The Continuing Saga of TRS...

Well... I went to Textbook Rental today to pick up my books. Miraculously, I found a great place to park (even in a student lot) and walked over to the rental building to find that there was NO LINE. What? Maybe I should pinch myself to make sure I actually woke up this morning, I mean, I was pretty tired last night.

Ouch.

Yeah I'm awake. Anyway, so I go in the building wondering what is up and why everything actually seems to be working well. Show 'em my ID card, get my book list... NOT THREE PAGES LONG like last semester. Whoa... something's not right here. "Station 3!" Yes ma'am.

At Station 3, I find only two other people in line. And I went to high school with them. Weird. And also, they had already been waited on and were just waiting for their books to come, so the lady at Station 3 asked me to step up, etc.

Still pretty shocked that I only had 15 books. For most people this is a lot of books, but (and I'm sure Amanda can vouch for this) for English majors, 15 books is child's play. I had 35 last semester. I waited what seemed like forever to get those 15 books. Oddly enough, one person left for them and two came back with them. The real drama started when the lady checked off each of my books to make sure they weren't damaged. Prior to this semester, Sunshine has always gotten the books that were thrown in the river, run over by a train, and chewed over a couple of times by a dog. And that's before the previous renter decided to mark them all up with ink and highlighter. I was always afraid I'd get charged for it too. But this lady was concerned about me and tried to make sure I got good books, so she called up Head Honcho to check out my American Lit anthology.

"Can you mark this USED?"
"What happened to this?! Oh! What is this? Is that WRITTEN in?! Oh how dreadful! That shouldn't have gotten through."
Sunshine: Am I ever going to leave TRS?
"I tell you what. We'll get a new person to get a better book for her."
This was all well and good except that Brandy had gone through checkout years ago and was waiting outside for me. Then came Shakespeare.
"Look at this one." pointing to Post-It notes on consecutive pages
"Oh my. Let me see what year... yep. That's an '04. I can't believe these people don't check these better."
I'm glad they don't check them better, because if they did, I'd be charged for someone else's vandalism. But thankfully, these women wanted to be sure that I didn't get improperly charged.
"You do realize it's your responsibility to check these all when you get home."

Yeah I went home and checked them all. Dang near took the whole evening, but it would take more than an a whole week's worth of work to pay for one of those suckers.

Meanwhile back at Station 3...

"You're all ready for checkout. Have a great semester."

All was going fine, really, until the checkout lady came to my next to last book. A poetry anthology. The man at checkout (who, keep in mind, was NOT my TRS helper) happened to see it:

sarcastic voice "Poems for the Millenium, eh? How 'bout you go over to Iraq and read some to the soldiers."

Maybe I'm crazy, but what just happened here? I don't know what this guy was thinking, except perhaps that I was a protester. I don't know. But whatever it was, it kinda made me mad. But I didn't tell him where to go...

Then there was the Taco Bell drama. All I have to say about that is, Sunshine is totally unable to back a car into a parking space. And why do they have to be right next to the building?

Later this afternoon I went to visit my friend Sarah. We had a pretty good time. She gave me a couple of late Christmas presents and we discussed her transfer plans and what the crap I'm going to do after I graduate. If I graduate. So all in all, it has been a pretty good day. Looking forward to most of my classes, gonna take a field trip and read some poetry, and just in case I chicken out on the second idea, at least Taco Bell is only a few blocks from campus, and they have a new vegetarian burrito. Peace out.