what hospital food and killer midterms do to your mind

04/27/2006
nick's parents and my parents really want nick and me to go to Cedar Point. by the time they convince us to do so it's like 8:30PM and totally not worth the admission, so we head for a Missouri University campus instead.
when we arrive the sky is smoky and a few buildings are ruined and there's a post-apocalyptic dance party in one of the former humanities buildings. matt and his friend sarah from Northwestern are there, smoking at the periphery of the dancers. a helicopter passes over, carrying a brand-new yellow chevy SSR. "better watch out," says sarah. "if that helicopter drops that truck we're fucked."
nick and i leave to survey the ruins of campus; we come to a spot not unlike the outside of cobb and soon it's a sunny day several months previous. we're looking at a black metal statue of a stereotypically evil british schoolmaster (as if this were a real person). the statue is bent over shaking his index finger at passerby. the base must be very heavy or sunk into the ground to keep this thing from tipping over forwards.
i become aware that the statue and its surroundings are going to be attacked by terrorists within a few months but somehow do not connect this with the ruins from earlier/later.
i don't tell anyone because in Missouri everyone thinks you're crazy if you say things like "stay the fuck away from missouri!! it's going to get bombed!" to strangers.
our RHs and their kids wave as they walk by. they're touring campus. their oldest kid is like 3. i think it's a little early.
my Dad shows up in a turquoise 50's t-bird and says he's not going to drive me back to Illinois because remember that time he drove me on that arbitrary trip to Florida? i owe him one as it is. i agree and wish him a safe trip home.

04/26/2006 (missing some details)
I was celebrating Greek Easter with Grandma Kruse in the 612 Republic. It was just Annie, Brian, Patrick, Grandma, me, and this annoying-ass hammy child, about five years old, whom nobody knew but Grandma. The girl was wearing the orange, yellow and pink sweater-and-leggings outfit I wore for my kindergarten class picture. When we were about to say grace, Grandma stopped us and told the little girl to say it instead. She recited it, freaking curtseyed, and then sang a very St. Columbkille Parish Elementary First Grade Class Pageant rendition of the Christos Anesti song, with hand motions including a finger-expanded smile. It was irritating as hell, but I thanked God someone else was singing it, because I don't remember any of it.
Eventually the girl and my family left. I did the dishes and and wondered where my roommates were. As I was making some hot wings to grill with my roommates later, some high school friends stopped by. They were still in high school, which is entirely unfair. They were going to a movie or something. I wondered where I left my car. But I couldn't come anyway because I had to go to the book signing Nick Dazé (of USC's 2NI) was running in the Shoreland's second-floor conference room.
I got down there and at first Maya Angelou was signing books, but before long she morphed into Bill Watterson. Dazé was incredibly annoyed at this but was trying, with impressive yet imperfect success, to act like it was exactly what he was planning and it didn't mess with him at all. Watterson looked like a cross between Kolesy and Mo Rocca, except with severe acne scars, and he walked around in a cloud of 1970's yellow photography haze. I didn't want to bother him, partially because I've heard he's shy and partially because I brought I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and not a Calvin and Hobbes book. So I headed back upstairs.
My roommates had made it home, and one of their mothers (not Adrianne's, because I have met her mom and this was not her) was rearranging stuff in our room. I looked at Julie's huge blue plastic bowl, which had been full of wings and now had only one in it.
"What the fuck?" I said.
"Oh, I had the girls bring those to the people at the book signing downstairs," said Someone's Mom. "They needed food down there."
I headed back to the second floor, not to get the wings back but to get out of the building for a while. A blond, middle-aged man with a young boy in a navy blue stroller waited with me for the elevators to the outside.
There are two elevators to outside; both are very futuristic-looking, beset with pressure indicators and red, green, blue and yellow lights. Instead of pressing buttons that say "up" or "down", since both elevators only go outside, you press "capitalist" or "communist".
The man had already pushed "capitalist", and we waited for almost 20 minutes. The man's son started screaming, and soon the man was sick of waiting, so he pressed "communist". It came right away. I didn't go with him because I wanted to stick to elevators compatible with my economic ideology. I didn't have to second-guess my decision because the capitalist elevator came within a minute after the man left.
I met up with the man outside. He offered me a ride to wherever I was going. I wasn't going anywhere in particular so I told him to go wherever he was going and I'd just get off at some point.
He drove to Hawaii. I was pleased to see, as we drove through the suburbs of Honolulu, that Hawaiians were just as tacky as Ohioans get crap for being--in fact, I saw at least three times as many motorcycles and lawn-ornament Jesuses there.
The man dropped me off by a roadside on the coast. I hung out.