At least I still have my personality.

I'm writing this on Thursday night with the intent of time-delaying the post for Friday, because I'm hopping on a bus at 10:30 tomorrow morning and I don't want to have to worry about writing a post between the end of my morning class (8:50) and then. So if you're reading this and it's not Friday yet, well, chalk that up to my technological savvy.

First off, I'd like to apologize for posting out of turn earlier this week. I could very well have held that in until this post. But that doesn't mean you suck any less for not taking that course, Jason, Kevin, and Morgan.

And now, ze week.

Saturday, Saturday. We had an off week, meaning there was no XC race, so I spent the day at Middlebury. I went to the football game with some friends and watched our team (Now 5-0 on the season. Pretty sure they could beat Cal.) slaughter Bates. You suck, Nicole. Because the performance of your school's football team is directly related to your worth as a human being.

Hopefully that will be the last time I call out a fellow blogger for sucking. But if it does happen again, it's your fault, not mine.

Saturday night . . . Oh, Rachael, this part will make you happy. I was at a party (Not that part. It gets better, I swear.) and they were playing shitty music, as usual. I was talking with a friend about Wizard Staff, which is more or less a drinking competition that happens after XC is over (Trust me, Rachael, this is getting somewhere eventually.). He said he drank 17 beers last year, and I said, in monotone,
"Just seventeen? You know what I mean."
He replied, equally in monotone, "And the way she looked was way beyond compare."
Me: "So how could I dance with another?"
Him: "And I saw her standing there."
Me: "We should probably go put that song on."
Him: "Yeah."
So he hijacked the music and put the song on, and lo and behold! Where earlier there had been shitty music, nobody singing along, some people dancing, and most people milling around aimlessly, there was now a rather different quality of music, everybody singing along, everyone dancing, and nobody milling around. We got through "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Twist and Shout" before someone else recaptured the music and put on another bad song. At that point, the party began to decline.
My point is this: Overall enjoyment seemed to reach its climax when 50 year old music was playing, whereas indifference prevailed when music between zero and five years old was playing. In other words, all hope is not lost for humanity. Not yet, at least.

Sunday was probably pretty normal. Sundays all tend to be the exact same for me: I wake, I run, I eat, I nap, I work, I eat, I work, I sleep. This one was no exception. The only variables are the route of the run, the location and company of the work, and the dining hall that we choose to eat dinner at. On this particular Sunday, I was working with friends (Friend and XC teammate are pretty much synonymous here. Pretty much all of each category is all of the other.) in the Chateau basement, and I had the idea to graph our productivity. Another guy actually carried out this project, which is why the graph isn't flawless, but rest assured, it was my idea. Time is plotted on the x-axis and productivity on the y-axis. As you can see, we started out well, but once Mark and Aaron entered the room, we got distracted, then eventually got working again. Chuck's nap from 4:39 to 5:02 definitely hurt us, because he had to be counted toward the team average. We flatlined through dinner, which is definitely not a bad thing, but after dinner we actually managed to go negative, as you can see. That's what we like to call a LotR YouTube sesh. It did get better after that, though.

Domain: 3:40pm to 12:05am. Range: YouTube to Paper Writing Extravaganza

God dammit Chuck.

On Monday I turned in a paper, and gave a brief in-class presentation, about the creation story and how its accounts in Genesis and in the Qur'an compare and contrast with one another. My thesis is essentially the same as my idea about the entire Hebrew Bible vs Qur'an: Similar content, different structure. Those four words were actually my entire paper. I just repeated each of them 250 times.

Turgenev's Fathers and Children is a good book. Not a gripping book, but a good book.
Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? is a boring book. Not a bad book, but a boring book.
Next we move on to Dostoevsky. Then Tolstoy. Then Chekhov. Then it's Christmas. So we're reading nothing but the Big Boys for the rest of the semester, which is exciting.

The other paper I wrote this week was also a comparison, thought this one compared three maps of North America, one from 1819, one from 1856, and one from 1961. The first was more or less a call for manifest destiny, the second was a political ad essentially campaigning for John C. Fremont (first candidate in GOP history, lost to Buchanan), and the third is just awesome. It's also pictured in my blog post from last week. Anyway, when I went to the GIS lab to print out these maps on large paper and in color, it occurred to me that maps aren't the only thing you can print at a GIS lab. So printed out a massive, high-resolution version of the picture you see below, which is now hanging up on my wall. Success.

You, Patrick. You are who I am calling pinhead.

I had just finished creating a link to a glorious YouTube playlist that consists of 82 short Spongebob clips, but then I realized I had another link to send you, and if you clicked on the first one and saw Spongebob, you might skip the second one, especially if your name is Jason and you hate the show. So I deleted the Spongebob link. And now after typing this, I realize it's okay for me to put in the Spongebob link because it's all so well-explained. So don't bite into this wonderful slice of happiness pie if you're on a happiness diet. Otherwise, be my guest. Number 71 is my favorite, by the way. Oh, and 42. Actually, definitely 42.

And now for the other glorious thing. Don't worry; it's got nothing to do with Spongebob, outside of the fact that it is glorious. But you should really check this one out. I wouldn't include it if it wasn't. It's got to do with, like, space and stuff.

Funny story. I mailed my real ballot in yesterday, and I got my sample ballot in the mail today. Like I said, funny story.

I'll be in Bowdoin this weekend. So Nicole, if you happen to find a wormhole between Bates and Bowdoin . . . you should probably publish a paper on it and become fabulously wealthy. I guess that applies to all of you. Because, y'know, it doesn't really matter than Bates and Bowdoin are in the same state if we're talking about wormholes.

One more thing. Starting November 6th, Denny's is unveiling a Hobbit-themed menu. Once upon a time I swore to myself I would never eat at that foul restaurant again, but hey, effective marketing is effective marketing. And it's only an hour's drive north to Burlington or an hour's drive south to Rutland, both of which have a Denny's. I'm not saying eating a disgusting sandwich named after Bilbo Baggins is worth two hours of driving. But I'm not saying it's not . . .