Back in early January, when the Santa Ana winds were blowing in full force across the Southland, I was housesitting at my brother's house down in Irvine. Unbeknownst to me, however, was the fact that I had left my bathroom window in Montrose open. As a result of the strong winds, the screen was blown off of my window and I returned home on January 7th to a bathroom that was filled with dirt and branches and leaves and all other manner of debris. Of course, I cleaned it up within the next couple of days.

However, there was something that I failed to notice. The little metal trough along which the shower door slides had been filled with a layer of dirt. Naturally, this metal trough occassionally fills up with water from the shower. The result in this case was that the water in the trough mixed with the mud to form a sort of mini-swamp ecosystem. I didn't notice this at first but, eventually, this tiny swamp began to emit a very foul odor. I couldn't tell where this smell was coming from and thought that, perhaps, it was the result of one too many urine misfires. So, on Friday night, I set myself to the task of cleaning the bathroom. As I was scrubbing the floor by the toilet, I realized that the source of the odor was this tiny swamp.

While it was tempting to leave the goo there to develop and perhaps evolve into some sort of life form (relying largely on the Medieval theory of spontaneous generation), I decided, instead, that I would prefer not to have the foul odor filling my room. So, I got a knife from the kitchen and began to scoop out what was perhaps the most disgusting crud I have ever seen. After nearly retching on several occasions, I finally succeeded in cleaning out the trough. At this point, I turned on the shower in order to wash all the primordial ooze down the drain to begin its life in the sewers of Los Angeles. After being satisfied that the shower was now free from this scourge, I attempted to turn the shower off. Somehow, unfortunately, my audacious act of turning on my shower had somehow broken the hot water dial, and it would not turn off. I stepped into the shower (fully clothed), thinking that perhaps a better angle might help me turn it off. This, however, only resulted in me getting completely drenched by scalding hot water.

It was at this point that Ryan Cox and Shane Ross called me and demanded that I go out to some bar with them and serve as their designated driver. Their timing was impeccable, and of course resulted in strong irritation on my part. Honestly...the nerve of calling with such a request at a time when I was having a crisis of Biblical proportions. Was I supposed to just leave the shower running and let my bathroom flood?

I politely declined their offer to be their bitch and hung up the phone. I looked at the clock and noticed it was about 9:30. Realizing that the apartment manager usually goes to bed slightly early, I ran down to his apartment and knocked on his door. He opened the door to find me standing there, dripping with water. I explained to him that my shower would not turn off and he replied, in his thick Armenian accent, "Yes, that is a problem." He came up to my apartment and spent the next hour or so banging away at various things in my bathroom, until he was finally able to shut the water off.

So, that was how I spent my Friday evening. At the moment, I am sitting in the computer lab here at CSUN in between classes. It honestly feels really weird to be back on a college campus. This school is quite smaller than UCSD, so I've already got a few of those "people you always see." You know the kind of people. They're part of your life, but you don't really know anything about them other than vague descriptions like The Guy on the Bus, or The Guy with That Hat, or The Girl Who Always Wears Those Pants That Are Mostly Blue But Are Sometimes Green. As of yet, I haven't given names to any of them, except for The Guy with the Mullet Who Wears the Earphones.

My favorite such person at UCSD was the subject of a more or less four year long obsession for me. Purple Jacket Girl was her name. For four years, I would always see Purple Jacket Girl around campus...just one out of 25,000 people who attended the school. But yet, every quarter, we always seemed to have classes in the same area. Purple Jacket Girl was, to be honest, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. And she always wore that jacket, regardless of the time of year. I think at one point she was even in a class of mine. Did I talk to her? Ha! Of course not. It was almost as if talking her would destroy the mystique of the Purple Jacket. Like what if I started talking to her and found out that the reason she wore that jacket was to cover up scars that were the result of years and years of psoriasis. I just don't think I could have handled that.

So, instead of talking to her as a more suave and confident man would have done, I was simply content to let the legend speak for itself. That's something that, perhaps, I will attempt to change here. Who knows...in a few weeks maybe I'll have enough courage to talk to The Guy with the Mullet Who Wears the Earphones.