EPTI’m a pretty clean guy usually – my room is only ever a mess after I’ve done my laundry and haven’t gotten around to folding it all. Probably a result of my time spent on the Navy reserve base. The Sergeant gave me enough verbal abuse for my wrinkly bedsheet that I’m now a professional at making my bed.
My shit is usually organized, piled cleanly, books stacked, I won’t go on, but this preface was necessary for the punchline of my little tale here.
We’re about halfway through the semester here at Michigan, and I’ve got an exam tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday evening, and next Monday. Needless to say, my stress level it at an all-time high. This also means my eating habits have gone to shit – meaning I’m eating whatever I can find whenever I can find it… and perhaps my organizational skills have gone a little out the window in lieu of finding more time to spend hitting the books.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been using my backpack pretty often. I'm a student, right? But every time I would pull something out of my backpack, I'd notice a slight smell. Nothing too overpowering, just a strange scent that I couldn’t quite place. It would usually dissipate after a few seconds, leaving me to focus on whatever it was that I had pulled out of my bag. I didn’t think anything of it. The last few days, however, I’ve noticed it on everything. Even my notebook. This isn’t the sort of smell you associate with anything usual – it doesn’t smell like BO, doesn’t quite smell like food, doesn’t smell gross. It just… smells.
Today I walked into lab to meet with my research advisor. We’re deciding on when to use certain instruments that our lab doesn’t have immediately available, meaning I have to plan days to travel across campus (not a big deal) and use other machines for my work. As I sit down to chat with her, (head of the Chemistry department, we’ve got a badass over here), I reach into my bag to get my planner, which I almost never use. I haven’t seen the planner in ages, but I figure I should look organized so I pull it out and set it on the desk. I proceed to quickly scrawl in my schedule for the next few weeks as she walks in. I notice the smell but don’t say anything. Typically in my experience, it isn’t a smell a person can place, and nobody has ever said anything. This time is no different.
We have our little chat and as I stand up to leave, I stuff my planner back into my backpack and I’m just about to thank her when my hand squishes into something. I MUST have grimaced, or made some kind of strange facial expression, because she cocked her head as if she was about to ask me what was wrong. I have no idea what I just put my hand into, but instead of pulling it out right there, I smile at her and awkwardly backpedal out of the room. Once I get out into the hallway, I grab whatever the stinky pile of shit is in my backpack and pull it out.
If you want to order one of what I found, just hop in your car and go here:
http://www.tacobell.com/
I'd send you the one I found, but its already about a month and a half old.
