Things are looking up

Several things happened this past week to improve my quality of living here in College Station.

1. It rained, causing the temperature to drop. We are now out of the 90s and into the upper 80s. Woohoo! (laced with a bit of sarcasm)

2. I GOT A BIKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3. I got a library card!!

First of all, this place is damn hot, and damn humid. I don't care "how nice the winter will be," it cannot possibly be nice enough to make up for the horrible summers. Thankfully I'll be on a ship in the Bering sea for part of the summer. Unfortunately, summers here are April-October, so I can't escape the entire summer.

Second of all, I swear to you, it would easier to buy crack cocaine in this town than it is to buy a decent bicycle. I've spent every day since deciding to move here looking for a bike. I looked on craigslist, university surplus and the newspaper ads. Bikes get snatched up so fast. It's a hot, hot market. So last Sunday I went shopping for bikes and found one I loved at Wal-Mart. It was WAAAY too expensive, so I left it there. Then Monday night, after more failed attempts to get a bike, I sort of snapped and Matt drove me to Wal-Mart at 11:30 to buy the bike. It's beautiful, see the pic. It's a Schwinn Avenue hybrid bike. That means it's sturdy enough to ride on trails, but light and quick enough to pass for a decent road bike. The tires are fairly thin, but still with tread. It has an aluminum frame, which is great because I have to lift it all the time. I carry it upstairs to our second-floor apartment every day and at work, we have hanging bike racks at the loading docks. Work is about 1.5 miles from the apartment, so I have a quick 10-minute bike commute. The best part of having a bike is zooming past all the stupid Texans in their big trucks who are stopped in traffic. Ha. Suckers. Lots of people at work have bikes, and we have a little bike club. It's fun. I feel whole now that I have a bike. It's as if the world has righted itself.

Adding to the "rightness of the world" was my acquisition of a library card! Matt kept telling me to use his, but it isn't the same. I wanted MY VERY OWN. So I got it. The CS library is pretty small for a city this size, but it's nice and new. They have inter-library loan, so I can get any books they don't have. I also think I'm allowed to use the university library, but haven't tried yet. I checked out a big pile of books the day I got my card, and since then, I've replaced habitual T.V. watching with reading. Indeed, I've been watching more TV than ever before in my entire life. It's nice to have something else to occupy my time.