I have been to eight (academic) classes in the last two days. In declining order of my desire to take them (considering all relevant factors):

History of the Culture Concept (Anthropology)
French 2B
Intro to Philosophy
Intermediate Syntax and Semantics
Goddesses (and Gods) of India
Comparative and Historical Linguistics
Patterns of Asian Religions
Intro to Cognitive Science

My schedule is still somewhat unsettled, but I'm essentially certain that I'll take those first two. Also Spring Ornithology, which has yet to meet, and one of two ling classes; Semantics or the "intermediary." As usual, I'm tempted to audit, the most likely candidates being Phil and Goddesses (less likely). Here's what it's been like:

Sunday was relaxing for the most part (the entire Björk ouevre to date, a visit from Ben, a chapter each in Pinker and Banks) although I had an attack of funk (mostly roommate/loneliness/lethargy related). That improved after I decided to be more active, and cleaned out my closet a bit, setting it up to prompt Rebecca to dub it a "boudoir," and strung up SAC funded blue lights around my window and eyesore pipe thingy. I opted out of the first day of French, but sat through two straight religion classes, both with Katharine Ulrich, an enthusiastic visiting prof from UChicago (doctoral candidate for "Images of Dismemberment"; she's also teaching a seminar on "Sacrifice: Theory and Practice"). Patterns was packed and seemed like it would be frustratingly broad and shallow, although well-thought out, but Goddesses (which I hadn't realized was emphatically Goddesses and Gods) held some interest, despite my lack of allegedly prerequisite knowledge of Hindu. There were only six other students, including an ecstatic Mike Smith and at least one practicing Hindu. Met Nori back home for a bagel with cream cheese, hot mango chutney, and Florence pear preserves, and then found myself late to History of the Culture Concept (that class is annoyingly unabbreviatable). I was the last one in the room in fact, which meant that I joined two others on the hard cold windowsill, looking at the hairs on the back of Jocelyn's sweater. I think it's a good sign that she's in the class, and it certainly has the mixture of hard-core theoreticalness and stylishly self-aware humor that marked my last class with her, Everyday Things. I'm not exactly sure why I signed up for it, other than that Bryn Rosenfeld raved about it so extensively, given that I have never professed an interest in anthropology, and have perhaps only slightly higher than average (for Swarthmore) tolerance for theory. But I'm pretty psyched for it. It promises to be challenging and fun (quite an imposing reading list that I'm sure will range from sublime and inspiring to frustrating and just boring, and just an overall aura of intensity and focus that engages my simultaneous hankering for hard-core academia and substantial skepticism toward it) and certainly worthwhile. Bruce Grant, the young, wiry, clenched-mouthed, Canadian prof (and self-described "me centered person") is a trip, as they say. He read us all of the course evaluations by students from the last iteration of the class, praised "Dude, Where's My Car" (and called Alicia Silverstone "fat"), offered an entertaining if inevitably self-parodying combination of candor, patronizingness (?), and scholarly enthusiasm. Anyway, that's good.

We got out early, although I didn't realize it, so I waited briefly for Alyssa in Kohlberg; then spent the hour or so disparity in our class-endings (at least for day one) going to the bookstore with Jocelyn and deploying Ester-hugs to Stefanie, Sorelle, Zabby, Addie, etc. A and I met up again for an unnecessarily rushed Sharples dinner before drumming for African (Charles just comes up to me with a big hug and a huge grin, has me up on the big drum with the agogo after ten minutes of playing). I took a brief and bizarre interlude at jazz band (thinking they would still be in need of drummers; as it turned out I was one of three, along with Andrew Steele), which was similarly a re-entry into a world in which I am quite at home, unlike some of my earlier experiences of the day, and then headed back for African II. Most of the drummers had danced the previous session, so it was an appropriate role-reversal. But we didn't actually hold class because of a gospel concert that Kemal wanted to attend. From there back here, where we had a second dinner of gado-gado and Brigid joined us (Nori and Alyssa) to spell "barn" and play scrabble. (Yes I won; sometime I'll have to write some of my thoughts about why I like that game so much and that I ought to find someone who will beat me at it.) We went to bed on the early side, since I had decided to accompany Nori to Schuldenfhilosipheightthirty the next day.

Rae has wandered up here in her silk bathrobe to seek out some bass tones that have been foiling her attempts to sleep (Nori was the offender, not I); she reminds me that I should be getting to sleep as well, at least after perhaps skimming through the last fifteen pages of Hindu Goddess stuff for this class I'm not really sure why I'll be attending tomorrow, since I am almost certainly not going to take it. But that's how it goes. So I'll write about today tomorrow, when I really will have some honest-to-goodness time.

it's better than even money