I woke up too early this morning. I had this weird dream that I was dancing again. I went into this club in Kalamazoo and set up an audition with this chick with a dragon tattoo wrapped around her arm.
I woke up, groggy and headachey, stumbling to the coffeemaker which takes far too long to brew.
It's raining out today, which I'm hoping does not impair my plans to go to the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.
So I went to the Secretary of State yesterday for my ID. Apparently, it's luudicrously hard here to get an ID if you're from out of state. It's not enough to have a social security card, a birth certificate and an apartment lease. Apparently, you also need either the title on a vehicle (which, not having a car, I don't have) a marriage license (which, never having been married, I also don't have) a divorce certificate (never having been married, I also have never been divorced so I'm screwed on that count as well.) or a passport.
So that means, in order to get my state ID, I have to get a passport. Now, I already needed one for the trip to Italy but I find it oddly ironic that it's easier to get the documentation to leave the country than it is to get a goddamned Michigan ID.
Apparently, too, it isn't as simple as getting my permit and having rob teach me to drive, and passing the test when I do finally get my drivers license. Apparently, you have to go through some sort of driving school here. Wow. That is really bizarre.
So with that, we decided to grab a bite to eat before heading home. Rob had a conference call so it had to be fast. We saw a bagelry and decided to go and grab something there. I asked for a cappucino and she said the machine was broken. (Which, in my experience, is a fancy way of saying "I don't feel like making this") so I just got a bagel with butter. It took absolutely forever for it to come up. (personal pet peeve: waiting a long time for something to go from a fast food place. I figure, if I wanted to wait forever, I'd go to a restaurant with good food. I'm settling for the crap they serve because I think I'll get it quickly.)When I finally did get my bagel it was god awful, grossly undercooked, and just plain bad.
Sigh.
I was not having a good day.
After the day I was having I was feeling less like Coop and more like Albert (ala Twin Peaks) and decided it would be in my best interest to go lounge in a coffeehouse. I decided to try the bus across the street from my apartment rather than hiking up to the mall to take the scary one I'd been on the other day.
This wasn't so bad. The bus driver was friendly, and most definitely did *not* give the impression that he was on crack. That was a real selling point. I walked passed some high school kid who said hello to me. Now, this is the sort of thing that while cool still takes a good deal of getting used to. I mean, moving here from a major city, one wonders why a stranger on the bus would say hello to them. In my mind, a person saying hello to me on the bus usually has some sort of agenda...sell me drugs, pimp me out, use me in a snuff film, munch on my brains for lunch because they're one of the living dead...that sort of thing. But I am fairly sure that this guy really was just saying hello to be friendly. And I gotta say, that threw me for a loop.
This bus weaved through frat row, a tad disconcerting since they were all getting drunk on their lawns in a post finals frenzy. As the bus stopped at a light, they all started staring. I did not look at the window in fear of "woop!woop!"s. (I got a few of these when I was waiting for the bus as they drove by.) Overall though, it was a lot more tolerable than the other bus I took. It was relatively uncrowded, and it was enough of a blend of people for me to not feel like I was in a trailer park. It went downtown, albeit in a much more scenic route than the other bus, but I didn't mind. Besides, I gained that time back by not having to walk a good mile to the stop.
So I got off the bus downtown and popped over to Water street coffee joint. That's a decent enough place. I think that fourth coast is still my favorite spot, but water street coffee joint is nice for a change of pace. I enjoyed hanging out and writing. Rob picked me up when I was done, and we ventured back home.
We still need to go out for a drink. I'm hoping we find time to do that this weekend but that's still up in the air. There's still so much to do, between unpacking and getting that last load of stuff.
Well the rain seems to be letting up. Hopefully, we can go downtown today and walk around for a bit...