aki ni nattara tsukimi

to the tune of: Forget December by Something Corporate

The first week of the quarter isn't even half over and it's already looking...intense. Observe:

Sunday: My first office hours, during which I sat around outside for half the time and everyone conspired to show up in the last half hour. But... I got to go see Rent with the SCTI people. It was a fun show, even if it wasn't quite Andrew Lloyd Webber or Rogers & Hammerstein. Maybe I'm a traditionalist. But the rock music allowed for some powerful vocals. Plus there was plenty of random fun: perhaps inspired by The Vagina Monologues, at one point an actress implored the audience to moo loudly...

Monday: Such a loong day. Left my lunch at home, but fortunately Dave was going into Gates later that day and could bring it by my office. I had planned (and announced) not to have office hours from 12-1 so I could regroup (as much as one can regroup by himself), and...eat. But my officemate still had office hours through the hour, so he left the door open. Naturally someone was still talking to me at noon, which meant someone else came in after him, and someone else came after her and saw me still talking, and so on until it was 12:50 before people left me alone for a lunch break.

Which was nice, except I had no lunch, since Dave neglected to bring it in. Can't fault the man too much, seeing as how I made the same mistake that morning. But I was still expecting him to bring it at 1 so I didn't rush out to buy any food. Which, it turned out, was a mistake, since I didn't have a free minute again till 2:45 to duck out and grab lunch.

Office hours finally ended and I finally got out of Gates at 5, to go back and get ready for my RCC housecalls. There was a burrito dinner in The Hood (so named because <sarcasm>our apartment is clearly in the most ghetto part of Stanford housing</sarcasm>). Of course, grad students are drawn to free food like flies to a bug zapper, only without the subsequent bzzt!, so a bunch of them crashed our party and rendered my burrito meatless.

No matter, since I had three hours of inoculation ahead of me in housecalls. I had one apartment where I was fluttering between three rooms of residents who never heeded our warnings to update their computers. But... I came home and busted out the 6-lb box of cookie dough for some warm chocolate chip cookies. Mmmm...cookies... so all was good.

Tuesday: Straggled into cs229 with the rest of my apartment, and didn't notice a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in the middle of class. cs376 handed out a 1 1/2" thick binder as a course reader. And actually checks that you did the reading. By 1 o'clock I've committed myself to two research projects already. Not a good sign...

Went on a (course) shopping spree all day long, with a short break to go fight with the registrar about my grad status so I could get my tuition covered. It was sad: I was told I had to make an appointment with the Great and Wonderful Czar of Graduate Status, but as we looked at her schedule and mine couldn't find a time we could meet within the next two weeks.

With this Full Moon not being on the Quad, this left the evening for the observance of the Japanese tsukimi (moon viewing) at Christine's place. We didn't exactly view the moon, but I saw it on the way out and, hey, it looked cool. Cooler than this picture shows...

zesty!

to the tune of: Panini Puakea by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Yes, zesty is now apparently being used to describe Stanford:

Stanford gets mountains of applications from students competing to benefit from its unique blend of "world class" academics, "zesty spirit," "laid-back lifestyle," and "beautiful weather."

--Princeton Review

I can't help but be proud. I'd like to be able to say I'm responsible. But I probably can't take credit. People are just realizing what an incredibly versatile word zest is. And moreover, a fun word. One I should really use more often.

Oh crap, classes start tomorrow. I should probably pick some classes, eh? (Note: Threats will not move me to change my course list.)

stood up?!

to the tune of: Oboe Concerto in D minor - Adagio by Alessandro Marcello

Exhibit A: An angry e-mail from a resident:

So I am a little crushed right now--I waited around the place for the last hour or so and you never showed--I feel like I was just stood up by my RCC just now.

What a bastard, you're probably thinking. My poor resident was just pacing around waiting for her Internet access and I callously didn't show up. But I did--and I can cite witnesses Candace and Salome, whom I had to abandon and delay visiting, respectively, so I could go look up her phone number and call her (to find it was disconnected), traipse to her building, knock on a door, and find no one home.

Turns out she also listed the wrong apartment in her Rescomp connect request. Perhaps the Rains Renumbering Squad has struck again, but I'm not sure what possessed her to type in the wrong apartment number. I may just have to resign myself to knocking on every door in a building each time I make a housecall. Nope, this was her fault.

But whatever, I ended up dragging Salome and Candace back to the Zone, introducing Salome to Naruto and having Candace proceed to kick royal Halo butt. Hasn't played Halo in a year my foot! Oh, and I scored a forbidden snapshot of Salome, thanks to my stealthy camera phone. Muaahahaaa...

Lots of introductions this weekend: Ben, Guy, Kathy, and Kelsey to the grand game of euchre; Guy to Spoons; Yune to gyoza with beer, and Scrabble. Good times all around. Seeing Jason's lavishly furnished apartment makes me think the Real World may not be so bad after all. How does he sleep at night, working for the Evil Empire, which he doesn't even trust? On quite a comfy bed, I can say.

Courtesy of Kathy: Jon Stewart dukes it out with Bill O'Reilly. Beware of any talk show host who boasts of a "no spin zone"--every host has their own biases. Observe this snippet:

STEWART: Do you really believe France is, in any way, worthy of a boycott?
O'REILLY: I do. I think France has really hurt the USA, to be...
STEWART: Really?
O'REILLY: Yes, I do.
STEWART: More than like Saudi Arabia? You would advocate a boycott...
O'REILLY: No, I'm not going to say more than Saudi Arabia. But I'm saying we do a lot...
STEWART: So why not boycott them?
O'REILLY: France is supposed to be our friend. Saudi Arabia is...
STEWART: Since when? Since the revolution they haven't been our friend.
O'REILLY: [changes the subject]

Really what Bill wanted to do is moan about how John Kerry went on The Daily Show (and later Letterman) but not The O'Reilly Factor. Tricky bastard, thinking more potential Kerry voters would watch Stewart and Letterman than Fox News...

Is it really that uncultured to not like opera? Or to split infinitives? Just for that, I'm going to play an oboe concerto right now...

mmm...fudge

to the tune of: As I Lay Me Down by Sophie B. Hawkins

Curiously, the pound and a half of fudge I brought back from Mackinac Island has survived now five days with four guys and a handful of visitors eating it, not to mention 92-degree heat. This seems to defeat the immutable Law of Junk Food:

The more sugar food contains, the faster it disappears.

However, this makes sense if we examine the First Law of The RWFZ Kitchen:

The more work required to eat a food item, the less likely it is to be consumed as a snack.
Corollary: Anything requiring cutting is more work than a bag of tortilla chips.

This may explain why we finally noticed the watermelon that has been sitting in our kitchen for the past month and gone completely untouched over several hot weeks of summer that would, one would think, call for a watermelon.

if you seek a pleasant peninsula...

...look about you. --State Motto
Yes, I'm back in Michigan for the week.

When I checked in for my 8:20 AM Wednesday flight, I knew somehow I wouldn't be sleeping Tuesday night. Tuesday night none of us really felt like dancing in the 80-degree heat. So after the lesson, we trekked back to the Zone for pizza, ice cream and...more Buffy. Naturally the night ended up with Brad, Kat, Laura and me staying up till the sunrise (again).

I was thinking I would sleep on the plane. But the demon kids in front of me thought differently. These twins were cute little 5-year-old girls. But they were evil. When seatbelts prevented them from conspiring (loudly) between rows (thankfully they weren't sitting together), the one in front got her jollies by slamming herself against the back of the chair in front of me, which she proceeded to do off and on for the entire flight. Somehow I managed to fall asleep anyway, and awoke to find she had knocked apple juice onto my brand new messenger bag. Ah well. It was inevitable I suppose. Just as we were landing and we all had hope of getting off the plane, they detained us on the runway, as is the custom in Detroit, while this girl started doing situps into the back of her chair. After ten, she grinned at her mom, proudly declaring she had just counted to ten. Her mom looked down and said, "Good job. Why don't you count to a hundred?"

well, i tried

I made the offer. But it was rejected. My body apparently now refuses to get more than 7 hours of sleep a night. This is both exciting and disturbing at the same time. For in the summer, the perennial season of sloth, I would have no reason not to be sleeping a ton, right? Well...

Friday night was a delightful Friday Night Waltz. It started with my first foray into dance classes as a follow. Role reversal is an uphill battle for guys it seems. Most of the guys I danced with looked at me as if I were going to give them cooties. (Gay cooties, of course, since most dancers had long since gotten over cooties from the opposite sex.) But it still had its moments, like when Joan Walton saw Laura leading and me following and rushed over to correct us and we got to correct her instead. (Disclaimer: Joan's a sweet lady, and we all love her. Kat especially.)

Rose, Kat, and I invented some sort of salsa threesome in a corner that ended up being a cross between samba and limbo. I had a lovely "American" waltz with Kathleen (also known as Corset Lady), singing Joseph's "Close Every Door" to the music. Laura was willing to brave a 205 bpm waltz with me, and Louisa endured a dizzying zweifacher.

As is often tradition after five hours of sweaty, un-air-conditioned dancing, we ran to Safeway to procure ice cream and bring it back to the Zone. We were all prepared to bid each other good night and go to bed at a respectable hour when Kat and Laura announced they were going to go break into the psych building to watch The Princess Bride. Now you can't just let two lovely ladies risk life and limb in the surely haunted psych building to watch a movie when you have a perfectly good 25" TV in the living room--and comfy couches. So Rose fled in disgust, Guy went to bed wondering what sort of crack was in the ice cream, and Ben, Laura, Kat and I watched the movie.

Somehow it got to 6 AM. The sun was about to come up. We decided, if we were up, we might as well take advantage of it. So we set out sights on the Blackwelder high-rise in EV. Alas, the door was locked, but sure enough, some crazy grad student would soon come come out to go for an early Saturday morning jog, so we made it in and went up to the twelfth floor...and then the roof. It was definitely breathtaking, the early-morning light falling on the campus while its sane inhabitants remained in peaceful slumber.

Kinda makes me want to go to bed now...

fear me

to the tune of: Centerfold by The J. Geils Band

for I now have ultimate power: the power to bestow Internet access. And, presumably, to take it away. Yes, I am now officially an RCC. With a key and everything. I opened the central Rains networking closet today and got this bizarre rush. If I get punchy I suppose I can arbitrarily turn off people's power and cable TV too.

This also gives me my ninth Stanford e-mail address (and my fifth lifelong address). I'm not quite sure what I need nine e-mail addresses for but dammit I have them.

Speaking of Rescomp, victory has been snatched from the jaws of defeat: we no longer have to move to the other side of Rains. It started with an innocent enough conversation with this RCC I didn't recognize. [The button just came off my shirt. Sad. I like all kinds of buttons, even the kind on shirts.] She introduced herself, then informed me I was her RCC. [New Utada (not Hikaru)lyrics: "You're easy breezy, and I'm Japaneezy!" A new low, but this I gotta see...from a former Columbia student no less...] Oh, where was I? Right. This was suspicious because this meant she'd be walking across Rains for her residents, something I proposed months ago and was told was verboten. Yeah, we got that changed. I guess it wasn't that entertaining a story. But the random subplots kinda liven it up a bit I suppose.

[OK, this new Utada video is really weird I gotta say. It's Utada strutting around a California pool and hitting on white guys. And really Engrish lyrics. IM me if you want to see it. All I gotta say is it's going to make a lot of men with Asian fetishes very happy.]

So the upshot of this is now we can finally start decorating the apartment. Suggestions anyone? I'm thinking my Procrastination poster goes right above the Pyramid o' Procrastination.

This week:

• Learned to west-coast swing, which wasn't as hard as I thought. Still may be a victim of sexual discrimination if I go next week and they insist on charging men 50% more. (Is that legal?)
  
• Got sucked into another TV series. Enough people talk wistfully about the last Buffy episode (mostly women, curiously) that I had to see what the fuss was about. Thankfully she's not the blond bimbo from the original movie.
  
• Somehow got talked into seeing Vanity Fair. Really its only saving grace is that stuffy British people are sometimes good for a laugh...though usually not at what are supposed to be comic moments in the film.
  
• Formulated a Unified Theory of Hustle Club Music. At last, the methods by which the hustle club picks its particular subset of music are revealed:
  
  • Club two-step music is sappy. (Enrique Iglesias, "Hero")
    
  • West Coast swing music is skanky. (Justin Timberlake, That Song from The Super Bowl Wardrobe Malfunction)
    
  
  
• Yes, it's true. This new West Coast swing fascination has led me to download Britney Spears' "Toxic" and Christina Aguilera's "Come on Over". In the interests of dance, of course. I still feel dirty somehow.
  

Random coolness of the day: AudioScrobbler. You download a plugin for your favorite player and it keeps track of what kind of music you like, then makes amazon-style recommendations based on what other people like you seem to listen to. For some reason it thinks I'd really enjoy listening to such classics as "Happy Birthday" and "Old MacDonald". But some of its predictions are pretty reasonable.

I propose an experiment: All of you join AudioScrobbler and let's see who's my nearest musical "neighbor" (with similar tastes). I've been throwing them off by listening to the 600 or so dance songs I just downloaded, not to mention Ben's and Dave's stashes I liberated.