Last night I got a flat tire on my bike while riding past the construction around the new science center. I was very annoyed, because since I live in Woolman, slightly uphill from campus, biking to class and stuff is very convenient, and I save a good deal of time. I also enjoy leaving skid marks on the pavement and playing around with my 21 gears. I was quite dismayed at the prospect of having to actually walk around. However, a while back I was telling Blake how wonderful it was to save time with my bike, and he said, “So what do you do with all of the time you save?” I didn’t have a good answer. Where does the time go that I save in transit?

I guess it probably goes towards checking my e-mail or reading Slashdot; it doesn’t really help get me to class on time.

Today as I was walking back to my dorm, I noticed for the first time that the leaves were changing, and many of them had fallen to the ground already. In retrospect I remember that there had been leaves on the ground before; I like to step on the leaves and hear them crinkle and crackle, and I recall crinkling leaves several times in the last few weeks. However, it hadn’t really computed that, “Oh, fall is here, the leaves are pretty!” I’m glad that I took the time to look at all the colors, and check out the big picture, of the greenery of Swarthmore preparing for winter.

My parents are probably going to kick my butt next time they see me, because I keep forgetting to eat, and I’ve definitely gotten thinner. There are several reasons this happens:(1)I get wrapped up in homework or SCDC business, and never make it to the dining hall or my room to eat (2)I make it to the dining hall, but something terribly exciting comes up and I drop my food and run off, or an interesting topic of conversation comes up and I neglect my dinner (3)I make it back to my room, but instead of cooking something, I just nibble on a snack.

The positive side of all this is that I’ve become so insubstantial that I can sneak around like Frodo Baggins with the One Ring, and nobody can catch me! Whee!

Hey folks, thanks to friendly nagging from Maggie, I’m going to try to keep my blog updated again, although it’s going to be terribly difficult because of all of the developments occurring with the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons. Swarthmore College has been in the news a lot lately because of the Diebold voting machine memos, and if you haven’t heard about it, I recommend that you check out our website.
In other news, my roommate Jerome recently mistook my electric toothbrush for a vibrator. He walked into the room the other day, and exclaimed, “You know somebody has been keeping a vibrator in our bathroom?” This would indeed have been odd, since we two are the only people who use our bathroom regularly. However, my Periobrush is probably not suitable for this purpose, despite its vaguely phallic shape. I can’t say that I’m disappointed about that…

For some reason, I let Sarah write this week’s blog entry. I’m sure this is a bad idea, but here we go… Sarah, tell everyone about my life!

(z.B. is German. If you can figure out what it means, Sarah will give you a candy bar. If you’re allergic to peanuts, too bad, it has peanuts in it.)

—Oh my god, that was Sarah’s entry. What have I done? I’ve created a monster!

Sarah is my CS partner. She doesn’t like the way I say “dude” all the time. She beats me up because I’m a Quaker and I can’t hit back. She’s laughing now, about how she beats me up. OK, maybe she’s not laughing about that, but I’m sure it’s SOME joke at my expense. What an abusive girl. God, why do I hang out with her? Visit her website, because. Just because. Thanks.
So we’re planning to get all of the CS done before the weekend, so that we can party hard as we are wont to do here at Swat. Right…. Actually, I’m straightedge, and Sarah wishes she was European. Which means that she doesn’t drink the way Americans drink (usually). Those uncultured swine. Sarah’s not coming across very well in this entry, is she? Oh well, I guess I’m biased, I’m her CS partner.
Other than Sarah, my life is dull. Dull. DULL!!!! Good thing I have Sarah for a CS partner. This entry was written specifically to annoy Sarah. Did it work? Cool. Evidently it did. Sarah is calling it creative non-violence. Yeah, peace.

Whoa, shit, my friend Zeke who goes to William and Mary says they’re evacuating the school. He’s about to start driving home to New Jersey from southeast Virginia, because according to this NOAA map his school is going to be right in the middle of the hurricane. Looks like we’re probably going to get hit here in Swarthmore as well. Knowing Swarthmore, we’ll probably have classes during the hurricane, just to prove how hard core we are. So batten down the hatches me hearties, we may be in for a wild ride!
For further updates, check the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s website.
Update: The hurricane did nothing to Swarthmore. We have had much worse storms this year without there being a hurricane. It was a disappointment, overall.

Yesterday and today the plumber people are working on the water damage on our dorm room wall. Apparently it’s due to a leaky pipe, so they ripped out all the pipes and left this massive vertical gash in the wall. The pipe should be replaced tomorrow, but the wall might not be back to normal for another week, I didn’t really follow their explanation, because I have a short attention span like that sometimes.
I enjoyed talking to my friend Jenn today on the phone, she lives in Massachusetts and is probably moving to Arizona in a couple of months. So hopefully we’ll figure out a way to see each other before she goes, otherwise it could be a really LONG time before we meet again. I trust in our combined resourcefulness 🙂