Been a lot of things on my mind, but I've been to busy (interpreted as 'too lazy') to get things down here as much as I'd like. Seizing the opportunity that I had nowhere to be last Monday, my wife shanghaied me into a bike ride to Bisbee, AZ. What a nice ride. It's a very small town in the mountains southeast of Tucson and takes only a couple hours to get there. That is, if you don't stop to eat at a nice little place at the corner of 83 and 82, or stop in Tombstone, as we did. We took our time getting there, checked into the hotel where my wife had reservations, and bummed around looking at all the shops. Nice place to visit, reminded me a lot of some small towns in Italy.

We were back home Tuesday, and I spent the next few days calling every day to the high school I would like my son to attend next year. Always got an answering machine. I had called about a month ago, the person I spoke to told me I needed to call the first or second week in April to make an appointment to register. Since the first week was spring break and nobody was working, I tried all last week, to no avail. Today I took a ride over there, after calling yesterday and getting an answering machine again. The lady told me I needed to call the first or second week of May, to make an appointment for registration which will begin on the 17th of May. No problem, whatever. I've nothing else to do, nothing else besides take on keeping the house and the kids in line myself since I'm unemployed at the moment. I would prefer to call it retirement, but get funny looks from my wife, who hears horror stories relentlessly of deadbeats that provide no income while their registered nurse wives work. So I'm 'unemployed', even though I pull a pension from the government for 20 years of military service. It's nothing to brag about really, btw. Anyone without a criminal record can do it if they set their mind to it. It's not as difficult as most would think, it can't be if I did it! Anyway, so I have nothing to do at the moment but make sure the house is clean, which it is, and that the chili for the chili dogs we are going to have for dinner doesn't burn. That's my excuse for lifting the lid on the slow cooker, even though the real reason is so the scents will waft through the house resulting in many tummy rumblings in anticipation of meaty paste slathered meat tubes.

Ok, I'll try to curb the ramblings somewhat. Wait a minute, isn't that what this is all about? Ranting? That's what one does when one is ranting, ramble on about useless drivel. I know I'll read this years from now, well, MAY read this years from now and think, as anyone reading now would think, "This shit is fucking looney toons! What the hell was I thinking?!" Speaking of looney, I've been accused of being paranoid by someone reading this. Hmmm, if I were really paranoid, I would believe something along the lines that the CIA and FBI are watching. That's what a paranoid person would think. Hmmmm, then I would come up with a test... let's say coming up with phrases that would catch the electronic eye of any watchdog searching for particular phrases. Hmmmm...... How about 'assassinate the President'. My wife dreads things like that being put down into words. She worries that someone really IS watching, and they are going to drag me off to some deep, dark, dank cave and torture me until they learn of all my plans to do away with President Bush.

I still want to get to what happened the other day while preparing to register for school. It was two days worth of shoe leather express, going from one place to another trying to figure things out. On Friday my first stop was Orientation Office. They told me that because I had signed up to the College of Science, that they were on their own program, and didn't want their students going through orientation. So I trudge on over to that building, and find the offices of the advisors on the 9th floor. They explain a few things to me, but there wasn't a lot of help there. After mentioning that I was accepted to the Honors College, one of the advisors pipes up that I should pursue that, and go talk to them.

I guess I should throw in here that I had decided to try getting into the Medical Technologist program. Only trouble with that is the Board of Regents wants to discontinue it at U of A. That's why I'm at the College of Science with no major declared, I figure it's the closest thing to what I need, even though that program falls under the School of Health Professions. The advisor I talked to over there has been trying to guide me, even though she can't officially until they decide whether the program is dead or not. She tells me the closest major to theirs is microbiology at the School of Agriculture and Life Sciences. But I'm thinking that if I declare that major, I would have to sit through orientation, and listen to one of their advisors, even though I already know the classes I need to take for the degree I want. See, if they do away with the program, I'm going to have to get into a similar program at another school. Right now all I really need is basic classes to get me through the first semester while they figure out what's happening with this program.

So I go over to the Honors College to see what they are going to do for me. Turns out that all they really have for me at the moment is a nice lounge and computers for use in their building. Next semester I think I can use them for early registration, but I have to keep a 3.5 GPA. I'll also eventually have to take some honors classes. So I talked to a blind advisor there with a PhD, and after 20 minutes left there.

Monday I was back in the afternoon, after finding out that Walgreen's doesn't use people part time, and it would be a waste of time to use me just for a few months if I'm planning on going to school in Aug. My first stop again was Orientation. I had checked the web site, and there is a hold on registration initiated by Orientation. They said the people at the Science College would have to take care of it, and a visit their assured me (or was sposed to assure me) that it would be taken care of before it was time to register. I had also paid a visit to the nice people at health to turn in my shot record, (another registration hold) and went by the Math Dept to get an algebra course evaluated. See, college algebra is a pre-requisite for Chemistry.... I've had two college algebra courses. So, if they evaluate it and it's good I can go ahead with chemistry. I also had to get info on their math placement test.

It's still Monday, and I wanted to go by the Modern Language building to see about getting into a Spanish class. A check on the registration website tells me to contact them for registering, and I explained that's why I was there. They told me they only sign up people whose major or minor is Spanish. Huh?! Yep, that's what she told me. After pressing the matter with, "So, everyone else goes with something other than Spanish to fulfill their language requirement? Well, no.... but right at the moment, they were only signing the Spanish majors and minors, and I would have to wait till all of them were done and scrounge for leftovers. That's the gist of it anyways....