Constant

It’s 9:30 on Tuesday morning, and one of my favorite parts of the week. It’s the mere hour between my 8:30-9:30 math recitation and my 10:30-noon music class. Since the buildings are relatively far from my room, I pass the time at the nearby Starbucks at the corner of 34th and Walnut.
This hour, every week, is a constant. No matter that I stayed up until 3 the night before, never mind that my grade on my math midterm is abysmal, and not to worry that I haven’t done the homework due in marketing tonight.
This hour is a constant. I consciously make myself not work during this hour, not stress, not worry, not fret, and not be bothered by the myriad of things that aren’t quite right in the world. Right now, during this hour, this constant, it’ll all turn out fine.
To the right of my laptop is a tall hot chocolate (they were out of caramel apple cider – I’ll try again next week). To the left is a chocolate croissant. It’s not always hot chocolate and a chocolate croissant – in fact, it seldom is. Last week it was a cappuccino and a slice of pumpkin loaf. The week before that it was something different, and next week it will likely be something different. The details don’t have to be constant – just the hour.
The music of the moment is something country-bluesy, conveniently playing on the speakers around the store: just soft enough to be unobtrusive, but just loud enough to resonate.
The hour is just long enough to finish a drink and something for breakfast – that’s why it’s an hour and nothing different.
I haven’t ordered straight coffee here yet – I always feel like I might offend the barista with the simplicity of my order. The people who are ordering less than ten feet from me seem to have studied their whole lives for the moment that they step up to the counter, make eye contact, and recite their perfectly personalized panorama of flavors.
There are two entrances to this Starbucks, and the small table that I’m sitting at looks out the window at one of them. The people who come in are an interesting gaggle (What do you call a group of coffee addicts? The answer: a roast), running the gamut from businessmen who down their triple shots with a kind of manly zest, to students who grab a caffe latte before class. They enter in different ways, too: the 54 year old professor walks in steadily and calmly – class can’t start without him; while the 19 year old international relations student with a midterm in two minutes rushes in and gapes at the line – class can and will start without her.
And the teenager with a backpack who orders a simple hot chocolate and chocolate croissant enters with a kind of reverence and inhales deeply once he steps over the threshold, because this is his hour – his constant.

Open Facebook

So facebook is now open to everyone. Know what I suggest? Stop complaining and use those privacy settings. The first thing I did was go through every single privacy page and limit what people can see about me in regional networks and create a limited profile. Even on facebook, anything online is still online, and there are ways for people to get at it. Anyone who thinks that they can put all sorts of things online and expect them to stay private is a fool.
But please, please, please Mark: don't sell out to Yahoo. I don't want to see "My Yahooligans!" underneath "My Groups".
See y'all online. Yeah I said it. Y'all.

Fork and Knife

Auditions for Fork and Knife Improv are this Sunday, at 2 PM. Location is forthcoming shortly - contact me for more information.

Penn

Hello world (yes, I'm taking computer science). I'm at the University of Pennyslvania (not Penn State, you dumb...you know), and things have never been better. Or worse. I'm not sure.
In fact, college is pretty much a mixed bag of good and bad. At the moment, the current "bad" is the fact that the restrooms have a wonderful, pungently odorous aroma of feces and urine. Together. Mixed. Merged in some sort of unholy union of human waste. It's hard to breathe because of the overpowering reek in there. I was in there less than a minute and, I kid you not, my nose stuffed itself up. That's right, it took a hit to protect the rest of my body. Thank you nose - your sacrifice will not be soon forgotten.
Philadelphia, too, is a mixed bag. The Penn campus is half-in, half-out of Philly, so the mix of students and locals makes for an interesting potpourri wherever you go. I'm going to whip out my camera and start taking pictures soon, and perhaps posting them either here, or making a new album on my facebook profile (which is linked to on the right, and on which this blog is now being syndicated to). Anyways, the number of things that have happened here are almost too many to count. A few of the highlights: I have a good roommate - very chill, in general, even when he bashed his leg open and pools of blood flowed all over our rug and floor. My class aren't too hard, except for Math, but I think I can muscle through it. The gym here has a 40' rock climbing wall, which I think I'm going to start frequenting. I didn't make the debate team, but I am joining an improv group, which promises to be a lot of fun.
That's about it for tonight, so I'll leave you with a question:
What's YOUR favorite cereal?

Top 10 Games Of All Time

I read an article describing the top 5 games of all time, but most of them are pretty obscure. So here are my top 10 games of all time, in no particular order.

Super Smash Bros.
Half-Life 2
Counter-Strike: Source
Halo
Halo 2
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament 2004
Command & Conquer: Generals: Zero Hour
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge
Battlefield 1942

There are so many other good ones, but these are the ones I really enjoyed playing (and some I still play).