Fitter happier

Last night, Michael propped his door open and soon after, Pat did the same. Later on, Brian and Frank both did, too. Tonight, I propped my door open, and it's sort of nice. I didn't realize it before, but they separated the men and women on the dorm - same floor, but different ends, so on the guy's end, it's a lot of open doors and music sort of drifting out into the hallways as we tap away on our laptops. Jason just wandered down the hall (the youngest of our group at 33) singing "I just died in your arms tonight" and asking who sang it. Cutting Crew, by the way - Jay Z has some sort of weird remake, but I'm down with the original; call me a traditionalist.

Tonight, Dorothy made a huge pasta meal for everyone - pasta, salad, garlic bread, etc. It was really nice - she pulled me aside and said she made a small saucepan of vegetarian sauce. Her main dish had beef, sausage, probably lamb or something else in it - it was kind of a reverse Noah's Ark, but I thought it was really cool of her to make a vegetarian sauce for me and Rosemary, the other difficult eater (although Rosemary just abstains from pork). The alternate sauce she made was essentially a jarred tomato sauce, but with sauteed mushrooms, peppers, garlic, and onions, and it was really good.

I don't like being away from home one bit, and I'm homesick every morning and night, but there's a silver lining here. It's sort of a monastic pursuit. The first day we were here, Hunter said we we're going to spend a month away from our loved ones, sacrificing time with our families and friends, giving up summer's pay (adjunct work), just to spend time away thinking about what we do at work - our craft. It's a bit of a lofty way of putting it, but in many ways it's true. It's people talking about school, labor, the things we do while we work. I know if I lived close to Kellogg, I'd be home every night, like some in our class are. And even knowing the benefits of staying here in the dorms, I'd still go home. But it's kind of interesting not to have that choice - to be stuck here. It's an experience I never would have chosen, but it's worked out really well.