Note: This was written on an actual piece of paper (strange I know) in class on Monday. I'm typing it in tonight because, quite frankly, I don't really have anything better to do. Well, that's not entirely true, I'm sure I could think of one or two more productive uses of my time than this little rant, but I don't really feel like doing any of these things. Further note, I wrote this while extremely bored, reading it can't possibly make you as bored as I felt as it'll only take you a few minutes, but still, consider this fair warning.

2.6 hour lectures make me want to reconsider my decisions about illegal drugs. Somehow, I think that sitting listening to this blather would be easier if I were high on something. I suppose however that that might tend to negate the purpose of being here altogether (that seems to me to be almost a good excuse for just staying home... I just did it to keep myself off of drugs, honest!). But, once again, I decide against drugs (and using my bed as my "anti-drug" - for now), and turn my thoughts instead to self-inflicted wounds; physical pain being perhaps preferable to this mental torment - with the added benefit of blood being a particularly fascinating shade of red. On the other hand, damaging oneself is more than a little unbalanced, not to mention messy and hard to explain ("well, you see doc, he just wouldn't stop talking"... "have you been hearing voices in your head?" ... "no no no, the professor! On and on with this radio frequency nonsense"). Chocolate might help, but not for long enough (that is without consuming ridiculous amounts, if you're going to eat enough to get the full chemical benefits you might as well just skip to the actual drugs, less calories). In the end, an ordinary, sane, fairly responsible and well balanced (and sadly mature, I just took an online quiz which put my mental age at 32... that's almost 10 years more than I actually am...) individual is left with about 3 choices (although I welcome other suggestions): 1. Drinking water - no calories but it's a very sad situation in which drinking water can be considered entertainment; 2. Day dreaming - much more pleasurable, and in fact tends to be my activity of choice, however, requires a delicate balance between interesting enough to keep one from drawing blood but yet tame enough to still be taking in all of the important information from the lecture; and finally 3. Doodling/composing blog entries - this one covers the objections to both 1 and 2... I'm not really a good enough artist/writer for doodling/writing to be very many times better than drinking water, but it's still easy to get sucked in enough to completely loose track of the meanderings of the professor. So basically, I end up just sitting and enduring for 2.6 hours and wishing for the end. So glad I only do this twice a week...

** See the photos from my trip here. **

Yes, I made it back to the States, and survived my first week of classes. I was very sorry to have to leave Robbie and his beautiful island, but somehow I managed to talk myself onto that plane, and the next one, and the next one :P. Classes are going fine so far, not much work yet (or anything terribly interesting, hopefully it'll pick up once we get past all the reviewing nonsense). I'm working at the ARC again this semester, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I hope that will be as much fun this semester as it was before. Also, Julia and I got Netflix, so if anyone has movie suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them (can't promise to act on them, but happy to listen).

{following is from an email to Sonia, but I didn't want to write about it twice, so, sorry Sonia, nothing new for you in this post :)}

Basically, it's gorgeous here. EVERYTHING is GREEN!! and there are flowers all over! It's been pretty much in the sixties everyday, I rarely wear a jacket. Pretty much everywhere you go you can see the ocean, and wherever there aren't houses, the whole island is covered with little green fields which are surrounded by low rock walls, often with cows inside :). Today we ate lunch at a seafood restaurant with a couple of other lieutenants, yum, really yum. We had barnacles for an appetizer - I really really wish I had remembered my camera! After lunch we were going to go to the golf course, but Robbie didn't really know the way, and so we ended up driving up into the mountains (not real huge as far as mountains go, but they're basically the right shape at least). It was so misty up there (it's cloudy a lot here, especially in their "winter") everything looked very mysterious and lonely and beautiful, and then we found some sort of national park type place, and stopped there and walked around a bit. There was a lake full of funny ducks (funny in that they were not species I recognized) and woods that we explored along a rushing creek complete with little waterfalls. It was a very good day.