I'm not sure what to do with this.

I wonder if this means that I can be more productive at work without actually showing up, or if I can get into better shape without actually working out. Or if I can tell you about this without actually writing this post. Maybe this post was written without me actually doing it... I'm going to go look at my lunch and think about it.

Intersection!

We're having a party, I guess you could call it, to watch the Maryland vs. Duke game on February 11th. The game's at 1:00 so this won't be a late thing. If you're reading this (no text-to-speech fans welcome) and will be a reasonable distance from our place that weekend, I would highly recommend coming. I can't promise to try to keep my misspoken play-by-plays to a tolerable minimum, but I'll try to try.

Illness

So it seems like I am sick. Actually, it's seemed that way for over a week now. I think I'm getting to the end of it, but it's hard to tell. This started last Saturday after I got my ass handed to me by a black belt. And by ass I mean nose. And by handed to me I mean kicked hard enough to make it bleed. That afternoon I started out with a slight stuffy nose that could have just been blood. That night there was a party at Craigs and I drank, not a lot, but perhaps more than I should have if I was sick. That lasted 4 or 5 days, then progressed into a sore throat with the occasional sinus congestion. I was actually happy with that; cough drops solved most of that problem. Today I woke up and felt much better. I went to Tae Kwon Do tonight for the first time in over a week and my stomach/intestines started hurting. My theory is that it's from the dinner I made earlier: both the bread and the cheese were suspect, but I was hungry. If that's the case than I'm pretty much finished being sick. If it's not food poisoning then I have some bizarre disease that migrates from one symptomatic collection to another. If that's the case, I'm going to bet that it will progress to a horrible flesh eating skin rash. That'll be a fun way to go.

Math question

I'm having some trouble with this math problem Leonard and I are working on. Does anybody know how to derrive the cardinality of an n dimensional real space where n is the infinity representing the cardinality of the real numbers? When n is one, the cardinality of the real space is the same as the real numbers for the trivial reason of them being the same. When n is 2 the cardinality of the 2-dimensional real space is still the same as that of the real numbers (I don't feel like doing a full derivation here but I think I've got that much down sofar). The same holds when n is any natural number, and also when n is the infinity representing the cardinality of natural numbers. But what about when n is the cardinality of the reals?

Or, you could do something at the opposite end of the 'smart' scale...
and see what our friends across the pond have been up to. Related, I saw this a while ago and found it somewhat ammusing, somewhat a batshit stupid waste of my time.

Maryland: atheists and agnostics need not apply.

Wondering around the Internet, I found this little jewel of historical relevance. It comes from the Maryland Declaration of Rights, part of the Constitution of Maryland. I can't find anything else in the Constitution of Maryland that overrides this.

Article 36. That as it is the duty of every man to worship God in such manner as he thinks most acceptable to Him, all persons are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty; wherefore, no person ought by any law to be molested in his person or estate, on account of his religious persuasion, or profession, or for his religious practice, unless, under the color of religion, he shall disturb the good order, peace or safety of the State, or shall infringe the laws of morality, or injure others in their natural, civil or religious rights; nor ought any person to be compelled to frequent, or maintain, or contribute, unless on contract, to maintain, any place of worship, or any ministry; nor shall any person, otherwise competent, be deemed incompetent as a witness, or juror, on account of his religious belief; provided, he believes in the existence of God, and that under His dispensation such person will be held morally accountable for his acts, and be rewarded or punished therefor either in this world or in the world to come.

(emphasis added)

Looks like I'm getting out of jury duty if ever called.

Tattoo, Tae Kwon Do, iTunes...

The theme of this post is items whose first capital letter is "T".

I went to the Tattoo place just off campus with Jeremy to talk with a tattoo artist about what I wanted done. The guy said that he couldn't do it, and that anybody who said that they could was lying. There's too much detail, and skin can only hold so much detail over the years without the ink bleeding around a lot and making the tattoo look bad. So I'm going to go back to my solid black design idea, and try to render some high resolution images tonight so that I can go ahead and do this thing. I'll post pictures tomorrow if I come up with anything.

I went to Tae Kwon Do tonight and nobody was there. Tim wasn't coming because he had to take Chloe to the vet, and I'm betting that Kevin's working because he isn't here, and that's where he typically is when he's not here. I drive up, and the lights are off, so I come home and try to stretch. We've been given the challenge of being able to do splits by June. Right now I'm halfway there: my legs bend 90 degrees away from eachother (that's pi/2 for those of you who don't like angular systems based around a rough approximation to the number of days in a year.) 90 degrees in addition to what I can currently do, divided by 6 months (180 degrees around the sun) means that every day I have to progress half a degree. That seems doable.

I'm re-ripping all my music into iTunes so that I have fairly high quality copies of my music on my computer. I would really like to see ogg support in more mp3 players (both portable and software based.) I had an ogg plugin for quicktime (and therefore iTunes, which uses quicktime) but the new quicktime uses a different sound structure, and so the plugin broke. So now I have a ton of oggs that I can't listen to in my room, and tons of CDs that I need to rip. Right now I'm ripping the soundtrack to Star Wars: A New Hope, disk 2. I've got about 125 more CDs to go through. Then there the CDs at my parents house, and any CDs I can find downstairs. At least when I'm done I'll have a large collection of fairly diverse music: Latin, Metal, Ragtime, Techno, Pop, Classical, Rock, Classic Rock, Jazz, Grunge, Blues, Punk, R&B, New Age, Easy Listening (nothing really bad, only as bad as Elvis Costello, Burt Bacharach, and Tony Bennett) to name a few.

There's other stuff going on, too, but none of it starts with the letter "T" so this isn't the place to discuss it.

Tattoo

Here's a tattoo I'm considering getting on my right arm (deltoid.) I'm probably going Friday with my brother. What do you think?

I have got to start writing these things down

I had an idea like this a couple years ago. Zero-gravity football. Somebody has got to remember. Mine was somewhat more true to the "one-gravity" football currently played, and basically just involved having two identical fields facing eachother, like a floor and a ceiling, separated by 4 feet or so. Also, mine was designed for people traveling between planets, while this one seems to be designed for rich people with too much free time on their hands. Also, mine didn't get published.

linked list of color value matrices

Um, I should have put these up earlier, but then I didn't.

Pictures from Utah.

Machines that pump blood

I donated blood again, on Wednesday. While I was waiting to get screened a guy who works there approached me and asked if I could donate double red cells. The requirements are to be 150lb and some height I can't remember, but it's under the 6'2" which people tell me I am; I fit the requirements. I said I could, and we did the whole screening process. I had good iron levels and heart rate, but my blood pressure was a little higher than normal (120/80) but still relatively good. I sat down at this machine, got the needle put in, and it started taking my blood. About half a liter later it filtered my red blood cells from the plasma (which was bright yellow, a good thing I am told) and then the machine pushed saline solution back into my body, followed by the plasma. The saline is cold, and my plasma has cooled off considerably from being out of my body for so long, and all this cold liquid going into my bloodstream starts to make me cold. Then, it starts all over again, taking another half liter of blood. This time, after the saline went in, and the plasma got started, my vein clotted. This is bad, since the machine is still pushing fluid up the tube and into my arm. I start to get this large bump where the needle's going in, which I am told is the plasma collecting under my skin (what else could it be? the beginning of a new forearm?). It gets to be about 2 inches across and an inch or so high. It doesn't hurt, but it feels bad anyway; it felt like there was pressure under my skin (which there was) and I started wondering how much pressure my skin could contain before busting. The guy taking my blood turns off the pump, and the bump in my skin eventually fades away. This, however, means that I lose most of the plasma I would have gotten back. So I'm out a liters worth of red blood cells and about a half liter of plasma. They patch me up, give me donuts and drinks, and a t-shirt, and I go on my way, trying to figure out the easiest way to get warm without burning myself too badly.

Nine Inch Nails

On Wednesday I went down to DC with Tim to see the Nine Inch Nails concert. Just outside the venue we bumped into Laurel who was waiting for Kevin to show up, but they had seats and Tim and I were on the floor. We got in, and the opening band kindof sucked. They weren't horrible, but the vocals were annoying. Then, Queens of the Stone Age came out and did a good set. The crowd was still fairly calm at this point; mosh pit here or here, someone jumping up and down like an idiot over there, but nothing big. Then, Nine Inch Nails came on, and the crowd rushed towards the stage like iron filings towards some kind of huge music playing magnet. Than analogy sucked. NIN was great (btw, why isn't there a backwards N key? or is it upside down? I need to know these things.) My only complaints for their set is that they didn't play The Perfect Drug, and they didn't do an encore (ooh ooh, I know what song they could have played.) My complaints for the crowd I was surrounded by run more numerous than that. For starters, everybody was undulating forward and backward like a spring every 10 seconds or so. Since we were all packed up front, this meant that you ran the risk of falling over, which would be bad. My guess is that when everybody rushed to the stage the people in the front just bounced off, sparking the recoil, and that people near the back were resisting being pushed further back, causing the wave to propagate back and forth. I love fluid dynamics, which brings me to my next complaint: fluids. Some kind soul from further up decided that a cup containing some fluid (smelled like beer, had a lime, so I'm going to guess Corona) would do more good to the people further from the stage, so (s)he threw it, and it hit me and the girl who was standing next to me. Nice. Also, on the topic of fluids, there were some really sweaty guys who kept accidentally bumping into people (read, me and those around me,) then continuing to shove people around like some drunk frat-boy version of Chris Farley (RIP) and getting more sweatty. I'm not saying I expect the environment to be entirely sterrile, but if you're going to sweat like a pig, wear something that will soak it up, and try to avoid smearing your sweaty back against people who are only facing your way because you're standing between them and good music. Okay, rant's over, the concert was great.

Salt Lake City

We got to Salt Lake City Thursday evening and went out to dinner with our hosts: Will's friends from college, Suzanne and Anne, and Anne's friend from West Virginia, Zelly (I'm not sure how to spell her name.) Later we hit up an office supply store and I failed to find those massage chairs they sometimes sell and have out on display and you can sit on and get a free massage and it's really relaxing. But they didn't have one. They did have lots of electronics, though. We got back, hung out some, then went to bed.

Friday we went to the Tracy Aviary in SLC, where Suzanne works. It was raining, which sucked, but there were random large birds wondering about in the open, which was nice. We got lunch at a soup kitchen, and eventually made it to the grocery store to pick up food, and the movie rental place to pick up Shawn of the Dead. Anne and Zelly made brownies, but the came out soft (they seemed to think this was bad, but they were good soft.) We ordered Pizza and watched the movie, then went to bed again.

Saturday Anne, Zelly, Will and I drove out west to the Bonneville Salt Flats where they have all sorts of racing and what not. As the name would suggest, the salt flats are made of salt, and impressively flat. This time of year, however, they are covered in an inch or so of water. I took off my shoes and started wondering out. Here's the problem with this: the salt flats were covered with water, and water softens skin. The salt we were walking on, while being smooth enough to drive on, had some pretty large and sharp salt crystals that you would step on. Once your feet are torn raw by the surface, they're soaking in salt water, which isn't the most pleasant of feelings. Still, it was an amazing sight. Since the water was so shallow it was very still, and would reflect the sky and mountains in the distance, which made it feel like we were floating around in the sky. Very serene. We then wrecked the serenity by taking a car out on the flats. Since there's nothing for miles, you can speed up, slam on the brakes and skid, do donuts and various other slides, and not have to worry about hitting anything. You do need to worry about the salt, though. We got to land and all the salt water that had been kicked up by the wheels had dried, leaving a thin layer of salt covering the car. We took it to a car wash and all's well, other than the engine block, which is probably still coated in salt. Arter all that we headed breifly into Nevada to try to find a post card, but failed to. Part of that search brought us to a casino. Casinos are creepy. No natural sunlight so you never know what time it is, lots of neon lights to anger up the blood, so many people wasting their time on this planet putting metal disks into machines and pulling levers.

We got back to SLC and had dinner with some of Suzanne's coworkers, one of which was leaving and being the cause for this dinner get-together. We got home, I made sure all my stuff was ready to go, and we went to bed. Sunday morning Will drove me to the airport. While there, and bored, I picked up a couple books at the book store. One, which was being read by one of our hosts, and was suggested to me by Will, and sofar is quite the good book is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers. It's kindof reminiscent of David Sedaris. Anyway, I eventually boarded the plane. I had a window seat this time, and whilst sitting a woman came up to me and asked if I would mind switching with her so that she could sit with whatever man I was sitting next to. She didn't ask it like that; I'm sure she knew him; maybe they were married. Anyway, I moved a couple rows ahead to her window seat. Eventually my neighboring seats were filled by a few girls visiting Maryland coming from California. After a week of hiking around and only using the biodegradable camp soap that doesn't clean that well I smelled like skunk. I'm not just saying that I smelled bad, which I did, but I smelled like a skunk, literally. It was bad, and I felt sorry for those girls. Eventually the plane landed and my parents picked me up. After a shower and dinner at their place I took my car back from Jeremy, dropped him off at school, and headed home.

Canyonland, Arches

We got to Canyonland on Wednesday and setup camp, then went for a hike. It's interesting to see the range of variation from park to park considering that they're all pretty close to each other. Canyonland looked more muddy, which is just to say that the rocks were more rounded with fewer sharp cracks. The hike took us past some interesting formations and once I get my shit together and get my film developed I will post pictures. Our campsite was near this huge rock wall, so that evening Will and I did some climbing around. Once it started to get dark I followed Will's lead and climbed back down to the campsite.

The next morning we got up, made breakfast, and headed out to Arches. Arches was the last national park we went to, and did a short day hike to Delicate Arch and had lunch, came back past some petroglyphs, then continued on back to SLC.

Bryce

When we got to Bryce, Monday, and got a campsite we went for a short walk along this ridge near the campsite. It was starting to get late and the orange from the sun helped make the canyons (which were mostly orange rock) really stand out. We made dinner over a fire and went to sleep. It got really cold that night. Tuesday we went on a fairly strenuous hike around the canyon. There were these things called "hoodoos" which are towers of rock remaining after eons of errosion. When we were hiking the trail started to look familiar to Will, (not to me, though) and it started to cloud up and drizzle. Getting stuck in the rain would have sucked. We turned around and quickly found the spot where we should have turned to go back to the entrance to the park, and got out of the canyon before the rain hit. The rain was kept mostly to the valley that the canyon opened up to so we just watched the storm clouds drift by and soak the nearby land. We went back to the campsite and rather than stay another night we decided to get going and drive to Canyonland. Every time I hear Canyonland I think Candyland, and start imagining a huge national park made out of rock candy.

The drive to Canyonland is a long one, and we stop along the way for food at a restaurant/inn called the Devils Backbone Inn or something like that. The food was great. Probably the best thing we'd eaten all week. After dinner, and more driving, we got out on the side of the highway, in the middle of nowhere, to see the stars. It gets real dark out there between the lack of major nearby cities, high altitude (less air to scatter light) and relatively dry air (less moisture to form clouds.) I can't remember the last time I saw the Milky Way, or that many stars in general. We finally make the last turn to get to the park and I notice that we have a quarter tank of gass and still a while to go. I mention this to Will but we decide that we should be fine, and that they probably have a gas station near the park. We get to the park, and not only are there no gas stations, there are no available campsites, and it's around midnight. Now I start to get nervous. Little gas, nowhere to sleep, our situation looks grim. We figure the best idea is to head to the nearest town and get gas and go to a motel for the night. I set cruise control to 55 to conserve gas and head out of the park. At this point we don't know how far we're going to have to drive, but it's at least 30 miles on less than an eigth of a tank of gas. As we're heading toward the highway, through open grazing land for cows, at 55 miles an hour, one appears just barely off the side of the road. When you can't see much in the dark, and all of a sudden an animal the size of a small car shows its head and looks at you, approaching at nearly a mile a minute, one can feel less than safe. We get to the highway and go toward the closest town, and on the way the "Low Fuel" message appears and we still don't have much of a clue how far we have to go. We roll into town and stop at the first gas station we see, and fuel up. The gas tank is a 12 gallon tank, and we put in around 12.06 gallons, which leads me to believe that we were moments from running out of gas in the middle of night, in the middle of Utah. We find a motel, each take a shower, and go to sleep. Wednesday morning we hit up a convenience store and head back to Canyonland.

Zion

After getting up in the morning on Sunday and making oatmeal on a fire we go for a drive. The plan was to go to a trail starting at The Grotto but we seem to be going in the wrong direction. The view from the drive is amazing, though. Zion is quite the change from the DC Metro area. We turn around and head to the visitor center and get on a shuttle that goes up the canyon to the starting point. We get on the trail and head up to Angels Landing, the place where the trail leads. The hike starts moderately, paved even. Then it starts to get a little steeper. Then steeper still. Then it turns into rock climbing, but they outfitted the trail with some chains to make the climb easier. Then we get to the top, and the view is well worth it. We're almost half a kilometer up at this point, and eat a lunch of crackers cheese and sausage, then head back down. We get back to the campsite and make dinner. Monday we go on a few smaller hikes: one to the Emerald Pools (we go to the upper one) and then to Weeping Rock. These are both fairly small hikes and when we get back we head out.

On the way to Bryce National Park we start looking for lunch. Apparently people in Utah don't eat lunch on Mondays. Every restaurant is closed. Unfortunately for us they are all connected to motels that are open, and have large signs saying so. What we see from the highway are two things: restaurant signs, and "open" signs. It's not until we get up to the door that we see the little "restaurant closed" sign. Boo. We eventually find a place just outside Bryce then head into the park.

Getting There

I've decided to do incremental posts on my trip to Utah, as to provide some logical breakup of the trip beyond simple paragraphs.

I got picked up by my mommy from school at around 2:00. I got my brother keys to my car so he could drive it last week (since he can park on campus using my permit, and I'm nice like that) then we headed up to BWI on 295. My flight was leaving at around 5:00pm so despite the stop-and-go traffic on 295, I got to the airport with plenty of time. I got my boarding pass, and waited to check my luggage (I had one of those e-tickets so I just went to a kiosk to get my pass, and the people working behind Delta's counter were calling peoples names to check their luggage.) There were tons of army people flying around to report for duty, and each of them had a half dozen or so large duffel bags, and they were all carrying firearms. This slowed things down some, but it was still a while before my flight was supposed to leave. While waiting there I misread a sign saying that lighters couldn't be put on checked luggage (it really said carry-on) and I remembered that the last time I flew they were letting people carry lighters onto planes. I took the lighters I was bringing out of my backpacking backpack and put them in my normal backpack, or rucksack if you would, and then checked my luggage. Then when I went through security their x-ray machine detected the lighters and they took them. I had a few nice zippos in there, too. Oh well.

I got on the plane and the guy I was sitting next to looked identical to Garrett, Aerials brother. I don't mean he looked similar. The resemblance was enough that despite the fact that he hadn't said anything to signal that he recognized me (we bump into each other every now and then and talk) I asked, just to be sure. His voice was about as far from Garrett's voice as it could get without him sounding like a kid, woman, or James Earl Jones. The flight was ho hum, they showed Batman Begins, which I had already seen, and I listened to some Elliot Smith and read. I got to Salt Lake City around 8pm local time and sat and waited until midnight when Will's plane landed. More reading and Elliot Smith (the only music I had on me.) We got the rental car, and headed to his friends' (Suzanne, Anne, and Zelly(sp?)) place where we rolled out our sleeping pads and went to sleep on the floor.

The next morning we got up, hit up a R.E.I. to pick up some stuff we needed like fuel for my backpacking stove, cooking utensils, etc., then went to the grocery store to get food. Then, we drove south along I15 towards Zion National Park. We got there before it got dark, and started to setup camp. The ground at the park was terribly hard, so the tent stakes weren't going in, and my tent isn't free standing: it needs to be staked down to stand up. We improvised and tied one end to the picnic table and the other end to a log we dragged over. We started cooking sausages, at first on the camp stove which didn't really work, and it started to rain, which made me worry about how the weather would be this trip, but it let up after a short while and then we just sat there by the fire, cooking polish sausages on sticks in the fire. It gets dark early in autumn, and so we went to bed around 8 or 9.

Back on the other side of the continent.

I'm back in Maryland. Utah was fun. When I have some energy I will post on my goings on, hopefully before my memory fails me and I have to start making up stories about seeing God in the woods. I brought some friends back to the woods, but they didn't see Him, so I sent one of my friends back and now I'm looking for a few wives.

extra hour in Utah

Daylight Savings Time ends next weekend, while I'm out in Utah. This means I'll have to set my clock three times over this next week or so. Once to adjust to Mountain Daylight Savings Time (- 2 hours), again to adjust to Mountain Standard Time (- 1 hour), then again for Eastern Standard Time (+ 2 hours).

Speaking of daylight savings time, terrorists are dumb...

In September 1999, the Palestinian West Bank was on daylight saving time while Israel had just switched back to standard time. West Bank Palestinians prepared time bombs and smuggled them to Arab Israelis, who misunderstood the time on the bombs. As the bombs were being planted, they exploded—one hour too early—killing three terrorists instead of two busloads of people, the intended victims. -(http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/k.html)

Everything balances out eventually

Last weekend sucked. This weekend was great.

Friday was sortof a downer. Nobody was here for a while, so I sat around and worked on little projects here and there, but I couldn't help myself from being bored. Even if I don't see anybody, knowing someone else is home makes me feel less shiftless. Example: Kevin's in the basement studying yet I feel like things are normal; he could have snuck out the back door and headed toward Tokyo and I wouldn't know; I'd still feel normal.

Saturday morning I got up and started packing my back packing back pack. Ha. I guess if I unpacked it, then started packing it again, I could say that I was packing my back packing back pack back up. I'll stop here. The plan was to go camping in Frederick last night, but I'll get to that in due time. I rounded up Kevin and Tim, then Jeremy, then we waited at the old house with Karen for Nina to be ready, and the six of us headed to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Renfest was fun. Nina used to live with some people working in the wax hand place, and Colin teaches juggling. We met up with Colin during his lunch break, and drank some and watched some belly dancers. Did I menrion there was mead, which is honey beer. I knocked a few back. Later when Karen and Nina and Tim were getting Food I laid down on the mulch, figuring it was a good idea, and some guy dressed up as a wwwyzzerdd walked towards me with a staff with a large ball at the end. He pointed the ball end at me and told me to touch his ball. I obliged, then his friend (standing by my head) asked me if I liked beer. I was drinking mead at the time but said yes, and he motioned with his cup like he was going to pour some over my mouth. I opened my mouth, and got 90% of the beer he poured. The rest of the beer spilled on my shirt, but hey, free beer! Later, I scaled the climbing wall drunk, but I scaled it quickly, which I think is a feat. Tim couldn't make it up, which puzzled me not quite as much as it amused me.

Eventually we get out of there and head back to College Park to drop off Jeremy and let Kevin get his car to go pick up Laurel. Tim and I pick up some needed stuff for the camping trip, then start heading toward Frederick. Kevin and Laurel are ahead of us at this point, so we tell them to find a campground. Tim and I pick up food and beer and get a call saying that all the parks are full. So we start heading back toward College Park when Tim spots another sign for another campground. We get lost in the woods, then find a map in a parking lot and figure out where we should be. Kevin and Laurel catch up with us at this point. We make it to the front gate and I find a sign (hidden in a mailbox of all places) saying that the campground is full. We figure 'screw it' and head back to the campground in Greenbelt. We get there around 11:30 and try to stay up, but it's late and we're tired and intoxicated, and only stay up for a few hours. I got up first in the morning and roused the rest, built a fire, and after breakfast we left.

Getting back to the house, Tim and I decide to go for a bike ride, so we head down 198 toward this park/army training center/hunting grounds. We bike around there for about 10 miles worth and head back, totaling 19 miles in all. On the way back I decide to try this BBQ place down the street, and the food isn't half bad. We got back, I cleaned up, picked up Jeremy, and head to our parents.

After dinner and West Wing Jeremy starts going through his camping stuff in the basement and starts picking out stuff for me to take to Utah. I need to figure out what kind of camping/hiking we'll be doing, and how long we'll be out there. (Will, do you have any idea?) My parents also picked up a couple journals for me to take to Utah: one lined and one unlined. I'll try to keep track of my goings on in Utah so I can post something interesting in a couple weeks. Until then you'll have to put up with this mindless drivel.

What a weekend

Man am I glad that it's Monday. This weekend was all sorts of ugly. For starters, there was a party at our place on Friday. Mostly people I didn't know, mostly friends of Parkers sister. Mostly people I'm not too interested in seeing again. There was a problem with people busting into Kevins room, and him kicking them out, and now it's snowballing into some sort of ideological battle between them what live here. It seems people aren't trying to resolve this, and it could end badly. Tim and I are trying to mediate this, but I'm not sure there's much we can do.

Saturday night Tim and Parker had their engagement party, which was nice. Afterward I went to Cicis and then saw Serenity, with Ben, Anna, Kevin, Laurel, Kyle, and Will. I wasn't as impressed with the movie as I was with the TV series, but it wasn't bad. Some of us met up with Kat and tried to go to a bar in Silver Spring, but they were closed, so we came back to our house, but it was late, and most of us were tired, so yeah. Sleep.

Sunday I studied some for a test, then went home to celebrate Jeremy's birthday with the family. We went out to dinner, and then I took him back to his dorm. I came home again and the whole housemate issue came up again, followed by another argument, followed by someone packing up and leaving.

Today I had a test in my syntax class, which I'm pretty sure I aced, and now I'm going to go see Weezer and the Foo Fighters in concert with Will. Today feels like a weekend.