Seriously!  I’m getting pretty sick of sub-zero wind chills. I can’t remember the last time I felt my toes.
Due to a lack of imagination today (which I am inclined to blame on the cold), here’s a recap of stuff that has happened since last week in roughly chronological order:

Last Friday night I had to spend some time working on a paper due at midnight, but I ended up finishing by early evening, so that was cool.  My friends and I spent the evening randomly hanging out until we went to Brunswick Zone and played around in the arcade again.  My friend and I blew a ton of money on this ridiculous shooting game where we had guns and we were shooting at ninjas armed with swords and shurikens… and still lost.  It was hilarious.  We ended the evening drinking coffee and flipping creamer containers at each other at Denny’s till the wee hours.  The rest of the weekend was full of homework and family functions so there isn’t much to talk about.

Also, later this week we had our first meeting to register for the Games for Girls competition.  I’m excited for this year’s competition for several reasons.  We decided to do a puzzle-type game instead of a role-playing game, which is generally the standard, because we learned the hard way last year that scrapping large parts of a linear plot at the last minute can be disastrous.  We’re also not required to use the same software suite we were last year.   They always required us to use a software platform called Game Maker to build our games, which is good for what it does, but this year they gave us the option to use pretty much any platform we want.  We’re going to develop on the same platform used by real game developers who write for PC and Xbox, so that will be pretty sweet.

Other than that, it’s been pretty much solid schoolwork and trying to stay warm.  This weekend looks pretty low-key since no one wants to go running around in the cold.  We’ll see how it goes.  Later!

Last weekend was a blast. My friend Sharon’s birthday was last Saturday, so we all went out to dinner at Red Lobster and went to see Juno. They wedged us into a tiny booth at Red Lobster, and squishing ensued:

Dinner was hilarious, of course–we keep ourselves entertained. The movie was OK but not as good as all the hype. We ended up coming back to campus and watching a few episodes of Family Guy before everyone decided they were tired and we headed home.

Classes have been getting tougher now that the term is in full swing. My first few papers are coming due and the reading assignments are getting longer and longer. It’s going to be a challenging term, but I knew that going in, so I’m at least reasonably prepared.

Tonight is also my first practice this year for the ACCA programming competition. The competition consists of a group of local colleges sending teams of up to four programmers to compete against each other in a timed contest. Whoever gets all the programs done fastest (and correct, of course) wins. I didn’t participate last year because I thought I would be too busy, but I’m back this year for my first Advanced competition (there’s also Novice, which is for first-year computer science students).

We also ran into a bit of a snag with our laser tag trip for COW. We were originally going to go tonight, but everything fell apart at the last minute from a planning perspective (late publicity means low signups, and that sort of thing) so we decided to push the event back two weeks until February 1. It’s a bit disappointing, but I think it will turn out much better if we wait.

This weekend will probably be pretty quiet. I have to write a paper and do a bunch of other homework, so I’ll have to focus on that instead of goofing off, but it’s OK… there’s always next week.

It’s the end of second week now, and classes are getting into full swing.  I’ve had to go back to spending most of my free time doing homework.  My Feminist Perspectives and History of Ideas classes require tons of reading (which is pretty typical for honors courses), and I need a lot of extra time to puzzle through problems for Discrete Structures 2.  I’m a little rusty, since I took the first Discrete course my freshman year and haven’t looked at it in the year and a half since then.  In any case, it’s a challenging workload but nothing impossible.

One of the things that interests me particularly is a collection of short stories that we’re reading in my Feminist Perspectives class called Feminist Philosophy and Science Fiction: Utopias and Dystopias.  The stories all examine gender from a science- or speculative-fiction perspective.  That in itself is interesting, because I can tell you from experience that women in science fiction tend to be cast in smaller or more stereotypical roles, so stories specifically written to address gender are a refreshing change.  I’m also a huge fan of the utopia/dystopia model.  In general I think science fiction and the like are among the best ways to explore new ideas and perspectives, and so far it hasn’t disappointed. I’d recommend it to any fan of science fiction or gender study.

I haven’t had a chance to do anything really exciting socially since school started.  I went to see the new National Treasure movie with my dad last weekend, but that’s really been it.  This Saturday is one of my friends’ birthdays, so some of us are going to go out for dinner and then see a movie to celebrate.  Also, next weekend COW is going to sponsor a trip to play laser tag, which everyone is really excited about.  Check in next week for a report of how well everything went!

I’m going to start this out by saying that I’m really happy to be back at school. I missed hanging out with everyone in the Cardinal Lounge, and I’m also glad to get into a better routine in terms of classes and so on. Aside from that, both my classes and extracurricular events look like they’ll be awesome.

I only have three classes this term, which is on the lighter end of a full load for trimesters. Two of them are honors classes so it will still be challenging. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I have History of Ideas 2: Early Modern Thought (an honors class where we discuss literature from 1500-1800) and a seminar on Feminist Perspectives (which seems to be a literature-centric exploration of feminist approaches to society and culture). Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Discrete Structures 2, which is most easily explained as math and logic relating to computer science.

After classes, I had a meeting with the COW executive board to start to plan out when we’re going to hold our events. Putting everything down on paper really made me realize how busy we’re going to be. We will hold roughly one meeting per week starting third week, so a lot of planning needs to be done very quickly. Hopefully we’ll be able to get all the important planning done well in advance so that we can just enjoy the events when the time comes.

Things are looking up… I’m really excited.

Things have been pretty crazy with family and Christmas and so on, so I don’t have too much to blog about. I hope everyone’s assorted holidays have gone well.

By this time next week, I’ll be in classes again, so that’s exciting. For now, I have time off of both school AND work, so I can finally relax a little bit. I got a bunch of DVDs for Christmas (including Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the three Bourne movies) so I can just kick back and watch them for once. It’s a nice break!

Anyway, happy new year to everyone, and the next time you’ll hear from me, it will be winter term. Later!