Another note to future Clarion attendees: Arrive on Saturday.

It's worth it. About two-thirds of us are here now, and yesterday was spent doing a really nice settling-in. By about 6pm every had shown up who was going to arrive, so most of us trooped down the hill for much needed food, ending up at a pretty cool greek/middle eastern place. We were planning on stopping at a grocery store on the way back, but then when we got to where the grocery store sign was, it looked like an empty storefront. Of course after we got back up the hill and back to the dorm we discovered that the actual entrance to the grocery store was further down the hill and around the corner. Oh well, it probably wouldn't have been much of a grocery store run anyway, since we still didn't have the lounge (and the refrigerator) unlocked. Apparantly someone from the Clarion office had dropped all sorts of boxes of cookware and dishes off, and also had a refrigerator brought up. But then said person locked the lounge (so that no one would steal the stuff, we supposed) and disappeared. Thus, for the rest of the evening we attempted to intimidate the youngling RAs into opening it up for us. We finally did find one who was cowed by our relative maturity. He came up with a handful of keys, and Mike asked him if we could leave it unlocked. Well, he started to get the "Well, I'm not supposed to leave it unlocked" look on his face (We'd been told before that it was supposed to be locked at night) and so Mike gave him a nice menacing look and said, "Yes would be a good answer." I almost felt sorry for the poor kid. He was pretty outmatched. Of course he tried to rebut, saying that if we needed to get in at night we could have the RA open it up, at which point it was pointed out that we were going to want to be in it at all hours of the night, and he might get a wee bit tired of us knocking on his door at 3am. Needless to say, the lounge is now unlocked. Plus we taped over the locking part, just to be sure.

There's a list posted on the bulletin board in the hall, for the Sam's Club run that two people are going to make today. We figured that it would probably be a bad idea to have us all troop into Sams. It was pretty funny, because one person would write down something they needed, and then everyone else would look at the list and say, "Oh, I need that too!" and would scrawl the same thing under their name as well. We all have these nifty little dry-erase boards on our room doors, so everyone now has dry-erase markers on their list. Of course, I am in constant search of a stapler. Not to staple mss or anything, but for putting stuff up on my corkboard. I also realized I didn't bring anywhere near enough pictures of stuff/people from home.

Of course, I was afraid I was going to catch all sorts of shit for overpacking, since I'd had boxes shipped up, and I'd borrowed tons of stuff from my brother. But then I saw what other people brought up. Eric drove up, and he brought all of the comforts of home. Robert had 8 pieces of luggage, for which he paid an extra $100 to get checked through. Karen brought her Pilates board, which we're all curious to see how it works. (Pilates is some sort of exercise program.) I have all of the stuff I need, but I didn't bring enough personal stuff. So, yet another note to future Clarioners: bring stuffed animals, toys, pictures etc...

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And I know I said it once before, but while I'm up here, I will probably be posting in micro-bursts. So, you might want to check the previous day's entries as you go along, so as not to miss an evening's micro-burst.

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Daniel and I drove to the airport to pick up Ellen, taking the "scenic" route both there and back. By the time we got back to the dorm the place was pretty deserted, so I trekked down to the grocery store where I ran into about 8 other Clarioners. So now I have enough food to get by for a few days. I figure I'll either go to the drugstore after class tomorrow, or after our "meet the instructor" meeting tonight.

And Tamela b/u/l/l/i/e/d convinced several of us to go down to the gym for about an hour this afternoon. I'm actually glad she suggested it, since I didn't have much time to work out the week before I left . I really hope I can find time to get down there once or twice a week. I think it will be worth it just for head-clearing.