Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.

Before I get in to what has been occupying my time over the past seven days, I'd like to make note of what I foresee happening in the next twenty-one. Starting today and going 'til Friday is my last week of classes this semester. The week after that is finals. I've got two exams and two papers, the last of which is due on Saturday the 17th, which is, incidentally, the day I fly from Burlington, through God knows how many connections (or does He?), to Salt Lake City, where I will be staying (well, not in SLC itself, but in the nearby Wasatch range) with my family until Boxing Day (eh?), at which point we shall fly back to Orange County. At least zat is ze plan.

But back to the past (Samurai Jack?).
Winkler's class has gotten to the mindbending stage. You know how when you look at a map (not that I would know) there's usually a scale on the bottom that's something like "10 km" or "250 miles"? Yeah, so there's an illustration in our textbook of part of the universe, and it has a scale, but the scale says "7 billion light-years". Just take a minute and think about that. At the speed of light, you would circumnavigate the Earth at its equator in something like seven and a half seconds. Now travel at that speed for a full year and see how far you get. And then take the distance you just traveled and travel that distance again once for every living human being on this planet. Whoa.

And then the textbook has this nice little habit of inserting little quotations here and there. So that's nice. I mean, when don't you want to hear what Carl Sagan has to say? Answer: When you're making an apple pie from scratch.

While we're on the topic of great quotes, I ought to give a shout out to my seminar professor, who has vaulted to the top of my favorite professors list over the course of the semester. I mentioned him way back in September, and informed you that he was a grandfatherly southerner. So here's his great line that I wrote down as soon as he had said it: "The interesting thing, if you ever get interested in it enough to find it interesting, is . . ." And then he proceeded to say something interesting.

Tuesday morning saw the hectic process of spring term registration, from which I have still not yet completely recovered, and by that I mean I'm still not altogether sure what I'm taking. I'll update you in, I don't know, February? I'm starting to think I won't know my classes until then.

Someone recently said in my presence something along the lines of "Whenever I look at Derek's handwriting I realize that it looks more like runes than English." I took it as a compliment, even if it was meant to be something entirely different. I now officially know a language that nobody else does.

Sometime between last Monday and this one, I don't recall specifically when, I went out on one of my solitary nighttime strolls and found myself walking through the cemetery, when something most peculiar happened. I saw movement behind a tombstone. The first thing I thought was something along the lines of, "Damn, I really wish Jason was here so he could get really really really really really really really really scared, 'cause that makes this kinda thing so much more fun." The next thing I thought was more like, "Well, I actually am more than a little bit curious about why there is movement in this seemingly derelict graveyard. And it's at least a little bit scary. You know, cloudy to the point where there is no moonlight, planet-light, or starlight, so very dark, and absolutely nobody in sight, and, well, surrounded by loads of dead people who were alive during one or two of the last four centuries before this one. But within the space of a couple of short seconds, a third thought found its way into the forefront of my minds, and this one went something like "Oh. It's a cat." And a cat it was. And the cat approached me and twisted between my feet and stretched out on my shoe and since I had no exposed skin below my neck (yes, gloves are a must here), I figured my allergies wouldn't be too bad. So I played with the cat for twenty minutes or so, an activity that was made very easy by the fact that this particular cat seemed to like nothing more than attention, and indeed followed me for a good portion of my walk.

So I know Rachael's gonna skip this paragraph, but I'm gonna write it anyway. Last Wednesday the Ducks fired their longtime head coach Randy Carlyle who also happens to be the most successful coach in Ducks history and hired former Washington Capitals bench boss big bald Bruce Boudreau, whose personality I've decided to give you a small taste of. This video (of him with his old team) is actually entertaining whether or not you know anything about hockey. And fun fact: the Ducks have lost both of their games under this guys' watch. Last Saturday was the cross country team's wizard staff party. Now wizard staff is a relatively simple concept. You drink a can, and when you move onto the next one, you duct tape it to the last one. So if you finish the night with, say, ten cans (a fairly common amount), then you're wizard staff is ten cans long. Easy. So the night consisted of a lot of people walking (i.e. staggering) around with their staffs, banging them on the ground and yelling "You shall not pass!" I cannot count the number of times I heard that sentence. Let's just say there were a whole bunch of wizards. In case you were curious, the winner ended up with a staff that was thirty cans longer than mine (so thirty), which, as you can imagine, is far too tall to hold, much less fit in a room when upright, so after about twenty it became more of a wizard basilisk and just hung out on the ground.  And I'll leave you with this, which will make this page lag. Oh well.