Fillings.

Summer's cool and all. The whole relaxing until your brain melts is fun, and it's good to be home. But if I may, there are several things I generally dislike about this season and aspects about Oberlin that I have severely taken for granted.

For one, I have learned that I kinda sorta maybe hate hot weather. 80° is fine I guess, 85°, 90° and I think my face might explode. Armpits too. Coupled with the fact that I seem to get chronic nosebleeds whenever the heat picks up, I think I'm ready for autumn to come again.

Second, I have conveniently forgotten how you can conveniently knock on your awesomely wonderful friends' doors right down the hall, or (god forbid) down a few blocks. My dad has still yet to trust me enough to let me drive, and let it be known that New Jersey is impossible to maneuver around without a car.

Finally, you can't re-create Oberlin. I've tried. I've brought back extra copies of posters from Oberlin to replicate my small, crappy dorm room and I've tried spray-painting all the squirrels in the area to have a fresh, white coat of fur. Before I get into any trouble with animal rights activists, the latter half of that sentence was a joke. But yeah, back on topic. Sadly, there's no suitcase big enough to be able to pack up all the delightful things about Oberlin and bring back home with me.

So that's enough moping for one blog post! In reality, I've actually been enjoying summer for the most part. One lousy week can certainly make you cranky, agreed? It's sorta cool seeing high school friends once you ignore the initial awkwardness and stop trying to compare their mannerisms to those at Oberlin. And I have started my previously mentioned internship at the Bread and Butter Collective (a silkscreening studio in Queens, started by recent Oberlin grads) and it's been great so far! More on that later, though. I feel like it deserves its own full-fledged blog post.

In the other hours of free time that I have, I've been watching anime and working on playing the guitar semi-competently. Now before I get pegged into some Asian stereotype, let me say that for the record, my anime watching extended to the Pokémon animated series, which hardly counts. I feel like I have purposely refused to watch any sort of anime in order to prevent myself from fulfilling these stereotypes. In hindsight, it was stupid logic. I'm beginning to watch some of Hayao Miyazaki's catalog, and viewed the complete season of Cowboy Bebop. Spirited Away? Great. Cowboy Bebop? Spectacular. Howl's Moving Castle? Irritating.

As for my guitar playing, after watching The New Pornographers live (that's a band, not a burlesque act), Kira and I have lofty dreams of making a cover band! A New Pornographers cover band! However, we will need band members with real musical talent. Any takers? Any? We may not offer much, but we're full of enthusiasm! And pep!