Marie
Can you believe that
she does that to me every morning? How
annoying can one roommate be, I ask you?
At least she got the animal right... lion! (This is how you feel when you are sun sign Leo with Scorpio moon
sign... every thing must go my way... okay, I hope I'm not too bad.)
Anyway... the Phantom's entrance into The Millennium, take one... and... ACTION!
Since Lisa and I had already discovered that time-travel enjoys wreaking havoc on one's digestive system, we all made a point not to eat the day of our departure. Much of that day was spent packing anyway and lugging the crap across the street where Elsie had been parked since we'd gotten there. (And for those of you who fancy yourselves amateur mechanics, yes I ran out there at least every other day to start her up and run the engine a bit... yeesh!) It took quite a lot less time than the first time around thanks to the extra set of arms that were Erik and, truth be told, that man could probably have picked me up with little straining. Strong dude... let me tell you.
The three of us stood outside of the Opera in the early morning hours, staring up at the building as if saying good-bye to a dear friend. It was a clear morning, one of those where everything's so still and misty that you half-expect a unicorn or two to emerge from the fog.
"We'll see it again, you know. The Opera still exists in 2000." I offered to Erik.
"It's not that..." he shook his head. "I helped build that... I lived there for twenty years. I've grown accustomed to reining in the cellars... now I'm faced with a new adventure. But I feel like I'm losing a part of me."
I placed a hand on his shoulder in consolation. "You know that if you don't like it, you can always come back... I'd be happy to drive you. And besides, you can visit and such... we wouldn't want Carlotta to get too comfortable, would we?"
He smiled, a sight that was slowly becoming familiar to me. "God forbid. Shall we?"
"Let's shall." I replied with a grin, taking his arm and approaching Elsie, who was humming in preparation for actually being driven.
*Indiana Jones theme
music* Yes, again!
"Marie... for God's sake, shut that off!" Lisa yelled at me.
I proceeded to fast forward my John Williams tape in Elsie's stereo with a contrite expression on my face. (Courtesy of Doug... the stereo, not the contrite expression, you silly person.)
"I thought Indiana Jones was appropriate." I sulked in the driver's seat as I punched the coordinates for home in and pushed the play button once again. Imperial March from the Star Wars trilogy came on instead. Lisa, on the other hand, proceeded to head-bang to the music. Both Erik and I paused and looked at her with curious expressions.
"What?" she whined in fake insult. "I was raised on bad eighties metal... sue me."
"I would but, I could scrape twelve cents off of the sidewalk a lot easier." I quipped, just ducking the slashing hand that came my way. However, on the backdraft, she managed to knock my head into the steering wheel.
"Ow! Bitch..." I muttered, the insult not nearly as serious as is usually required. "Is everybody ready?"
"Yes." Erik nodded with a deep breath.
"Fasten your seat-belts... Houston, we are clear for take off in five... four... three..."
"Push the damn button, Marie!" Lisa shrieked in my ear.
"Threetwoone, go!" I hurried through the rest of the countdown.
Again the sensation of blacking out and then waking up in completely different surroundings. In this case, those surroundings were the Beaver College parking lot and, wonder of wonders, we were in a parking space right in front of our dorm! (If you've ever been to Beaver College you know that the parking is absolutely horrid! Almost every time I wind up parking across campus... it's like not being able to park in your own driveway. On really bad days, I have to park in Cheltenham High's parking lot across Easton Road, which is like a highway at that point. All in all, not good.)
"Next time I see Doug... remind me to hug him." I giggled to Lisa.
Lisa laughed. "I'm sure he'll enjoy that immensely."
"Ew!"
"Oh, c'mon... you know he has a crush on you."
"Two words... statutory rape."
"Ew! Not you and my brother! That's just skanky!"
We all got out of the car and began unloading into our room, good old 310 in the Castle. (Yes, castle... Beaver College has a castle on its grounds called Grey Towers... Geez, haven't you read the obligatory All About Me page?) Again, this took less time than usual thanks to Erik's strong back. However we were all out of breath by the time we finished lugging everything up three flights of stairs to our room.
"This is not... very healthy... for the borderline... asthmatic." I panted, collapsing spread-eagle on my bottom bunk.
"God, Marie, it's not that bad... at least it's not as bad as our last room... that just smelled funny." Lisa playfully chucked one of my scrunchies at me.
"Whatever... I think I liked being on the first floor though." I threw it back.
"It's the castle! It's got that really cool mystique! And balconies!" Lisa chimed.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." I shrugged, managing to sit upright. "Anyone else want something to drink?"
"What do we have left?"
"Um... Sprite... tea... and apple juice."
"I'm voting Sprite... I need some sugar."
"Kay... Erik?" I asked, fishing through the meager remains in our cooler.
"Hmm... tea sounds relatively safe." he commented.
"Not entirely... it's Nestea."
"What?"
"Never mind... here." I tossed him the can, which he caught deftly. He regarded the aluminum can cautiously and, in the end, I had to open it for him.
"Ah... I see." he nodded, sending Lisa an evil look as she rolled on the floor laughing at him. "Are you quite finished, Lisa?"
"I guess." she sputtered, still laughing. Suddenly, she sat up, nearly banging her head on the bottom rung of our ladder. "Oh shit!" she exclaimed.
"What is your problem now?" I asked, rolling my eyes.
"I just remembered that I have an English paper due in two days! You know that thing I was doing all the research for at home?" she all but sprinted to her computer and notes.
"The one on biological warfare?" I asked.
"That's the one... oh spam!"
"Okay, chill. You do your spamming paper and we'll pop in Steel Magnolias to watch...that ought to relax you enough to actually concentrate on the paper." I sat her down in her chair and turned the monitor on for her.
"I have a hand gesture for you but right now I need my fingers for typing."
The next hour was spent listening to both the movie and the exclamations from Lisa that sounded strangely threatening. These were things like, "Shit, I need that article on botulism!" and "I need some damn Anthrax!" and the ever-popular "Plague... my kingdom for the plague!".
Towards the beginning of Shelby's death scenes, Erik and I were blasted out of our seats by a resounding, sonic blast of "OH FUCK!!!!"
"What?!"
"OH MY GOD!!!"
"What???!!!"
"OH SHIT!!!!"
"WHAT????"
Lisa looked over with a panic-stricken face and uttered the words that every computer consultant dreads hearing. "My computer froze... and I haven't saved the fucking revisions! Oh, spam!"
"Control, Alt, Delete." I parroted, "See what it says."
"I already tried that... if I do it again... my system will reboot and I'll lose it!" she whined several octaves above her normal speaking pitch.
We both tried several techniques to save the paper and unfreeze the computer but nothing worked... it was almost as bad as ER. (I need some keystrokes, stat! We're going to have to cold boot, everybody stand back. Clear!) In the end, that's exactly what we did... a cold boot. Lisa... was not thrilled.
"It's gone!" she whimpered. "The whole paper's gone!"
"Did you save it on your hard drive?"
"That's what I was doing when it fucking froze!" she yelled at me.
"Disk?"
"What disk?"
"The disk you saved it on halfway through."
"You think it'd be on there?"
"Check."
"Okay, life sucks... the world is shit... there's nothing on my disk! Not a fucking thing!" she screamed, pointing at the screen as though hoping it would magically appear beneath her fingertip.
"Give me the disk."
"Here." she flung the poor disk at me and I took it over to my PC to scan it. Lisa crawled (yes, crawled) over to my side, all but hanging on my shoulder. "Think it might be on there?"
"Could be."
"But I just checked, it erased my disk!"
"Shut up for a minute will you?"
"Okay."
I used that wonderful thing known as My Computer to look at every file on her disk. As before, no files came up as icons in the window... however, I noticed something written in the border... Zero (0) Files found... One (1) hidden.
"Look..." I pointed at that bit of information.
Gasp from Lisa. "Could that be it?"
"Could be... let's check."
"Have I ever told you that I love you?"
"No."
"Well, I do!"
"Um-huh... let's try to open it in WordPad and see what happens." I said after using Help to figure out how to access hidden files. WordPad did open it, but all of the formatting was gone and replaced by gobbledy-gook computer symbols.
"Is this at least the version you were trying to save?"
"YES!!!!! HAVE I TOLD YOU WHAT A NIFTY PERSON YOU ARE TODAY???"
"Um... no. Go re-format your paper." I handed her the disk back.
"There will be shrines built in your honor... there will be daily sacrifices... or at least incense until I can find a fatted calf."
"Lisa... go sit down, please?"
"Kay. I can do that."
Erik sat on the bed with a completely bewildered expression on his face. "What... was that all about?"
"That was Lisa nearly losing her paper which she just spent two-and-a-half hours on." I replied.
"I've never heard swearing like that outside of Persia." he commented, gracing Lisa with a cautious glance.
"Well, gee... there's goes your innocent flower impression of her." I grinned, running a virus check, just to be safe and advising Lisa to do the same.
"I've never heard a woman use language like that! I've never heard a man use language like that!" he exclaimed.
"Way to go, Lisa, you've offended Erik!"
"What?"
"He's offended by your extensive vocabulary of four-letter words."
"OK, darling... I know I barely used the word 'damn' in front of you before but... losing an English paper does something to you, it sends you into a spiral of psychotic episodes and renders you completely incapable of using anything but four-letter words. I'm still contemplating throwing the fucking computer out the fucking window into the fucking mud!" she said, turning back to her computer with a growl.
If Erik were standing, he would've taken several steps back. As it was, however, he was sitting on my bed and managed only to lean away from her.
"Welcome to 2000." I shrugged, finally strangling a laugh from Lisa.