What an eventful week! Not so much in terms of accomplishments (rarely do I have a “productive” week), but in terms of interesting stuff happening – Whammo®! Lots of thinking, playing, mischiefizing, and sulking to report on.

(By the way, these reports normally go up on Monday afternoon, when I have time to put them here, even though they have Sunday’s date. I would put Monday’s date on them, but then I’d end up putting them up on Tuesday…)

The frequency of Quake playing on Wednesday through Friday was pretty high. Life was a Quake game, occasionally interrupted by eating and sleeping. Imagine if life were really a game of Quake! Your face would be defined by only a couple of flat polygons. Boy would that make shaving easy! Josh would fit right in, as he now has dimensionless hair, or as Katrina put it, “Your head looks like a mouse.”

Thanksgiving dinner was about the most interesting I’ve ever had. Ed and I played quake right up until dinner time, then we decided to walk into Palo Alto to have a nice dinner at a restaurant (sans Amol, since he evidently forgot the plans and ate at Boston Market without us). So we walk 45 minutes in the rain, all the way to the end of University Avenue, finding only “Miyake’s” and “Sub-Par-Miyake’s” (japanese restaurants, one expensive, one imitative) open. We certainly didn’t want japanese, so we rented “Lost in Space,” and went home to order pizza. I called every pizza place in the phone book, to no avail. So, we went down to the terrace (our open kitchen), and microwaved quesadillas and meatloaf, which we ate while watching one of the lamest movies I can remember having seen.

Leah, Ed’s friend from high school visited from Friday to Sunday. Had there been any doubt that I could avoid doing work all break, she shattered it… Now there was someone who was never doing a problem set, so I didn’t have to feel too guilty. I got to express my competitive side a bit, to relieve any lingering guilt, by playing her chess, darts, and playing Matt in a rousing game of “who can unlock the door first.” She killed me in chess, I returned the favor for darts, and Matt and I remained pretty even – a good match. It started with racing to the terrace or the door back into the dorm, but progressed to him trying to steal my set of keys to open my door. We fought over those for a while, but Amol ended up opening it, causing a draw. Matt immediately sprinted for his room, but I caught him, and we wrestled over his keys for a while, when I finally capitalized by grabbing them just as he got the key in the door, then running up the stairs and doubling back to unlock his door. We shook hands and congratulated ourselves, and took care to avoid all the people standing in the hall laughing at us, as we returned to our rooms…

Saturday I walked into Palo Alto with Ed and Leah, to try and get “Risk.” We declined, as it cost as much as 3 haircuts – nearly thirty dollars! We found a dip sign laying next to the road next to, well, a dip. It had been rammed by a car it looked like, so I hoisted it over my shoulder and we started for the dorm. Almost out of a grove of trees I caught a glimpse of a nearby police car, so I promptly dropped the sign and continued walking, while Ed and Leah stopped and proceeded to look at the ground as a wanted criminal might. “Keep walking!” I forcefully intoned, nodding my head towards the cop. We decided to come back later, which we did, but I decided the whole thing was not worth the risk and trouble, so we stood the dip sign up in the middle of the field.

Finally, on Sunday, we bid Leah farewell (passing the time waiting for her ride by creating a story about a druggie smurf named Gilgamesh, each of us taking turns saying one word of the story). We saw Ever After at flicks. At one point before the show, I turned around (stupid move) during the traditional weekly paper fight. I was going to shield myself so I could look around at who was there, but right as I turned, whammo®, I was blinded by the impact of a half-pound compacted paper ball, right between the eyes. It blinded my right eye, and when I finally looked up at Ed, he informed me that I was bleeding. And no one of course volunteered themselves as the culprit, so I couldn’t even target my anger. I’m now finally getting rid of the spot I see in my right eye, and I have a bit of a scar from the cut… Unfortunately, my theory about movies and my psyche proved correct again (an inverse relationship between my mood and the happiness of the ending). Ever After ends perfectly, so I have been in a bad mood “ever since”. Should clear up soon though, after my java program is done…

This week was so eventful, I even forgot to mention I went to a Better than Ezra concert, where we were very close to the stage, and the lead singer came into the audience and acutally brushed by me. And I have two tickets to the Goo Goo Dolls concert TOMORROW, and I have forgotten to look for a co-attendee. Oops! Better get on that now.

Quote of the week:

Leah: You really can’t say “South Dakota” without sounding dumb…

This is Bradley, signing out.