Dormania

Living in a dorm again is not without its benefits/detractions (i say both, because while i think dorm living is fine as long as you have your own room, others whom i have told i would be living in a dorm this summer said "i wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy" (which is incidently what the mother of one of my friends said when she found out i had just been diagnosed with type 1. she's a nice lady, she just didn't consider her words before she said them. Of course, the whole incident makes for an excellent story, so i thank rather than condemn her)).

Benefits:

• No utility bills
• Don't have to clean bathroom
• nice hot showers
• access to couches that are not 3/4ths of my height, therefore i can lie down on them
• ping-pong table, pool table, and any board game you could ever wish to play housed in the game room.
  
• Ability to run downstairs and knock on a door for ping-pong/movie insta-friend
  
• Unfettered relatively speedy internet access that can be on all day every day.
• only $25 a month for full time airconditioning (my vow: never ever turn off air conditioner. turn down or turn to fan only, but never turn off. it's anti-american!)

But life in the dorm is not all puppies and rainbows. Besides the slightly annoying kitchen-in-the-basement, people-know-where-i-live-and-can-come-by-at-any-time, no-toaster, shower-shoe situations, here are several problems i've run into that i had not anticipated.

1. Elevators. Yeah, i know- how the hell can elevators be a problem? Well, some inconsiderate soul threw up all over the left one (known as "pukevator") sometime within the last month and no matter how much the cleaning lady cleans, it does not stop smelling. The right elevator, knowing that it is superior to the left, likes to stop randomly and require the mashing of buttons to get it going again. I imagine it says to itself "i must pause here so that the passenger can admire my piney-freshness and compare it to that of my stinky brother." And in that we have elevators, the stairs have been relegated to the edges of the building, so if you want to be active, you must go to the end of the hall, walk up 5 flights, then walk back to the middle to your room. Anyway, this is the choice that i have made, to walk whenever i'm not carrying something huge, so that i can avoid entrapment and the pukevator. so problem somewhat solved?
2. Drippy faucet. I don't mind sharing a bathroom- every girl on the hall behaves how the stereotype predicts, and does her best not to leave anything nasty lying around the bathroom. But one lovely young dimwit loves to use the drippy faucet and then let it drip alllllll the time. Consider the facts:

• There are 8 faucets in the bathroom (and only 5 girls on the hall)
  
• The drippy faucet doesn't drip if you turn the handle all the way.
  
• There is a notice about the drought in the area up in the bathroom.
  

And yet every morning, afternoon and evening, i walk into the bathroom to find drippy faucet merrily dripping away. WHY??? I should leave a note- something like "This faucet drips- please fix" for the cleaning ladies.

1. The Gym. Inhouse gym- again, what's the problem? Well, as only 2 of the rooms in the dorm are airconditioned (unless you bought a window unit- sweet window unit), the gym is not one of them. And there's no tv, despite the fact that there is a tv on every floor and free cable/starz/hbo. And there are only two treadmills, a broken eliptical, a bike, a crappy weight machine and some impossibly heavy freeweights in the gym.And the ceiling skims my head when i'm on the treadmill, giving me a neck-crick. And it's open from 9pm to midnight. It's not a gym, it's an ersatz gym- a "gym". So you go down in 90 degree weather and try and burn your requisite 600 calories. I've taken to walk/running around the secure perimeter of the campus instead- at least outsidethere's no ceiling and you can spit freely. (tmi?)
   

That's it- otherwise i'm pretty cool. Frankly, a little complication and adversity in life gives me something to think about when i'm trying to release all the bad stuff during my yoga meditation. Otherwise i'd just have to patiently wait while the dvd lady assumes that i am thinking about my recent divorce or nasty coworkers or rocky relationship with my son. if this is all i have to complain about, i'm pretty blessed, right?