Indiana

Well, here I am. I'm here in Indiana and I'm here, at long last, in the world of the blogger. I don't have much to say about Indiana thus far. It...exists. The people are friendly, but I can't say I've noticed the extra dose of friendliness that the Midwest is famed for. I hate my apartment and will never in a million years understand why people smoke. Actually, it's not fair to say I hate my apartment. If it smelled normal I would be pretty delighted with it. But let me just say, I think smoking is a disgusting habit and I don't understand why people would ever pick it up. I understand it's heinous to quit, but I really think if they would all think about me just a little bit more and themselves just a little bit less then we could come to a compromise that would benefit me. I mean us. I am thinking about the poor smokers as well!

Today for the first time I think I may have started to get a handle on the smell. Here's how you get rid of cigarette smoke: listen to and follow all of the advice that various family members, friends, and the internet can provide; wash down the walls, dust the carpet with baking soda, use vinegar liberally. Then go ahead and buy every deodorizer that looks like it has half a chance of working, cross your fingers and hope that one of them works. Magic!

In other news I went to my first of roughly three thousand orientation meetings today. It was for graduate student employees. I sat next to a guy, glanced at his paperwork (For those of you who know of my...tendency to be overly curious about things that don't concern me, I swear I wasn't being nosy, just glancing over) and it turns out he's from Utah. So we chatted and his wife was from Orem, they're in one of the other wards in the area and I'm sure if we had played the Mormon "do you know?" game we would have ended up discovering that we were third cousins once removed and were once in the same ward. You know, because there are actually only a thousand people in the Church. This came up yesterday in church when, after introducing myself in Sunday School, a girl ran up to me and said, "were you in the Sharon 7th ward?" and it turns out I used to visit teach her twin sister. Like I said, a thousand people tops.

And that's it for my first post. I make no guarantees of posting frequency. I don't even guarantee I'll remember the name of this blog two weeks from now. But it's a start. If I ever get around to feeling like my apartment is presentable in pictures I will take some and then start a new adventure of figuring out how to post them here. Again, no guarantees.