Vicarious Living

My shift for today was "Activities" and that means that I drive students around town, since they can't have their own cars on campus. With it being a Friday, plenty of people wanted to celebrate the weekend, mostly through getting dinner out in town and/or watching a movie. (Side Note - Despite all the advertising on how scary the new Evil Dead movie is, I can't fully take it seriously because of how delightfully campy Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness are.)

As I was driving to pick up a group of students, I thought about how I've lived in Maryville for four years, but I only know some of the town's "features" because of the students. To give you some evidence, I could tell you where to go in order to:
- seek medical attention, both in an emergency and in an urgent-but-not ER sense,
- get a new eyeglasses prescription and cheap frames,
- have dental work done, (don't like the first guy? I know another one)
- train/work with/adopt a pet,
- go tanning or get my nails done,or
- visit a resident at one of the few nursing homes in the area
and I've never done any of these tasks for myself. Yes, I did volunteer at a nursing home last year, but the one on the bulleted list was another nursing home that the students would also go to. Then, when you consider the places I go for Robotics/Science Olympiad shopping (like Sutherland's, Fastenal, True Value, O'Reilly, etc.), there aren't a lot of places I know about in town that are unrelated to work and that aren't restaurants.

It kind of made me wonder about what will happen when I leave Maryville for my next adventure. I have this feeling that when I come back after being someone else 5-10 years, I can still walk into the Sutherland's and tell you where to find PVC pipe, chain, nuts/bolts, super glue and electrical components. With that said, I do want to start exploring the area on more personal expeditions so Maryville seems less like a tool for work stuff. I'm off this weekend and I'm definitely thinking about a minor road trip to somewhere new. I do also have a weekend project I just acquired today, so hopefully that goes well. (I'm sure I will comment on at least one of those things tomorrow.)

Today's holidays were Licorice Day and Drop Everything And Read Day. When I went shopping today, I picked up an extra-large bag of Twizzlers and gave them out to students, citing the holiday. Many students were like "Really? That's an actual thing?" and I think they enjoyed the randomness of it. A co-worker asked me if I got the students involved in my holidays and I think I'm going to start to include them more. (With that in mind, next Thursday is going to be awesome.) As for DEAR Day (that's an acronym the holiday people came up with, not me), I made sure to create a situation where I dropped my sandwich, which was the only thing I was holding, and started to read the World Religions book I read a chapter of during Buddha Day. Granted, I picked my sandwich back up and it only dropped onto a plate, but in the spirit of the holiday, I can say that I did drop something in order to start reading.

After the bounty of driving today, I had a general night down for all guys who wanted that turned into a Risk-esque game (wasn't paying enough attention to remember the name) and then Fluxx and Munchkin. College friends, if you haven't played Fluxx, consider this my seal of yes. It's a zombie-themed card game that can be completely random, while being very easy to pick up for the first time. I kid you not, there is a goal card that lets you win the game and survive the zombie apocalypse if you have the ability to make toast.

The night down was quite fun, but it is way past what should be my bedtime, so I need to wrap this up. DFTBA and I'll see you tomorrow.