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i know it’s more fun to read about my adventures with girls (of which there are a lot, of course), but i have some more mundane announcements. 1. starting next quarter, i will officially be the new kitchen manager for beefeater’s dining society here at suites. what is that, you ask? i tell: all the people who live in suites eat at one of four eating clubs: beefeater’s, bollard, avanti, and middle-earth. which club you eat at is determined by where you live in suites. for instance, this year i live on the third floor of griffin, so i eat at bollard. anyway, these eating clubs have a club manager, a kitchen manager, and a financial manager, who together are responsible for running and managing all aspects of the club. i applied for one of these positions, and was assigned kitchen manager, as i said. what that means is that i will be living in suites next year, will get free board, and will have to work a certain number of hours per week making sure my club (beef, as they call it), runs smoothly. as i was looking at a sucky year going unpreferred in the draw, this is a blessing and a step-up. the job starts in april and goes through the end of my senior year! ...

for the first time in my life, i took a girl on a date on valentine’s day. the first 12 or 15 years i was either oblivious to the option of doing so, didn’t care, or would have been denied the opportunity by parents. in fact, during those years i don’t think i ever even gave a girl a serious valentine card. i received my share, of course, and some from girls i liked, but it always seemed dumb. then again, i was young. ...

it’s final: daniel urban, joseph carucci, and i will be traveling to the united kingdom for spring break. we leave on march 20th, return on the 27th, and have spent $330 each on transportation from san francisco to london and back. quite a good deal. now it’s all about finding in-country transportation and lodgings at a bargain. plans for what to do while in the uk are not firm (or even existent), but ideas include visiting such places as london, oxford, bath, edinburgh, cambridge, and dublin. ...

new cds that came in the mail today and made me happy: american football | american football sunny day real estate | how it feels to be something on the gloria record | a lull in traffic [ep] the gloria record | the gloria record [ep] belle & sebastian | the boy with the arab strap living sacrifice | reborn sixpence none the richer | divine discontent and hooray for 4 posts in one day! all you un-friends out there (alex zane) will have a hard time catching up.

AIM ceased to work on my part of the stanford campus sometime this afternoon. when it went, it left a huge gaping whole in my heart. i was forced to actually do work and go to class instead of obsessively (or is it compulsively?) checking away messages. now, hours later, i’m feeling a little bit freer, a little bit lighter, as if a great weight has been taken from my back. although, if i did it again i wouldn’t stop cold turkey. serious addictions are not to be toyed with and we’re all lucky i didn’t go drown myself in lake lagunita.

…and speaking of rapidly [cf. my last post], here it is! i had the distinct (actually it was kind of fuzzy) pleasure of seeing the sunrise this morning, as i was up at 5am to drive a friend to the airport. now i’m debating whether to catch a few hours of sleep before my long day of classes, or instead to just fall asleep in class. in other news, splendour hyaline CDs are being made as we speak and should be shipped to me in the next week or two. also, i’ve been looking at taking out a loan and trying to get a car. i decided i really need one out here this year. last, dan, joey, and i will be heading to the UK for 6 days over spring break. we hope to visit a number of places in england, and maybe spend a day each in edinburgh and dublin if we can swing it. i’m looking forward to that adventure!

i am paralyzed by music, and i love it–the state of complete and utter disability to do anything but sit and allow my ears to be two thirsty mouths. each beautiful song is a spiritual feast of the most fundamentally real kind, as i internalize the form of beauty itself and thus meet the one whose playground is platonic heaven. the conclusion being, of course, that it is more important to listen to music than to perform any of the academic gyrations they ask us monkeys [students] to exhibit, like reading abstruse philosophy. ...

i just got back from junior formal. if you don’t believe me, come to griffin 302 and take a look: i’m sitting here in my dress slacks, black square-toe docs, and wifebeater undershirt, dress shirt and tie strewn on the floor to my left (incidentally, according to hanes, i am not wearing a “wifebeater” but an “a-shirt”. according to my dad this selfsame article of clothing is a “guinea tee”. perhaps hanes is too uncomfortable with and my dad too old for the unpleasant connotation of the name. i prefer to think of the name not as being built up from components with a determined semantic value [“wife” and “beater”], but being an english primitive, the fact that it sounds phonologically similar to said semantic components a complete accident. more interesting to you all is perhaps why i wear this particular style of clothing at times. this is a great topic for discussion, as it involves themes of pride, insecurity, frivolity, and toned muscles. tonight let’s just say that i was out of regular undershirts. and this was in fact the truth). ...

i had more important announcements to make on the 3rd of this month, but something else happened on that day: my blog turned 1 year old. in honor of this event i’ve compiled all my archives for that year into one file. to read the entire first year of this blogging venture, simply click on “year one” in the right hand pane. the months for said year are included underneath. archives for the current year (year 2) will continue above them as usual. ...

while we’re in the mood of announcing new and fabulous things: i got my hair cut on saturday. it was just past shoulder-length, and is now a very abercrombie 2 inches. the change, while it makes me look a few years younger (no more illegal alcohol runs), is welcome. life feels more manageable, and it’s not such a pain to put my headphones on. also, being more aerodynamic now, i hope to shave a few seconds off my mile time.