no problem, opening the door was no problem...the problem was the room itself. Sparsely furnished, and overall crappy looking, the room that greeted me was for two people, but was roughly the same size as my single in Johnson for 2nd semester. Except that it was more square than rectangular, and I had to share it with someone. As of that moment, the mysterious roommate was nowhere to be found, but they had warned me in the interview that people tended to work a lot, so I assumed she was at work. After I unpacked and whatnot, attempted to locate service on my cell phone (another whole story), mysterious roommate shows up.
Ohboy.
She's a nerd.
I can tell this right off the bat, but she seemed to be a nice nerd, and might be someone I could live with. We made small talk, etc, she seemed like she might be an OK roommate.
Yeah, I was extremely wrong on that one.
Let's give a little background on weird roommate. This in itself should explain just about everything.
Weird roommate is 20 years old, is the oldest of seven (yes, seven) kids. She was home-schooled her entire life, "graduated" from high school (home-school) in 2000, despite the fact that she is a year younger than me, and had she been in the normal school system would have graduated in 2002, and has already gone to three different colleges...should be graduating this year with a degree in "liberal arts" or something stupid like that (she said it's basically a way to graduate with an undeclared major)...yeah I know I go to a liberal arts college, but still....Anyway. Weird roommate has no social skills, and consequently no tact.
I had a little red flag go up right away, when she told me that she likes to listen to the New Testament before she goes to bed, and proceeded to show me that she had the entire thing on tape. Oh joy!
Not being the most of religious people, I took the cue to maybe keep my distance, especially at night. Most nights I could be found floating around somewhere outside of Gold, looking for cell phone service.
Who listens to the New Testament?? And before bed?? You've got to be kidding me. When weird roommate wasn't listening to the Bible, she was reading it. And listening to cheesy praise music. It was like a constant barrage of noise. Ugh.
As the summer progressed, weird roommate became weirder...and she didn't work. Ever. My weeks ranged at 6 days a week, of 7.5 hours at the minimum, weird roommate's weeks ranged at maybe 20 hours, maybe, and over the course of 4 days. And she went home early at any chance she possibly got. Arguh. So weird roommate was there ALL. THE. TIME. And was not getting any less weird!
Soon more of her freaky habits were showing up...
A typical morning included me going to bed somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00...sometimes later. So at the bright hour of 9:30, my roommate would set her alarm. Which went off right in MY ear. I swore some day I would unplug it and chuck it out the window (since we didn't have a screen, afterall), but after about 5 minutes, she would turn it off. Let me rephrase that. She'd hit the snooze button. So then 10 minutes later...
Repeat this process about four times.
Eventually, Creepy McRoommate (which I will henceforth refer to her as), would get up. Now, if you're awake, and your roommate is asleep, don't you think that MAYBE you would be at least somewhat quiet??
Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, Creepy McRoommate had a better idea. She was going to make as much noise as possible. Yanking open drawers, then slamming them, going to the bathroom, slamming the door, making phone calls on her cell phone in the room, etc, etc. Eventually, around 11:00, I would absolutely have had it, and just get up. And then Creepy McRoommate would take a nap.
At this point, I would retaliate, and turn on my music. Not excessively loud, but loud enough. And hey, she'd been up for almost 2 hours, so it wasn't my fault she picked that time to go back to bed!
So this whole process of making a whole buttload of noise continued on, getting worse on days when she would call her mother at 8:30 in the morning before work (when she actually started working), but would keep the cell phone in the room and talk to her while I was trying to sleep.
Eventually, I caught her talking on her cell phone one afternoon (she actually held the conversation in the hall!), except that she was talking about me, and I was in the shower, able to hear the whole conversation. Isn't that thoughtful of her??
As the summer progressed, I avoided talking to her as much as possible, but that didn't keep her annoying habits from being annoying, and eventually disgusting. The girl who lived below us, Teresa (my eventual roommate), complained about how obnoxiously loud my roommate was in the morning...not only was she able to wake me up, but she woke up Teresa who lived downstairs. She was definitely loud deliberately...arguh.
Aside from being loud, Creepy McRoommate had a nasty habit of personal hygiene. Actually, let me rephrase that. Lack of personal hygiene is a better word for that!
One night, I walked into my room around 2:30 or so, and Creepy McRoommate was asleep. I had my flashlight, so I was able to keep from turning the lights on, and I happened to notice that Creepy McRoommate was asleep...under her comforter (yeah, it was like, 80), and her feet were poking out...feet and legs complete with khaki pants that she'd worn today. I was a little disturbed by the fact that she was sleeping in her clothes, especially since the light was out, so she actually went to bed wearing her clothes. The next morning I thought I was wrong on that, or something, but when I got up after she went to work, her clothes were definitely on her bed in a pile. When Creepy McRoommate got home that night, she put on the exact same clothes that she had worn the day before AND slept in that night. I was highly disgusted. It's not like it's winter here...temperatures were definitely in the 80s...ugh, I wanted to barf. Personal hygiene, please! This repeated itself a number of times, and I don't ever really recall her taking many showers either...so yeah. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
Lack of personal hygiene is what finally drove me from the room, I moved in with my friend Teresa (hooray! she was normal! and didn't listen to the bible at night!) for the last month of the summer.
Like I mentioned earlier, Teresa lived below Creepy McRoommate and I before...and used to get woken up by Creepy McRoommate trying to make sure I didn't sleep. Needless to say, as soon as I moved out, Teresa said it got a lot quieter upstairs. Go figure. :)
- posted by L. @ 9:38 PM