Free stuff

So there are plenty of people who like to complain about modern college tuitions and they are often correct. A student does pay a very large amount for the privilege of being abused at random hours until the brain tries to leak out the ears. However, I have discovered several things that you can get for free on a college campus.

• Post-consumer use recycled toilet paper pens, light beige in color. Sadly, I was offered these by a hippie who popped out of a recycle bin and pushed them in my face. Since I nearly broke his nose, I felt it polite to turn him down.
• Entertainment. It's completely possible to turn my Brit Lit class into a drinking game. The teacher often repeats herself so often, using the same phrases over and over. "Welcome to [insert modern science here]!" or "Anglo-Saxons like violence!" or "America is just the second British Empire." Sadly the class is at 8am so I'll have to use M&M's instead of shots of vanilla rum.
• Feelings of superiority. The squirrels on campus are not afraid of anything at all. They will stand right there and steal the food right from your hand. However, since the freshmen are scared of everything, including the squirrels, I still can feel good about myself.
• Gideons Bibles. But only the English ones with the green cover. All the others have to be special ordered.
• Inspiration. Every time I've had to write a really complicated paper or work a freakishly long biology set, I feel extra creative and go off to make some new project in the craft room.
• Aluminium water bottles. There's a bounty out on plastic water bottles and if you bring in so many of them, they give you a nifty metal one in exchange. This leads to people buying all the water out of the machines in order to turn in the plastics. Rather suspect if you ask me.
• Free school t-shirts. You have to trade in a shirt from another school or possibly 5 cans of food for the food bank, so that's not really free I suppose.

I finished the hat and I liked it so much I made a doublet to go with it. As soon as I locate the camera I'll get you pictures. They're both late period Elizabethan with the doublet pattern mostly out of Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion. Since I haven't gotten any trim on it yet, it's a very respectable middle class doublet with pretensions.

I've also managed to finish a lovely bright blue merino wool hat that deserves pictures and praise. I got the pattern off of Ravelry and it knit up in a snap. I think I'm going to be forced to make the matching scarf too, just because it's so pretty. It has a tiny little faux cable on the head band and a lovely soft moss stitch for the top. The royal blue merino was a gift for my birthday from the lady who taught me to knit and I've been hoarding it until I found the perfect project for it. I may just sell the extra long blue and white one I made a few years ago.

I'm holding steady in the high B-low A range of grades at school. If this keeps up I will hopefully manage to keep bringing the GPA back up which will make me very giddy. After this semester I'll have nothing but French, History and Theater classes to do. I'm very excited about that since it'll be the first time I've ever only had classes I wanted to take. Mind you, Theater 101 is going to be a drag again, but I figure I can only push the GPA up, up, up!

Now I'll go back to watching Kathrine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy goofy old movies. They have the best sparks.