Day 12a

Well first I had left my summer project go for way too long and couldn't afford the time that the tasks were taking. Then I was burned out on the project again, disappointed at the lack of super-fun-happenings this summer, and not wanting to do anything in general. Then I got into poker and my blog and my project slipped from my mind completely.

Then I realized how long it had been, and started bracing myself to write some sort of lame "I guess I'll start this again even though no one said much about my stopping, bleh..." post. Then three different people in three different contexts, who happen to know little if nothing of each other's existence, sent me a Facebook message that inspired me to dive back into 30 days.

Now that I have only one week left of my summer job, a good share of activities planned in the near future, and back-to-school excitement beginning to build, I feel more than ready to tackle each and every challenge Brett McKay throws (threw?) my way. Huzzah!

...unfortunately, it's that time of day where my family is getting up and I have not yet gone to bed. Lying in my bed thinking out the items on my bucket list, my fading conscious mind threw out a last-resort warning that if I didn't get up now and blog what I had so far, it would be quite a few hours before I had the opportunity to do so again. So I give you the first five of at least ten items on my bucket list:

1. Play No Limit Texas Hold 'em in Vegas (did I mention I'd gotten into poker?).
2. Climb a mountain.
3. Travel to at least six continents (the non-Antarctic ones).
4. Solve P=NP, help bring about the first AGI, or find an equally significant contribution to make to computer science.
5. Learn guitar.
6. Bonus! Thought of this while typing the last five: Travel to outer space. I believe this will become very doable in my lifetime, and I can't imagine what could compare to the experience of seeing Earth like that with my own eyes.

Day 11

Today's task was to give yourself a testicular exam. Everything was... umm... where it was supposed to be. This being the only task of the that doesn't require a check-in, I'll leave it at that.

And no, that timestamp can't be right...

Goodnight.

Day 10

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or, being lied about, not deal in lies
Or, being hated, not give way to hating
And yet don't look too good nor talk too wise

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat these two imposters just the same
If you can bear to see the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with kings - nor lose your common touch
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you
If all men count with you, but none too much
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run
Then yours is the Earth and all that is in it
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

In fulfillment of today's task, the above poem was typed from memory. I was going to leave this update at that, but then I remembered I had date details to fill you in on. So here they are: my date was Kristin, a longtime friend from school. We had dinner at a restaurant in town before going to see Harry Potter with the rest of our friends. I had originally planned to have the date on a different night, but I am glad it ended up this way. We were able to have a good one-on-one conversation, which is something I realize I don't have very often, but also got to spend time with our wonderful group of friends--adorable good-bye hug lines and all.

Speaking of adorable, it seems there is going to be a movie version of Where the Wild Things Are (I would embed the preview, but embedding is disabled and this is probably worth watching a large version of anyway).

Day 9

Oh dear... 1 am is a bad time to start doing challenges from hackthissite.org.

Contrary to earlier claims, today's task was to take a woman on a date. I said earlier that this was the task for Thursday. It is not. Appropriately, however, the date will be on Thursday, which is now today and a little more than twelve hours away. With that in mind I should probably go to sleep. I'll give you more details and tell you how it went in my next update.

Goodnight/

Day 8

Today's task was to start a journal. This was an easy one for me because I have been journaling on a reasonably consistent basis for about two years. I have used notebooks, text files, e-mail drafts, and this very blog to record my thoughts. All combined, I don't think I've gone much more than a month without an entry, and usually less. Brett, however, recommends journaling every day. So today was my first day of daily notebook journaling. I had to put some thought into the decision of whether to keep my daily journal on paper or on a hard drive. The latter has definite advantages, like speed of writing and ease of searching, which I do not want to give up completely. I will continue typing the occasional .txt entry, and of course will maintian my blog. But it's nice to be free from the distractions of a computer both when reading and writing a journal, and so away from it I shall stay every night before I go to bed.

Day 7

Today's task was to reconnect with an old friend. The corresponding (and linked) blog entry raised an interesting point: it seems like everyone today considers themselves busy. I've noticed this at school and believe it is also common of those in the workforce. But, Brett McKay asks, are we--with our computers, cars, and cell phones--really more busy than those in, say, Lincoln's time? Or are we just more distracted?

The friend I'm writing is named Nathan. We knew each other way back when my family (and his family) still lived in New Tribes, and before either of us entered Kindergarten. We spent enough time together at a young enough age that we heard more than once that our voices had become hard to tell apart. But one day Nathan walked into our 6th Grade Advanced Math course and told us that the reason he had been gone last week was because his family had been looking at houses in Texas, where he was moving at the end of the year. As the rest of the class mock-cheered, I sat in silent disappointment. Aside from a some sporadic phone calls early on, a brief visit from his family several years later, and a few messages when we found each other on Facebook, I haven't communicated with him at all in eight years.

The timing of this assignment might be perfect. There was a less-than-subtle indication that I will be expected to set up a meeting with him later in the project, and it turns out he is coming to Mizzou in the fall. Given that I also have other friends there but have never before visited, this could be a very good thing indeed.

Addendum: I couldn't help but notice the assignment for Thursday is to take a woman on a date. Hmm.

Day 6

Today's task was to update your resume. Unfortunately, mine is currently stored on my non-work hard drive which means it will be rather a nuisance to retrieve. Since today was kind of a catch-up day for me and I need to let my computer run for a while, I decided to wait on this one. :-O

I don't want to get into the habit of putting off finishing the assignments, so I'm going to have to be doubly sure to get tomorrow's task done on time. I would also like to get tomorrow itself done on time, which is to say I'm going to try to go to bed before 3 am.

Day 5

Today's task was to cultivate your gratitude. The first of the two subparts was to list 10 things you are grateful for. While I don't want to give you the whole list here, it seems lame to do nothing more than say I did it. So I'll compromise by giving you number three:

I am thankful for my dog's willingness to let me pick him up and play with him even when he's sleeping.

He's pretty adorable, and I had to add him to the list when I saw him doing his little lying-down leg stretch.

Part 2 is to send thank-you's to three different people. This is going to be completed tomorrow, but I'm ok with that because I plan to do at least six.

Day 4

Today my task was to increase my testosterone by completing at least three testosterone-boosting activities from a list. My first two--getting 8 hours of sleep and not eating any soy products--were pretty easy to handle. Meditating was also a simple task, though it took me two tries to keep it up for the full ten minutes. Given how stress-free my life is right now, it seemed a little superfluous anyway. Additionally, I ate fat, animal protein, and cruciferous vegetables, though perhaps not as much of any of them as I should have. Finally, I changed my exercise routine for today to use improvised weights, but after my "weight rack" fell off the deck and the handle on my salt bag broke while I was deadlifting it, I would have to say it didn't turn out to be a stellar workout. Maybe I should stick to my bodyweight routine until I can go to a real gym.

The only two remaining tasks were not smoking, which non-smokers were not allowed to count, and morning sex, which, well, requires someone to have morning sex with. Also of note: the fact that I am awake right now seems I need to learn to get better at accepting poker losses.

Day 3

Today's task was to find a mentor. I've had a few men in my life start to play the traditional mentor role, but none have lasted more than a few months. I like the idea of having a mentor (or several, as many of the guys on the forum seem to have) but until today had never actively tried to foster that kind of relationship. So today I contacted someone who I think would be good for the job. I can't guarantee it will work out, but if it doesn't (or maybe even if it does), I will do everything I can to find someone else. Brett recommends having a mentor in four different areas of your life, so I suppose that even after today I have some work to do. =]

A Month of Manliness (not the Spike TV variety)

The Project

I had forgotten how much I loved the Art of Manliness blog until I visited it for the first time in several months on Monday. While there, I discovered I had just missed the "30 Days to a Better Man" project, which ran through the month of June. But after reading the first challenge, I reached the last paragraph and read the following:

Remember, these posts aren’t for passive entertainment! The 30 Days to a Better Man Project is about action! You have 24 hours to complete this task.

I knew I had to do it. Not just the first task, but the whole project. And since I'm more than a month late on it, I've decided the accountability group on the AoM forum probably won't do much to motivate me. Instead, I'm going to post my progress here. I read the Day 1 post at 6:00 pm, so every day by that time I need to have my assignment completed, though I'll grant myself four hours after that to post about it. This means that I want you, whoever you may be, to ask me what's up if you wake up one morning this month and I haven't reported progress the night before. E-mail me, text me, call me, or talk to me if you see me. But make sure I'm keeping up, all right? Even better, you can check in here and see just what it was that I was supposed to do.

Ok. Now here's my first report: I missed my first deadline. And my second one. I received a last-minute invitation to Springfield on Monday night and didn't get back until today at noon. I vaguely considered simply pushing back the whole thing by one day, but I knew that wouldn't cut it. I would just have to catch up.

Day 1

And catch up I did. This afternoon I locked myself in a closet with my little red Google Open Source Office moleskin notebook until I had completed the first task: Define Your Core Values. I came up with the following list, in order of importance:

Truth
Integrity
Close Relationships
Self-Improvement
Trying New Things

While I was listing them, I tried to decide which of my potential values were ones I actually found important and which were ones I just thought should be important. I think I arrived at an accurate result, but I'll be thinking about it a lot this month and reserve the right to make changes if it seems correct to do so.

Day 2

I finished the first assignment shortly before my parents came home from work, and decided to wait for my dad before tackling the second one: Shine Your Shoes. After retrieving his shoe-shining kit, I sat down to work on my two pairs of dress shoes, asking questions about some of the instructions I had read on the blog.

As I was working, I felt like the experience was exactly what Brett McKay was hoping for. First, my dad's kit is little more than a few cans of Kiwi and old rags, but it is exactly was was prescribed on the blog. Second, as I was putting on the polish, my dad told me how when he was growing up, people used to polish their shoes every week before they went to church, and that his family would all polish their shoes the day before they went to town. He went on to comment that it seemed most people don't shine their shoes at all any more. It's true. I never had until today. It's just this kind of generational difference that is frequently pointed out in AoM, and this kind of interaction that it encourages. While things like shining your shoes or shaving with a single-blade razor may seem somewhat unimportant or even antiquated, looking to past generations of men as examples certainly is not, and is one of the reasons I like this blog so much.

Today's song: Have You Got it in You? by Imogen Heap



The note about lyrics at the beginning of the video is only true of the YouTube page.

System Themes and My Contribution to the World

I sat down at my laptop to write this post and when I started typing I saw nothing. Well, almost nothing. There was an almost imperceptible motion of something across the screen as I typed, but I certainly wasn't able to resolve it into letters. I've had this problem before. I recently started using a dark system theme on this computer, which features light gray text on black backgrounds. This works great until I get online and access websites that can choose to specify their own colors. Sometimes they make sure to say they want black text. Awesome. But that means I fall back on my default black background and can't see what I type. Other times (like here) they specify white backgrounds. Sweet. But my default light gray text doesn't show up very well.

It turns out this has been a known issue for over a year, but has yet to be fixed.

And as I type that, I follow my own link to get a little more familiar with it (because I'm coming back to it later--you might want to at least queue it up in another tab if you haven't looked at it yet). And what do I discover but a fix? A fix that, unlike other fixes I've seen for this, works for me! And uses files that actually exist on my machine! Good deal. I shall continue typing this back in my wonderfully gothish theme and not leaning in until I'm two inches away from the screen, only to find I still have to highlight what I just typed to confirm it's actually there. Isn't contrast wonderful?

Now, still have that tab open? Launchpad, the site hosting the bug report, is also hosting 628 lines of veritable C++ written by none other than yours truly. That's right, this week I published open source code for the first time in my life (ok, I guess you didn't really need the other tab for that). It feels good to finally have something to show for my work, and it feels crazy to think that this could some day be a small part of some incredibly revolutionary technology. Even better, this is exactly what I've been learning to do in school and could be what I do for the rest of my life.

I've been tossing around the idea of devoting my next three decades (or however long it takes) to helping create the world's first artificial general intelligence. If I do I have a lot of learning to do before I can make really serious contributions, and even then I will only be playing a small part. But if I do, you can, right now, see the first 628 lines of my life's work. And if I do, I would be taking part in the most significant human advancement ever. How incredible is that?

For that to happen, though, I should probably at least complete the Summer of Code in good standing. And part of that is completing weekly progress reports, which I have not done yet. I suppose I should get on that...

This week's song: I'm Still Here by Vertical Horizon

Pardon the Smallville; It had the best audio of the videos I found.

Of course, now that I understand that this universe actually exploded out of nothing and went from a pinhead to a massive broiling ball of gases in far less than a millisecond, how can I possibly believe in miracles anymore? (That's tongue-in-cheek, folks).

One of the ways you can impress me is by demonstrating an understanding of modern physics. Opening a book with a summary of everything I've learned in the past year about quantum mechanics and astrophysics goes somewhat beyond that. In fact, in his book "Finding God in the Questions", Dr. Timothy Johnson confesses that the intricacies of the universe in both the sub-atomic and inter-galactic scales are for him more compelling evidence for God than is the existence of morality, which is the much more traditional demonstration of deism. This intrigues me, as does Dr. Johnson's very honest treatment of his belief in Christianity.

Also, a rather unrelated song:



If I knew how, I would link you directly to 2:06.

On the Road

As crazy as my polyphasic sleep schedule will be later this summer, it will be nice to have something regular. After much sleep deprivation at school, I slept 15 hours on Wednesday night, eight hours Thursday night, seven hours Friday night, all day Sunday, then two hours last night. All that to say that my kickoff post for our grand Canadian adventure is going to have to be shorter than ideal, but what can you do? Not pack as much, comes the answer from the back seat to a different question.

With Wi-Fi an uncertainty and my limited cell-service internet reserved for work and e-mails, I'm not sure how much I will be able to update this over the next two weeks or so. But rest assured I will take any opportunity I can and will be back to regular scheduling soon enough.

And with that... we're off!

Why this semester is the best semester of my life

This semester I finally did it. This semester I had a goal and I reached it. This semester, I broke. I hit my limit. With seven classes, two TA positions, and independent study, and two extra-curriculars, my usually effortless balancing act finally failed.

This semester, I got my first B. Ever. I have never ever ever in my live long life gotten a grade below A- in a class. Not in lower or upper elementary schools. Not in middle school. Not in high school. Not my first three semesters at WashU. Heck, I just got $100 and an Engineering honorary award for having a three-semester 4.0.

And then tonight, I checked my e-mail. Will had mentioned getting his Engineering Math grade, and I have the same teacher for Probability and Statistics. Huh. I guess I should check to see if my grade is posted, too. I needed an 88 on the final exam, and it would be nice to confirm my strong suspicion that I had gotten it. Sure enough, waiting in my inbox, was "ProbStats final exam scores". I opened the e-mail, to which an excel spreadsheet of our scores was attached.

I opened the spreadsheet as a Google doc. It was loading too slowly. I opened it as html. Again, too slowly. Really? Must you play with me like this? I know I got an A, but that doesn't mean you have liscence to tease me. They both load. I find my unique four-digit number and look at the score. 41. Out of 50. Whatever my grades say, I know enough about statistics to realize immediately that the ride is over. I am human/mortal/normal/what-have-you, and... and... well, that's it.

To be honest, I thought this week might be the end of the line for my academic perfection. But my concern was purely with Quantum Mechanics. I was easing up a bit after taking the exam today and expecting to brace for the results at the end of the week. And then BAM!

You know the scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden asks the narrator to punch him? But he wants it to be kind of unexpected. He wants a new experience and he wants it to be genuine. It is entirely over-dramatic of me to make the comparison between that scene and my semester, but I kind of like the idea, because in some ways that's really how it was. At the end of last fall, I looked at my registration worksheet and said "Punch me. As hard as you can." And it did. And I learned a lot about myself and what's important to me in the process.

For starters, I don't like taking 21 credits. Even when I thought I could pull out the 4.0, I was
dissatisfied with my level of understanding of the subjects I was taking (ironically, this was
least true of prob/stat). And they were all great classes. Taken under a lighter load, I would easily have put in twice as much work into most of them, purely because of how interested I was. Notice I say most.

Another thing I realized is that I really love computer science. Definitely more than physics and abstract math (both of which I, nerdily enough, still like). There's just something about it that makes it so interesting and fun and it comes naturally to me. I honestly can't think of a more enjoyable summer job than working on a Google-sponsored computer science project. Combine that with my plans for road trips, camping, canoing, and just hanging out with the people I love, and you have a recipe for the best three months I could ask for. Hold onto that last ingredient.

This semester increased my appreciation and understanding of the idea that no man is an island. I went to a "last lecture" given by Kit Wellman, one of the professors in the Philosophy department. (For the uninitiated, a last lecture is a talk given by professor with the prompt, "What would you say to your students if you knew this would be your last lecture?") He said that the two essential ingredients to the excellent human life are strong relationships and meaningful projects. (cut to my summer plans... cut back) What he said reflected something I had started to feel myself. I've realized that, particularly in the case of my academic prowess, I tend to look down on a lot of people as inferiors. I don't really even do more work than they do; grades just happen for me. But I look down on them. And this is something I wouldn't admit, even to myself.
I have a clear memory from freshman year, thinking about why I didn't really spend time with any of the guys on my floor. I imagined they thought of me as somehow stuck-up and too good for them. But of course, I told myself, of course that's not true. In fact, rather the opposite. I don't spend time with them because I wouldn't be good enough to fit in.

But it was true. They swore, they drank, they weren't as smart as me, they slept around, and they actually thought of this as a tough school to get into. Ha! This was my fallback school. This was the school I applied to on little more than a whim! I'm MIT material and I'm stuck in this "hidden ivy" school with people who are NOT my peers in any meaningful way.

I was stuck-up and too good for them. They were people I had to endure until I found better ones. They were unavoidable, but temporary. I was an island. Or at the very least a penninsula, staring straight out into the sea, where my award was waiting for me to overcome this challenge and demonstrate my worthiness.

I should perhaps mention here the subtle influence I really believe video games had on this mindset. Granted, I won't claim that it was any more than a limited promotion of an already developing attitude, but I do think its influence was there. You see, video games (single player ones, at least) tend to make the player an island. Even if there are other characters in the game, all of the success you have in the game is of your own making. And the games are designed so you succeed. That's what makes them fun. You can rescue princesses, save worlds, destroy worlds, win championships, win battles, and solve problems. You. Sitting there on your
couch, you have power and influence because you put in the time so you would level up and you found that hidden item that wasn't marked on the map. You.

This semester I gave up single-player video games. I realized I wasn't really happy with myself when I played them. I felt like I wasted time. I felt antisocial. I felt like I went over the line when I played almost a full day of Spore last semester, skipping classes and everything. I did go over the line when I played almost a full day of spore. But I really do enjoy video games when I play them with other people. We can talk and laugh about what's going on. We can be competetive. Or, as has happened this week with Fallout, I can just be a spectator, sharing the experience with the person playing the game without the need to have control of it myself. I've been happy with this decision.

I've been happy because I have shared that time with other people. Not because I beat some stupid game (or some stupid class) myself. And you know what? I've met some incredibly interesting people. Grad students, rock climbers, and music junkies, everyone has a passion. Some share my love of technology. Others are motivated by religion and philosophy. I met two people with a vision to restore the WashU radio station to its former glory, and got to know better someone with a dream for a whole new culture among the student body at school.

And now, somehow, the semester is over. Nearly, at least. With two more finals to do today, I probably shouldn't declare the end just yet. I also probably shouldn't stay up much later writing this. For now, I wish you the best with whatever summer signifies for you, and hope to get up a slightly tangential slew of Project 365 pictures very soon. Good night.

Happy Thursday

Today I wrote a program in assembly language for the first time ever (unless you could writing for the WashU1+). I was pretty excited about it. More exciting, however, is catching up on one month's worth of pictures. Here they are:

March 17 ?!

At least it hasn't been a month. I promise I haven't forgotten about you. I just seem to finally have been caught by my courseload. And, what's more, Google Summer of Code, and the attendant excitement, trepidation, and self-doubt that came with the application process. But today, having finally submitted my patch, I have to step back and just let the rest take care of itself.

There are updates I've left out from spring break and the preceding week, which I carefully recorded in my journal, but being in a different room, I'm going to have to do without that for tonight. I was in a wedding party for the first time over the weekend, as a groomsman. I enjoyed it a lot and will certainly include pictures if I get access to them.

In the past few weeks I have become quite intrigued with two books, Godel, Escher, Bach and Godel's Proof, the former inspiring my interest in the latter. Both make me feel like a nerdy math guy, which I enjoy, and both make me want to read more books like them. And my image of Douglas Hofstadter driving into the wilderness with only a tent and copies of mathematical works is so wonderfully genuine and fun that I can't help but listen to what he has to say.

And now, alas, I am once again up far past my bedtime. So I will leave you with a renewed promise of updates and pictures, with the firm deadline of Friday for the first signs of both. Goodnight.

It's been a while

I clearly haven't kept up with my weekly posting schedule for this blog, but at least I can say I have compensated for it by filling the intervening time with myriad things to write about when I actually take the time to sit down and write them. And that time is... not now. I'm sorry to dash your hopes if you were expecting this to be the gushing report of everything I have had to say in the past two and a half weeks, but I hope you will allow the suspense to build just a little longer. For now, two thoughts:

First, Requiem for a Dream is one of the most intense and well-created movies I have seen in a long time. It is confusing, disturbing, creative, and very well titled. It is also the most effective anti-drug media I have ever seen.

Second, every experience I have had in the past two and a half weeks has made me think about just how strong a desire humans have to feel useful, needed, independent, purposed, or strong. I will go into more detail about those experiences next time, but for now it seems apparent that Theodore Roosevelt and William Danforth were on to something with their respective programs of "the strenuous life" and "challenge by choice".

Project 365 pictures will be coming soon, as well, though I have a fair amount of processing to do first.

Today was a Good Day

On Monday I discovered I had missed my chance to apply for a Software Engineering internship at Google. In North America, at least. I was both disappointed and frustrated, having been prepared to spend the afternoon working on my application but never having received a deadline. On Wednesday I was startled to discover the student to whom I had given a 13% was a man in his mid-thirties with a wife and kids and a very reasonable appeal for a better grade than he received. Somehow even this simple, calmly negotiated disagreement gnawed at me for the rest of the day. Yesterday the observatory was closed after we came all the way from the South 40 to go to it, and today it rained.

Overall, it was a good week.

I found a renewed desire for adventure both at school and for this summer and felt the highest I have all month, both literally and emotionally. Literally, you ask? Despite the fact that the observatory was closed, not all of the doors were, and we managed to get out onto the lowest roof of Crow and, with a little work, up to a point above the observatory. I suppose I was still riding that wave today, and the combination of that with Flatterland, my anticipation of the weekend, the rain, and my continual discovery of wonderful music was a recipe for that ever-hunted but oft-elusive Good Day.

Speaking of music, check out Kina Grannis on YouTube, MySpace, or iTunes. She is awesome.

The Good Kind of Tired

You know the kind of tired you are when you sleep too late or stay inactive all day? Perhaps it's better referred to as sleepiness or lethargy. But for now, for the sake of contrast, it's the bad kind of tired. It's the kind of tired that means you don't have the energy or motivation to do much of anything, but also doesn't really make you want to sleep. In fact, when you're the bad kind of tired, you often can't sleep.

Right now, I'm the good kind of tired. It's the kind of tired that that starts when you get three hours of sleep because you're up working on a circuit design problem that's frustrating at first but kind of fun when you solve your problems and end up with an elegant solution. This kind of tired grows out of that initial exhaustion when you get nine hours of sleep the next night but still have to power through a full day of commitments. It is more subtle then. You feel it in your joints and every time you rub your head. Then this kind of tired hits you when you do your last workout of the week. It spreads through your arms and your legs. It settles into the soles of your feet and crawls out to your fingertips where it is felt with every last key you type.

Still, this kind of tired is optimistic. It would love to go out and do something. Maybe frisbee? But it's cold outside. And no one can think of anything to do. As you watch The Fifth Element, this kind of tired starts to remind you that what you really want is sleep. So as you savor one more 60% dark chocolate square you begin to really notice the feeling in your toes as they play with the table. The soothing massage of your neck on the back of the couch. And when someone suggests playing Gauntlet, this kind of tired pulls you, strong and seductive, away to your bed.

It waits, patiently at first, for you to do what you need to do at the end of the night—brushing your teeth, swishing from your new bottle of Listerine, clearing papers and books from your bed. But as you type the post you missed last night because you wanted nine hours of sleep and didn't have one of the pictures you wanted, this kind of tired starts to pull a little harder. As the message goes on, you go slower and slower and want more and more to give in and burrow into the mattress and pillow, pulling your blanket tight, and sinking beautifully and blissfully into a long-awaited and well-deserved sleep. And so, with the sounds of swords and mages coming from the tv in the background, you finally... happily... serenely... collapse.

No Amount of Wine

"You see," he said, "You're choosing to love a changing person."

maybe when i think about you i know exactly what i want.

maybe what i want is to fly. and

maybe when i fly the breeze brushes 

smooth, light, and cool on my skin. but

maybe when the breeze brushes smooth, light, and cool on my skin 

it burns, cold and hard in my eyes.

maybe i have no idea what i'm doing.

maybe i'm not perfect and neither is life. and yet

maybe, just maybe, every time i go to sleep, every time i wake, 

every time i walk to class...

maybe i know exactly what i want

Back to Work

Arriving back at WashU after spending Saturday at home, I quickly remembered that

1. I am a TA

2. I do in fact have homework on weekends, despite their being followed by a light Monday

3. I can't turn down anyone asking for help

And all of those are good things, even though they frequently lead to my being up at 3 am, as they did today. When I have people all around me, on- and off-line, asking for help on physics and computer science, and I know how to answer all of their questions, I feel good and I feel like I'm where I need to be. I sometimes (often) feel like I don't have the service or leadership credentials expected of me as a Danforth scholar, or perhaps as a good person in general, so it's reassuring to know the academic help I can provide is still valued.

I also recorded a song for KWUR Theater of Air today. It was my first time in a recording studio and it was kind of cool to experience, even though it took a long time and by the end I could barely get through my part because my lips were so tired. It has certainly been a while since I was in marching band. But, as I realized later in disappointment, I didn't think to take any pictures there, which means I have once again reached the end of the day with the challenge of finding something in the limited space of my dorm room to summarize it. I considered taking a picture of mystery girl when she was here today, but then thought that might be a little creepy.

Better Late than Never

Yawn. Sleep. Work. Scratch. Groan. What?

This week I am realizing two things. First, this might be a pretty exhausting semester. I'm going on my second straight week of not going to bed before 2 am and frequently staying up past three (though that still gives me eight hours of sleep on weekends). And I'm still exercising, trying to read several books, and become generally more organized, all while dealing with my heavy work- and course-load.

Second, I need to complain less. And "complaining" here also includes having a holier-than-thou attitude about my schedule. I'm not really sure how much I do either of those things verbally (complain or sport an attitude), but three things I encountered this week made me notice that, at the very least, I do them mentally.

My first encounter was in Bear's Den. I ordered pesto pasta and was waiting for it to be mixed and boxed for me while the guy who had just been in front of me in line was sprinkling on some parmesan cheese. In fact, he took so long putting it on I thought I might be able to beat him to the checkout. Had he taken any longer, I would have. Instead I took solace in the fact that there was no one in line on our side of the cashier, which meant I could still check out without waiting in a significant line. But when the cashier finished ringing up the person she was working with and turned to us, this guy in front of me, who I see now has intentionally been maintaining distance from the register, told her he would wait for her to handle the end of the line on the other side.

I'm not sure if I explained that well enough for you to follow it, but this fellow pasta eater turned down a coincidental cut in line that I sometimes try to use on purpose. As simple as it was, it made a big impression on me and made me realize that I should consider other people a lot more than I do now.

My second encounter was with fellow Danforth Scholars at a meeting about our Spring Break trip to Biloxi, MS. Everyone there was busy, and I didn't even think about complaining myself. In fact, it is probably being in this group of people that motivated me to do as much as possible in the first place.

My last encounter this week was a phone call earlier tonight from the most resilient girl I have ever met. Despite facing a multitude of issues that would each be particularly difficult on their own, she remains upbeat, incredibly enthusiastic (most of the time), and says next to nothing about any of her problems. People like her just make me think "whoah!" and they are the best part of being a student at WashU. I hope I can learn from every last one of them.