Yet Another Trip to the Quad Shitties...

Augie has changed. It's no longer about LAN parties, all-nighters, or the gazebo. It's an endless series of awkward moments fought by memories and nostalgia. Augie—and its consumption of my life—has become a relic of the past.

Augie has changed. The age of Batman has become the age of new blood... All in the name of graduations of companions of old. Augie has changed. When the student body has forgotten my plight... Augie becomes just another nameless school to me.

Augie has changed. My time has ended. My stay is over. But there's one more thing I must do... One last punishment I must endure. Erase my genes... Wipe this meme from the face of the earth. This... is my final mission.

(Oh God, that Kimber Operator 1911 is so sexy...)

...At least that's what I had thought about a week ago, before what would be my final visit to Augustana College. In fact, due to my love of theatrics, I was thinking of not telling anyone that it would be my last visit and leaving all mysteriously while spreading all sorts of misinformation about my location. Ultimately, I'd leave a giant envelope with the above speech, enclosed along with a bunch of personalized letters to each of my friends saying goodbye. In fact, I'd even bought the stationery for this prank since, up until leaving, I was considering going through with it. Ultimately, I chose not to, not only because this prank was just too horrible for my morals, but because within the first half-hour of arriving, I realized that there was no reason for me to feel that way, since my worry of feeling out of place was just a paranoia trip.

Anyways, as I did with my Pitt trip, I'll go through what I did day by day.

Friday:

I left for Jumah (Friday) prayer at the masjid, saw a squirrel get run over, went to work after prayers, stopped by the house for ten minutes to grab a few things and then left. I was hoping to catch the Bingo game at Augustana, so I took the short, but toll-ridden way there. I think it would've been my fastest drive to the QC if it wasn't for traffic and construction. In any case, I arrived on campus at about 9:15 and quickly changed into my Batman costume. Upon arriving at the College Center for Bingo, I was reunited with a large group of my friends waiting for me along with an even larger group of fresh blood that'd never seen Batman before. You know what? I'll admit it here and now: I dress up for the attention. Screw you.

Me, my wife Megan (right) and our adorable daughter Liz (center) after Bingo

Anyways, after a six game losing streak of Bingo, we left to head to the gazebo--which, two years ago, was a haven for all of my friends to hang out and simply enjoy ourselves without having to worry about whatever was on our minds at the time. Glad to see that hadn't changed even after this time. Plus, there's nothing more delightful than harassing slews of drunk kids as Batman. Afterwards, we visited two of my friends in desk security at their respective posts. That night, I was often asked, "Why so serious?" I responded (in my Batman voice, no less), "Because my parents are deeeaaaad!" Anyways, later that night I attempted to meet up with the other set of friends I know. Upon learning the location of their house thanks to Penis Sam, I managed to break in since the door was unlocked. Unfortunately, no one was home except for Oz, who was a bit shocked when I grabbed him and yelled "Where is he?!" I felt bad afterwards because his girlfriend was sleeping at the time, but fortunately she didn't wake up. Oz was kind enough to drop me off where the other kids were. Attempting to surprise them, the plan backfired when some girl I'd never met answered the door leading me to believe I'd gotten the wrong house. So I didn't get to scare anyone, but I was met with quite a bit of tipsy joy when everyone saw me. It's nice being appreciated for once (I'm looking right at you, Lindsay...). We soon left said person's house, who shared it with a girl who despises me (it's a long story) and went back to the Kremlin, as they called it, where they forced me to play Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. I must say, the gun porn in that game is almost overwhelming. There's some sick pleasure I get from tacticooling the hell out of an M4 and shooting a FROG with a Masterkey. Anyways, I got back to Megan's house at about 6AM. I half-expected to run into Lindsey since she wakes up so early, but at that point I was so tired I just collapsed in the basement and went to bed. Oh, and I forgot to mention; I was staying in a house of four girls. It was either that or a house of guys that hadn't had the dishes done since July and most likely never had the trash taken out (or even thrown away for that matter), along with booze scattered all over the place.

Saturday:

I don't even remember what the morning was like. I remember having a cute family breakfast with the girls, but I can't recall what we ate. Maybe if one of them reads this, they can remind me. After showering, ironing my clothes for the stay, and getting dressed, Lindsey and I walked first to the Kremlin to mess with Andrew's Airsoft guns for short bit and then headed towards Aldi to shop for materials to make dinner that night.

I initially planned to make my two specialties. The first is known as Chicken Makhni, which translates to Butter Chicken, a slight misnomer because there's no butter used in the dish. Apparently it's known by the name because of the texture of the sauce...which is why my friends call it Nacho Curry. The second is my corn, the still nameless dish that's been met with disgust about 100% of the time I mention it to people, but is almost universally loved once they get to know it. Hey, it reminds me of me! I also decided to make a lentil dish (known as "dahl," the same word for the letter "d" in Arabic) for Shmoo since she's a vegetarian. Lindsey and I proceeded to start making dinner around 5:30, after another MGS4 session at the Kremlin.

Note to self: Tell Steve to hire Lindsey when we open the Bitchin' Kitchen in the future.

As dinner was completed, the corn turned out wonderful as usual (and I made new believers of my cooking philosophy!), as did the Nacho Curry. However, Liz couldn't handle the spices, but that may have been because she bit into a cardamom seed, which isn't the best idea. I was actually worried that there'd be an imbalance of spices among the other materials (seeing that I brought the amount required from home and didn't have immediate access to any more), but it turned out pretty well. As for the dahl, I'll admit that it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. It was my first attempt and my mom did say that it's a harder dish to make, but Shmoo and the rest of the girls liked it, so I was happy. Live and learn, no? Hopefully next time I'll do better. I mean, I'm sure even my mom (the greatest cook on this planet) wasn't proud of the dishes she made during her younger days.

Another note to self: Lindsey is way hotter than Lindsay.

Afterwards, I ditched the girls (as they were headed to some concert) to walk around campus for a bit, hoping to run into some people that I'd known during my yearlong visit. I ran mostly into people I didn't recognize, so I returned to Megan's house, where Lindsey, Liz and I walked to Whitey's Ice Cream (how apt) to get dessert. Afterwards, I headed towards the Kremlin to mess around with Andrew's Airsoft guns a bit more. It was actually rather funny, because as I was firing his M14, I was approached by a man who began questioning me about the gun. I freaked out for a bit, thinking it was an off-duty cop that was about to bust a brown kid with a gun. It turned out it was just the landlord with some info about the house who was quite the gun nut. We began talking about guns, of course, and I guess he owns everything from an AK to a Garand. Now I wish I'd stayed simply so he could've taken me with him to a range...

Later that night the kids at the Kremlin decided to have a party (yes, that kind of party)...and that awkward feeling returned full force as I simply sat in the corner while they all drank and talked about stuff that I had no idea about. Fortunately, April was nice enough to listen to my laments and made me feel better. Even still, I felt out of place so I took another walk around campus with Jake, who also wasn't drinking. Of course, I then received a barrage of phone calls by Dale, Jack and Andrew wanting me to play more MGS4.

Allow me to explain. I used to dress up as Big Boss at Augustana before Batman entered the picture. Unfortunately, no one knew who Big Boss actually was. So I introduced Dale, Jack and Andrew to the MGS series by playing through MGS1-3 during 12-4AM every night for about a month. Thus, when MGS4 came out, they didn't want anyone but me to play it for them for tradition's sake. I couldn't argue with that.

I got back to Megan's place around 5AM this time. I wasn't tired for whatever reason, so I decided to watch an episode of Cowboy Bebop before falling asleep. Next thing I know, it's 9AM and the DVD is on loop at the title screen. I guess I was tired after all.

Sunday:

Woke up relatively early yet again. The morning was a blur yet again, though I think this was the day Liz and I made eggs with tomato gravy. I felt a little bit like Naomi teaching Sunny how to make eggs in MGS4. Lindsey had one of her art pieces on display at the Figge Museum of Art in Davenport. When Faisal and I went to the museum back when I first visited Augustana as a prospective student, we arrived about ten minutes before it closed and weren't able to see much. Plus, Lindsey was planning on biking across the Mississippi on her own and I couldn't let her do that, so I figured I'd drive her. It was a pretty fun trip, though I felt awful that I didn't know she was an art major until I saw her piece, which was a sculpture of a geisha's head. The other works were pretty cool, too, like a teapot that looked like a chair.

Random Stupid Adil moment: I was looking at the parking meter trying to figure out how much change to put in when a guy drives by and yells "It's free on Sundays!"

Later that day, Jack and I attempted to find a Kosher butchery so he could make me a steak the way white people do. Our quest was fruitless, so Jake, April and I walked to Hyvee attempting to do the same. That quest, too, was fruitless. Afterwards, we went to my friend Allison's house in order to meet up to have dinner at La Rancherita--a restaurant which every Augustana student is required to eat at their first week of attending the school. I guess it was better two years late than never. Now I wish I had known about the place earlier, since it was delicious, especially the salsa. It was so good that I ate the entire bowl to the shock of my friends, since I guess to them, even a tiny bit on top of a chip was enough to kill them with the spiciness.

When we'd left the restaurant, Allison had the crazy idea of dying my hair. I couldn't say no to that. The trip to Walgreen's was pretty embarrassing for everyone. April saw her ex-boyfriend buying condoms and I publicly noted how badly I wanted to bang Allison solely due to her purple hair, right in front of the cashier. I felt pretty bad afterwards, actually, since she has to go to that Walgreens if she needs any pharmaceutical needs. At least she has a friend there, now...

Now, the thing with dying my hair is that the pure black hairs are pretty much unaffected by anything except a concentrated dose of bleach. Seeing that I love having black hair (and that brown hair on Desi's is a sure sign they're a douchebag), my silver/gray hairs are the only ones that actually ended up getting dyed, much as they did two years prior when they were dyed purple.

I had four choices in hair dyes: red, blue, purple and pink. I've already done purple, so that was out. I thought blue would be too dark with my black hair, so that left red and pink. I wanted to do red in order to make Lindsay proud of me, but I gave into peer pressure and went pink. At least Shmoo thought I looked hot...even if she is a lesbian.

Later that night, the girls and I had our spa night. Since Megan didn't have any masque on hand, we ended up making our own with household items as noted in that previous post. It kinda looked like we were puking on the person having the mixture spread across their face. I did notice my face felt smoother after washing off the faux masque. Maybe I should make this a regular thing?

The spa night continued with some massages, which I have too much fun with. I could have used one myself, now that I think about it, since my back was hurting from sitting so awkwardly whenever I played MGS4. Megan did walk on my back Saturday night, popping a few vertebrae into place, but I should have had her do it a second time.

I will admit that I love doing girly things. I wish I had more feminine friends, sometimes.

Again, I ditched the girls for some more MGS4 action at the Kremlin that night. I had to beat this game before I left. Plus, I was having WAY too much fun forgetting that it's supposed to be about sneaking and instead just killed everyone. I got home around 5AM as usual. This time, I was too tired to crawl on top of the futon and ended up passing out on the floor. I'm actually quite surprised I didn't wake up in a puddle of drool!

Monday:

Gah, this post is WAY too long. I need to find a way to compress this.

I visited more people, including Nicole, who's among my favorite people at Augustana. I felt completely awful that I left last time without saying goodbye and was really worried that maybe she had graduated. And with a name like Nicole Nelson, tracking her down via Google or whatever would have been impossible, especially since she rejects any form of convenient communication technology, like e-mail and cell phones. Needless to say, I was delighted when I learned she was a senior this year, so I still had a chance to talk and give her a proper goodbye.

I've realized something. There's no substitute for having a good conversation with someone while sitting out on the back porch and admiring the beauty of nature. I wish I could do that more often, especially with someone as insightful as Nicole.

Anyways, I spent most of the day going back and forth between the Kremlin and playing MGS4 and going to Megan's house to hang out with the girls. I wore my vest all day, even if it was 95 degrees out. You see, I have a pretty poor self-image. But God damn, I look gorgeous in that vest. Especially when wearing a pink shirt that matched my new hair color. And I just had to toss in my Big Boss eyepatch. I met Megan's mom for a second and I guess she wanted to joke about it, but didn't want to offend me, since she wasn't sure if it was real or not. I also spent a little bit of time at April's house, which had a pretty cool attic hidden inside of a closet.

Also, I'd thought that it was the first day of Ramadan, until Faisal told me otherwise. So I fasted for about half the day and ended up breaking it by making a bagel sandwich at Nicole's place. I guess we have very similar tastes in food. Looks like I'll be making more Nacho Curry during my next visit.

That night, I beat MGS4. I do love how the end of the game is about an hour of actual gameplay and about four hours of cutscenes. Then again, that describes the entire MGS series pretty well, haha. This time, I got home at 4AM, my earliest return yet! I really appreciate how Megan gave me the key to her house for the weekend. I certainly wouldn't have trusted someone like me with it.

Tuesday:

I was hoping I wouldn't sleep the day away, but unfortunately, the previous three nights of getting minimal sleep were catching up with me. Also, considering I had a three hour drive ahead of me that night and I had to wake up at 7AM on Wednesday, I decided it'd be best for me to get some additional sleep beforehand, since today was the first true day of fasting. Thus, I wouldn't be able to fall back on caffeine at all.

Since everyone had classes/work to attend to today, I spent most of the time by myself. I figured now would be a good as time as any to visit the friends I had on the Augustana Faculty.

Now, there were only two people I truly respected that were a part of that group. The first was Michael Tendall, my counselor who talked me through a lot of my psychological problems. We met weekly starting around January 2007 up until when I finally left. I honestly cannot thank him enough for all his help in keeping me [marginally] sane during those times when I couldn't sleep and was having crazy thoughts in my head. I do recall him telling me once that it would be thanks enough that I recovered, so I'm sure he was happy to see that I was doing well.

The second person whom I truly respected at Augustana was Dean Stephen Backmeyer, a seemingly bitter old man whom I dealt with on multiple occasions when I got into trouble. What I loved about him was how rational he was; upon explaining my situation about why I got into the trouble I did, he understood completely and let me off of the hook without much of a problem. In fact, he even pulled some strings for me so that once I decided I would leave Augustana, it would be with as few problems as possible. Also, I found it hilarious that when I was caught with Airsoft guns in my room, we ended up spending more time talking about guns than he did yelling at me. He was also happy to see that I was doing well. And it was even nicer to see that he was taking steps to change Augustana so situations like mine wouldn't happen again.

See, I recall one very specific series of events whenever I discussed my thoughts for leaving Augustana with staff members. Every single person would offer their sympathies and listen to me, but always gave me advice that I should stay, and even going so far as to lie to me so that I would stay. I assume they wanted me to do so not only because I was a source of income for them, but a source of diversity in a school that was starving for color. Ultimately, they were more interested in their own interests or the interests of Augustana College as a whole instead of my own well-being. They were investing their time and fake-sympathy so that I would suffer for longer just so they could make some extra money and have some better PR. It truly disgusts me.

Mr. Tendall and Dean Backmeyer were the only two people who were willing to listen to me for real and offer their true opinion. Ultimately, they were entertaining both sides of my dilemma and understood that leaving was in my best interests. Not only that, but I just felt that they were speaking to me not because they were pursuing their own interests, but rather that they saw that I needed support and desired to see me feel better. That, you see, is how more people should be. I'm glad that Augustana has at least two good staff members on a team of hundreds.

After seeing the two of them, I went to visit Taddy Kalas, the polar opposite of the two people I mentioned above. Don't even get me started on her nor the lies she told me in order to get me to stay. I just needed her to send some information to DePaul regarding transferring credits. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if she's forgotten already.

I spent the rest of the day in the College Center, hanging out like days of old. It was nice seeing more old friends and getting all nostalgic about the past. After making one final visit to the Kremlin and getting Jake started on MGS1, as watching my play through MGS4 piqued his interest in the series, I started to get my stuff together to leave. I spent my last few hours running around campus saying goodbye to everyone and then headed home. I had intended to stop at the Moline Masjid for Iftar, but I just didn't have the time to spend since I needed to get home in order to wake up so early the next day. The drive home wasn't bad aside from the construction. I drove more conservatively, as my previous drive home from Augustana resulted in my first ticket.

Looking back, I think this was my favorite visit to Augustana. While quite a few of my friends had graduated by now, my time wasn't spread so thinly as I tried to make an effort to spend time with so many people. I think I stayed long enough to where I got all that I needed to be done without overstaying my welcome. But most importantly, I realized I still have a place at Augustana, despite so much that has changed in my absence. Of course, things would have changed had I stayed anyways, so the sooner I realized that, the sooner I began to enjoy myself.

So, would anyone like to come with me when I go in December?

* * *

As for the song of the post, I've always found that this song represented my stay at Augustana almost too perfectly. There's so many little pieces to the song that each signify the various facets of that year, each carrying so much emotion, like pain, fear, fury, sorrow and joy. I can't really explain it, but I hope you get the idea. Also, that last bit that starts about 5:07 into the song always gives me the chills when I hear it.

And a random factoid? Did you know that Shigeru Miyamoto wanted Kirby to be yellow, while Masahiro SAKURAIII (Kirby's creator) wanted him to be pink? The argument endured up to the point where artwork of the game couldn't be finalized, ultimately leading much of the early Kirby art to portray him as being in black and white, as his home console, the Game Boy, displayed him that way to begin with. Of course, Sakurai won in the end, though you can play as a yellow Kirby in the SSB games.

Whoo, time to sleep now.