The best part of this has been getting to meet, converse, and network with the fellow students as well as the presenting faculty. I had a great time with a fun group as we went out to lunch. More than any of our "getting to know you" activities in the class, talking with fellow students during meals really makes personal connections (and Facebook friends).
There was one REALLY disturbing element from the day: I saw a guy get tazed. I was nearly back to my hotel with one of my new friends when we heard the sound of a tazer (a kind of cheap one) going off only a few yards away from us. There was some altercation between the security guard at a store and one of the homeless (I think). Other security from somewhere else were calling in the incident, asking their dispatch to call the police and turn on the street's security cameras. The store security kept yelling at the homeless man to leave the area and then tazed him again when he didn't. We skirted the area and went on the hotel. The security guard used the tazer two more times, but this time as a threat--without touching the man. The homeless man went in our direction for a little while and then found something to start banging (it sounded like a trash can). Between this incident, and my wife's concern about me walking a mile away in this area, I have reconsidered my plan to go to the 7 PM mass tomorrow night.
Meanwhile, my room has only continued to creep me out. First, it's on the thirteenth floor ... and I registered into it on a Friday! The carpet coming out of the elevator gives me vertigo; yes, seriously. My door, as reported earlier, is behind a column. There is more vertigo-inducing wallpaper on the far wall in the bathroom. The place is a narrowly claustrophobic. There is a picture of a bison above my bed next to a picture of a woman who looks likes she's judging me (that's Janelle's job). My window looks into the interior of the building in a dystopian future sort of design.
Yeah, and I wonder why I didn't sleep well ...