I have acquired a vehicle. He’s beautiful. He’s a 1983 Ford Fairmont in ridiculously good condition, with a brand new air conditioner and paint job, and only about 26 000 miles on it. The interior is beautiful (minus some dashboard damage from the sun), with no damage to the seats or anything, and that radio should qualify as an antique–it’s completely mechanical; if you press a preset button, the stick that indicates the radio frequency jumps to the frequency of the preset. It’s beautiful. And insurance is el-cheapo, so I can foot it. Which means I can drive it up to Terre Haute after Christmas break (my father needs a three-day…

One of the first things I realized this (Saturday) morning, other than the fact that 05:00 is entirely too early to be getting up when on a leisurely vacation, is that I’ve lost weight. That’s a weird thing to suddenly notice, I know, but I was getting dressed after my shower, and I suddenly remembered the trouble I’d had recently keeping my pants up. Again, I’m not the most observant, and even what I do observe doesn’t always immediately register. So I took a look-see in the mirror (something I usually don’t do), and was a bit astonished. The weight-loss isn’t majorly apparent (despite my father’s claims), as I don’t…

Actually, it’s not, but I couldn’t think of a title. Okay. I just got home from work, it’s Finals Week, and there were about… ten people taking calls. That’s friggin’ scary. We normally have a staff of something approaching thirty, and Mondays (along with Wednesdays) are the busiest nights of the week. You couldn’t even hang up before the next call buzzed, and calls were cut off at the half-hour mark. In other news, the swelling in my toe hasn’t gone down a bit, so I’m still wearing one tennis shoe and one slipper when venturing outside of my residence hall. How is it that bruises can make your hairs…

I decided I wanted to restart lifting weights. I haven’t done it since being here, just because the SRC is a daunting place for me–people look at you and watch you, and I like to work out in peace. At any rate, I head down to the SRC and get my palm-print recognized and coded so I can get in and I head into the weight room. Oh. My. Damn. Lemme explain something first: at my place in Charlotte, there are simple weight machines; you put the peg in the hole for the weight you want, then use the machine. Simple. And there’s one machine that can do the exercise…

A quick note before Calculus: I worked really, really hard on this essay for Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 that I just got back from my prof today, right? (I’ll be posting the submitted draft soon.) What’s cool, however, is that my prof suggested that I submit this essay for the Humanities and Social Sciences Essay Contest later this year. My response: (!!!). (This means lots of squeaky happiness and jumping around and waving the essay around.) I’m so on a cloud right now. All the drama of my roommate and her friends, all the difficulty of working with Hitler incarnate on a Logic Design project, and all my worries over…