The Many Uses for Cardboard: 1. as pizza crust; 2. as dorm room walls so one can hear her next-door neighbor boinking someone she just met

I'm in a dorm room overnight all by myself for the first time ever. It's a new and exciting experience. Some of the more exciting aspects of the experience are wondering if the couple noisily having sex in the room next to me is using protection, hoping that the rather strange bugs I'm seeing aren't either bedbugs or termites, and hoping that whatever fool left popcorn in the microwave too long last night and caused the smoke alarm to go off at 3:00 a.m. suddenly grew a brain so as not to repeat the experience tonight.

Most people have roommates in university dorms. My parents thought it would be an act of kindness to spare anyone else the misfortune of having me as a roommate. They actually felt so strongly about it that they bought a house nearby, since my dad's work location is flexible, and are planning on making me live at home this year because I'm only sixteen and becasue I have nightmares in which I wake up entire subdivisions. I only have this dorm room because my Godparents thought I needed a place to go between classes besides the library, so they sprung for it as my early birthday present. I usually won't be spending nights here, but I've been able to talk the people with whom I'm staying into letting me spend just two overnights here while not much is going on other than the couple next door having loud and passionate sex.

The cafeteria here is bad, but not as bad as an elementary or high school cafeteria. School pizza will inevitably taste like cardboard, and school jello will have the consistence of rubber, but at least I have a few choices besides cardboard and rubber, and there is usually ice cream.

Tomorrow is my final day off before classes. I'll go back to the house of my aunt and uncle and have forced merriment before I officially stop having fun until December.

For all you slackers out there who won't be carrying 21 quarter units, enjoy! Your time will come.