Day 13

Today was the day: I finally had to change the batteries in my voice recorder. Ah, AAAs, you've served me well.

This morning I had breakfast with Amy, who, enjoying the beautiful, absolutely gorgeous weather today, frolicked in the sunlight all the way to Buntrock. After eating, I made my way down toward Skoglund; today is special, of course, because it's Monday, and that means it's Ashley and my special day to work out together–always a treat to look forward to. We had a great conversation, but the day had brought nothing too surprising so far, just a normal Monday (other than the weather, that is, but that's more of a "gift" than a "surprise").

Came back to the room, practiced guitar for a while, then went to Buntrock to meet DaveO. It seems today's conversation was just doomed for interruptions–this is not inherently a bad thing, since interruptions have potential to be surprises in disguise, but today I had a couple important things on my mind that I really needed to talk about (okay, fine, I'll be honest: it was just one important thing... one really attractive important thing). First Dave was late: he had some errands he'd needed to run in town and they went longer than expected. Then, when he did get here, someone else joined our table for a good 10 minutes or so. I'm not opposed to meeting new friends at all, but time was short, I'm impatient, and I couldn't start on my list of conversation topics with someone else there. Finally, with maybe 5 or 10 minutes left before Dave had to move on to his next appointment (hmm, kind of makes him sound like a shrink... I think maybe he is, in a sense, just without the private office and extra letters at the end of his name), I delved into the relationship questions. And that's when the surprise came: he didn't say what I expected him to say at all; he said something a lot more in line with what I'd wanted to hear. What's more is that I know he wouldn't just pander to my hopes, which was encouraging. That's perhaps really abstract, but even at this I've may have written more detail than entirely appropriate.

In the afternoon I wrote another short response paper for one of my classes (this one as extra credit–the readings were about theodicy, how could I not have a lot to say about that after taking an entire course on the subject last year?). Then I took a nap, because I didn't really feel like doing anything, even though I knew I had a lot to do.

On my way out for dinner I printed some number of various papers and notes, one of which made the printer jam–that was exciting. It jammed in the same place as the last time a couple days ago, so I knew exactly what to pull out to fix it, and then, to my delight, the printer was smart enough to know it needed to reprint that page. Good printer.

Dinner was with Katie and her roommate, and then Katie and I were off to a small group study session for our Theology of Creation test tomorrow! Yay! It went reasonably well, and I felt somewhat relieved after actually talking through the study guide; not to say I felt completely prepared, but I felt less ill-prepared than before, so that's good.

The rest of the night was sort of a wash; my brain was tired, and I needed to get to bed so I could be well-rested for tomorrow. This did not happen before a hilarious conversation with my roommate about British spelling, though. If he reads this I'm sure he'll be upset, but I can't resist quoting this great line he said: "Do the British even use the 'z'? And simple words like xylophone don't count!". Oh Ben. He of course realized what he'd said right away (I'm sure my hysterical laughing helped), and it was just a great way to end the day.