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those college days For a room without windows, I am amazed at how the light seems to change with the passing hours at work. It must have something to do with how awake I am while I am there. At times everything seems very sharp under the bluish white glow of the fluorescent tubes, but at other times everything takes on a more gray appearance with any real color contrast having been eliminated. My second shift counterpart on Friday and Saturday nights calls work the detention center and I can see his point. There are times when it does seem pretty grim and having to sacrifice two prime party nights at the age of twenty-one must be a little hard. Then again from what he has told me too much partying ruined his first attempt at college so in a way his working nights is a form of penitence. As for my feelings on working nights on the weekend, they tend to be a little more mixed. When I started this job almost eighteen months ago, I had just broken up with my last girlfriend and the thought of going out had very little appeal for me. Now I go out once in a while and it seems to be enough. Most of my partying days are long gone, although I think that it would be interesting to experience a college party just one more time. Then on the other hand, I am sure that it would make me feel old. The one thing that I regret from that part of my life is that I didn't keep a journal. My life was certainly more active then especially when I lived in the house that doubled as a frat headquarters. People were coming and going all of the time and I took all of it in the best that I could. There was the alcoholic housemate that lived in the room above mine who would stumble up the stairs at night. Sometimes he could make it under his own power, while other times someone else helped him along. Either way I could hear them make contact with each step. There was the other housemate who let his buddy live in our livingroom for free. At first this was meant to be a temporary arrangement, but ended up being an ordeal that lasted three months. Of course as the weeks went by, this situation was met with more and more resentment from the rest of the house. There was the six-foot tall sorority girl sporting dreadlocks that would crash on our couch and eat food from our refrigerator on semi-regular basis. She was nice enough, but it was still a little odd to find her sleeping on the couch in the morning. There was the constant shuffling of four cars in the driveway with each car taking up a different amount of space. Somehow we managed to juggle and rearrange a Saab, a Ford pickup, a Buick Skylark and a Cadillac in our garage and on our short driveway. Winter made things even worse. Now it seems like chaos to me, but at the time it was completely normal. The weather seems to be cooperating with the start of my extended weekend. From what I have heard it isn't supposed to get cold again until I have to go back to work which works fine for me, because I want to spend as much time as possible outside the next few days. With winter ending for a few days, I'll be able to start doing something physical again. My other goal for the weekend is to work some more on the new site for the journal. Ever so slowly I have to rename all of the archives and then I'll start posting in the new location. I would rather do everything in one move rather than have part of the journal still residing here. I am also thinking of calling the journal something else. I think that I want things to go in a new direction and a new name would be a good place to start the change. Choosing titles for my paintings in college was never an easy task for me and trying to think of one for a journal is even harder. Now having said that I think that I already have something chosen. To me it's a little less serious than what I have used in the past, but is still unique enough not to be confused with another journal.
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