The Thorn is bad for my health. We finished up the paper just before 04:00 this morning and Luke, Bob, and I went our separate ways. I then had the pleasure of standing outside for ten minutes in twenty-degree weather (with no jacket; grr) waiting for the security officer to mosey on towards my residence hall on his rounds, because there was no monitor in the lobby and they lock the doors at 02:00. A meatsicle, I ran upstairs, disrobed, and climbed into bed. No such luck on just going to sleep, though. I was so cold, and shaking so hard, it was about 05:30 before I finally dozed off,…

Wow. Four years seems like forever when you’re only nineteen. Thanks for the reminder, Dulin. It’s amazing how all it takes is a couple of quotes to bring back the memories of lunch periods that were both too short and that lasted an eternity… And, yes, a ridiculously embarrassing game of strip poker. I still can’t play poker any better than I did back then. No poker face to speak of, no ability to mentally judge odds in a numerical way. Should four years really seem like a lifetime? That’s kind of disturbing.

I wonder if I will ever actually feel comfortable living alone. I love the privacy, the solitude, and the self-made noise, which is no reflection at all on my roommate or other girls on my floor, of course. I’ve been living alone on campus for the past five days, going for daily runs, long walks, tinkering around on my computer, reading, and talking with my brother and my mother. None of this bothers me. Of all things, it’s the bugs. And it’s always the bugs, even in my parents’ bug-free apartment in Charlotte. Here, there are potato bugs/lady bugs, big-ass retarded flies that slam repeatedly into the window, and these…

An interesting, interesting event. The entire evening/morning was scheduled around panels (and meals), including a student (undergrad) panel, a career panel, and a bioinformatics panel. There was a speech and a single panel the first evening. The others were Saturday morning. I always find myself in a sticky place at these types of events, in which a minority gets together to discuss the fact that they are a minority, which much of the conference felt like. Okay, so women are a minority in the computing field, and it ain’t getting any better (worse, in fact). Why are we sitting here finding all the differences between male and female coding methods,…

The first spring I lived in North Carolina, I had the worst allergies I’ve ever had in my life. I normally suffer through sinus problems, asthma-esque symptoms, and occasionally hives on my scalp (there’s nothing quite like the feeling of scalp hives–it’s like a thousand bugs crawling through your hair). That spring, though, I went through all of the above plus another interesting one that I’m still not sure what to call. To show me how it worked, my doctor took a wooden pokey stick and drew it lightly down the inside of my forearm. Aside from the tickling sensation, nothing happened immediately. In about 20 seconds, however, a large,…