Alright, alright. I’ll post a picture of the Panasonic ring. I think those white things in the background are my fingers, but I’ve been wrong before.

It was hard to get the camera to focus up close on the ring instead of my hand, so the ring is a bit blurry. (Note: I did not try very hard.)

I just received my championship ring from the Panasonic Academic Challenge. It’s pretty awesome.

For the first two weeks, I didn’t have any grades in my classes, but four of my classes have quizzes this week. The quiz in orgo was pretty good; I think I’m getting the hang of resonance structures. I’m not quite used to nucleophilic attack and Lewis acids/bases, but we’ve just started that unit. The math quiz was easy, the video game quiz will be easy (as it is open book, open notes, and open internet), and the Scientific Revolutions quiz can’t be too bad, eh?

Last night was the first of the ten swing dancing lessons I signed up for (“for which I signed up”). I’m actually okay, I think, as much as could be expected from someone who’s only tried swing dancing for a total of one and a half hours. At the rate the lessons are going, I can actually imagine myself being good by mid-November.

I’ve been listening to music a lot lately, while hanging around or reading the New York Times (another habit I have picked up). I can’t fail by turning on Foo Fighters or Green Day, though I’ve come to rather like KT Tunstall. Her new album, Drastic Fantastic, is rather catchy, especially the first single. (Whoops, is it not yet legally available in the U.S.? Scratch that statement.)

Anyway, it does feel good to read the Times every day and know what’s going on in the country and world. I do read BBC News online, but that’s just not the same as coming across articles in the Times I would perhaps not read if I only glanced at online headlines. Besides, I get to work on the crossword every day. I’m at the point where I can finish Monday and Tuesday fairly handily, and can complete Wednesday with some trouble. Friday still kicks my ass, but I guess that’s to be expected.

I went to the football game against Indiana State yesterday with Emma and Caitlin. The competition was not especially exciting from either side, even though we won rather…convincingly. (It ended 55-7, 14-7 of which was in the first eight minutes.)

And I realized that, if I don’t attend sporting events with sports fans (i.e., Nick), it actually appears like I know a little bit about sports.

I think my classes will go well this semester.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I have organic chemistry lectures. My professor seems very nice, and I think it won’t be as bad as it’s supposed to be, especially since it isn’t even an honors section. The AI who runs my discussion section hasn’t impressed me thus far, but discussion is optional so I can always just decide not to show up. I’m giving him a few weeks, though.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have my other four classes. First is my class on the history and philosophy of science. My professor for that is a friendly Canadian guy who seems to enjoy the subject. Plus, we somehow got accidentally put into a computer lab, so we all get very comfy chairs.

Second is my honors differential equations class. Turns out that the honors section is just part of the normal class, and we just get a little extra material. The professor seems on top of things, but doesn’t seem very scintillating, at least yet. I suspect things will stay that way, but it isn’t terrible or anything.

Third, after a few hours in between, is my seminar, Origin and History of the Universe. The people in the class are really interesting and smart, and I really like the subject material (can you tell? I’m taking two similar courses…) so I think this will be a really great class.

My final class is History and Social Impact of Video Games. The professor is a nice guy who doesn’t seem to expect very much out of his students (I feel it’s a learned low expectation) except that they read the “textbook” (a book on the history of video games.

(two college girls, standing in front of refrigerator with milk)

“I think my mom would always get fat-free milk. ‘Cause, like, it’s the same, but with less fat.”
“Oh, so then, is that, like…two percent?”

Wearing sandals for a few days has already made my feet significantly less pale than they were before.

I think that’s an indication of several things: how sunny it has been in the past few days, how quickly I tan to the Carlo shade (but don’t progress past it), and how infrequently I used to wear sandals.

I passed out of Calc III. Judging from the final, I will have to get used to tests consisting of fewer, larger problems than they did in high school.

I am taking a Calc III final tomorrow morning. Luckily, Calc III appears to be things I know well (partials, iterated integrals), not things I need to review heavily–it doesn’t even have line integrals! Win. I hope.

The following post is much longer than necessary, but please read the whole thing anyway. Thanks. –The Management

Good news, all! I now have a cell phone from AT&T Mobility, formerly known as Cingular, which absorbed AT&T Wireless and was formerly composed of SBC and BellSouth, which in turn were conglomerations of 12 Bell company descendants. Oh, those phone companies.

Anyway, I already have eleven of my friends’ numbers. If you are one of those people, I just sent you a Facebook message with my number. If you are not one of those people, I don’t have your number. I don’t want to just put my number on Facebook for all my friends, because then I still won’t have more than eleven numbers, and I’ll have thirty people calling me to say “Hi! Since when did you have a cell phone?”

So! If you want to have my number, and you want me to have your number, please email or Facebook message me with your number, and I will respond with mine.

Note that I am on an individual–not family–plan and don’t feel like spending huge amounts of my own money, so I don’t have infinite minutes. This is not true if you have AT&T yourself, where I do literally have infinite minutes. It is only partially true for nights or weekends (9 PM-6 AM), where I have a very large, though finite, number of minutes.

I will not be answering calls today, because I’m busy. (If you are dying to test out my number today, text me instead.) You can reach me starting tomorrow, with the exception of when I’m at a formal dinner in the evening, and obviously won’t be answering my phone.

As a humorous side-note, I have three profiles set on my phone right now. The first one, “Normal,” rings. The second one, called “Silent,” vibrates. The third, which I dubbed “Ninja,” hides in the shadows, neither ringing nor vibrating, but staying on to descend upon its victim at any moment. Or, like, for me to use it.