I watch as the snow falls silently, and heavily, as I make my way up to a building. I ask someone making their way through the night with a bookbag, if this was the right building, “Voorhees Hall”, he nods, and without another words continues on, face bent to the snow swirling around him.

My thoughts of the college being made entirely from pieces of leftover castle is only confirmed, as I make my way up the steps; they creak and groan beneath my weight, one of the heaters comes to life and all you hear is CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! as hot water gushes through it.

I pass sign after sign pasted on the doors of the third floor, my footsteps echoing strangely off the hollow and empty walls.  The hallway is unusually bright, and absent of any usual paintings, student work or otherwise.  I stop suddenly in front of an open doorway; I’ve reached the room I’m looking for.

“Doctor…um…” I say quietly, my voice catching in my throat; even though I’ve whispered the question I can hear my voice, magnified ten-fold in the empty hallway.  The man sitting on his computer, typing away, looks up.

“You must be Jillian,” He says, getting up quickly from a desk, “I’m glad you found it, we just finished renovating this building…”

He waves dismally to the white empty walls in the weird hallway and ushers me inside.  He pushes the door closed, so that it comes close to clicking in its door frame, but not quite; a tiny sliver of light is seen on a bookcase nearby.

I blink and look around the room properly, my eyes adjusting to the dimmer light in this room.  It doesn’t look anything like an office, but merely part of a library, and a desk was accidentally placed here.  Bookshelves cover the largest wall, running the length of the room right up against a small window frame.  The bookshelves are huge, towering to the ceiling, and stuffed with all sorts of computer books.   You can barely make out the desk with all of the papers sitting on top of it.  The desk is stuffed between bookshelves, and looks like a dolls toy next to the towering books surrounding it.  There are piles of papers and folders everywhere there is room, which isn’t much.  A chair sits half-hazardously near the desk, and looks well-used.  I take off my jacket and look around.

“Yes, just there is fine,” He says, taking a stack of papers and shifting them to behind his desk, he points to the cleared square of space he left on the floor, and I set my jacket and bag down.

“Sorry, it’s…it must not be what you are used to - I usually clean I just didn’t have any time today…” He stammers, looking more and more embarrassed as he follows my eyes, looking around the room.

“It’s perfect,”  I say, grinning.

We introduce ourselves proper-like and he starts talking about what classes he teaches, what to expect at Carroll, and what his duties are as acting Chair of Computer Science, etc.  Pretty soon, we get down to talking about my required classes.

“Yes, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”  He says, turning in his chair to look out the window as well.  His window overlooks a quad-type area, where the snow is falling thick and fast, sometimes I see it swirl up right past his window, as a gust of air pushes it around.

I start, realizing that he took my staring off into space as fascination.  He was just giving a lengthy description on the Object Oriented programming class I would have to take, first most likely, a Java class.  I lost track after he mentioned Eclipse; I’ve already taken two Java classes at ISU.

“I…yes, both beautiful, and terrible,” I say slowly, thinking of the long drive back to Milwaukee I’ll have to do, soon enough.  He nods, understanding.

“So, how many years do you think it will take you?”  He asks, sitting up a little straighter and turning back around, “Also, are there any classes that you are considering taking for the graduate elective perhaps?”

I look at him, blinking, dazed.  I suddenly feel like I’m sitting in on a test, the answer hangs in the air, tantalizingly close, but my brain is sluggish and unresponsive.

“I…maybe 3, 4 years?”  I stutter, looking at him for the right answer.

“It was an open-ended question,”  he says, grinning.  He brings up a list of the classes that are scheduled out for this summer, explaining how the registration process works, and flips open the small, green book that holds the list of required classes I need to graduate.

“So, according to this you will be done in 2.5 years, that is, if you take one class during each summer,”  He says, pointing to the piece of paper I’ve been writing like mad on for the past half-hour.  “So you’ll be what, 27, 28 then?  That won’t be so bad, if you want to continue with a Ph.D in the future, I mean.”

“I’ll be 24, er, 25 maybe,”  I say, doing quick Math in my head.  He gives a theatrical start of surprise.

“Oh, wow, you’re saying you’re 22 now?!”  He exclaims, looking at me as if seeing my plainly for the first time.  The look on his face is different, I can’t tell if he’s trying to figure me out or is mildly impressed, the shocked look remains on his face as he looks at me.  A few more minutes pass as I pack up my stuff, him talking excitedly about a new class he will be teaching in the fall.

Soon after that, we say our good-byes, and I’m on my way, feeling suddenly like my future is laid out before me, a very clear road.

I start with one class this Summer — should I write “INSANE” on my forehead now, or wait a few months, you think?

This past week my mom came up and visited, and after she left I promptly bought a bottle of wine. Actually, it was two bottles, just to be sure; you know how these things are! I only drank one…and a half. Overall, you could say it was fun!

While she was here we did all sorts of fun things, including frolicking in the sunflowers, suntanning on a beach and shoveling snow. Well, that last idea is the only probable one because it’s the MIDDLE. Of. Winter.

We did all the usual things, like go shopping and whatnot, and then we went to the Milwaukee Art Museum, or, better known as (BKA) the Milwaukee Museum of Artistic Adventures. We also went to the Domes, but I figured I would save those pictures for another post; I’m running out of my stored posts, alright?!

So, this is the actual building, and I must say, it is JUST…like that. However you want to interpret it. When you go inside, it’s a tiny desk and elevator music playing softly in the background as you walk in to this HUGE fake-marble hall. Of course, that big white ship-looking building isn’t even the art museum itself, oh no, they have you walk down this long hallway into the rejected art building made of mud and bricks, no, bricks and mortar, erm…rejected art and rubber glue, dammit! Well, the hall was nice enough, anyways.

That is looking out into Lake Michigan. I have to say it was a terribly overcast day, and I did a bit of doctoring techniques I learned in Photoshop recently from a library book. Not half-bad, eh?

That is looking up at the ceiling, it seems to go on FOREVER.

But, it doesn’t.

The conversation kinda went like this:
Mom: Jillian, why is there a guy standing over there?
Me: Looks like a Janitor.
Mom: I think it’s ‘art’…?
Me: Uhm, well, if it isn’t he is standing awfully still…

We walk over, and there is a guard standing RIGHT next to the guy. I couldn’t believe how realistic it looked! As tall as a regular human, and it looks EXACTLY like a janitor. The sign next to him says that his clothes are fashioned from a janitor in the 1970’s-era. There is a sign next to him, demonstrating what human contact can do to destroy an art piece. The guy is really, REALLY interesting, and in great condition, considering the amount of time it has stood without any rope surrounding it, and how many people have visited the museum, etc.

These TV’s were in a HUGE room, must’ve been stacked about 20 feet high, and all displaying different pictures at different points in time, really interesting to stare at, it was almost like a reverse lava-lamp, instead of it being soothing or calming and not being able to take your eyes off of it, you can’t take your eyes off of it because you are trying to catch a glimpse of all of the images whizzing past the TV’s. The room was dead-silent, no noise from any of the TV’s, just images flickering very fast.

Suddenly, I hear something faint, coming from behind me. I turn around to find the source, and I see a doll sitting on the ground, with a chair toppled over. I guess a famous artist is known for projecting faces onto dolls, it was rather creepy. As I got closer, one could hear what sounded like a monotonous speech coming from a small tape recorder on the floor by the doll, which was part of the ‘art’. It said things like “I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough”, and “I just wanted it all to end”. Let’s just say I moved on quickly from that one.

Now THIS, THIS was weird, man. It was call “infinity”, and created in the 60’s. It’s an entirely glass box, where one has to put on these ’slippers’ to get inside the box, and only two people are allowed at a time because of weight limit or whatnot, but man, that is what was inside. At first I like “No, I’m not going in there,” because you look down and you just see these, well, you know it was lights but it looked like it fell into nothing.

In the end my mom literally had to PULL me into the box; I have to say it resembled too much like a very high bridge for my comfort, not stable at all and if it broke I would fall into nothing, FOREVER! The only way I went into that stupid box was to tell myself over and over again that the floor is below, and NOT nothingness. Really odd feeling of floating-type when you went inside and pulled the black flap closed.

This was pretty cool, called “The Matrix”. I was leading in front, going through the Matrix-like hall. When my mom said to ‘keep going’ because the path wasn’t through yet, I stopped suddenly, looked up and said “Mom, It’s a ROOM”. I too thought it was mirrors and lights like how the “Infinity” box was set up, but it was an actual room filled with these strands of blue lights shimmering oddly. The room was HUGE!

Annnddd finally I give you, what I thought was one of the cooler ‘artworks’, it was just this giant table filled with glass objects.

I know you can’t see it very well, but this is a close-up of one of the objects on the table; it’s a fruit bowl with glass apples, glass grapes, etc. VERY cool. Some of it was cracked around the edges, I wasn’t sure if it was done on purpose or if some stupid art-goer did it, but either way most of the glass objects were intact and it was nice!

Overall, I had a lot of fun, at the art museum, with my mom (and the tequila that followed…). I’d have to say, mission, accomplished!