My condo complex is a giant chocolate chip in the West Campus cookie. The Croix is infamous for its West Campus expansion area of who knows how many block(-party)s.

This explanation barely scrapes the gentle surface of the environmental transformation process the Croix experiences every Saturday night to Sunday morning.

The saga of my upstairs neighbors continues. Known for previously throwing trash down the stairs and bashing the upstairs window in a fit of drunken rage, last night their story was toned down when they simply could not finish their last bite of pizza and their last sip of Coca Cola.

The pizza was not found on the scene.

This has been a brief and first introductory episode of “The Croix Report.” Tune in next Sunday for more compartmentalized apartment stories, or later this eve as more details unfold.

It’s getting to be that time of the semester again. The struggle of being in the thick of the course workload, trying to keep up with extracurricular shiz AND having the undying need for cash is just so painful.

So, as soon as I realized I was done with my Texas government text, I ran to Bevo Books (it was an online ACC class) and proudly handed over the book. It was exciting on so many levels, but mostly I just had $$ signs in my eyes.

The time to sell back books is bittersweet. The cashier hands us dolla bills for the crap textbook that we’ve been avoiding all semester, yet the return is 25-40% of what we originally paid.

But this time, my return was going to be more like 15% of the original price! DANG IT! The employee explained that all of the college bookstores, including the CO-OP, have “off” times during the semester, and the most profitable time to return stuff is the week before final exams.

Since textbooks aren’t hot quite yet, here are a couple ideas for legal, fast cash:

- Craigslist! Furniture, iPods and digital cameras all sell fast among the students (speaking from experience).

- Amazon.com is great for selling books, and buying them. Next time you think that buying from the CO-OP is worth it because of the easy resale, check the price of the book on Amazon. You’ll find crazy cheap prices that will make you not care about the resale (I’ve bought books for class for $.25).

-Donating body stuffs (ie. plasma, platelets, sperm). Yeah I know this is kind of sketchy, but every day it seems like more of a possibility…