sunday night, we’re all sitting around during the seder dinner. dan and justin are to my right, and 3 or 4 pretty girls to the left. we’re all having a great time, great conversation, and of course dan and justin and i are competing to be the coolest so that the girls will like us. during a lull in conversation, when nobody around is really talking, dan turns to me and says, loudly, “jon, how would you describe what we did last night?”
verbatim. so everyone turns to me expectantly, and more than a bit curiously. dan of course is referring to hanging out with serena, but no one else knows that. i try to forestall visions of illicit goings-on, but it’s too late.
at least it was funny.
i went to all of my classes yesterday, and actually enjoyed it. i enjoyed the feeling of not wondering if i was behind or missing something important. i also enjoyed the feeling of doing work in my room, and knowing that i was making some sort of progress on a definable scale. i haven’t felt that in a long time (mostly because of the not doing work thing).
i was part of a psychology study for .5 hrs yesterday, for $7. i do them every once in a while, because it’s easy quick money and i get a kick out of trying to outsmart the study and screw with the results.
on top of school and all that, i had a small victory at the wall last night–i finally conquered the 6 i’ve been working on for a month or so…the first 6 i’ve done! it was great to feel strong, and to feel like i’d improved. now for the next plateau…
in other news, i’ve decided to kick modal logic’s butt. i let first-order logic rule me, but no more of that pacifist crap–i’m taking this class by the horns and…what, then, i don’t know…maybe doing that cowboy trick of flipping over the horns and landing backwards on the beast then slapping its butt to make it go. first problem set due thursday, so i’d better start on it.
to continue with school updates, we’ve started reading lysias’ orationes III in greek. in the class, and the language, i mean. ancient greek is really hard, i realized, after going back to taking a conversational spanish class. spanish is so easy–you can many times translate word-for-word and have it make sense. translating greek is like finding pieces of a puzzle all over a paragraph, linking up different words that are in no spatial relation to each other, using different obscure rules and constructions to equate these to dramatically different constructions in english, then trying to make sense of each phrase with respect to the others around it.
now to read 40 more pages of objections and replies to descartes’ mediations on first philosophy. if you’ve never read it, you really should. the mediations themselves can’t be more than 40-50 pages, and they more or less defined the problems in philosophy that we’re still thinking about today.
virtual disc on spin: when the world sings | fine china
