It cost HOW much?

I can’t believe no one made any comments about my fungus commercial the other day. I thought it was hilarious. But I suppose I have a weird sense of humor. You guys are a tough audience… :)

Well, everyone left to go back to Chicago on Saturday, so it’s quiet and lonely here in Texas Peopleville. It was nice to hang out with everyone – and it was fun to go to Seattle’s Best with a list of drinks every morning and watch the baristas scramble to fill our order. I tried, as usual, to add enough poison to Eric’s morning coffee to assure he’d no longer be “in the way,” but he seems to have built up an immunity to arsenic. (I’m just kidding, by the way… I don’t REALLY try to poison my brother… I mean, not ALL the time…)

So this weekend Rick and I drove down to St. Edward’s University to buy some books because Rick is going back to school this semester. St. Ed’s has a program called “New College,” which is for old people like Rick (not for people like ME, obviously... I’m WAY younger than Rick…) – actually, it’s for anyone who might not have the time to attend traditional classes during daytime hours, or can’t spend three days a week in class, etc. It’s a more accelerated program, and you can get college credits for experience you’ve already gained in the working world. They also have a campus up north, closer to where we live, so Rick won’t have to drive all the way into South Austin for class.

But we did have to drive into South Austin for the books, to the St. Ed’s bookstore on campus. Now, college textbooks are notoriously overpriced, although you can get a “refund” if you return them at the end of the semester:

Student: Here’s the book I bought for 60 bucks a few months ago.

Evil college bookstore overseer: Hmmm… looks like you really beat this thing up.

Student: What?? I kept it in a hermetically-sealed plastic bag and used salad tongs to turn the pages! I didn’t even carry it in my backpack – I used a silver-plated tray with a UV-blocking dome!!

Evil college bookstore overseer: Yeah… I think I can give you two dollars back. I’d give you three, but it looks like there’s a fingerprint in the corner…

(Evil college bookstore overseer is hit in the head by a pair of salad tongs…)

So we were expecting to spend a lot on Rick’s books, but we were still surprised when one of them turned out to be 143 dollars. $143? For ONE book?? The book is about “managing human resources” – hardly the kind of thing I’d expect to pay that kind of money for. I’ve flipped through the pages – there’s no money hidden inside. And the book itself doesn’t seem to DO anything – I mean, if it could jump up and run over to the sink and do the dishes, then MAYBE I could see paying that kind of money for it. But no – it’s just a book. It just sits there doing nothing, waiting to be read. Waiting to impart its (apparently extremely valuable) human resources wisdom.

But overpriced books aside, our trip to St. Edward’s got me thinking about my OWN college experiences, and how I don’t have a degree yet, either. (Even ERIC has a college degree – and he’s been trying to work the arsenic out of his system for years…) And St. Ed’s has undergone an explosion of sorts – buildings are popping up like weeds on campus. It’s still a small campus – you can probably walk from one end to the other in about fifteen minutes – but new buildings are overtaking parking lots and what used to be empty fields of grass. All the original buildings are still there – but they’re blending in with new buildings, and the entire landscape has been changed. And even the old buildings have undergone some changes and renovations – like the bookstore where we bought the nearly-priceless book. That bookstore used to be a café – and before it was a café, it was the first indoor swimming pool in Texas. (They eventually filled in the pool with concrete and painted it blue – so everyone can remember that it USED to be a pool…)

Visiting the campus got me thinking that I might not mind going back to that school – especially now, when everything seems to be in the midst of change and the old is seamlessly melding with the new. As long as it’s happening with the school, I might as well provide an illustration of the same thing in my own life. Me, the not-quite-as-young-as-most-college-kids student, blending in with all the young college students. Yeah. I could handle that. Maybe.

Well, it’s something to think about. For now, the 143-dollar book and I are going to wash the dishes…