If you have no idea who Patrick O'Hearn is, I suggest you find out at http://www.patrickohearn.com/index.htm

Ah, finally back on campus after a long winter’s break. A new semester of (hopefully) exciting classes has just begun! Rather tired, I peck at these keys today after a nice, moderately standard first Monday back. Arrive at class, role call, syllabi; all that. Dr. Flynn gave the morning a lively splash of amusement, particularly when he got even further off task by following up on his uestion of “Goethe or Milton?” for me; he asked everyone something and followed it up a bit until we were out of time, but my response and reasoning seemed to interest him for whatever reason. An hour of great humor later, and I was off to investigate my mailbox, food, and my book situation. For any reader who has had the blessed naiveté of worrying over buying more than one twenty dollar book at the local bookstore at a time, avoid university bookstore bookshelves for the sake of coronary and wallet health… Buying books online is the way to go when one can get the same book for half of the uni’s best price, and often in better condition. This is not to attack the university bookstore, per se, but the prices can be scary, and unfortunately a trend all universities seem to take in stride. But, when it’s unavoidable because one needs a book to do reading that week, well, it’s nice to have a place nearby that has it in stock.

Another welcome back to campus came in the form of puffy white snowflakes that drifted about lazily today, or, in my experience anyway, shot right into the eye with stinging speed and accuracy while its friends grab onto the coat to laugh and look on. It was, even with all the wind whirling it about, quite exquisite, particularly accompanied by my newest CD. I, like not a few others, joined the iPod and MP3 craze a year ago when I got an iPod Nano, and have sensed delighted in its wonders, carrying hundreds of my favourite songs with me on the way to and from class, having, essentially, a personal soundtrack for each scene of the day, just like in the movies, except here one can change the soundtrack when it starts to try and steal the spotlight too much. Today I finally got hold of my copy of Glaciation, Patrick O’Hearn’s newest album. Patrick who? Yes, I listen to fairly obscure stuff. Stuff most encounter in elevators on in the background of films, or automatically associate with a collection of music to meditate or do yoga to. Real, quality new age music does not necessarily associate itself with any of this (I cannot deny that some of it does; Patrick has done a couple of soundtracks, and his music is truly moving stuff!), and I could go on, but listening to an album inspired by ice whilst walking about our snowy campus was rather satisfying and slightly ironic.

German Word: So I've been using my little German phrase calendar thing, and it's lacking the exciting phrases thus far. Well, in my opinion, anyway. And some of the pronunciation guidelines look iffy, but that's another matter entirely. And let's be random this week. How does one say 'pope' in German? Der Papst, of course!


Pictures!

I sincerely hope this looks like over a hundred dollars in text books, because just these two set me back that much… Although that’s pocket change next to most of the science department book pricetags…


This is Byron surveying the cold weather and wishing he could sit by our pond again, but I feared losing him to the winter cold, so my bay leaf tree came to the uni instead.


A blizzard?!


Not really.