Saturday, May 13, 2006

Bah AB Tech

As you may have noticed, I have recently reinvented myself and become a student. Today, I was signed up for the first of two intensive Saturday all day Photoshop workshops - yes, me, I signed myself up, not even under duress, to spend two Saturdays in a row beginning at the ungodly hour of 9:00 a.m. in a computer lab adding to my knowledge of Photoshop. To which end I woke up this morning at about 7:15 and got out of bed begrudgingly at around 8:00 and fed the animals and took a shower and ate breakfast and even had time to smoke a cigarette and take a couple of bad pictures of the back yard in this unfamilar early morning light and still be only about 3 minutes late to class.

Except when I got to Enka, I noticed in a sort of anthropological way that there were hardly any cars in the parking lots and, actually, they were all trucks, and, oddly, the building was all locked up except for one door, which was annoying but I figured it was just one of those things. Seeing as how I am a regular AB Tech student now, I know their little tricks. I know, for example, that all the paperwork says that classes are held in Haynes 135 when, in fact, Haynes 135 is the vending machine room. It's just a test - you have to figure out on your own where classes are. I was prepared for that. I know where all the computer labs in that building are now, so I didn't even bother with the vending machines, I went straight to the labs on the third floor. Which were locked. All of them were locked and dark and silent. I began to get a little worried. On my way through the building I had passed one open room; a class full of uneasy burly men preparing for their contractor's exam. The rest of the building was completely deserted.

I got in the elevator, which closed behind me, and pressed 1. Nothing happened. Nothing happened when I pressed door open. Oh god, I thought, I'm stuck and I'll have to push the alarm button and there's nobody here to hear it and also, god, this is going to be so embarrassing. But anti-climax: the elevator finally worked and I gave up and went on home, after checking the vending machines to see if, perchance, a small sad photoshop class might be gathered around a bottle of Coke. It wasn't.

I guess the class was cancelled, which makes sense; really, who gives up two consecutive May Saturdays to take Photoshop? Besides me, that is? It was nice of them to tell me though: in fact, I assumed I must have missed it, but when I got home I went through all my old mail and there was nothing. There's noone in any office to call and here it is 10:00 in the morning and I'm all clean and showered and dressed and I've been up for almost three goddamn hours, which is ridiculous. So I'm going over to my mother's, since she's the only person I know who is awake.

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