One Absentee Blogger Checking In

It was a good quarter. Math was just another math class (albeit a fun one - our professor turned out to be a former professional magician, specializing in card tricks and mind-reading, and our TA came to class once in a pirate costume). Introduction to Humanities moved up the charts when I was permitted, nay encouraged to write a sci-fi short story in lieu of a rigorous final paper. Computer Science was a joy until I tried taking the practice final the day before the real one - fortunately, it was over less than 24 hours after that.

Stanford released me after the aforementioned CS final on Wednesday. I packed up my stuff, vacuumed up the graham-cracker crumbs I've been meaning to deal with for the past two weeks, and even filled out my course evaluations (Stanford is hoping to "Beat Yale" in percentage of student body to fill out online course evaluations - we would hope to beat Cal, but they don't have an online course evaluation system). Unfortunately, I didn't take down the Christmas lights - if my roommate didn't do it before he left, we'll probably both be hanged by Residential & Dining Enterprises upon our return. In the meantime, I'm in Utah, relishing the first chapter of my 3.5 week Christmas break.

Next quarter I'm hoping to study the history of genocide and mass violence, play in a jazz combo, get a sane amount of sleep, and learn multivariable integration. Call me crazy if you want.

Isaac and I have encountered each other 4 times since the beginning of the quarter. Isaac showed me the castle he inhabits and the massive, next-door open-air music venue where nationally famous artists perform, snubbing my less fortunate side of the Bay. Later we met up for a Meters concert in San Francisco and, just this past week, I dragged a couple of family members to a poetry slam this past week showcasing 15 of Northern California's finest slam poets - Isaac took second place.

My sister Ruth is looking at TASP 2007 applications right now. !!!

Groetjes,
Sam