Two Things

1) I ordered all of my books for this semester from private sellers on Amazon, figuring it would save me money (and it did, although it was a fairly negligible amount of money. Mainly it saved me time because now I don't have to walk all the way up the huge hill to get to the campus bookstore and then make the trip three or four different times since the books are never all in the first time you go, or the second...). Today my first book came in the mail. Luckily, it's the exact book I really needed to get this week since it's for my directing class and we have a reading due on Thursday. Anyway, I unwrapped the package and got all excited when I saw that it was A Director Prepares. I was much, much less excited when I saw that the seller had included a flier with the book entitled "Go Vegan for Life" complete with pictures of pigs in slaughterhouses and a phone number to call for a free Vegan Starter Kit. To Amazon seller Imagradstudent, whoever you may be: I'm a grad student too! What a coincidence! This may make us allies in some ways, but not in all of them. Yes, I may be studying theatre, which you may have infered from my order. However, the fact that I'm a theatre grad student does not automatically make me a super-liberal granola-y sort of person. I realize how one might make that assumption about someone ordering Anne Bogart's directing book but that just goes to show you that you should never make assumptions based on one's reading and/or entertainment selections (incidentally, Amazon.com, you need to listen to this as well-I ordered one Muppet Movie ONCE as a Christmas gift a year ago. Please stop assuming I want everything Jim Henson ever created). Anyway, Imagradstudent, even if I did agree with you and your PETA-esque ways that still doesn't mean I want your propaganda included with my text book. Thanks but no thanks.

2) Tonight in my Dramatic Theory class Christin was lecturing and she filled the chalkboard with our musings on "Theory is..."and then realized that there was no eraser so that she could erase the board and we could move on to "Criticism is..." But I saved the day (okay, the class...okay, not even the class) when I realized that I had tissues in my bag. Well, the tissues are these holiday patterned tissues that Mom put in my Christmas stocking. They have ornaments on them. They're also the thickest tissues known to man and are pretty horrible for actually using on your nose but they function well as napkins (and chalkboard erasers, as it turns out). Anyway, I pulled the tissues out and handed one to Christin and she said, "Wow! These are so festive!" and everyone in the class started laughing and Shanthi said, "That's why we love Ashley!" and Amanda said, "That's the exact sort of thing that Ashley would have" and everyone else in the class nodded and agreed. Which leaves me wondering, am I really a festive holiday tissue person? Really? Enough to make an entire class full of people nod their heads and say, "Yup, that's Ashey!" Who knew?!

As a side note, the first day of class went well. I'm looking forward to all three of my classes so far, for the most part anyway. It's gonna be a hell of a lot of work again, but at least it should be interesting, possibly even enjoyable work so I can't really complain...yet.