Back to school

This week my friend and I set out for the campus where our cake decorating class was going to be held, and wishing to be prompt, nerdy students, we left home approximately 24 hours before the class started. That time was broken down in this way:

Drive to campus: 14 minutes

Drive around looking for parking spot: 19 hours, 36 minutes

Walk around looking for building: 3 hours, 8 minutes

Walk around in building looking for classroom: 1 hour, 2 minutes 

Find restroom: .005 seconds

Although the parking lots were very full, fortunately there were helpful signs directing us to acceptable parking areas, such as Red spaces for faculty only, Green spaces for preferred faculty, Yellow spaces for pregnant faculty, Blue spaces for day students (Sunday only), White spaces for nonsmokers, Purple-and-orange polka dot spaces for those experiencing a mental parking lot breakdown, etc. 

We finally parked in another time zone. Of course we took reasonable precautions that one should take when parking in a deserted area, such as parking the car under a light even in the middle of the day. That way, when you come back to your car in the dark -- which it will be by the time you remember where you parked -- you will discover that your car is sitting in pitch blackness because you neglected to make sure the light was actually working. At least this is what happened to us.

We had also neglected to look at a campus map ahead of time, figuring there would be signs showing us where Building G was. We wouldn't have been surprised, however, to find that Building G did not exist, and that we would find signs that said 

Buildings A-F       

Buildings H-ZZ    

The buildings seemed to be in no particular order. We wandered past Building B, H, R, U, etc., wondering if maybe they spelled something ("BEYOND THIS POINT -- BEWARE! HAHAHAHAHA") until finally we came upon a sign that stood directly in front of a group of pine trees. It displayed a large , as if someone was confused about what letter should go there.

The sign, of course, did have a listing of the buildings and a map, and as we had suspected there was no Building G listed, although the map showed a Building G. We chose to believe the map. When you are desperate, you will choose to believe anything.

Building G, when we finally found it, seemed to have been designed by someone with a firm belief that students in general do not get enough exercise, because no matter where on a floor we entered, the room or staircase we wanted was always on the opposite side of the building.  We descended into the basement with some misgivings, and passed a room with a door prominently labeled Mortuary Science, which we fervently hoped was not our room.

The restroom was much easier to find. We followed the time-honored female way of finding it, by following another woman who was a complete stranger to us through a door. We did this even though there was a room number on the outside of the door, and the room could just as easily have been a back way into Mortuary Science for all we knew, but to our relief it really was a restroom. We fervently hoped that this, too, would not turn out to be our classroom.

The effort of getting to our classroom pretty much wiped out any memory I have of the actual class, although I remember that instead of the cardboard practice cakes I had expected, there was a Styrofoam cake to practice on, and that out of a two-hour class we had about four minutes to practice some techniques that we hadn't yet actually learned. 

For the next class we have to make our own icing and bring it in, and I'm not sure it will survive the 24-hour pre-class drive. But we know where we are going now, at least until the college sends us a message that We apologize for the inconvenience, but your class has been moved to Building HQX...