Brian.Indrelunas.com: September 2008

Do you know who I am?!
Wait... Do I know who I am?

This afternoon I was walking on the Tempe campus with my meteorology lab professor and a classmate and something I said prompted the question, "Oh, where do you work?" When I answered that I was the editor of The State Press, both seemed really impressed, and my classmate even said she'd pick up the paper tomorrow and tell people that she's in a lab group with that guy right there with his name in the paper.

Also today, I received an invitation to speak to a campus group about the newspaper. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to accept because of a scheduling conflict, but both of these interactions jogged my memory on the semi-importance of my position.

You know, I've been so engrossed in the day-to-day demands of The State Press editorship that I'd forgotten that I have such an important and semiprestigious job.

Late start belies a strong finish

Even though I completely slept through my meteorology lab this morning, today was a really great day. I got some things on my nondaily to-do list done and had a really good, really fun night at The State Press.

Last night, we had our copy done early but sent our pages to the printer late, which I found really frustrating. But tonight, we had both copy and pages done early, and I got to enjoy myself a lot more as a result. And that's a good thing because it's stuff like rubber-band wars, new rap lyrics and sweet-talking the temperamental printer that keep you sane at a place like State Press.

It happened.

I totally slept right through my first and only class this morning, which just so happened to be the one I need to pass in order to graduate. Way to go, me...

Sun Devil Law #2710:

When the guys with painted chests leave early, you know it's over.

Wake me up when September ends

I really do not appreciate how, after a month of not requiring much of me, my classes have now all decided to ask me to do work. This week I had a test in my sex class, an assignment due in graphic design, two homework assignments due in meteorology lecture, the assignments in meteorology lab started to get hard and require real comprehension and I've got a big urban-planning assignment due next week.

Now, I'm not saying that any of my classes have gotten prohibitively difficult. It's just that they all decided to ramp up at pretty much the same exact time. Not fun.

Like clockwork, oversleeping sets in

This summer, I was the LA staff's designated rooster — or Christmas chicken, depending on the day. While our cooks usually woke up first, I would be the one who set an alarm for 06:50, woke up to the alarm and then roused the construction team and SLC.

Somehow or another, I managed to fulfill this responsibility almost every day this summer. The one time I remember really abdicating this responsibility was a day when I was particularly tired, so at 06:50, instead of getting out of bed and rousing the troops, I lazily rolled over in bed and said something to the effect of, "Wakey wakey. It's 6:50," and then tried to hide under my bed sheets.

People who know me could hardly believe that I was serving as an alarm clock for others. To be honest, I could hardly believe it myself. That's because I'm usually the one who has to be dragged out of bed on any given morning, as anyone who I've ever lived with will tell you.

Although I had hoped that I'd turned a new leaf with my summer rooster routine, this semester I'm already back to my old ways.

This is Week 4 of the fall semester, and I'm already sleeping right up to the minute that I need to get up in order to shower and catch the last possible bus that will get me to my first class on time, earlier alarms notwithstanding — not-at-all-withstanding.

Maybe it's that I'm staying up slightly later slightly more consistently. Maybe it's that there are 25 to 55 teenagers and adult chaperones downstairs who'll be at best thrown off and at worst quite grumpy if I wake up late and, consequently, wake them up late.

Whatever it is, it's not good, and I'm guessing that the day that I oversleep not just past the alarms but also past the point of getting to class on time is coming soon.

Happy ASS Day!

'Twas the night before ASS Day...

...when all through the newsroom, everyone was stirring, even the roaches.

Today was my favorite day of EICdom thus far. First and foremost, it was ASS Eve, aka the day before we run our story on how ASU's academic advisers have a new job title: Academic Success Specialist. No lie.

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGH!

Maybe she'll take him to Candy Mountain...

Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a bus?

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have a class at a most inconvenient time, 5:40-7:30 p.m., and it's downtown to boot. So during three prime State Pressing hours when it'd be nice to be in Tempe, I'm either in Phoenix or en route.

Usually, I catch the 5 p.m. bus that gets me to class just in the nick of time, but I realized today that I've got lots of downtime between our afternoon budget meeting and the bus ride and that most stories I have to edit come in while I'm on the bus or just getting to class.

So today my master plan was to bus over to Phoenix early, edit stuff before and after class and then bus back as soon as I was done editing stories so that I could look at pages in Tempe.

Well, after a longer-than-I-had-hoped story-editing period, I missed the ASU shuttle back to Tempe by about 30 seconds. But that's my own fault for not hustling downstairs any faster or earlier.

But having missed the bus, my backup plan was to take a Valley Metro bus back to Tempe since one of those was due to swing past the campus in about 10 minutes and the next ASU shuttle wasn't due for a half-hour.

So after 10 minutes of waiting for the 1/Washington bus, it pulls up right behind the Red Line bus. Said Red Line bus takes up most of the length of the bus stop, and although it goes into Tempe too, I'm waiting for the 1 in the wings, so I walk on down toward the corner, where the 1 is sitting in the middle lane.

I make eyes at the bus driver, who then points at me and points forward down the street. I take this to mean, "I'm in the middle lane right now, but I'm pulling up to yonder bus stop. Why don't you walk over there?" But she must have just been pointing with her middle finger instead because as I walk forward along with the bus, it never merges right to stop at the bus stop. And as I speedwalk forward toward the next bus stop (I don't run for buses. Tiev asseblief.) the bus speeds up, moves over to the right and barely even slows down as it passes that next stop.

So then I kick my flip-flop off to convey my general disgust and also kick a few road cones and listen in frustration to a prerecorded announcement that the Valley Metro customer-service office isn't open right now on my way back to campus, where I take that half-hour-later shuttle after all.

But believe me, Valley Metro will hear my wrath tomorrow when their voicemail-less gripe line reopens. Beezies.

Great day

cell vacation

Also, this weekend I accidentally left my cell phone in my car before heading out to San Diego in a rental van, and I found that having a weekend without my phone was much more relaxing than it was frustrating. So expect that to happen again, on purpose, during some future weekends.

La Jolla, Vol. 5

I knew there'd be advantages to coming back for a fifth fall semester as an undergrad, and I'm proud to announce one of them right now: After much trial and error over the past four years, I have finally succeeded in spending a weekend in San Diego without getting sunburned. Fifth time's the charm, I guess.

Anyway, this year's Labor Day retreat was pretty sweet, although pretty different from the ones in years past. I'll hopefully get around to posting more details later, about such things as Katy Perry songs, Katy Perry points, and maybe even Katy Perry as the Antichrist.