The Grande Tour

I have once again returned to bring my readership more material for consumption. Blessed be my ever distracted study habits. Also, this post will nicely cover up the flaming wreckage that preceded it.

I got an official tour of good old Minota on Wednesday. The tour was given by Shandy, my commanding officer for my future donning position and she did a fairly thorough job for someone who's only been in the building once before. I'm sure I'll spend my first day wandering around there anyway so as to learn the ins and outs, but it was nice to see what the future holds.

Suffice to say that Minota is an awesome residence. It's pretty small, only 70 residents and 2 dons, and I believe it has one of the best don to residence ratios on campus. (Beth had about 58 of us to deal with all by herself!) The don rooms are the same as the regular rooms, and each room has basically what you'd expect from a res room plus a small fridge and a sink. Jubilations! The main bathrooms are shared like in V1, but you could brush your teeth and wash your hands in your own room if you so desire.

Next item on the list is the kitchens. These are sweet kitchens, and I'm a man who knows his kitchens. There's about the same people/kitchen ratio as I currently have at WCRI, but these ones outclass WCRI's by a long shot in both style and functionality. Don't take my word for it, do a virtual tour:

http://www.housing.uwaterloo.ca/residences/mh/tour/index.html

I could have provided that link first thing, but I wanted my readership to have to work for it. There's also a virtual tour of the rooms themselves and the main lounge on that page.

Which takes me to the next cool thing, the lounge. That thing is huge, as you've probably already seen, and is well decked-out. There's windows from the hallways in the upper floors so you can see who's in the lounge without actually going all the way downstairs. Plus, that place should be big enough to fit 72 people in there for house meetings, something we couldn't do in our V1 lounges.

The last thing I wanted to mention isn't on that virtual tour, so you'll have to use your imaginations. Minota's general outside area is perfect for summer activities. They've got the campfire pit just a little ways up the path, a few barbecues on the first floor patio and a rooftop patio with picnic tables. Exciting possibilities folks! Plus it'll be summer, and I've heard being on campus is so much better in the summer. I'm inclined to believe that, since I remember what it was like when the weather warmed up back in S2. I'm sure Liam remembers that the girls would lie in the grass behind S2 to tan, you'd always see them as you walked across the glass hallway to the stairs. Yes folks, the best things in life are free.

Since I was on the tour with Rachel, and we were walking a ways in the same direction afterwards we ended up talking quite a bit. I'd like to mention that I have learned most of what I previously posted through more conventional, socially acceptable methods now, so you can all get off my case. Mind you, I didn't see her in a bikini, though I'll attribute that to it being unseasonable attire at the moment and call it a moot point.


I wrote my Math 235 final today, and thank goodness that's done with. It was my worst class going into the final, I was sitting somewhere at about 60% for the term mark and the exam was worth 60% of our total mark. Unfortunately when I have trouble grasping material I tend to have even more trouble trying to study it, and I found distraction upon distraction in the past few days to hinder myself. The exam seemed to go alright though, I certainly didn't know everything but I kept a conservative running total of the marks I'd earned and I can say with nearly complete certainty that I passed the course. I can say with still strong yet somewhat less certainty that I got over 60%, and kept myself out of any sort of multiple secret probation.

ROBOT HOUSE!

After the exam I hurried home, but it was not the thought of my lonely readership that drove me onwards with such amazing speed. I had neglected to go to the bathroom before heading out to my exam, and I certainly wasn't going to leave during the exam when it had so much riding on it. However, I encountered some unexpected difficulties upon my return. I'll let Penny Arcade explain, since I like to keep this blog free of graphic descriptions.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/01/19

Luckily I found another alter to receive my gifts.

Oh yeah, FYI our toilet here is broken. Yeah, the flusher handle doesn't work, but one can still get it to flush in one knows how a toilet works under the hood. It's kind of inconvenient, but I don't think any of us care enough to fill out a maintenance form until exams are done.

One last, much more attractive FYI. I saw Beth on my way into the exam, she was writing Health 433. I didn't actually talk to her since I saw her from quite a distance but it didn't take much deductive reasoning skills to figure out what she was there for. The choices were Math 235, Nanotech 121, and Health 433.

That's all folks, I've got some studying to do and then in 22 hours my Christmas vacation begins!

Awesome.

-Danger