I'm a bear, etcetera

- Mike Birbiglia.

So, my life is a vacation with classes.

I live in Tampa, which is more or less a vacation capital for yankees like myself. It's incredible, I'm 30 minutes from Clearwater Beach (widely considered one of the best in the US, and even t-shirt material for Hollister), and I still hear some of my classmates complain about how campus isn't close enough to the beach for their tastes. Might I add, it was 93 degrees today, it will be 93 degrees tomorrow...and it has been over 90 for almost every day I've been here. Come wintertime, it will usually be in the mid-70s to 80s.

Some of you would kill for this. Just a little bit. (just a little bit, you would).

It's pretty ok. I'm also getting a little tan (in relative terms, at least). But life-wise, college has been solid. It's kind of a let-down from my amazing summer, but anything would have been, because my summer was amazing.

But I've met great people. Most of my nights are booked with social activity and there's almost always a group to study with in the dorm lobby. Also, we watch a lot of movies, leading to my 3-day streak of watching a Rachel McAdams movie.

Most people have celebrity crushes, or at least fictional character crushes (I'm looking at you, Edward Cullen. Stop enchanting our teenage girls and go back to vampire-land. I'm gonna carry around my F. Scott short stories anthology and throw it at the next person I see reading "Breaking Dawn"). It's something I've never really given a lot of thought to for myself, but I guess if I had to pick a celebrity crush it would be Rachel McAdams. Partially because I think she's hilarious in Mean Girls, and I like her character in Wedding Crashers. And, well, I think she is pretty, which is why people usually pick Keira Knightley or Jessica Alba. But Rachel McAdams seems pretty chill and like she'd be fun to hang out with. She also attended the MLS all-star game - bonus points!

Although I did dislike her character in the Notebook - that girl was pretty needy. But I have faith that it was just Rachel working her acting magic.

But like I said, it's not like I gave much thought to it. But I never really had an answer to that question of favorite actress, so there ya go. But I digress.

I should be blogging about how school is, moreso, but I don't know what more there is to say. Classes are fine. I already got a blurb out there on how my friends are. My roommate is cool. The food is satisfactory.

It's just kind of surprising to me that this huge change in my life is hardly registering in my mind. I guess I've always been comfortable with changes.

Well, I shouldn't say it's HARDLY registering in my mind, because I often think about home and how great it would be to see all the people back there that I had come to love. But I'm hardly homesick, it just makes me really look forward to Thanksgiving weekend (when I hope everyone is free to get together for a while). But I'm not really lonely here, I just occasionally find my mind wandering back home. Stuck between Drunk Girl and Hurricane, I say. But I'm not too concerned by it. Life is pretty good.

One thing about Tampa life that I feel I should mention is the church I go to. There's only one WELS church in the area, and I have an arrangement with a very nice couple to pick me up and drive me there every Sunday. They also have invited me back to their home for lunch a few times and are doing everything in their power to make me feel comfortable.

Very un-WELS, don'tcha think?

I kid. Sort of. The church itself is very small, and the pastor's a younger guy who seems very excited to serve his Savior. It's so cool to me, that even down here in unfamiliar territory, I can go to church on Sunday and still sing the same 300-year-old German hymns I would back home. It's comforting, in a strange way. You take that stuff for granted when you live next to Lakeside.

Another cool thing, that I already told a bunch o' the MLC kids, is that I got to talking with one of my best friends I've met here so far about faith and church and etcetera, and to make a long story short, I invited her to church and she's going to come with me. We were going to go to church together this morning, but my alarm didn't go off and I overslept. I basically wanted to die, but the pickup couple that I stood up accepted my apology and next week is on. All is well again at Northdale Lutheran.

So, yeah, Tampa is cool. That's pretty much why I'm down here. Because it seems cool. Haha. There's much more to it than that. But I've found that a surprising amount of what I do is an attempt to make myself look "cooler".

I wear a baseball cap
I wear aviator sunglasses
I go to school in Tampa

Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and admit it now, much of my decision to come down here was because it seemed cool. Yes, it was financially responsible. Yes, I am going to college for free. Yes, I am creating a business network in a major metropolitan area. But an embarassingly large amount of my decision, in hindsight, was because I thought it would make me totally cool.

Which really doesn't invalidate the decision. It changes the way I look at it, but I don't know if I can say that there was a better decision, based on career opportunities and financial management, available.

But there is much more to life than career opportunities and financial management. Whether those other intangibles will prove to be better or worse down here remains to be seen. That's when I can decide whether this was a good decision or not. It is much too early, of course.

But at least I'll be cool.

Maybe someday on the blog I'll talk about the main events that eliminated the college contenders one by one, because I think it's fascinating looking back. But I want to do it in style, with pictures and graphs and music, or something. It would be kind of a big project. I doubt anyone is THIS interested in my life and my little future-planning struggles, but if I feel creative it's something I'd like to do. All I know is that "I'll follow the Sun" by the Beatles would figure importantly in such a presentation. Get it? Florida? Sun? Sunshine State?

Plus the Beatles are just good, so...

Also, I'd use "Seattle" (because I love myself, of course...) and "Driving South" by the Early November. Not sure what else there would be. Also not sure why I'm hypothesizing what songs I'll use for my likely never to be finished project. Maybe I'll have to do some big powerpoint project for Public Speaking or Computers in Business. If I do that, I'll be sure to show it to all "y'all" at home. See, I live in the South now. Gonna go grab some Chick-Fil-A. Drink an iced tea. Drawl. Ya know.

But that's about all I have to say about that. The paper, take us away.