I didn't finish my entry yesterday, but I guess since several people have read it that I'll just start a new one. I was going to mention two especial cuases for the wonderfulness of the world yesterday. First, I have figured out a solution to my scheduling quandary for the semester. I had wanted to take the Schuldintphil 8:30, but since I had already a full slate of 1+1+1.5+.5 academic credits, and I'm not that much of a fool for learnin' my ambition was to audit it. Mr. Schuldenfrei (whose name Nori translates to free of debt or guilt) takes a principled stand against audition, and shot me down like a high school sophomore clarinetist auditioning in a challenge for the stand of principal. Mr. Bruce Grant (one of two professor Bruces to say nice things to me yesterday) sez, though, that's fine. So there's the compromise: audit HistCultConc, take the bitter phil. This has decided advantageousnesses, such as a much (much) lighter workload for the course where it will technically count, and the ability for me to test just how much I really do want to read all this theory schtuff, even though I'm determined to read as much as possible. The only downside is that I'll be graded on my ability to lug myself off to Papazian twice weekly in the early morn. But so far so good. I got there this morning fine, and the added pressure of three straight 75-min classes (philfrenchling, philfrenchling) made the burst out into the abso-freakin-lutely beautiful afternoon all the more dramatic; this schedule promises many jubilant Tuesday and Thursday afternoons once real spring comes (assuming it bears nearly as much resemblance to spring as this bears to summer.)

Number two is that good things have arrived in the mail. A couple Anth textbooks from Half, pleasantly enough, but much much enjoyably a cubical box from my folks packed full of goodies: a postcard from Rae from England; a roll of fun Sager photos from last year that actually belong to Rebecca, which I guess had been left with me and developed sometime when I was unawares; four boxes of LST (that is, two licorice spice and two lapsang souchong); Joel's iMic; a lemon zester (which I christened Miss Zester. Oh, I miss Ester); and two cheap CDs, by Edith Frost and Rebecca Gates (both of whom were all over Spinner this summer), and will figure nicely in the next installment of "Chicks." (Does Ester, I wonder, play tapes or CDs?) Hoo-rah for material possessions.

Sunday evening, after struggling with Fabian for a while, and then triumphing with that pleasant moment of intellectual connection, besides which realizing that the problem was much more with the poor writing than with the complexity of the idas, I came back home to find dinner ready, even a dinner guest - alum Chris Fanjul, who shared fencing stories along with Rebecca. Read Tylor (which has amusingly quaint certainty that it isn't actually racist) and so forth, and then went downstairs to visit buddy Rae. Her room (at least twice as purple as Nori's) is if possible even messier than before. She's gotten to the point where she's ready to something concrete about it, I think, so I gave her some suggestions, and offered to spend an afternoon helping her pick up/straighten up/clean up (it needs the first two most), provided that she was committed to going through with the full thing. Perhaps in conjunction with an "Eban and Charley" listening party. (Martin Hall?) She's practically abandoned Swat once again; half her classes are at Bryn Mawr. I guess the plan is to design a library. She's also talking about changing her name to "Rae". I suggested "rae." or perhaps "RAE". Miho Hatori may be the funniest rapper ever. Listened to "Insignificance" on loop for about three hours. It really is that good.

i'm miho hatori, straight out of purgatori
ai ai allright, i'm passing on your right