Today has been a pretty nice day off, semi-productive, but more.. idk, I feel a good deal refreshed, which is nice. Went along with Tom to campus, he wanted to get there early (like, a bit past noon, his class starts at 6) to do his 3D animation homework, and I had some errands to run there. Stopped by the WilliC first, to inquire about me getting a bus pass for the bus that runs around town - as I'm no longer a student, it'd be 50cents a ride..which adds up quickly. A pass for the entire academic year is $25, so, good deal. While I was waiting for them to make it (apparently it takes some time to print out some text on yellow paper and then laminate it), I had to get some money from the atm, which, conveniently, is in the new University Commons, which I'd been wanting to check out.

GOOD FUCKING LORD. It looks like an airport terminal. Like all sleek and shiny and clean and light and glass and wow. The bookstore is ridiculous, it's a complete 180 from the old one. It's so spread out, and there's wooden shelving, and.. like it looks all upscale, it's crazy. From there, I had to stop at the new Starbucks, and apart from their coffee-making being abysmally slooowww (it being the beginning of the year, I forgive them for now), guh it was gooood. Prices about as expected, I think it was like $2.95 for my "tall" (god I hate how pretentious starbucks' sizing is) iced white chocolate mocha, which tasted phenomenal. mmph. I believe they're a bit higher than the Signature cafes on campus, inasmuch as I believe a chai was less than starbucks' $2.90, but, I could be wrong, I'm not used to paying attention to dollars and cents, just, y'know, what costs a meal. ^^;

So we went over to the lab, but the card-swipe is acting up again, so we had to go upstairs and hunt down Eliot. Turns out that, contrary to the schedule posted on the door, there's a class in there from 1-3.30, but, Eliot doesn't mind Tom sitting there quietly at a spare comp (there's only like ten kids in the class, Media Arts got something ridiculous like two new freshman this year :\ ), so he went on in, and I wandered off to the library to nose around and find out about getting a card. Just had to write down my name and some general info, show my id, and pay $2, which is quite reasonable for the amount of stuff around there. <333 I wandered around the children's books today, as I've been haunting an lj comm featuring illustrations from children's books, and am currently addicted. Spotted a few things I remembered, but not much that really caught my eye... They have Lang's Fairy Books, but only the Blue and Green with the illustrations that I really love - and those are the two I own. Their copy of Oscar Wilde fairy tales, I also wasn't found of the illustration style. sigh. But, I did find "The Little Prince", which I nabbed, as I'd never read it, but have very vague and fond memories of the anime I saw as a child. Also scooped a Louisa May Alcott to re-read, and another thing I'd meant to read before.
Next trip: Will actually look things up before I leave home, to find some books I've been wanting to read/re-read, and figure out where in the library they're hiding. There is NO WAY they don't have any of Chris vanAllsberg's books, and I have GOT to get my hands on some of those again. <333

Sat down at a table for awhile and read a good bit of this huuuuge book on Disney, mostly focusing on his early animations and movies, skipped the live-action section, and the building of his theme parks. Pretty general, but, some interesting tidbits, and toooons of gorgeous pictures. It's the older Disney style of animation that I really love, like I watched both Fantasia movies one after the other not long ago, and the first is far superior. (Interestingly, the book I was looking at glossed over and shrugged off the whole mythological bit, with the centaurs and unicorns and pegasus..es.. and things, merely commenting that this whole section was highly derivate of art noveau elements. So that explains a good deal of why I love that part so very deeply..) But there were tons of early character sketches, stunningly beautiful pencil drawings as tests of layouts, and background paintings shown without the animated overlays.. *speechless*. The technical quality and artistic style and real *love* that went into those... there's no matching that in anything recent.

Wandered back upstairs after awhile, read some of "The Little Prince" while I waited for the class in the lab to let out, then popped into the lab to see what Tom had accomplished. He did, in fact, make a penguin. Granted, it's a creepy penguin, with a red glow on the floor around him, and this eerie red-grey cloudy sky behind him, but.. *giggles* He asked me for suggestions, I gave some, he toyed with some things, and eventually went back to what he had in the first place, but, it looked pretty cool. A few other people wandered in (to do their hw as well), chatted with them a bit, and looked on and offered commentary as they made sheeps and rabbits and things. Tom and I hopped over to the WilliC to pick up my bus pass, which we mocked, then grabbed a bite to eat (it was really odd, paying cash for WilliC pizza), sat at our usual table 'way off in a back corner (because we're antisocial like that). Went back to the lab for a bit, but I headed home pretty soon after, leaving him to putz around on the computers there and things.

When I got back, I found my mp3 player waiting for me. *happydance!* Now, my main goal with this was to get whatever I could that seemed somewhat less than sketchy, for under $50. I would LOVE an ipod, but, not going to have $300 free in the near future. I just wanted something little to drag around with me going to/from work, since now that school's back in session, Tom needs his ipod again and I can no longer gank it. And I realised I was usually only listening to like one or two of my playlists anyway, I wasn't changing things up much within even a week usually. So, Tom nosed around for me, then I nosed around, and after looking at the reviews and specs of a few different players, decided on this one. I was pretty psyched to find 1gb for like $40, there's a handful like that. I thought I'd have to settle for 512mgs at most, but, this is nice.

..that being said, this thing's nowhere near top-end. *giggles* Pretty lightweight plastic, and I'm a little concerned the usb cover isn't going to stay on long, but we'll see. There's an equalizer sort-of, inasmuch as there are seven presets, most of which sound like shit. It came with headphones, but I have other cheap headphones, that I might switch out just to see if it makes a difference. Given that this is mostly going to be listened to over the sound of traffic though, I don't really care too much. There is a voice recorder, and I actually had to read through the manual to figure out how to get back *out* of it. idek. The manual has grammar/vocabulary/punctuation/pluralization errors pretty much every other sentance. It's ridiculous. There was NO editting on that, and-- it has to be seen to be believed. good lord. *hides* But, now that I've spent five minutes or so figuring out the controls (which aren't terribly intuitive), and another two nosing through every option on it, I think I'm good. It does what I need it to do, shuffle, playback options, etc. It supports multiple folders, and I can drag'n'drop right from my itunes into explorer, so we should get along alright.

The little led screen says "Welcome" in a scripty lil font, and "Bye Bye!" with a.. I think it's a cutesy little horse or something. The interface has these bizarre and entirely random little pictures scattered throughout when you do things. Also, you can change the backlight color: white, yellow-green, aqua, green, fushia (slightly darker than the one in Paint), red, and blue. Only the first three, maybe four, can you actually read the black lettering against. But it's a little amusing.

It runs on an AAA battery.

This is going to be interesting.