it’s 2am on a friday night and i’ve had a great day. apart from my 8 and 9am classes, it could almost have been a perfect day. i got an early start, performed suitably well in my school-related functions (even if i did act like an automaton that only very nearly passed the turing test), and went home to take care of some web business. that being done i had a beautiful lunch at bollard, before launching into an afternoon of quite litera[ri]lly novellic adventures. i read the last two or three hundred pages of my latest stephen r lawhead installment in one sitting. ah, the blessed feeling of the cool breeze mingled with sunshine through an open window while turning the pages of a good adventure, each page like a movie frame that when rolled at speed produces a sequence of fantastic images. ...

and welcome to our new home. hopefully you will notice an increase in speed!

*changing servers for jonathanlipps.com…this site may disappear for a bit…*

i’m trying hard to remember what’s happened in the past few weeks. i guess it’s been at least 3 since i really said anything of importance. my last week at home after portugal, before stanford, was really fun. i went up to gainesville for a few days to hang out with my brother and best friends there. we watched movies, ate big reds, smoked pipes, climbed rocks, and had an all around freakin awesome time. chris domeck went up with me, so the whole posse was there, sans andy, who’s in indiana. ...

i am moved in. class starts tomorrow. and i’m definitely not ready for the hardest quarter of my stanford career.

*in the process of moving into suites…hold on….*

portugal was really fun. last wednesday we flew out of orlando at 2pm, to miami and then across the atlantic to madrid, spain, on an iberia flight. the flight was nice because we were surprisingly upgraded from coach to business class–a fantastic difference in service and comfort. going against the spin of the earth, we arrived in madrid thursday morning, only to smoosh ourselves on a crowded 1-hour commuter flight to lisbon. ...

tomorrow i start my grand september adventure: portugal. i’ve never been to the country, nor do i know anything about it. these two factors make me at once excited and a bit nervous. thankfully, i’ve been learning trying to learn portuguese this summer, so i’ll feel a little more confident in the unfamiliar environment. not that i’ll be out on the streets needing to use my language skills anyway–my home away from home will be the carlton palace hotel, a designated national monument and 5-star accomodation. within the hotel and its grounds are gardens, restaurants, workout rooms, an indoor track, 2 indoor swimming pools, hot tubs, saunas, sweat rooms, and, of course, a gymnasium (for the dogeball, i’m assuming). with all this and the free in-room nintendo system, i don’t think i’ll ever need to leave the place. ...

and now, part 3 of the DiscMagnet™ saga: coordinated assault i knew that the cunning of the evil monster holding my 3 discs captive was too great to be overcome by myself alone, so on thursday i recruited a team of hardcore disc-rescue veterans to help with the cause. the members of this newly-formed counter-discnapping force were as follows: team leader: jonathan lipps callsign: throwmaster flex skills: insane speed, tactical genius, looking dark and cool in a trench coat job: strategy, execution coordination, primary munitions expenditure ...

…..and i’m off home. it was a great summer…i’m extremely glad i stayed and worked at stanford. now time for a little r&r before the affectionately pre-dubbed “hell quarter” kicks in. coming soon: part 3 of the DiscMagnet™ saga.