I started my new life as a Jayhawk today. I felt all day long like I was out of place. I guess it felt like I should be over at Johnson County Community College, like I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. But I am, because I graduated JCCC. My schedule is pretty good. My earliest class is at 0930, and because I drop my son off at school in the mornings that means I get out on the highway around 0800, so I have plenty of time to catch the Park & Ride bus and get to class.
My Religions of the East teacher is about to retire. He’s pretty energetic, and informed us all that he’s legally allowed to remove cell phones from us and mail them to the police station. When we walked in he had on the overhead projector a teacher evaluation form that said a bunch of nasty things about him, and joked about it. Anyone who starts off like that is OK by me, I guess.
My Geology teacher is German, was trained in English by an Englishman in highschool and spent four years in Australia. His accent is pretty strange, but he says awesome things like “lah-bohr-ah-tohry” like Dexter from “Dexter’s Laboratory”.
My Religions of the East discussion leader is a grad student, and ends every sentence on a rising tone as if it were a question. Until she starts to get excited about a subject. She clearly is into the subject, so I think the discussions should be interesting.
My Intro to Fiction teacher looks to be about my age, and I think she must be a grad student too. The class is in the Military Science building, and is hotter than blazes because the building’s A/C is absent. We actually have window units in the classroom. It’s weird, because a military building always FEELS like a military building when you walk in.
So I have to crisscross the campus from one end of the Boulevard to the other, but I have more than enough time in between classes. The bus system at KU is pretty good, even if the brakes on the new buses work a little too well sometimes. Ran into a couple of people from my last math class at JCCC. It felt pretty neat to have someone come up and say hi. Also, one of my old Japanese classmates text messaged me today, and that was cool too.
I felt pretty invigorated all day. I didn’t get much sleep last night, but was lucky that I was awake when the power went out on account of, for whatever reason it happened, so that I could learn how to program my cell phone to act as an alarm. Living in the 21st Century is cool sometimes. I feel really good about how this is going to go. I made a vow at JCCC that I wasn’t going to drop out or stop, that I was just going to keep going until I came out the other end with a degree. It seemed like a grim declaration at the time, like an order to fix bayonets. I reckon I feel the same way about KU. This is it, no more backing out and screwing around.
Also, I bought a bicycle. I’m looking for alternative means to exercise. It’s not like I’m bored with jogging, I just want to add variety so I don’t ever get bored with jogging and quit exercising. I’m sitting at around 215 right now, and my goal is to get solidly below 210 in the next two months. I lost a lot of weight pretty easy to begin with, but once I hit around 220 I got sort of stuck. I will go down to +/- 215, and then find myself back up again around 220, and then back again. That’s been going on for a while. Everyone said it would happen, so I’m not all weird bummed out about it, just more determined to keep at it. Also, I bought a bicycle today, how weird is that?
And for the purpose of keeping at it, I reckon I’m going to start doing weekly reports on my weight loss. One what day? I don’t know yet. Maybe Wednesdays. Maybe Friday mornings. Yes. Friday mornings. I’ll wake up and do a report tomorrow after I get back from dropping my son off at school.
Anyway, I don’t want this blog to be all about my personal life. It’s not supposed to be like a diary or anything. But today was the first day of me being a junior at a university, and that’s worth talking about. I’m not sure I was ever a junior in high school, to tell you the truth. This is a big deal for me.
I emailed the KU Fencing Club today about if they have a schedule, or even exist, for this semester. I did the same for the KU Kendo/Kumdo Club. If there is no kendo at KU, I plan to introduce it myself. I would need an instructor sponsor and two other students willing to be involved. I’m pretty sure that would be easy to come by. I figure all that I would have to do is go to the Japanese language class with some of my equipment, give a little talk to the students and I’d probably have a starting class of thirty people. And maybe two of them would stay the whole semester, but that’s all I’d need. Then I’d put up some flyers and contact the EALC group at KU to see if there are any exchange students who do kendo. That would be a boon, because then there might be someone with enough rank to teach us something, because my plan would be to offer it as a satellite of the KC Kendo Club and do nothing but kihon introduction and familiarization stuff. Like, “today we will talk about the parts of the shinai, then you will practice men strikes”, something like that.
But I may be way ahead of myself, because the club may still be there, I don’t know. We’ll see, because either way I want to get in a third day of kendo into the week. EDIT (21Aug): Just got an email from the KU club, and they are still going to be active this semester. Which means I won’t have to do any of the above organizational work, which is good. Also, I will be getting to get practice in on Monday nights and maybe another weekend class. So that’s awesome.
I emailed my iaido instructor. This Sunday we’re going to talk about me getting an iaito. Film at eleven!
Also, I have the website business sorted out. Welcome to RomanticAntihero.com, cool logo for the front page coming soon.
Reviresco!
Romantic Antihero™ 