October Observations

I've spent several days on end coding up a webcrawler, which is easily the most code I've written before. Between 1 and I'm-going-to-gnaw-my-own-arm-off crazy, I'm at about an 8. It's been a while since I've written and I'd better take a break before I become a 9 on the aforementioned scale, so here goes.

Just four gallons of milk ago the weather was still warm and I still woke up to the darn sprinklers under our window. Now my face hurts when I ride my bike and I sleep under 36lbs of blankets, curled up like a potato bug with a 4 year-old prodding it. Classes are intense (please see above paragraph) and, as always, fall has allowed for all sorts of amusement. For example:

1. The kid in computational theory who always sits next to the podium, right under the professor's nose, and plays his GameBoy (I guess we just call them "DS's" now?) wears a safari hat every day. Real name: unknown. Suspected name: Christopher. Name that Joe and I use: "Safari."
   
2. The furniture in my apartment is really just termites holding hands. I accidentally broke the back off a kitchen chair with my chest. So we have four full-backed chairs and now a stool as well. Variety is good.
   
3. My roommate leaps off of the bunk bed in the morning. The bunk bed already on cinder blocks. 150lbs falling 6.5 feet onto old plywood covered in lint labeled as carpet is hardly quiet. This made him about as popular with me as the WNBA. For a while there, I thought I was going to have to resort to booby traps.
   
4. A mystery roommate leaves large enough wads of hair in the tub drain that I feel obligated to name them...just before going to great lengths to throw them away without any skin contact.
   
5. Tuesdays can be made enjoyable despite starting work at 4 am. This was accomplished by me establishing "Documentary & Crock-pot Tuesday" in the office. We watch a new documentary in the early hours of our shift, while preparing lunch in a crock pot, which we cook all day. It's great working with the smell of slow-roasting pork and pepper; however, the scent seems to overpower any cologne and leads to increased attention from hungry girls.
   
6. Difficult tests in a large room with hundreds of people collectively making absolutely no noise can be perfectly nerve-wracking. They can be made worse, however, proven by Dr. Rodham who puts you in a room with no Internet and randomly selects one of this semester's lab projects for you to duplicate from memory in three hours.
7. The Yankees lost to the Texas Rangers. Let's not talk about it. Still too soon.