election day

Did I go to New York this weekend to see Halley in a play? Was the play called "Election Day?" Was the other purpose of my visit to see Peaches and the Herschkowitzes? Would that be a good name for a band? Did I like the play? How are Jenny and Julie? Did I go out for drinks after the play with Halley and a bunch of the cast and crew? Was that fun? Did I eat delicious challah french toast on Sunday morning? Did Peaches and I hang out in her new apartment and then walk around the West Village for a while? Was that great, seeing her? Did I also see the Richard Serra exhibit at MOMA? Did I pay more attention to Peaches than the exhibit, but still enjoy the show? What did we talk about then? Where was that drag queen in the furniture shop from? Did I read a short story by Donald Barthelme called "Concerning the Bodyguard"? What did I think of it? Did Mom and I have really nice drives both ways? Did our topics include the Oxford English Corpus, theology, and internet ethics? Was my new cell phone waiting for me when I got home? Did I talk to Vale on Friday night, and again on Sunday? Is it strange and hard to talk to her on the phone? Is it worth it? How is she doing? Did I play frisbee last night with the Blair clique team, and did we lose 15-11? Was it fun? Did Lincoln and I finish the guest bedroom in Erin and Arthur's house? Was Cori there this afternoon and did we get to talk for the first time in weeks? How was her trip in Bolivia? Did it sound like a nightmare? Did I do prep for painting the hall? Was dinner delicious tonight, and did it consist of orange-mint lamb, corn on the cob and pasta? Is that a lot of starch? Did I talk briefly to Nora and am I going to call her in a little bit? Did Vale's postcard get here? What am I going to do tonight?

What was that short story about?

i think blogger is confused

It says my most recent post was on Monday but that's not possible and also doesn't make sense from the context of what I wrote. Anyhow, today is Friday, and it seems that I'll be painting once again. Painting sucks, especially by yourself, and I'm not sure whether I'll actually do any today. I've worked plenty of hours now for the amount Lincoln said he'd pay me to help out. But we'll see.

Yesterday was the most eventful day in a while. I painted most of the ceiling over at the Fulham-Cohens' (the job today would be to finish it). Then Linc, Mom and I went to the Phillips for the ColorField (the only art movement ever to come out of DC) show there. It was cool for the location aspect and some of the pieces were nice but this was not a big or particularly influential movement. The real show is upstairs in the permanent collection, which has some really tight pieces by the heavy hitters of the past 150 years: Cezanne, Picasso, Renoir, Miro, Klee, etc. Plus some excellent less-well-known stuff. Right after that I went and met up with Robin (!) and her friend Boris to go to a one-man show at Busboys and Poets about the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was neat, he used beat-boxing and singing plus a whole host of characters to illustrate some tired but important themes about the similarities between the people on either side of the walls there and about the dehumanization of each side by the other. But it cost a lot of money and Busboys and Poets isn't cheap, either. In the end I spent 20 bucks on it, which would have been unheard of in Chile for the same show. Oh well, guess I've gotta choose more carefully down here. It was great to see Robin, though, she's such a cool girl. And I liked Boris.

A couple of other notes: I've taught Lincoln and Jack carioca, although we haven't played a complete game yet because it required a real time commitment and we're all busy and on totally independent schedules. But Jack and I did play a game of Scrabble, which, to my surprise, I won 403-315. Not bad after a year with not a single game in English! Also I found --bless you, Dad, the only THINGS you obtain are books and music and 90% of the time they're great-- an album in the kitchen by a guy named Boubacar Traoré. Well the album's great, and I did some snooping around on YouTube to try and find something to put up here and, well, I got to clicking and discovered a couple of other awesome musicians: Ali Farka Toure, Salif Keita, Corey Harris. It seems Mali produces a lot of great music: Amadou et Mariam, Tinariwen, Traoré, Keita, Toure. Sheesh. It's really interesting to cruise through YouTube, though, and hear just how much of a continuum there is between the traditional African sounds and American blues. Awesome. So the song I settled on ended up being Taj Mahal and Corey Harris playing "Sittin' on top of the world." Enjoy!

i finished harry potter

Because people who give spoilers are basically on par with violent felons, I'll refrain on saying anything about it, period.

Other than that, things have been going all right here, I suppose. Mom, Dad and Linc are all pretty busy, but I'm still waiting for word from Sparks and Jack is sick still from El Salvador, so he and I have been chilling at home. I emailed our landlord today and applied for a couple of work-study jobs in Ann Arbor for this coming year. However I'm still not sure what to do about spending money; SAT tutoring came to mind today as I searched CraigsList.

Judy and I went out for coffee tonight. It was nice to catch up, and also to drive around a little bit, as cumbersome and useless as the car is at the distances I was traveling (my house-Mayorga-downtown Silver Spring). She seems to be making the most of her summer, working at a nonprofit in DC and biking and although Bethesda is suffocating her, she's getting along fine. Talking about being abroad is nice in general--lord knows I've learned enough things and had enough unusual experiences to fill at least one decent conversation with anyone--despite the fact that it brings my mind to Vale and Rodrigo and Cecilia and the other people I miss and the people I missed the chance to get to know enough to miss. And Vale. But talking to someone who has been abroad recently is so much easier because the shared experience, although we may have gone to such different places, is very powerful.

Dad, Linc and I went to Deb's on Monday night. It was kind of boring and not very fulfilling, which is an unusual experience there. But really there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of tension in the house right now. Stress, to be sure, but we're not taking it out on each other. In other news, I've fallen back into my old practice of reading eight hundred books at the same time; right now they include: Super Fiction, Forty Stories by Donald Barthelme, Cotidianas by Mario Benedetti, Harry Potter (which I obviously just finished, but like 20 minutes ago, so it counts), and Ficciones, plus the usual New Yorker, Outlook, New York Review articles. I've been laying off the blogs, though. It's interesting, when I was in Chile they provided an intellectual link with the day-to-day issues that I care about at home and I drank them in effortlessly and eagerly. But now that I'm here they remind me mostly of sitting next to Vale in her apartment in Santiago de Chile, of how strange it was to be keeping in touch with the goings-on up here through the opinions of other people rather than just by simply being at home.

Anyhow I've got to rise and shine tomorrow, to await word from Sparks and then go to the dentist at 10:15. Hope I've got a car, walking there would suck shit through a wet paper straw, as a certain recent houseguest might say (although he was talking about the Yale University bureaucracy). One last note before I conk out: WHEN IS IT GOING TO FREAKING THUNDERSTORM!?!?!??!!? I feel ripped off.

at home

Jack comes home tonight and we will finally be all five of us together again. Being at home is really wonderful and also really strange and hard. Details and reflections will come about that in time (I know I've written that before but I need to keep telling myself to do it or too much time will pass). Really I just wanted to post about how happy I am that I'll get to see Jack again today after so much time.

leaving so soon

Vale made me promise not to use my computer at all tomorrow, so I figured I'd better post now because my next opportunity will be Friday. First, I've got another book for the list: Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Barrington Moore. Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, it's time to write a little about what's going on here.

Yesterday Vale and I went to Rodrigo and Cecilia's for a good-bye dinner, which was lovely despite one last Transantiago nightmare getting there. We laughed a lot, as usual, and stayed so late that we ended up spending the night even though Vale had work this morning. It was strange saying bye, I've gotten pretty close with that family over the past few months and I will miss them a lot. Today Ceci drove us to the metro bright and early and Vale went to work and I fell asleep. On waking up I had my second round of good-byes, in the COPA office, to Isa and Katty. I haven't been as close to either of them this semester and it was a little weird and awkward, but they have also been very important this year for obvious reasons and I'm glad I went. Tonight we'll go one last time to the Pilars', but not for dinner. David and I talked last week about me going over there for lunch one day but he never called back to tell me when I should come over and I didn't call him back, either. I'll also leave without seeing the Diaz family one last time. I regret not having made a greater effort to get over there (it's been months since my last visit). Good-byes are awkward and hard and I've shied away from a lot of them or avoided going out of my way for them, which I'm not exactly proud of. I wish I could have said bye to the frisbee crew, but the game got called off yesterday because of rain. Tomorrow I'll spend with Vale, who of course will be the hardest good-bye of all, and then at about 3 on Thursday morning a van will come pick me and my mountain of stuff up (and hopefully Vale) and take us to the airport and away from Chile for a long time. But not forever, and hopefully not even for that long. I love this country and certainly some of its people and there is still so much for me to learn and see and do here.

Some real reflections on the past year will come along soon but not now.

more music wish list

First, I've decided I really like Vale's card game, carioca, which I wrote about in a rather negative light a few days ago. Family, expect to learn this game. Now, the music:

"Sailin' Shoes" by Little Feat.

"Give it Up" by Bonnie Raitt.

"Supa Dupa Fly" by Missy Elliott. From which comes this freaking awesome single/video:

comments follow on harry potter 4

First of all the theater was jammed, lines out the door for the 7:30 subtitled show and the 8 dubbed show. We got there around 7:10 and first went into the wrong line, so when we finally made it into the theater our seats kind of sucked (pretty close the screen, no raised at all, off to the side) but could have been worse. As far as the movie goes, I liked it for the visual imagination it showed. The effects, particularly in the battle scenes, were beautiful. I wasn't expecting much and that was enough to push me into the positive camp. But as far as a retelling of the book, it missed a lot of points. The whole thing about finding out where the Room of Requirement was, for example, with the cursed contract and Cho's friend betraying them and getting "SNITCH" written across her face, was a great episode in the book. The movie's kind of awkward Harry-kisses-Cho-then-thinks-she-betrayed-him-but-Snape-vindicates-her way of making up for it didn't work at all. Or the kids flying on the dead horse things: In the book, there's a whole scene where the kids who haven't seen death get coaxed up onto the horses and it's all very bizarre and cool. In the movie, the horse things are introduced in the beginning, briefly explained and then abruptly, flown on! later. Then again, that's what you get when you're trying to make a 2-hour movie out of a gigantic book. They need to bring back Cuarón, or some other director with the spine to take the book and make a really good movie out of it, rather than trying to cram a summary onto the screen. Another minor complaint: Helena Bonham Carter should never find work as an actress again, ever. She's so irritating and unbelievable I could barely watch her scenes, and she's way deep into typecast territory now as the "kind of scary/crazy but a little bit hot, maybe?" woman. All the other villains are tight, though, especially Ralf Faiehness.

In other news, briefly, I found out my final grades today. They are as follows: Sistemas Electorales (5,3); Conflicto Armado (5,9); Economía Política de Europa (6,5). In other words, B+, A, A. Judging by the grade for EPdE, I did really well on my final paper. Good news. Now I'm going to start making lunch.

going to start tagging posts

What the title says.

camille paglia

Well I'd never heard of her before today but I clicked on her column on Salon and read it all the way through. I don't agree with a lot of what she says but she's definitely way unorthodox and way unlike a lot of the other people I read on a regular basis (not so much Unsane and Safe, who I like more and more as time goes on). No knock on the liberal bloggers, Add two new books to my wish list and throw them pretty high up there: Sexual Personae and Break Blow Burn. Plus she pisses off lots of people, like John Updike and Betty Friedan--thank you, Wikipedia. Any self-proclaimed liberal who pisses off that many bona fide liberals certainly piques my curiosity. I mean, they really hate her. (The book list will eventually take true list form, along with the music list, in a future post.)

Speaking of which, scratch Andy McKee from the music list, that one song is really impressive to watch but GOD is his music boring. The one video, though...damn. Okay, I'm off to buy HP tickets so we're sure to get a seat tonight. In really shitty news, Cori is stuck in Bolivia and won't be coming into town, after all. Getting back to the States can be a nightmare. Oops better run.

two new sites

A new blog, Science and Politics, and a new website, Public Library of Science. The former is a guy in Chapel Hill, Bora Zivkovic, who writes about puppy dogs and ice cream. I mean, science and politics. He's got a couple of other blogs, too, but that one seemed like the most interesting at the moment. He just interviewed John Edwards, whose office is in Chapel Hill (the whole damn world is against me, I hate Chapel Hill...sorry, Dad), about his positions on various science related topics. The interview is here if anyone wants to read it. The latter is the organization that Zivkovic works for, an open-access science research library, mostly consisting of peer-reviewed journals broken down by discipline (genetics, pathogens, computational biology, etc.). Mom, I'm not sure if you've heard of PloS, but if not it seems like it'd be right up your alley. Pretty cool stuff.

quick note on gladwell

Because it's irking me at the moment, here's one nit-picky complaint I have about Gladwell's writing. I've just come across my umpteenth "brilliant" paper/book. The word "brilliant," like the word "stupid" or the word "intelligent" can be usefully descriptive, but when it's used over and over again in different contexts within a short space it loses most of its meaning. How is it brilliant? Is it very insightful? Particularly well-written? Extraordinarily creative? "Brilliant" doesn't tell me anything worthwhile about it at all.

This was starting to turn into a longer post but I'll wait until I've finished the book first.

summary

This is what has happened since last Thursday:
1) Finished school with final assignment turned in three minutes before the deadline due to extensive editing.
2) Went to Algarrobo with Vale, watched sunset over the Pacific, probably my last for a while. Spent the night at a nice but very cold hostel (no heater in the room), Residencial Vera. Next day went to El Tabo, walked on the beach, ate shockingly overpriced lunch (we saw the menu and thought, wow, cheap! and then it turned out the cheapness was directly related to the quantity and quality of the food...go figure). Really nice time except Saturday night I got very frustrated trying to learn a new card game.
3) Said good bye to Jesse Z and Leslie on Sunday night, to the tune of "Wet Hot American Summer," which I hadn't seen since senior year of high school and which was even more hilarious than I remembered. Great movie. Jesse's planning to visit Ann Arbor in January.
4) Last night Vale and I went out to Zanzibar for dinner, which provoked an avalanche of feelings in me that had nothing to do with leaving or going home, which I'm certain I will feel again in the future and which I will address then. They're important.
5) Talked to Mom Dad and Linc last night before dinner. Jack is in El Salvador. It sounds like things are going smoothly at the moment and that stress is low, which is great news. Hopefully that atmosphere holds until I get home, coming home to simmering clashes wouldn't really help with the whole transition thing, which is going to be hard enough as it is.

I think that pretty much covers the highlights. Cori gets into town from Bolivia tonight and she's here through Thursday morning (I think) before heading back to the states. I've got just over a week left and I'm not even sure where to begin trying to write about that at the moment, so I'll leave it for another day. Before I get back to The Tipping Point, which I'm finding better than Blink but still kind of disappointing, here's a great song by Chile's answer to the Clash, Los Prisioneros. It's title (and chorus) means, "Latin American is a village to the south of the United States." I suspect that most of the people who read this blog (all four of you) don't speak Spanish, but that's okay. Los Prisioneros were really influential in Latin America and their anger and resentment of US hegemony represent a lot of people down here.

new blog: the last plantation

The Last Plantation, commentary about racism in the US right now. Really thoughtful, well-written stuff. Check it out. Also, in case you didn't notice, I alphabetized the links list. Thank you, blogger. And now, I've got about 6.5 pages of my final done and need to start extending that. Here goes.

happy fourth of july

On this day, I will post two things. First, the national anthem in the most beautiful form I've ever heard it, the one I woke up to this morning: Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game.



And second, the transcript of Keith Olbermann's Special Comment last night, which I didn't get to watch for obvious reasons. But the transcript gave me goosebumps all the same. Keep kicking ass, Keith. (H/t Salon.com)

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on what is, in everything but name, George Bush's pardon of Scooter Libby.

"I didn't vote for him," an American once said, "But he's my president, and I hope he does a good job." That -- on this eve of the Fourth of July -- is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The man who said those 17 words -- improbably enough -- was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them when he learned of the hair's-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon, in 1960.

"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job." The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier. But there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne's voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgment that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our commander in chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world, but merely that we may function.

But just as essential to the 17 words of John Wayne is an implicit trust, a sacred trust: that the president for whom so many did not vote can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire republic.

Our generation's willingness to state "We didn't vote for him, but he's our president, and we hope he does a good job" was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.

And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with which history tasked us. We enveloped our president in 2001. And those who did not believe he should have been elected -- indeed those who did not believe he had been elected -- willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of nonpartisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and reconfigured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete. Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice. Did so despite what James Madison -- at the Constitutional Convention -- said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes "advised by" that president.

Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told, "Break the law however you wish -- the president will keep you out of prison"?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation's citizens, the ones who did not cast votes for you.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the president of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the president of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.

And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander in chief who puts party over nation. This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of "a permanent Republican majority," as if such a thing -- or a permanent Democratic majority -- is not antithetical to that upon which rests our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.

Yet our democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.

The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment.

The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws.

The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this president decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war. I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient. I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors. I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent. I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought. I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents. I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a vice president who is without conscience and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that vice president, carte blanche to Mr. Libby to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to grand juries and special counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.

"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and, ultimately, the American people."

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people. It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party's headquarters, and the labyrinthine effort to cover up that break-in and the related crimes.

And in one night, Nixon transformed it. Watergate -- instantaneously -- became a simpler issue: a president overruling the inexorable march of the law, insisting -- in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood -- that he was the law.

Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the courts. Just him. Just, Mr. Bush, as you did, yesterday.

The twists and turns of Plamegate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the "referee" of prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy, these are complex and often painful to follow and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush, and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal, the average citizen understands that, Sir.

It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the prearranged lottery all rolled into one, and it stinks.

And they know it.

Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment. It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of nonpartisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to "base," but to country, echoes loudly into history.

Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign. Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant. But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics is the only fact that remains relevant.

It is nearly July Fourth, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a king who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them -- or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them -- we would force our independence and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time -- and our leaders in Congress, of both parties -- must now live up to those standards which echo through our history. Pressure, negotiate, impeach: get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our democracy, away from its helm.

And for you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone -- anyone -- about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

holy smokes

It's July 1. Took me until 1:30 p.m. to realize it, but I'm officially going home this month. Weird, I got one of those funny heart things that I think is what people mean when they say your heart "skips a beat." Note to self: Come up with a better way to explain that sensation. Speaking of which, this song comes to mind.

allow me to explain

In my dream last night, I had posted at least three times after my last real-life post. I don't remember much else about the dream except looking at photographs of something. The large number of "fucks" arose out of frustration at the fact that this whole ticket mess appears to have been mostly my fault, and as a result the money that I had been saving up in hopes of one last cool trip before heading back to the states will instead go to getting me home. Which, it kind of goes without saying, fucking blows.

In better news, Emily and Vale and I went to Valpo yesterday and had a really good time, despite the cloudy/foggy weather and Vale feeling vomity. It's such an interesting city, I took some more photos, including some duplicates and triplicates of photos I'd taken before because it's just that cool. Emily had bought a ticket straight to Pucón from Valpo so at the end of the day, around 7:30, we went our separate ways--Vale and me back to Stgo and Emily on to Volcán Villarrica. Lucky. Today is a day for work; I meant to get up at 9 but when I did instead of resetting my alarm for 9:30 I somehow turned it off and was only awakened by some guy named Hector calling a wrong number. Twice. But now, with a cup of good coffee (on Friday Vale's mom came to town for a funeral and we went to Granos y Hojas afterwards, which was really fun because watching them interact is hilarious; anyhow the upshot is we split a bag of really nice expensive coffee there) I will start this blankety-blank 12 page final that is all that stands between me and the end of the school year. Hoo doggies.