The Road Goes Ever On and On

Mammoth got six inches today. Li' dat.

Before I talk about this week, I need to address something that happened a few weeks ago that I intended on mentioning in whatever week's blog post that was, but forgot to do so. That sentence was horribly constructed. I'm going to leave it as is to serve as a reminder of how far I have yet to go. Anyway, the thing I need to talk about is the best game of Settlers I have ever played. Throughout the entire game, I built exactly one road and zero settlements, while my three opponents expanded and fortified in the usual way. I was locked in, you see, and I didn't have many options, geographically speaking. So I turned to development cards. Oh boy did I ever turn to development cards. All in all, I purchased fourteen of them, and I had as many as eleven in my hand at once. For most of the game, therefore, the only thing I did was activate knights and grab the Largest Army designation and the two points that come with it. So when we were about 80% through the game (though at the time my opponents would likely have assumed we were more like 60% through), I had four points (my two original settlements and the two points for my army) while everyone else had, if memory serves, seven or eight. And that was when I saw that the rock deck was down to only a couple of cards, and I had only a couple of rocks in my hand. So I flipped Monopoly and proceeded to gather enough rock to buy my way to another few D-cards and a city. I then waited patiently for three or four more turns, by which point Kevin (not Dales, sorry) had nine points. It was then that I struck. Five points showing (2 for city, 2 for army, 1 for settlement), I bought a second city and flipped four victory point cards. Five points to ten, last place to first, all in the amount of time it takes to flip a hand. And that, my friends, is how you settle Catan. I believe a celebration in in order:

I watched ECACs in Williamstown, Massachusetts on Saturday. That was fun. Yep.

On Monday I, along with four partners, presented a geography . . . presentation . . . in which we analyzed the flooding of New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We looked at it from a physical perspective (deforestation's contribution to flooding, what exactly happened with the levees and floodwalls, which areas of the city were hit worst because of topography, etc.) and a social perspective (which demographics lived in the worst-hit areas, which neighborhoods have been rebuilt and which are still almost deserted today, and the effect of different warning and evacuation systems). I'm telling you all this because I get the impression you guys still don't really know what you do in a geography class.

We did have another lab due today in that same class; this one focused on the economic restructuring of the manufacturing industry in the U.S. that has been going on since 1970. You know, manufacturing jobs moving from cities to suburbs and rural areas, or moving from the north and the east to the south and the west. All that, plus six more pages of stuff, plus seven maps. That's the cool thing about geography. In both my geography classes, I've attached maps to every paper I've written, because the paper is only part of the assignment. Maps, maps, lots of maps.

Speaking of which, today I got back a map comparison paper that I wrote for my history of cartography class, and I got 25/25 on it. Very relieving and encouraging. I think I may take my professor in that class as my advisor once I declare my major. Which I guess I should get around to doing.

Today's Qur'an class was fun. We divided in half and had a class debate between Islamic fundamentalists and Sufis. I chose the fundamentalist side, because, at least in my sometimes humble opinion, if you're going to believe a holy book, you may as well go all the way. As a result of the debate, that class went by faster than it ever had before.

I'm roughly two thirds through Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and damn is it ever good. The last three books that we've read for that class (Fathers and Children, Turgenev; What Is to Be Done?, Chernyshevsky; Notes From Undergound, Dostoevsky) were all very preachy; it seemed the author's only goal was getting his political or philosophical point across, and in each case he was willing to do that at the expense of the story. But in Crime and Punishment, he does both. I'll say a final word about it next week, but I don't think I'll have much bad to say about it. What I will do this week, though, is show you the map in the back of the book. Because maps are the best.

The numbers and letters correspond to places of significance in the novel. Duh.

Oh yeah, Tuesday was election day. I knew something else happened this week. I watched it with a bunch of XC guys, almost all of whom were Obama supporters. Of the fifteen or so people in the room, one voted for Romney, two voted for Johnson (including yours truly), and two didn't vote. An explosive gathering, to be sure.

In a few hours, I'm hopping in a car and driving, with a bunch of other XCers, to the house of someone on the team, which is ideally located in Albany, partway between Middlebury and Westfield State, which is where tomorrow's race will be held. Those that are actually racing (only our top 7 now) are already on a bus headed straight there.

There were definitely more things that happened this week. Time to stretch the brain.

I remembered one thing! Yesterday, one of the dining halls had applesauce brownies, and they may well be the greatest things that I have ever laid taste buds upon. Which is, of course, a little bit of an exaggeration. But not a lot bit of one.

Another thing! I have been adding to my To-Do list, and the focus of the last several days has been marathons I want to run. Take a look at some of these beauts:

Valley of Fire Marathon, Nevada

Big Sur International Marathon, California

St. George Marathon, Utah

Estes Park Marathon, Colorado

Lost Dutchman Marathon, Arizona

I realize I put pictures of places I haven't been to in a lot of my blog posts. And if the purpose of this blog is to discuss things that have actually happened in the past week, perhaps I'm not adhering to that as strictly as I could be. But I think the things I think about in a week should also be fair game, which is why I include these kinds of things. I can talk about what I learned in such and such class all I want, and I do enjoy doing that, but I'd also like to give an accurate impression of the things I find important, so I'll continue to do this sort of thing.

EDIT: I can't believe I forgot to complain about how cold it's been. Well, I'll do that here and now:
It's been really cold and it sucks. I've been wearing gloves on top of other gloves, and putting mittens around them. By the way, that's not true at all. That would be absurd and counterproductive. But I have been wearing gloves.

Gloves.