i prefer pi

Joel, my sometime wrestling partner, my only male sibling, my baby brother graduated from high school tonight. I’m so proud of you, man.

Whoa. Someone visited my Xanga page from Anguilla. I’m not even sure where Anguilla is (Sabra says somewhere in the Caribbean), and I certainly don’t think that I know anyone who lives there. Anyone on a cruise or on vacation, maybe? If you’re out there, leave me a comment!

I’m beginning to feel a bit daunted at the thought of starting work at Microsoft next week; I had a dream last night where I got there, and I was underpacked and couldn’t do anything right — I couldn’t even fill out my address on some paperwork.
(If anyone remembers what they learned about complex sentence creation and conjunctive punctuation, can you tell me if that last grotesque conglomeration of clauses was constructed correctly?)

I wish I knew how to write catchy opening sentences.  Moving right along:  We got back home this morning around 9:30 after driving straight through the night (I had the wheel from around 12:45 to 4:00 AM thanks to Red Bull, et al).  It was a lot of fun to see David and Brian again (who came up from Anderson for Friday night and the ceremony on Saturday morning) and to get away for a few days before heading up to Seattle.  Too bad I got a radioactive sunburn in the process =P

I’m in Indiana.  Upland, Indiana.  At Taylor University.  In a dorm room on the third floor of the east wing of Wengatz Hall.  My friend “D” says “Hi!”, is getting naked, and is walking down the hallway towards the bathroom.  I wouldn’t have subjected anyone to that, but he told me to.  Quite a different all-male dorm experience here than I think that Crocker will be.  I think I like it (minus all of the baking soda and bodily fluids…)

Grades came out today, and I managed to nudge the ole’ GPR (that’s “grade-point ratio” in case you’re not from College Station) to a 3.870.  I’m glad, but the frustrating thing is that I need an ‘A’ in every class that I’m taking next year to grab those last 0.03 points to get to summa cum laude.  Stupid second semester of my freshman year and stupid slacking off.  Oh well… I suppose I probably wouldn’t have continued to do as well as I have been doing if I’d gotten by with what I did that semester.  Chalk another one up to “lessons learned the hard way”.

I’ve decided that I’m tired of my fiction intake.  I’m tired of watching imaginary people make mistakes, I’m tired of drama centered around who is sleeping with whom, and I’m tired of subjecting myself to entertainment that glorifies things that are inconsistent with what I value.  I’m tired of Rory being Rory, tired of Jack killing someone because “it’s just that important”, tired of Enterprise’s endless deus ex machinae, tired of laughing at Scrubs, getting sucked into Alias, and being fooled into watching summer flicks.  Of course, I’m also extremely tired of being awake, so that might play into the above in some capacity. :yawn:

A bit of news:

• I’ll be the first floor RA in Crocker next year.  WHOOP!
• I have a dentist appointment today
• The new graphics card is double-plus good
• I’m going up to Indiana in a few days (and for a few days) for David’s graduation
• I stepped down as a Hobbes administrator

Well, I made it back to Duncanville in one piece. I drove back down to A&M last night for Jacob B. (”Jacob the Lesser”)’s graduation and Jacob F. (”Jacob the Elder”)’s thesis defense. It was a fun time, but I realized that I probably should have just applied for an extended stay and seen who could have picked me up on Saturday instead of moving home on Wednesday, then driving back down on Thursday and back up on Friday. I also found out that another friend from high school moves into FHK tomorrow (on Saturday), and it would have been cool to help him move in. Oh well…

I played games with friends (DD, Mary, Kristen, Brian and Jim) on Thursday night, slept on the couch and went to Jacob’s graduation this morning, finally got to meet his family, all of us (including Jacob) ducked out after the CompSci and CompEng majors had walked and went to Cheddar’s for lunch, then went to Jacob F.’s thesis defense, in which he staved us (the thesis attackers, apparently) off rather valiantly . Went back to the room and did some stuff while Kristen took a nap (I really ought to have also taken one), then she, Dimitri, Mary and I went to Rumours. I can finally claim victory over Food Services this semester, having used all of my meals for the first time ever Said “good-bye” to Dimitri and Mary and Hart, then “good-bye again” and then “this is really good-bye for the last time ever until next semester, I promise” and hit the road around 7:30

The drive was a bit of an adventure, because I missed my turn onto 14 and so decided to go up 6 to I-35. Along the way I detoured onto Waco’s 6 Business, which probably added an additional 15 minutes to the trip, then got back onto 6 Proper but turned the wrong way at Loop 340. The trip from Waco to Dallas took forever, and I was starting to fade around Red Oak, so I stopped at a gas station to rest my eyes, woke up about 20 minutes later, and drove the rest of the way home. The graphics card didn’t arrive today (because no one was here to sign for it), but I suppose that I can wait until Monday…

Situations, conversations, and songs on the radio gave me a lot to think about today, but I suppose I’ll sign off with one of the more light-hearted ones:

Kristen: The only thing that I don’t like about school is the dead birds…
Me: Dead birds?
Kristen: Yeah, I saw two dead birds walking somewhere the other day
Me: … You saw two dead birds… walking?
Kristen: No! Well… yeah… sort of… the birds were dead, and I was walking

Well, I’m back at home… on dial-up… with one phone line.  *weeps*  No, actually I usually enjoy not being “always on”; when I’m at school, I feel like I’ll miss something if I’m not constantly checking, people expect that if you’re on IM then you’re available, and that if you aren’t then you don’t want to do anything.  Here at home, people call each other when they want to get together.  I write e-mails and people reply.  I even get letters every now and then.  It’s nice.  Until I want to do something online.  Then I get annoyed

My new graphics card should arrive tomorrow.  It’s the first new hardware that I will have added in almost three years, and it will be quite a nice jump from my 32MB Geforce 2 MX 220 to the 128 MB Radeon 9800 Pro All-in-Wonder that I got for an absolute steal from newegg.com.  Waiting for it to arrive is like waiting for your birthday, and the worst part is that I probably won’t even be here tomorrow when it gets here :-\  I suppose that I can wait just a little while longer…

Has anyone else ever noticed that some foods smell so much better than they taste?  Actually, I take that back; I’m referring to the coffee that Mom made this morning, which has a very distinct raspberry smell to it.  The actual taste is quite a bit more subtle, but I think that’s probably a good thing.  If it tasted as “raspberry”-y as it smelled, it would probably be terribly sweet, and I wouldn’t be able to stand a whole mug of the stuff.  Olfaction is an interesting thing.

Heh.  I just realized that I wrote the word “linaear” last night when I was writing an AI paper.  I think it looks cool

This semester has been less physically exhausting than some in the past, but I’m no less ready for it to be over.  I just wish that there was a mandatory stay of an extra week after classes were over so that you could catch everyone before they left for the summer.  Although, I suppose there is one if you’re an RA

Thank God for friends, for long conversations, and for late-night breakfast runs (even when there are no lingonberry crépes to be had:)).

I’m about to fall asleep sitting up, but first I feel that it is my duty as a member of the human race to warn you all against seeing Van Helsing.  That was quite possibly the worst film I’ve ever seen.  *checks ticket stub collection*  Men in Black II… Jurassic Park 3… Batman and Robin… Yep.  This movie was made to be on Mystery Science Theater 3000.  I was a bit worried when I started dozing toward the end that I might miss something, but then I remembered that the plot has more holes than a tennis racquet..  If you’re looking for a few laughs, check out the Rotten Tomatos page.  You have to see this one to believe how bad it is.