A Brave New World

I'm in New York and everything is odd, even the Kmart.

My temporary dorm room, Mercer 302A, which will be my home until early tommorrow, came equipped with lots of open drawers, a mattress constructed entirely of plastic, very little light, and a foreboding sense of emptiness. Needless to say, it did not offer the welcome I was hoping for.

The emptiness, I should add, is at least partially my fault. Oblivious as always to reality, I packed like I was going to Vegas for a weekend instead of New York for three years. At the beginning of today, I had no towel, no blanket, no pillow, no toothpaste, no shampoo; now, at 8 pm, all of those luxuries have been acquired - except for the pillow. Though, when you have no blanket and are sleeping on what is essentially a plastic box, it's amazing how insignificant a pillow can seem.

Thanks to the frugal nature of my parents, my remaining possessions are being shipped at the slowest possible rate from Fairfield. From what I can gather from the cost, dog sled must be the primary method of transport. Tracking numbers reveal that the boxes should reach my more permanent home, D'Agostino Hall, by the time I graduate. Well, that is if snow allows the dogs a path directly to the dorm.

Despite all the slip-ups, oversights, and bone-headed mistakes, I did manage to make it to a Gray's Papaya for a hot dog and papaya juice. Heavenly stuff, let me tell you. Anyone who visits me will be treated to both. If that doesn't entice you, I submit that you are either (1) a vegetarian, (blissfully?) ignorant of life's true pleasures; or (2) a heathen, doomed to spend eternity somewhere where there is no purveyor of hot dogs and papaya juice.