My Journal

Today is Hallowe'en... and there's a blue moon tonight! Go out and admire this astronomical phenomenon, which only occurs on average every 2.7 years!

Got up 10 minutes before class and went to math. Didn't get the test back-Friday. Did get an answer key, though.

After the test I went to lunch with Ann and Mollie and we talked some about family weekend, and Mollie said that her parents and some aunts were coming up, which led her to mention that one of her aunts lives in Chicago and has given Mollie carte blanche to visit whenever she could, especially since Chicago is now closer to us than tht Twin Cities. So we (me, Mollie and Ann) might go down there the weekend between reading period and Thanksgiving. Seems like weekends in November are filling up fast for me.

Sunday, October 28th

It's my sister Martha's 16th Birthday. Happy Birthday Martha!!!

26:13 Started the day with a math test, which I think I did fairly well on, only not giving a complete answer to one question. Then I went over to Main Hall to give my Freshman Studies prof my paper that was due that day and ask if I might be late for class, as I was going to go hear Jane Goodall lecture. He said that of course it was fine, and I rushed over to Stansbury to hear her. She didn't really say a whole lot, and I was somewhat disappointed. Not too much, though, because I wasn't sure exactly what she was going to speak on and thus had not built my hopes up really high. After the talk I spoke with her, asking if she remembered a film crew from Minneapolis that came out about three years ago. I told her the name of my uncle and she said that of course she remembered him- in fact, she had just seen him last week in Dallas. So I needs must call home and see what that was all about.

After the talk I went to Freshman Studies where we were basically reviewing for the test on Monday. It was pretty dull. Afterwards I met Jill for lunch and we sat with Elena and Tasha and laughed at silly things. Then I went to my room, got my Latin stuff and headed to class. We learned the rest of the verb forms and then read a little bit about the Aenied. After class I meant to take a nap, but I got on the computer for half an hour instead, and then took a shower to sort of wake me up. After my shower I went off to frisbee practice, and at 6 we drove from practice to a pizza parlour in downtown Appleton. There were 16 of us, which made for a good fun crowd. When we got back to campus, I went over to Draheim House to set up for the BACCHUS party that night, stayed there until almost ten and headed over to the house Joyce lived in, where the rest of the frisbee team was (supposedly) watching movies. However, as I got there I saw four or five people coming out, and they and I went over to the area in front of the rec center to toss for a while.

At 11 we went into Ormsby and watched an episode of The Simpsons in Peter's room and chatted and did fun things like that. At midnight the five of us went over to where the Yuai community was showing the Rocky Horrow Picture Show with live interpretation. It was... interesting. Matthew won a prize which we shall mention no more in this journal, save to say that it was an... interesting and not at all appropriate (in most situations) prize. After the movie we walked back to Plantz in search of food, and then since I hadn't slept in a while and didn't really want to go out in the cold and wasn't hungry besides, I stayed here. Now that I'm done, I'm going to bed.

After lunch I went to Latin where we learned all about the passive endings, and professor McNiell was right- so far, they're all a piece of cake compared to the rest of what we've learned. In the last 10 minutes we got our quizzes back (I got a 24/25) and

24:42 Less lethargic now. Got up at noon and met Erin for lunch. Was supposed to meet with Mollie but she went early 'cause she had to "study". So I ate with Erin and another girl whose name I have forgotten already but who I have seen around a lot. I left at 1 to meet with Elizabeth, my math lab partner. I also stopped and picked up my math homework which was in a folder outside my professor's door. It took me so long to find mine (it was tucked between two sheets of someone else's) and so I inadvertantly saw a lot of the scores, which seemed to be in the 5-8 range, so I was kind of nervous about my score, especially since I had compared mine to Jana's right befor class on the day we turned it in, and we had different answers for a few problems. But I didn't think I would do that badly. An 8 maybe, or 7 at the worst. Imagine my pleasure, then, upon discovering I had a 10 out of 10- something I hadn't seen on anyone else's papers. Though of course it could have happened. Anyway, yay me!

I got to the computer lab only slightly late and we spent the next 25 minutes doing Not A Whole Lot. We did print out the boxplot, which showed us the actual outliers. It was a good thing we did so, too, because one of the points that was "out there" that we had considered an outlier was, in fact, not. So now we might have to go back and redo a column that we had edited before so that that point is still included. It wasn't anything too bad. We also made an appointment to meet again, this time on Thursday at 9:30, which maybe was not such a good idea considering that I have a paper due the next day, but perhaps it will motivate me to do the paper beforehand, since I want to get to bed early so I can take my math test at 8:30 on Friday morning, yay happy. Although when I think about it in the grand scheme of things, it is happy, because by taking the test early, I get to go hear Jane Goodall speak, which is WAY more important than that extra half hour of sleep I would get. I might even skip Freshman Studies if the speech goes over, or if there's a Q&A or Meet Jane session afterwards. However, I also have a paper due that day (as I said before) so I was thinking of just giving it to Ned (who lives upstairs) or someone else, but then Andrea (who came in to study since I was up and Erin was in bed and the other rooms were too noisy/condusive to chattering) suggested that I hand it to my professor before class on Friday so I KNOW he gets it. I suppose I could do that, especially since I ought to be done with my exam at 9:40 and the speech starts at 10. So I should have time, assuming I know where to find him. I suppose I'll just talk with him after class tomorrow.

Well. As I said, I was in the lab with Liz, and then I went back to Plantz and got my wallet, went to Conkey's and got note cards (for flash cards), envelopes and a book because I wanted to, and then next door to the Chinese place and got some Chinese food. 'Tis nice, they have a special rate for LU students. So I brought those back to my room and had some Chinese food before fencing, which I was late to, having forgotten my ID card in my room when I was almost there. So I had to run back here and get it, then run back there, by which time I was late. But I got through practice fairly well, and learned the move (disarm) which everyone else had learned on Thursday. I left at 5:25 to go meet the police officer that was coming for alcohol awareness week, ran back to my room, grabbed the Fatal Vision Goggles (drunk goggles) and ran to Downer.

The officer was very nice and put people through a couple different tests, and some people just tried the goggles on and walked around, others took the test and left and some were actually interested enough to stay and listen to what he said afterwards about the tests they would administer if they did pull someone over for drunk driving. Ann and Mansi arrived at 6:10 and we went off to dinner together. Mansi is an... interesting person. Andrea has already informed me that she's a little Brahmin princess worth half my family's savings, and Ann told me today that she NEVER STOPS TALKING. I wondered if that was due to being a little princess with constant attention. Ah well, who knows. She's not annoying for half an hour, at least, although I wasn't trying to study and Ann was when she found out about Mansi's loquatiousness.

After math was Freshman Studies, for which I had read (skimmed, really) about 10 pages of the 50 we were discussing. I actually did manage to make several points, though, which I thought was not too shabby, considering. We were discussing the Platonic "forms" or ideals and someone was trying to make the point that chaos was a form and everyone else was trying to refute what he said. We also discussed why mathematical reasoning was less of a form than pure intellect. Meh. Nothing worth sharing.

After class went to Lucinda's with Ann (and Mollie and Erin and April) and had lunch for a good twenty minutes before we actually got down to work.

The next time I woke up was when my alarm went off at 10:15, and again at 10:30. I shut both of those off and went back to bed. When Katja's mother called at 11:30, I answered the phone, handed it to Katja and finally got dressed. I knocked on Erin's door to see if she wanted to go with me to brunch, and then we both went to Mollie's room to get her. The three of us sat together and somehow one of us started teasing Mollie about naked sex orgies, and then began discussing wether or not the term "sex orgy" was redundant or not. We decided it was, and then a friend of Mollie's from crew joined us.

After math I went to Freshman Studies, where we discussed what I had skimmed last night, and I was able to participate with a fair degree of insight. I think I've stopped taking notes because all we do in class is discuss what Plato says in the reading, so as long as I read (and comprehend) what's in the book, I should be fine both as far as the paper and the test go.

Lunch I had with Ann, Mollie, Erin, Barb and (for part of the time) a boy from my FS class named Mike. It was okay, though I didn't spend as much time studying Latin with Ann as I would have liked to. When we finished eating I went back to Plantz to switch books, then spent ten minutes in the lobby with Cole going over vocabulary flash cards.

In Latin itself we went over the homework (which it seems very few people do now) and then talked about the Sequence of Tenses. I think I got most of it. Now I just need to study it a whole lot for the quiz on Monday, as well as the list of noun/adjective endings and the vocabulary for Units 1-3. After Latin I walked Ann back to Trever and then came back here and sat down at the computer until now (4:00). Soon I shall go off to frisbee practice.

Cool thing happened on the way to Frisbee practice- right before I left, I was mumbling to myself the two Japanese phrases I know really well (aside from hello and goodbye)- Aishetelu and Anata no namae wa, and so just for kicks I looked the Japanese stuff up on my langauges page, (which is really cool, you should check it out) and then went over and asked Andrea how she was, 'cause it's really easy to say. BY SOME WEIRD COINCIDENCE, I ran into one of the three Japanese-speaking girls on campus, and the only one I had met so far, Sheshma (sic?). So on the way down I asked her, "Genki?" and she responded to me in Japanese, half of which I understood!!! I walked off to frisbee all elated. That really was the high point of my day.

20:17 This is the first time I've been back to my room since I left for practice. I went to the ORC house and jogged over to the fields with everyone else. I actually jogged most of the way, too. When we got over there, we ran a drill and then worked on passing in the wind. By the time we finished, I was really tired, but we started a game right up. So I spent most of the game at a slow trot. We finally stopped at 6:30 when it was getting too dark to see well. I drove back with Colin, Peter, Emma and Grace and we walked from Plantz to dinner. Dinner was a three-cheese enchilada that tasted like it was mostly cream cheese, eeew. After dinner I ran back to Planzt but stayed in the lobby because Katie was there and I was cheering her on for the pie-eating contest later that evening. Then I went over to Trever to meet Ann. Turns out her friend Shiree was also there, so the three of us went over to Memorial Union.

Tonight was the penultimate night of homecoming events. (Will fix this later, but I'm off to see a hypnotist!) The RAs from Plantz and two students from Ormsby were in a pie eating contest. My RA, Katie, ate hers all up (it was my hall vs. another) and the boy's RA here, Al, was working on his, but he wasn't feeling too good, and he had eaten too much earlier. So Al, being the Plantz-proud resident that he is, kept on eating long after he should have stopped. He ended up spitting out slices of apple into the pie tin. But since he wouldn't let the other hall win, he just kept eating it! But towards the end he started throwing up for real and had to stop. I'm so proud of our RAs.

25:05 Went and saw the hypnotist, got partway hypnotized but not all the way and so was sent back (though it was still cool being partway hypnotized), had quite a bit of fun at the show, and then afterwards went back to Plantz with Meredith, Sadie and Naomi. We were trying to watch a movie, but there was no VCR we could borrow, and none in the lounge in the basement, so we settled on playing a board game instead. We started out with 6 people playing Taboo, and at one point the game got up to 12 people. At the end I think we had 8. It was really fun- we played from about 11 to 1 am. After the game was over (my team lost 82-83), we went up to bed and very soon I shall go take a shower. Goodnight.

Made myself get uo at 9:30 and have breakfast. Bowl of Kix and some apple juice. Then I came back and got ready to leave, because Rose and Allison were going to Younkers to go shopping today and I needed a haircut, which Katie had said was in the same mall. By 10:10 no one had come up to my room to say, "Okay, we're leaving" so I got panicky and thought I might have missed them. So I went down to look for them- turns out they were just running late. So I did the crossword puzzle in my room for a bit, and when Rose came up twenty minutes later, I put it aside, pulled on my jacket and we left. They looked through Younkers while I went into the mall and tried to decide which of the two salons Katie had gone to. I ended up picking the right one, so I was happy. The stylist was really nice and did a good job (of taking an inch off to get rid of the split ends, real hard, I know) and it wasn't all that expensive. Though when I rejoined Allison and Rose, Allison told me that Grace would have been willing to do the same for about five dollars or Chinese food. Ah, well. Next time.

When Rose and Allison had made thier purchases, we walked back to Plantz, where I met Mollie who was just about to go to lunch. I joined her and Erin and we went to Lucinda's, where we were joined by two people Erin knew, Stephen and Ellen. Apparently someone had found a pic that looked like Stephen on HotOrNot.com and posted it on his door, so random people kept coming up to us and congratulating him on "his" score of 9.1. Lunch itself was decent though not great.

14:17 After lunch I came back to Plantz with Mollie and we both put our laundry in the driers, and then I came up here and sat down at the computer. At first I was semi-productive, but as I spent almost the last hour playing solitare, I'd say I got a little distracted.

One good thing was that I called the Appleton Police Departement about having an officer come out here for Alcohol Awareness week, as I had done last week. But last week (and yesterday) I only got answering machines for the officers I was trying to contact, and today I got a real person, who said that they would look someone up for me. Ten minutes ago I got a call from Officer Piepers saying he'd be here on Tuesday. Yay persistence, and yay for calling me back, Officer Piepers!

27:22 Bedtime, finally.

After math we had a Freshman Studies lecture in Stansbury. It was more interesting than the one on the Communist Manifesto, and I didn't feel the need to take as many notes, which was also nice. It was pretty interesting, and he made a couple of jokes, only one of which was a bad philosophy joke. I was sitting with Naomi, and it was only after a few minutes that I realized that Ann was sitting right in front of me. So after the lecture we just went on to Lucinda's together (we had arranged to meet at the bridge yesterday, but found today that there was no need.) Anyway, we got out our Latin notebooks and spent the first ten mintes eating and then next forty studying for the Latin quiz we were going to have that day.

I thought the quiz went fairly well. We were to list the third person plural (they) form of a certain regular verb in the ten forms we had learned, and then translate a sentence and identify which subjunctive form it was. I got the form right away because we had been working on that right before we got into class, and they were all in my favorite form, the pluperfect which has "isse" in it. The translation went okay, though I think I could have done better. I think I got almost all of the words, which was really good. I'm not certain about how I did overall on the translation, but it was fairly good. I hope. And I might have gotten two of the forms mixed up in the first part, but I expect to get at least 20/25.

After Latin I wanted to take a nap, but I quick checked my e-mail and read those two messages, and by that time it was three and Naomi was supposed to come then to go over what we had learned at fencing on Thursday. After that I wasn't feeling as tired, though I knew I needed sleep. So I went down to the lobby and read the Onion for a while. When I finished that I finally went upstairs to my room and took a nap. This was at 5:00.

I woke up at 6:30 by Ann calling and asking if I wanted to go to dinner. Since there was only half an hour left before Downer closed, I agreed, even though all I really wanted to do was go back to sleep for two more hours. But I got out of bed and met Ann and Shiree for dinner. We spent a lot of time discussing Ann's roommate and how to get her more involved. It seems that there are very few clubs that she'll consider, and no sports. The only thing we could think of was Greenfire, the environmental organization. We also talked some about Stillwater people, and the Latin quiz and other things like that. I also yelled at Ann for being pinapple discriminatory, and asked her how she thought the fruit would feel. Just as sort of a silly/funny thing to do, because Ann had said that she thought she was going crazy. So I demonstrated to her what would really constitute going crazy. After dinner they walked me to my dorm, and I played on the computer (mostly reading my webcomics and such) and read some Plato until 9:45, when I went over to Jill's room to pick them up for the Bacchus meeting.

Jill, Sadie, Meredith and I went over to Sage, where we were joined by 8 others- rather less than last time, but it was still fun. We talked about some big things like the Bacchus Bar on Wednesday, then split into three groups. My group was discussing Alcohol Awareness week activities, and we came up with some good ideas, I hope. Then we all reconvened and shared what we had come up with. (There were milk and cookies to be had throughout the meeting, too). After we got everything settled, we took a box of message boards that say "Bacchus" on them back to our dorm to put in every room.

When we got back I went to my room and tried to sort out my trip to Boston until 1 am. I also took a bunch of TheSpark.com's tests, so I may now state with some authority that I am not pregnant.

16:26 Went to math, did some work on the poker hands and then took some notes about dependent and independent probabilities. In Freshman Studies we got some background information on Plato and then talked about the first reading. I had actually managed to read most of it- at least, what we actually covered today. There was only one little section about the ring of Glyndes or something that I hadn't gotten to, and I was able to skim that in about 5 seconds. So I'm still on top of things! But I needs must take the book with me to the tournament this weekend. Speaking of which... but I'll get to that later.

After FS I went back to my room and read my e-mail and looked at the Harry Potter website. Of course, I had meant to finish up my Latin... I got to that eventually. And I got it all done before 1 pm, which was good. I had a Pop-Tart and Hi-C in my room for lunch, but I had been planning on skipping lunch anyway since Lucinda's was closed and there would be about half an hour's wait at Downer. So that was that. I also voted for Hall Council before I left.

In Latin we talked about subordinate and main clauses and then did some drill work on the sentences in the book. Afterwards I walked as far as College Ave with Ann, who told me that her grandparents and Bobby (her 8-year-old little brother) were coming up this weekend, so I'd miss seeing him. He's cute. But oh well, I don't mind too much because this weekend I'll be at a...

Frisbee tournament!!! Yay! We hve practice at 4:30 today and then we're going to dinner and then leaving at 7, so that we can be at one of the team members' house in roughly 4 hours. Saturday we play all day, and when I'm not playing I'll be trying to study. Though I don't know how well that will work... and I'll still have math homework when I get back, but that I can only do on the lab computers here because of the software I have to use. So I'll just have to save that for Sunday afternoon/evening and do my Latin and Plato this weekend. We'll see how that goes. For now, I'm off to practice!

I got to Lucinda's five minutes before they supposedly close and went through the buffet line. It was slightly salted cod, which wasn't really that bad. There were also curly fries, yummy bread and fairly good coconut-chocolate-candy cake or whatever it's called. I sat with Tasha and her roommmate Elena, who were about halfway done when I got there. We finished around 1:30 and I came back to my room, got my shower things and bathed because I had been feeling really dirty for the past 20 hours or so but had been too lazy/busy to do so before. It felt really good to get clean.

When I got out of the shower I sat at the computer in my bathrobe and looked at comics and then got the bright idea to try downloading a few games. (All of these were ones I had played before.) One of them went just fine, but I tried downloading the original game and it said I couldn't open it because another program was using the same file (whatever) and I couldn't delete it because it was in use. I tried deleting it from the desktop and File Manager, neither of which worked. So I got all panicky and wondered what I was going to do when I got the really bright idea of going to DOS and deleting it from there. It had been a while since I had last had to work in DOS, but I still remembered how and managed to delete the files with a minimum of stress. After that I went down to the lobby and read the comics and did the newspaper.

Now I have fencing and will complete this later.

18:30 Eventually I grew bored with the crossword and was sort of laying on the couch with the newspaper on my stomach. I was considering taking a nap, but as it was only 2:00, I didn't exactly need one. I felt I ought to go campaign or do homework or something, but didn't really feel like doing anything. Luckily, Andrea came into the lobby just about then and started talking to me. The funniest thing she said was (because she had been working on developmental psychology just before) was that young babies (less than 2, 3 months old) can't remember things, so if something isn't in front of their eyes, it doesn't exist for them. You can stare at it and stare at it for hours on end, and if you go behind them and come back, it's like they've never seen you before. This is why babies get excitied when you hide behind a piece of cloth- because once they can't see you anymore, you're gone. When you come back, it's totally new to them. Interesting, non?

I love my Sailor Moon CD.

Well, after Andrea talked to me I wasn't feeling so lethargic, so I came up to my room and cleaned up a bit, and then tried playing the game I had downloaded. Problem was, it was almost exactly like the game I had played before, and while I liked that game fine, it was more fun when it wasn't in 3D. So I deleted it. At 4:15 Naomi came into my room and gave me a piece of paper with the contact information for the Scarff visiting professor, who was teaching a class I was thinking of auditing 2nd term. She also told me that she had a meeting with her advisor that afternoon, so she couldn't make it to fencing. So I went off on my own.

Fencing was fun. We did some warm ups, then a little work on moving back and forth, practicing our footwork, and then we got to put on our masks and jackets that we had gotten on Tuesday and worked on a simple attack. First one person would extend and then their partner would parry in 4th position, extend and advance to strike. It was actually kind of hard, because everyone wanted to parry, then advance WHILE striking. I admit, I did this as well. After a few passes with another student, one of the varsity fencers came up and started coaching my partner, so another of the varsity fencers came and worked with me. Then when she called for a break the coach came over and worked with me, and I did a pretty good job with him constantly saying "strike-extend-advance." The bad part was that we were released ten minutes early, and I was having so much fun. I went back to my dorm, changed and headed off to dinner with Andrea.

Andrea went into the B line which had no wait, and I went upstairs to the C line because it said they had cheese ravioli. So I went up there thinking I would have a five minute wait tops for my food. HALF AN HOUR LATER, I get my freshly-sauteed to order ravioli and fresh vegetables. It was good, but andrea had almost finished by then so I ate alone. Sigh. After dinner I went back to my dorm and got on the computer. Someone I was IMing mentioned that Bush was on TV giving another speech. So, since Erin and Andrea were out, I went up to Zach's room and asked if I could watch it. We sat there and listened for a little bit, and once I figured I had the main idea I went down to my room and turned on the radio, but continued using the computer. At some point in there dad called and said I could go to Boston over break, and then I went back to playing on the computer. Soon I shall get off and study and participate in a study. For now, I'm just messing around on here.

After breakfast I went off to math class where we took a quiz (I'm hoping I got 9/10), took a few more notes and then worked on the probabilities of poker hands. At the end of class we got our quizzes and homework back. I got 10/10 on the quiz and 11.5/12 on the homework. I missed the half-point because I didn't do part c, though it wasn't really mentioned that we were to do part c. I decided not to argue the point, though. Perhaps I should... That half point may matter someday.

After math I went to Freshman Studies, where we read a poem by Philip Larkin, "For Sidney Bechet." We also talked some about Mr. Marsalis's speech and what we thought it was about. Professor Yatzeck was nice enough to let us out 5 minutes early, so I got to Lucinda's before the rush and managed to get through without having to wait in line. I ate with Sadie and three people who were talking in French for half the meal. As we were leaving a bunch of people stood up and sang "Happy Birthday" to Andy York, who was turning 19.

I left and went back to Plantz. Because I had gotten out 5 minutes early I had finished 5 minutes early, but more importantly I had missed the 15 minute wait, so I found myself for once with a lot of time on my hands before Latin. I was going to finish up the homework (I had 2 problems left), but found myself in the lobby talking with a boy from my class and taking crap while he showed me flash cards for words I hadn't studied yet. (I've got them down now, at least). So I did that for 20 minutes, then went off to class. There we learned about the 4 tenses for the subjunctive mood, and ended by going over the 10 tenses and moods in all 6 forms we had learned so far. I now have a lovely chart in my notebook to which I can refer.

After Latin I went to the library with Ann and photocopied the answers for the next two assignments, and then we both came back to my room where Ann got some more candy and complained a little about her roommate. I have to admit that I was not the most gracious of hosts and spent most of the time doing little tasks around the room, so she soon left.

26:40 After Ann left I played on the computer a bit, folded my laundry, sorted through and threw out some of my papers and debated skipping Frisbee. I finally decided I would go, so at 4:15 I headed over to our meeting point and we all jogged over to the playing field. We started out with warm-ups, then did bidding drills, which is where the disc is tossed wide of the mark and you have to dive for it. I got ALL muddy all over my shirt, but it was fun. I kind of wish I had cleats, though. After that we played some scrimmages, and I finally accomplished my goal of catching and tossing a disc in the same pass. I felt so wonderful after that. When practice was over I ran up to my room and then ran over to dinner with the frisbee people. It was an interesting dinner. Amusing. After dinner I went to the library thinking there was a debate meeting, but after waiting 10 minutes I decided to check my e-mail and, lo and behold, the nominal leader had written an e-mail saying the meeting was cancelled. So I went up to my room and played on the computer until 8, when I thought Enterprise would be on (that being the time when Voyager was on). After 10 minutes of searching through and finally finding UPN, I found that what was on was not Enterprise. I went up to Erin and Andrea's room to look at their TV guide, and found, much to my dismay, that it had been on at 7. AAAUUUGGHH.

Having nothing to do for the rest of the night, I sat in my room and played on the computer. Katja kept complaining that my "typing was too loud" and I kept wanting to smack her. She even had headphones on and was listening to music!!! Something is wrong with that girl. At 9 she asked me to move downstairs because she was tired and wanted to go to sleep. She lay down for maybe 15 minutes (with the light off so I was typing only by the glow of the monitor) and then got up and left. I assumed that she needed to go to the bathroom, but after 15 minutes I turned the light on and figured she had gone somewhere. I IM'd Andrea, who said that she saw her in the lobby chatting with people. The nerve!!! So very tired, indeed. So I went in Andrea's room and screamed, then came back and took some deep breaths and eventually I felt better. At 9:30 I left for the Lawrence International meeting, which I'd like to get involved with but there are a lot of subcontinentals (not that there's anything wrong with those) and a lot of Germans (and my anti-German sentiment is pretty high right now) and some Africans and Jamaicans, but very few of what the South African government described as "Caucasian". Ah, well. We'll see what they're like. I just don't want to spread myself too thin, and of all the things I might drop, this seems likliest. Though only if I have to.

After the meeting I came back. At 11 Katja wanted to go to bed (this time I believed her) so I came down to the computer lab and printed my paper, then worked on making campaign posters. (Oh yes- I also washed some of the dirt from my shirt.) I made three different posters, dropped them off in my room and went on a brat run. Those are good brats that we get at 1 am on Wednesday.

When I came back I found my roommate talking with a guy, so I picked up my posters and left. I'm never going to believe her when she says she's going to bed again. I hung up my posters where I thought they'd be seen- mostly in the stairwells. Then I brushed my teeth and almost went to bed, but I remembered my shirt and came down to get it. I got sidetracked by (and in) the computer lab, because I remembered that I had told my dad I would IM him the second time Katja kicked me out and I forgot about it. So I logged on to AIM on the offchance that he would be on (he wasn't) and then wrote them a nice long e-mail. Then I cleaned my inbox up a little bit and wrote this. At 3:00 or so the two boys sitting next to me struck up a conversation with me. It was quite nice. Now it is 3:30 and even though I do not have a class tomorrow I would like some sleep, so I think I am for bed.

"You go to the best that has been produced for you, and you learn that and make that be you."

In the middle of the Q&A session I (and a lot of other people) got up and left for our 12:30 classes. I hoofed it over to Briggs Hall for my math lab. It was pretty straightforward stuff- make the chart, make these graphs and report back the data that follows. When class was over I read the paper, did the crossword puzzle and just generally goofed off. At 2:30 I went to my Freshman Studies professor's office so we could discuss my paper. He was 15 minutes late with my appoinment because the person before me had messed up Right Royally by capitalizing proletariat and bourgeoisie and mixing up his nouns and adjectives. Ooops. When I finally went in, my professor took one look at my paper, went over the three marks he had made and then since there was so much time left, sat and chatted with me a little bit, mostly about the convocation that morning. After we had spent the minimum amount of time required by courtesy chatting, I left. I came back to my room and attempted fold some laundry and type this up. At 4 Naomi came in and we left for fencing class.

Class was fun. We started out with stretching, then going forward and backward without a weapon, then with a weapon, and then we got to get jackets and masks, so that on Thursday we can actually start beating on each other. Fun fun. After class Naomi and I went to main hall to drop a form off for her advisor to sign, and then I came back here and typed some more. Soon I shall go off to dinner, and then I get to see Wynton Marsalis actually performing, yay lucky me.

23:13 Just got back from the concert. It was splendid. They did mostly "full orch" pieces, by which I mean 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 5 assorted saxes that doubled on clarinets in a few cases, a bass, drums and piano. Almost all the pieces had two (or sometimes more) solo sections in them, and all of them were fabulous. There was also one piece in each half where they had a solo sax with rythmn section, and that was all. The first one kind of made me sleepy, and the second one was fair enough. I really preffered the second to last piece, though, which had really loud noises that actually sounded like a choo-choo. I mean, uh... I enjoyed the penultimate piece because of the evocative aural imagery that brought to mine locomotives. (See what you learn in college?)

When the concert was over I went to the back of the chapel and had a brief conversation with Mr. Marsalis (I stuck to what I know and commented on the bass player) and got his autograph. So that goes on the shelf with the others I have, except that I think I threw those out. Some of them, at least. WSS.

None of the lunch-like items appealed to me, so I settled for a waffle and a bowl of Kix. I should have just gone with the Kix, but I still haven't gotten over the thought of being able to have waffles almost every day. Hopefully the novelty will wear off soon. Although someone told me that the meal plan works out to $6 per meal, and when you think about it, that's a little much for a bowl of Kix and a glass of grape juice. With luck next term I can sign up for the one-meal-a-day plan. But I digress.

After bruch we went back to our dorm and stopped in the lobby to read the board (slightly amusing, though less so than last Saturday's) and then, finding copies of The Onion in the newspaper rack, we scooped up two copies of those and sat in the lounge reading them (occasionally to each other) and sometimes talking with the two boys who were trying not to study music theory.

When we finished the paper we went up to our respective rooms. Katja was in mine, listening to some loud Nirvana (whom I dislike) and changing. I just sat on my bed and started looking for the comics and crossword puzzle. The comics I found easily enough, and read those (nothing terribly good this week), but I had to look in the little reference column for where the crossword was. I did some of that, but got frustrated and gave up when I was a third of the way finished, and typed this up.

16:54 Just got back from playing with someone's illegally-kept kitty. I feel so happy now.

We went to brunch and had brunch stuff, and we sat with some boy from Brainerd and his roommate who has seen some anime. Hurray. Went back to the dorm after, took a shower and then went to the corner store to get some foodstuffs for Erin and Andrea and juice boxes for me. Came back and did math homework for a really long time (trying to figure out how to make a math program work) and then came up here and felt like taking a nap but thought I ought not to so I updated this because I felt like it. Also turned on the radio to Prarie Home Companion. While I was updating I got distracted by online comics and found a new comic, which I put up a link to on my links page, or you can see it here.

I think I might need to go do Latin in the lobby. Yay.

12:30 Changed my mind as it was already 6 and the dining hall closed at 6:30. I went to dinner instead and sat with Liz and Katja. We were almost finished when Shams joined us, so Liz and I got up and left when we were finished but Katja stayed and talked to him. Upon arriving back in my room, I went wandering the halls looking for someone to go dancing with me. Finding no one, I gave up and returned to my room. Not ten minutes later, Naomi knocked at my door wanting to know what I was up to. I asked if she wanted to come dancing with me and she agreed. Since there was still an hour to kill we spent a little time in my room talking and I read over her Freshman Studies paper. At 7:30 we went over to the student union, but there was still half an hour before the class was supposed to start, so we went to the coffeehouse and played cards. Naomi had no idea how to play poker, so I taught her that and we played until 8, when we went upstairs.

There were about 20 people there, roughy 2/3 of them female. There were three or four people serving as "instructors" who taught us the basic step, a few turns and something called "skinning the cat" which is where you put your arms over each other's heads and pull back until you're holding hands. If that can accurately describe it for you. At 9 the "normal" dancers showed up and started outdoing the rest of us and making the beginners all self-conscious and we stopped. But they were fun to watch. Naomi and I went back to Plantz and walked the 2nd floor knocking on doors and meeting people, which was mildly amusing. We made it through by 11, and then I ran downstairs and got tokens for the laundry machine. For tomorrow, of course. Then I went to Mollie's room where she and Erin were watching SNL and I joined them. When it was over Erin and I bade Mollie goodnight, and then I came back here, typed this and IMd Stefan. Soon I shall brush my teeth and go to bed.

Toga party tonight. Chose not to attend.

Have you ever had someone say something to you, and it just makes you feel so great for a whole day? I love when that happens.

Just spent the last 10 minutes tryping up what I did so far today, and then I grab for my juice box, and when I look back, BAM! it's all gone. Grrrr.

Got up at 8:30 this morning and went to breakfast with Mollie and W9ll. So much for her "I wish he'd hang around less" (my words not hers). I had Lucky Charms, apple juice and two slices of watermelon. It's getting toward the end of the watermelon season, though- these were good, but soon it'll just be too late. I wanted to have Belgian waffles as well, but they didn't have that option today, though apparently they did yesterday. I was upset.

After breakfast I came back to my room to find Katja awake but still lying in bed. I went and took a shower, and when I came back she was not there. So I sat on my bed in my bathrobe and read the comics and did the crossword puzzle, and when she came back she made some sort of disparaging remarks about when I was going to "get up finally". So when I finished the crossword puzzle I went back to bed until 12:30.

I finally decided to get up then because I figured I ought to go to lunch (and I ought to get up as well.) So I grabbed my social security card and my driver's licence (since the student employment office/office of financial aid is right next to Lucinda's) and hoofed it over to the better of the two dining halls here on campus, Lucinda's. Lunch there was actually really good. They had tortellini (meat and cheese both) with marinara sauce and ceasar salad and chocolate chip cookies. The cookies were actually not the greatest but they were tolerable, and certainly looked better than the fruit/jell-o salad puree they had as the other option. I also made myself a half-Sprite, half-cranberry juice drink, which is the best to have at Lucinda's. I sat with a girl from my hall, Monica, and some boy she knew (a sophomore transfer student).

After lunch I went over to the Student Payroll office and got my employment card so I could get a job, and filled out my W-4 and I-9 forms. Then I went downstairs to look at the jobs, but they only had one job in the library and some food service jobs. What I really wanted to do was get a job in the admissions office giving campus tours, but there was nothing posted for that. I wondered if I had to wait till they had something posted, or if I should put myself forward and GO to the admissions office and ask if they were hiring people to do that. But that can be done later.

When I had my employment card, I went back to my dorm knowing that I needed to write my paper and knowing equally that I was going to put it off for quite a while. I started by looking at the Yahoo! headlines, then went to my personal links page and read through all the funny stuff I have links to there. From there I found a link to this movie called "Robot Bastard" so I watched that and then made Erin and Andrea watch it and we all had a good laugh. After that I went down to the computer lab (because my printer isn't set up yet) and made up a schedule for myself, which I then filled out to some degree. Hopefully, this will at least help me keep track of my time commitments so I know when I'm wasting time and when I have time to waste. I also went through a few pieces of paper I had accumulated, some of which needed (and still needs) to be tossed out. Soon now I shall go turn in one of those forms, and maybe go down to the admissions office and see what's up there, and possibly even go to Conkey's bookstore and spend a lot of money on more books.

(later) I went down to the lobby and asked one of the RLAs where I could turn in said forms, she told me and I went there and dropped them off. I'm down to my last juice box, and needs must get more. Good thing tomorrow is Friday.

In Latin we went over some verbs very briefly and then Professor McNiell explained noun declension. It made sense for the most part, but there were some people who were catching on to things much faster than I, it seemed, which of course upset me. I wondered if they weren't looking at their notes, so I figured I might as well if it helped. So I did, and indeed, I seemed to be doing quite well from there on out. I was happy. After class I handed Ann a slip of paper with Professor McNeill's curriculum vitae on it (Harvard and Yale) and we wondered what someone like that was doing a) here and b) not married. Now, I had recognized that he was indeed quite attractive, but it was Ann who had gone the next step and looked for a wedding ring, whose absence she wondered at. I must admit, it seems a shame for someone that intelligent and attractive not to be making someone happy (and reproducing and creating more intelligent attractive people to further life on this planet, as opposed to the squalid and the stupid who propogate like rabbits and leave behind their useless offspring). But that's my take on things. No more on that subject today.

After Latin I walked with Ann to her dorm, then came back here. I got an e-mail from Kaarina today (who passed her driving exam, or at least the written part, though I'm not sure if there's a big difference there), which is cause for happiness. And I'm feeling fairly aware of who and where I am and am not so confused, which is also a good thing, and I think I might even be feeling up to Frisbee practice even though it is such miserable weather. So that's what I'll be up to later today. Ninjutsu starts tonight, which might be problematic and I think I'll probably just not take that class, because frisbee will most likely go until 6:30, and Ninjutsu starts at 6. So that's a no-go, and besides, I think I have enough to do with frisbee, and I don't think I'll drop that just yet in favor of fencing.

Right, I was driven over to frisbee practice because I was not feeling like running and because there was someone driving over there anyway, so that was all fun and good. Practice itself even went well- we started off with drills, which was something somewhat new to me. Before we had just been casually tossing the disc around before a few scrimmages and it was catch-as-catch-can, no pun intended. Today we started out with 20 forehands and 20 backhands in moderate winds. For some odd reason, my forehand is far better than my backhand, which apparently should not be the case. But neither were seeming terribly wonderful today. Ah, well. I did manage to put myself in a position such that I would have had a beautiful catch, except that

Went for a brat run at 12:30. Needs must write about that.

Got up at 11:00 this morning, and was surprised to see Katja also still in bed. So we both woke up and I went and took a shower, came back here and read my e-mail, replied to it and then guilt-tripped myself into writing back to the YFU Alumni contact person. So that's all done, now, and I can stop feeling this low-level guilt. However, I shall soon be feeling guilty again if I make myself late for class by typing this. Off I go! 19:03 Well, I moved September's journal to a new page just before dinner (right around 6:00) so now I have a nice new clean page to work on. Here goes.

K, got up and wrote what I wrote before and then went to class. There were enough computers for one for the each of us, so none had to share. We started by dumping files Joy had prepared for us into our own folders, then opening up this program called MiniTab, which does graphs and other statistics things so that we don't have to take out our protractors and measure the angle for the pie charts we make or put in hundreds of tiny little dots or things like that. Mostly it's just there to make life easier for us. Joy walked us through the first few examples, then told us to look at the data from a different survey and make graphs and do what we could, and then after five to ten minutes, we would report back to her whatever we could. Using a histogram and dot plot I was able to see the skew and spread fairly easily- the box plots and pie charts really didn't make sense for this data. It seems in general that dot plots are the best for locating "outliers" and shape, while histograms show skew better, and depending, can also indicate shape. We also looked at one graph that plotted data over time, except that (clever me) I noticed that the time interval wasn't consistant, so I asked about it. Joy said (clever me) that that was an excellent point, and then showed us how to make a different kind of graph that would account for that.

When class was over, I went to Joy's office and waited

You know how sometimes there are good days and there are bad days? Well, today started out okay, then got bad, and then I took a nap and when I woke up it was suddenly a good day.

I work up at 7:50 to the sound of Katja's alarm, went back to sleep till 8:10, which is when my alarm for Katja went off, and then I sort of went to sleep until 8:50, which is when my alarm for myself went off.

24:36 K, the moon cakes we had were disgusting. I'll add more tomorrow, but I just can't add anymore right now. Sleepy time.

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