My Room

I don't think I ever really described my room before. I feel like I should put that down somewhere.

So when you walk into the door - I'm at the end of the hallway, on the right - there's a little alcove on your right for the sink and mirror and towel racks and a light for said alcove. Most dorm rooms/college wouldn't have anything like this, but we do, so we never have to use the hall's bathroom to shave or brush our teeth or wash our face or mess with our contacts or anything. I guess that was really nice at first, but now I kind of lament the fact that we all have our own sinks and mirrors because we never have to go to the same bathroom all gross and disgusting and sleepy-eyed and see each other just that much more. Anyway. I keep most of my stuff on the sink - toothpaste and brush and etc., pretty much everything except for my shaving cream and razor because I don't use them enough and they're too big to justify keeping on the sink.

Behind the door when you walk in is my closet. Our doors slam, so we have to prop them open with brick(s). So my closet is often obscured by a door propped open with bricks. We have one brick that is half painted as a piano, and then Danny wrote on the other side, "lay me." Sam Schmerler thought that was a really good idea, so he wrote "LAY ME" on a brick and wanted to take it back to Keeney with him, but left it with us, and never returned to pick it up.

There's a safe in my closet. It's bolted there, and we can't move it. It's in PRIME shelf space, too, like, exactly the place where if somebody said to you, "Where's the last place you would want me to put this bulky, crappy safe?" that you would point to immediately. I We hate those safes.

The top shelf of my closet is for bulky stupid stuff that I don't want to think about or deal with. Stuff like the vacuum I haven't used, boxes for things in my room, suitcases and extra stuff, the fan I don't use anymore. On the shelf below that, I keep things like paper towels and napkins and plastic bags. Below that is the shelf with the safe on it, and I ended up keeping all the medicines I thought I might ever need on this one. Vitamins, sunscreen, Mucinex, Wal-Profen, etc. On the shelf below that is actually where I keep my food, two boxes of Cheerios, one of Life, my shaving kit, my peanut butter and crackers and my utensils. Below that is the box of Ritz crackers and all my extra towels and sheets and stuff. I keep my hamper in there, as well as the pile of jeans that I never feel like putting in the hamper. Oh, and also that I recycle. Oops. I also keep my hockey equipment in there, but I haven't used it yet here and it makes me very sad. I have some clothes/jackets hanging in there, too, but I really only use two coats here [the big black one and the tiny blue one].

If you walk past my closet, you've stepped onto my side of the room [the right side, basically]. Behind you and to your right, on a wall that juts out between my space and the sink, are some shelves. I keep my hat/glasses there, and magazines, mallets, my puzzles, books, bowls/cups, my shower caddy, and gym/sleeping clothes there. There's also a trashcan below it, and currently my sandals as well.

My clothes drawers are in the far right corner of my side, then next to that is my work desk, then my bed. My printer is on top of my clothes drawers. The top is for socks and nightshirts/etc. The second drawer is for all my regular shirts, which I now organize by color. I realized that I have a HUGE number of blue shirts [and I'm very happy about this]. The bottom drawer is for pants. I brought khakis, but I haven't worn them yet, so I put those in the back.

My work dest is sort of messy, but at the same time, not really. There's a ton of wires over on the right that go towards the surge protector behind the printer, but I know what all the wires are for. Whenever I unplug/take out my laptop, there are five wires just hanging out, but it only takes me like five seconds to plug them back in [USB Mouse, printer, ethernet, power, speakers]. My external harddrive is also on my desk, but I actually haven't used that too much. There's also my lamp, and my clock, and my phone, and usually my water bottle. My gloves, headphones, and letter stationary are also out right now, as well as the tiny ball of wall putty that I play with when I'm bored.

One of the nice things about college is that I ALWAYS know where the scissors are. All of those things are in my second drawer of my work desk all the time and never go anywhere else. It's really nice to have it be that easy, I guess.

Behind my printer, on the wall, is my photo board. There's a picture of it on Facebook if you haven't seen it already, but just incase FB or that picture ever disappears, but this doesn't, I have 20 pictures on there, of these people, from top left to bottom right: Jeremy T, Hetty N, Joe K, Kacey D, Katie R, Kelly D, Matt G, Kristin W, Nicki M, Beth O, Gina M, Sarah J, Steve! S, Steph D, Viv D, Trisha K, Abby M, Chloe G, Erik H, and Drew S. They're all black and white pictures, and I think all pictures that I took, except for the one of Gina and maybe the one of Kelly.

Behind my workdesk and bed are my posters that I made and love and posted here. I guess I'll explain them, from top left to bottom right. And for people who don't know me as well, they're posters of pictures I took and the titles to them all are songs I wrote.

tragicstory is a macro picture of a small flower/weed at the DCI show that Nicki, Viv and I went to in Allentown, PA, summer of 2007. It's the time we saw Mike and Katie and they hardly waved to us. And the time we saw the guy from Norristown and wondered if he actually had a tattoo on his leg. And the first time Nicki and I heard Scharton and asked the pit instructor of the Buccaneers what the name of it was so we could find it and use it. I think that might have been Tollie Contento, but I'm not sure.

strangeplace is a picture of the pier on 31st St. beach in Avalon, New Jersey. I think this was the time that I went down on my own, the day after Kristin's party. I wanted to wake up before the sun rose and drive there and see the sun come up over the water, but I missed my alarm, overslept, and missed it all. It was raining and stormy when I got there and thought it might make for a good picture, so I went and took a few and really like a couple of them. This is one of the ones I liked best.

onedayonenight is a picture of candles on the coffee table in front of the sofa in Gina's basement. On the second to last night, I think, we lit candles. I think we had five of them total [there are five in the picture]. I remember thinking it was going to be just about the last time I could light candles before I left for Brown, and I'm really glad with the way this picture turned out, it makes them look really beautiful. I was very sad when we had to blow those candles out.

singingfarewell is a picture of Katie R on the rocky jetti somewhere around 54th street in Ocean City, NJ. We were just walking on the beach and found that jetti and I thought it was really pretty and I would like pictures of it, so I got some just of the jetti and water and the pier nearby, but also some of Chloe and Katie with it. I think this is one of the better pictures of Katie that I have.

chemicalroad was taken at Chloe's house, at what I think was the last time I was at her house for a party before I left for Brown. We had a fire - a very large fire - that day. I remember this picture was taken when it was still light outside. Chloe's dad or uncle had just thrown a huge amount of fuel onto the fire and it got really big really quickly. Gina was laying on the hammock, and I took a picture. The fire looked really intense, and the smoke looked really ominous, and the scenery was beautiful and Gina looked so subtly amazed by the fire.

snowandlights is a picture of the Brandywine River, way down Smithbridge Road. I took it the day I drove around town with Steph and Kacey so they could take pictures of everything for their German exchange students and I could get pictures of things that I thought made Garnet Valley as awesome as it was. I think it was by far the best picture I got that day. Actually, I think it's the best picture I have, period.

goddamn is another picture that I took that day. I remember we were driving down Smithbridge Road either towards Cossart Road or toward the river, and Steph wondered if she would see any geese anymore this time down the road. There were some geese, and I made Steph take a picture. Come to think of it, we may have been driving back towards home from Smithbridge, or maybe it was a different road [but I don't think so]. In either case, I think this picture largely captures what the song God Damn was going for, except for maybe the geese, but they're cool anyway.

dysthymia was one of the first pictures I took with my camera. Like, within the first ten that I didn't delete, I think. I was sitting outside Jess J's house, and I just looked at my dashboard and thought, this could make a really pretty picture. So I took a couple shots. I can't remember if I had already talked to Jess or if I was waiting to go in and see her. I'm pretty sure I had already seen her.

thingsfallapart is a macro shot of the inside of my piano. My beautiful, fifty-four inch, Baldwin, baby grand piano that I like more than any piano in the world because it's the best piano in the world. In this picture you can just see some of the string pegs and some of the strings. I took it in the higher register because all of the string pegs have three strings around them. It's a really mellow picture.

Out of Bounds, the sketch comedy show, starts soon, so I think I'm going to go to that. Just for closing, my favorite pictures of the ones listed here, in order, are: snowandlights, singingfarewell, chemicalroad. It's really really close between 2 and 3, but snowandlights is by miles and leagues and years my favorite. Not really fair, though, because it's the one I colored blue. But I think it was the best even before that. People who come into my room all seem to agree that snowandlights is the best one, as well, though, so I'm pretty confident that it really was the best anyway.

Peace out!