October 13 (The Beginning) (Part 2)

8:45 AM—Awoke and breakfasted.

9:30—Decided to create a four-year plan (or, rather, a two-and-a-half-year plan) to figure out the remaining classes I need/want to take and how those will fit in my schedule. Discovered that I want to take a lot of classes still at Macalester, and it’s going to be hard to fit all those in along with the requirements for both majors and the possibility of study abroad. Is it even possible to do all three??

3:00 PM—Began baking pumpkin bars. My sister, in her incredible wonderfulness, sent me a specially designed homemade mix as a consolation for the tragic demise of my beloved Coffee News. It is amazing how therapeutic and relaxing baking can be—and how much it can create a feeling of home even when you’re far away from your actual home.

Baking Photo Montage!!

I sat in the lounge kitchen (which for once did not smell like terrifying popcorn) watching them bake and enjoying the wafting smells of deliciousness while continuing to work on my college plan.

4:00—Thus commenced the Doty 4 Reunion Tea Party of Loveliness! Most of the awesome people from my floor last year reconvened in our room to have a silly tea gathering—Keo, Sorcha, Rachel, Tori, Lisa, Emma, Lizzy, Charmaine, and I. We drank lots of tea, ate lots of pumpkin bars, and talked about anything and everything.

Tea Party Photo Montage!!

5:15—Charmaine, Lisa, and I made the spontaneous decision to go see Next to Normal, a musical, because we discovered that there would be free tickets available at the theater before the show. This required some logistical maneuvering and figuring out the way Hourcar works.

6:30—We arrived in downtown Minneapolis for the show. While trying to find the theater (my navigators got us rather lost), we noticed several oddly dressed characters roaming the streets. They seemed to be covered in some sort of viscous red substance and walking with a strange stumbling limp. Some of them seemed to have oddly deadened eyes.

7:30—Next to Normal started. Everyone in it did an extremely good job both of singing and acting, but the show itself was very distressing. One of the people I went with described it as “emotionally battering,” which I think was accurate.

10:25—We left the theater after the show and suddenly the full weight of what we’d seen hit us. The people wandering around earlier were not just wearing costumes, but were indeed zombies. We fled the city in terror, afraid for our lives. The zombies covered the streets, thousands upon thousands roaming the city.

From Jennifer Juniper’s Myspace

I managed to escape to the freeway without hitting any zombies, despite the temptation. I argued that it wouldn’t matter if I hit them, as they were dead anyway, but my friends had some qualms.

10:45—Upon our return to the Macalester area, we struggled unsuccessfully with the Hourcar gas card and eventually had to return the car late, which rather sucked. This may seem like an unsubstantial woe in the face of the horrors our world is facing, but was oddly poignant at the time.

1:00 AM—Fell into an exhausted slumber, the possible end of the world hanging like a dark cloud over my sleep.