poem meme

from ellen_fremedon, who got it from bravecows, who got it from yonmei: post a favorite poem.

( Rondeau Redoublé (and Scarcely Worth the Trouble, at That) )

that's dorothy, there. structure. structure. structure.

in which i begin to tell about My Life Now

so here i am. i am back in student housing (british style) and 72 hours away from the beginning of classes. i know what many of your days are generally like, but not too many of you know about mine, so i'll try to describe how i'm living now.

i live in a building of suites (they call them "flats", but that's a little generous, since there's no living room) shared by two colleges. (actually there are two separate buildings, one for us and one for the other college, which is good, because their side has been INFESTED WITH BEDBUGS and the poor bastards have been moved out and all their clothes put into deep freeze for two weeks while the place is fumigated -- more on this later, but because our buildings are separated by a quad-type thing, we have been spared.) some of the suites have three rooms and some have five; most are single-sex, but some are coed. i have four suitemates, all girls:

T, Chinese, very pleasant, seems to have her boyfriend living in there with her -- which, since they hardly ever emerge, doesn't bother me much, but i'm pretty sure she's not allowed to do that. not that i'm going to blow the whistle; i just wonder what's going to happen if and when they come to throw him out.
L, American, very cool, hums in the kitchen.
I, English, also very nice, haven't hung out as much with her.
A, no idea about this girl, since i haven't met her yet. it's possible she moved in two evenings ago and i still haven't met her since i only left the room once yesterday. we were referring to her as J for a couple of days when we couldn't remember what her name was -- i think it'd be funny to continue to call her J, but that'll depend how funny she thinks that is, i suppose.

my room is next door to, and the wall next to my bed is shared with, the kitchen. this could be annoying, but i'm choosing to think of it as a good thing, since i'm as far away as i can get from other people's bedrooms. i'm at the front of the building, so my windows look out on the street, or they would if there weren't a tree in the way. this is probably the noisy side of the building, but whatever -- compared to some places i've lived, you know what i'm saying? (actually every room has windows on a corner -- just right next to each other, but the desk under the windows is in a little bay, partly one presumes so it doesn't take up so much of the room, but also so the windows can be opened for some circulation of air, instead of just on one side.)

the room is about 20 feet square, maybe -- it feels big because it's so empty. the door is in the bottom left corner, if you're looking down on the room from the top. you come in, and in front of you is a table set at the foot of the bed; the bed is behind it, and the head is against the wall. there's a lamp in the wall above the head of the bed on the left, and a large bulletin board in the middle of that wall. to the right of the bed is a little nightstand, with one drawer and one shelf. it is wider than the remaining space next to the bed before the wall dives away toward the window.

the bay is about three feet deep, with a small window in the left-hand wall -- so, parallel to the wall with the bulletin board and the lamp -- and a larger window in the long wall, which is directly opposite the door. the wall takes up a little more than half the desk. the outlets and things (ethernet port; telephone port; four power sockets; television antenna) are clear over on the right-hand wall of the room. this is so much desk space, particularly for someone without a desktop computer. currently on my desk are: a 24-can case of soda; three boxes of cereal bars; a box of kleenex; a table lamp; one place setting, which the college offered me for some low price so i said what the hell (dinner plate, lunch plate, bowl, knife, fork, large spoon, small spoon, mug); laptop computer; box from mobile phone; iPod, headphones, firewire cable; year's supply of birth control pills; camera; glasses; address book, weekly calendar, passport, and some other random papers i've been dealing with. and there's still plenty of space.

against the right-hand wall is a three-shelf bookcase with hardly anything on it. i don't have much in the way of schoolbooks with me. my gym bag and laptop case are next to the bookshelf, and another chair is next to them (i'm sitting in the first chair, at the desk). the heater is on the other side, on the right-hand wall in the back corner. it's miles ahead of the heater i had in edinburgh. there, we set the temperature we wanted and if we turned the heater on, we had to select a time -- we could either have heat in the morning (when you're getting up and it's freezing cold) or in the evening (when it's so cold you can't fall asleep). difficult choice. and by "heat" they were being generous, as well. this heater isn't too powerful, but at least when you turn it on it heats the room up to 23 C (which in old money is, what, 73? not bad) and keeps doing so if the temperature drops again.

on the back wall of the room, adjacent to the heater, is a sink with a cabinet underneath it. i heartily approve, as a contact-lens wearer, of sinks in dorm rooms. there's no reason to hike down the hall in order to brush your teeth. this one is probably called a "basin", but whatever. and next to the sink is a wardrobe, the left half being full-length for hanging things like dresses and the right half having two shelves at the bottom and one at the top, and in between a half-length space for hanging things (like blouses, shorter skirts ...). next to this is the intercom phone -- for knowing people are downstairs, but not for buzzing them in -- and lightswitches, and next to these is the door.

luggage is under the bed. sheets are a decent burgundy color. carpet is ugly and brown and probably original mid-90's vintage. curtains are a burgundy/sage/mustard plaid. (they're not as bad as they sound, but they're certainly not good.) wood is neither blond nor dark. (i have no idea what sort of wood it's likely to be.)

there are only about [counts on fingers, guesses] 50 or 60 of us living here (on our side; we're discouraged from mixing with the folks on the other side while they remain cootie-ridden, and you only think i'm kidding), so we're a sort of ready-made social group. i will tell more about my fellow New Kids in later posts.

you know, even with the heater on, it's chilly in here.