12 September 2000
Things that make me busy, aka, recent developments:
In the interest of not being broke all the time, I procured a job at a health club called (oh god, it kills me) The Sweatshop (aside: stealing the signs that read "Parking Reserved for The Sweatshop" was a popular activity for some of my first year floormates). I serve essentially the same purpose as every other bored front desk attendant in the country, but with an added bonus: the clientele. Oh no, The Sweatshop is not just any health club; it's a super-duper expensive "workout studio" catering primarily to middle-aged women who are a lot more wealthy than they are fit. The people-watching opportunities are spectacular.
Thanks to said job, I've been on another of my fitness kicks lately. It's hard to sit and watch all those wrinkly flabby bodies trying to make up for lost time without being reminded of what I could easily become without a little effort on my part. It helps that my place of employment (where I'm now endowed with a free membership) is significantly more pleasant and better equipped than the facilities over at Macalester, and, conveniently, only two blocks from my apartment.
Classes started about a week ago, facilitating the return of homework to my life. Actually, my class load isn't bad. I'm taking: a sophomore-level psych class that is boring, but easy; an intense and fascinating senior seminar for Women's and Gender Studies; and 4 credits of my honors project, which, needless to say, will be a ton of work. Nonetheless, I'm still taking only 12 credits as opposed to the usual 16. I still have my "paid study hall" on-campus job in the Humanities Resource Center, so I have plenty of mandated homework time.
With the start of classes comes the start of Queer Union for the year. There are a lot of events surrounding National Coming Out Day on October 11th, so I'll have a ton of QU work to do until then. After that, the activity level will taper off a bit as people get involved in midterms and such. I'm actually pretty excited about the year-- there's a pretty substantial batch of new freshmen who are interested in getting involved, and we have a lot of neat stuff planned already. In November, for example, eight of us are going to attend the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change Conference in Atlanta. I'm thrilled about that-- I haven't done much traveling since Amsterdam last fall.
All of the above is most of what's been keeping me away from writing the past few weeks. I'm hoping to get more frequent entries up as I adjust to the pace of the new school year, so don't give up on me yet...