All y'all Californians are just jealous.

I knew it would be a rough landing. You can’t just go to California, spend two weeks lolling about on all 800 available sleeping surfaces at Hotel 519 and generally forgetting that you didn’t always have a cocktail at 5 p.m. sharp, and think that going back to New Haven would be easy.

Actually, the first few days back were pretty mellow. A 40th birthday party on Saturday with a red attire requirement allowed me to spend a good part of the afternoon painting my finger nails candy apple red. Then there was the birthday itself, an event full of powerful margaritas and swaying/sloshing speeches, followed much later by a peaceful drive home from Danbury along winding route 34. All the way back to New Haven, the sun trailed behind me in my rear view mirror, doing its best impression of a giant flaming nectarine as it sank towards the horizon in the 85 degree heat.

I would have stayed at the party longer it not for Hazmat. Hazmat is the petite tabby that chooses to live with my advisor, Craig. While Craig and his brood drive all over tarnation visiting relatives, it is my duty to make sure that Chez Roy is kept in good order. Essentially, aside from some minor plant watering and mail gathering, this means dispensing Whiskas in a timely manner and spending at least a half hour letting Hazmat throw herself against me and prod me with her declawed front paws. In return for my services, I have been given the gift of Grad Student Gold: access to a house with multiple air conditioning units and a super sized washer/dryer in the basement. Oh. Yeah.

But then of course, Monday happened. I started off Monday as I usually do, masochistically, at the gym at 6:15 a.m.. Or at least I tried to start off that way. As I trudged past the front desk, the normally rather drowsy attendant bellowed at me,

“Excuse me! You need a sticker! EXCUSE ME!!”

I stopped and blinked at her for a few seconds. I almost started walking again, assuming that she must have been talking to some other person much further away, as such bellowing was hardly necessary to reach me, an arm’s length away.

“A STICKER. You need A STICKER.”

My silent blinking must have been misinterpreted as poor hearing. Fair enough.

“But I thought we didn’t have to pay for the gym this summer. No paying, no sticker? It’s free for students now, right? See, I have a student ID.”

Not so articulate at dark-fifteen in the morning.

“You still need a sticker.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll have to come back here between ten and two. But before you can get a gym sticker, you’ll need to get a summer sticker. Those are at the HGS, not here. You’ll have to call them and see when they’re available.”

I was back to my silent blinking phase. My ID, which had granted me trouble-free access to the treadmills upstairs just two weeks before, now dangled unstickered and useless in my hand. Why has Yale gone sticker crazy in my absence? What is the meaning of all these stickers?

“Uh… Umm…”

I couldn’t make words. It was all so abrupt and I was so sleepy and wrestling free from my tangled sheets had been so hard after an all-night battle of Eva vs. humidity. All this sticker business was putting me close to the edge.

“Could I just work out this morning and come back for the stickers?”

I tried to make this sound polite and not overly pathetic. She glared at me for a moment longer before muttering something about “ten and two” and waving me on.

The day didn’t improve much from there. A few hours later, I was trying to remove the vacuum-sealed plastic from the See’s chocolates I’d brought for my lab. My normally excellent razor blade skills escaped me as I drew a clean slice across the back of the box and then into my finger. After an hour, the bleeding stopped enough for some gauze to take over from the wad of paper towel and it was time to get back in the car for The Great Sticker Adventure.

I made it across town and finally found what seemed to be the last parking spot in the city of New Haven. Shortly after throwing the car in park I discovered that the plastic case that normally holds both my ID and my stockroom card now only contained the later. My ID was sitting happily in my lab coat pocket back at Ranch Legionella. No proof of Yalie status (in other words, no ID), no summer enrollment sticker. No summer enrollment sticker, no inexplicable gym sticker.

“*@#&#$*!!!”

So as to salvage some part of my trip out, I got out of the car to walk to the post office to buy stamps. When I returned, I found that I had slammed the car door on the sweatshirt that had been draped loosely on the back of the driver seat. The door’s locking mechanism had punched a greasy hole through the shoulder and sleeve.

That’s when I gave up. I drove back to lab and just sort of floated through the rest of my day, trying not to touch anything or talk to anyone. Now I’m back at Chez Roy with an air conditioning unit blowing directly on my neck. There is fur all over my keyboard from a recent visit from Hazmat and I can hear the dryer rumbling downstairs. Mmm… clean sheets. I’m pretty much back to the silent, blinking phase, but I’m trying to pull out of it. After all, tomorrow I have to be prepared to do it all again – I still don’t have my stickers.