Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Doritos and Fruit Snacks

Stockton and I paid a visit to the dentist today. My teeth usually have a weird gray sheen to them. They've been that way for years. Usually it's at the bottoms or tops, against the gums. Anyway, the dentist suggested I get checked out by the doctor for potential thyroid problems, because it's possibly I could have too much iron in my blood. Which is curious, considering how little meat I eat.

Mom was also nice enough to take me by OHOP so I could get the Nutella crepes I like and had really wanted to taste again before college. As she drove, I read the last chapter of Gone With the Wind and talked to her about it.

A few minutes away from my apartment, Mom asked me if I had my keys. I was surprised. I remembered taking the keys into Angie's, because I couldn't remember if they offered discounts to students who showed their IDs or anything like that. I couldn't find them in my backpack. So, I called Stockton up and asked him to check the motorhome. He found the lanyard on my bunk. Oops.

The second-floor RA, Ethan Hammer, brought me rental keys and said that they would normally be $45 or something, but as long as I returned them before September, the office wouldn't charge me. That was great. Otherwise, I would have been confined to my apartment, unable to lock my door behind me should I go anywhere. My roommate hasn't moved in yet. While I waited for Ethan to return with the keys, Mom brought me some groceries. I switched on the TV to find the third "Jimmy Timmy Power Hour" playing. This was the last of three huge crossover episodes that were supposed to be the combined series finales for both "Jimmy Neutron" and "The Fairly OddParents".

"Jimmy" did in fact end after this, but apparently FOP fans back then were kind of upset with the way things went down. So, FOP returned and is still going on today. Though, they just recently finished airing Season 10 in America, and I have suspicions that it will be their last. The show has been moved to poor time slots, and and lots of people are frustrated with Chloe's existence. Admittedly, even I haven't liked the way many of the recent episodes have been written, though I would still rather have them than have no episodes. My assumption is that ratings have gone down, so the series will probably end at last. Shame if it has to go out on such a bad note. A special series closure where Timmy officially says good-bye to his godparents and releases them to help another child seems like it would have been the appropriate way to end this twenty-year-old show. Maybe we'll still get a finale movie.

So, I watched the special episode on and off as I worked to figure out the problems with my my computer WiFi, and why my computer had randomly started acting up this last week. It wouldn't always exit Internet pages when I clicked, and when I would click and dragged, it would deselect and freak. Still, I cleared old school files off my desktop to make way for new ones when I realized that the problem seemed to be with my mouse's left button. The right seemed to work fine. I played around with it, managed to clean it out, and it seems to be working just fine now. Awesome! I'd worried that my computer was having issues because it was old and dying, and I might have to surrender it - and all my access to art files - completely.

Mom headed home again, and I settled in. Earlier I had texted Dallin, letting him know that I was back at USU (as opposed to being at the cabin), and I'd caught him up with the key situation. He asked if I wanted to meet up tonight, since we haven't seen each other face to face in two years, though we'd emailed back and forth several times while he was on his mission in South Korea, and I sent him occasional packages. We agreed to meet in the International Lounge at the TSC. Appropriate place, with all its flags, and I thought of him every time I saw South Korea's.

It was a long walk up. The shuttles weren't running, and the direct path up the hill was blocked off by construction. I had to circle around and, well, walk. But eventually I did get to see Dallin again. He suggested we check out Aggie Ice Cream. We walked and talked on the way there. He shares an apartment with five other people, and mentioned that the only one who seems a bit sketchy is his own roommate. I'm not sure what he meant by "sketchy", only that the guy stayed up late playing video or computer games or something. Dallin described him vaguely as "A punk", which I thought was amusing. I'd told Mom that I thought I could get along with many roommates, but I didn't think I'd deal well with the punk type. Namely, I just want a roommate who won't walk all over me.

We passed some missionaries on our way and chatted with them a bit. Dallin pointed out which building he lives in, Bullen Hall, which is right next to our destination and about as far away from me as possible.

Aggie Ice Cream, however, was pretty crowded when we got there. So, Dallin suggested we head back and maybe try the Marketplace in the TSC. I was a little concerned about this plan, because I was pretty sure the place was about to close. Nevertheless, we walked back anyway. We arrived at 7:58, and they close at 8:00. So, no go there. We went down a floor to the first level of the TSC and studied the taco and quesadilla place, and the pastry shop, or whatever you call it. Everything looked closed. So, we bought snacks from the vending machine- Cool Ranch Doritos for him, and some fruit snacks for me.



We hung out and talked for awhile, about majors and the eclipse and stuff. I walked him to the recreation center, which is where he said he was meeting some friends later. It was on the way back to my place, and I wanted to get home before it got too dark and cold anyway. So it was a lot of walking for me today, but the weather was actually really great. It was nice to see Dallin in person again, and it'll be interesting to see if we ever bump into one another while around the campus this year.