Monday, July 21, 2008

Who needs sleep, really?


Hi all,
If you know me remotely well, you will know of my deep hatred for the "textbook conspiracy". This is a phenomenon where large greedy book companies pump out new edition after new addition of essentially the identical textbook and con professors into using them for classes by giving them the teaching guide for free. Next, the campus bookstore (whether individual or a corporate giant such as, Barnes and Noble, for example) will give you only a pittance for the book when you sell it back - or refuse to take it at all if another edition has come out. Regardless of whether the Professor will be using the new edition.

I, however, full-heartedly loathe this system and through some website hopping (the official college book store link meant so that you can order the book-although they never give you the ISBN- to Amazon to get the ISBN based on the edition number to campusbooks.com for an automatic price comparison) I have managed through the last 2 years in the US to buy very, very few texts from the Campus Bookstore. Once, I even cheated the system, but that's another story.

At any rate, the whole point of this segue was to tell you why I am slightly crazy and to explain why I got up at 4:45AM this morning to bid on e-bay for a textbook. Unfortunately, I didn't "win" the book, and so I feel like my sleep was wasted. Especially since I was due to be at Eric's at nice for....

Painting!
The girl who lived in Eric's room before he moved in had moved out without painting the walls, so the task fell to him. Naturally, Claudia and I wanted in on the action. I got to Eric's at about 9:30, a half an hour late as I had difficulty waking up - but I brought bakery goods along so all was good in the world. It took us (Eric and I, since Claudia had a final at 8AM) just over an hour to empty his room of everything in it/on the walls. This included taking his bed apart (thanks IKEA!) and moving his dresser and desk and other things into the other rooms. Later, after Claudia came, Eric and Claudia went to go and buy the supplies. This left me to do the taping. As you can see in the slideshow, I think I did my mother proud. Since we were painting the walls white on white (harder than it sounds), my fastidious taping was probably a little over-kill, but it gave me a sense of accomplishment. We finished painting around 2, although Eric has to do some touching up tomorrow.

Selling my Bike
Or not, as it turned out. Vaso had assured me that I'd be able to sell my bike back from the place where the other Vaso had bought it at. If that's confusing, don't worry - it's all Greek to me because they are. So I've been working on getting the receipt from the Vaso that went home, with no avail. So Vaso volunteered (my friend Vaso, the one still in Regensburg) to go with me in case I needed back up. Then we discovered that this was all a moot point as they wouldn't buy it back. So...yeah. Now what? I'm not really sure. People suggested selling it at a flea market, but at the one Eric and I went to, I didn't see anyone selling theirs. So, yeah...not so good. At any rate, a back-up plan will simply have to be found.

So, another long day with mixed success. 8 Days left people, are you ready?
Hope all is well,
Steph

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