There are worse ways to nurse a mild hangover than by spending the afternoon dozing through Tank Girl and Trading Spaces (as weird a combination as they are). I don’t feel like I’ve ever really woken up today at all, but I figure it doesn’t matter too much since I’m just about to go back to bed anyway (which is distinguished from the state in which I spent the rest of the day by the fact that I’ll be taking off my slippers and moving from the couch to the bed.)

I’d tell you how my day was, but I’m too busy playing with my new best friend. Who knew it would show up in only three days with cheap-ass standard shipping? Not me, but I’m not complaining.

I’m beginning to find Mondays and Wednesdays sort of depressing because they’re filled with anywhere from three to four and a half hours of computer science classes that I’m just not very enthusiastic about. One of them is a database class that I talked my way into depsite not having done the prerequisite - I thought it would be challenging, but it looks like it’s going to be both too easy and not interesting enough to make up for it. The teacher’s great, and it’s certainly not her fault that the class isn’t what I was expecting, but it isn’t - the only material on the syllabus that I don’t already know is material I’m not at all interested in learning (like Access). I’m reluctant to drop the course entirely because I know things can change after the first couple of weeks, but since I don’t actually need the credits, it’s always an option.

My other CS class is more challenging, but also a little frustrating. It’s primarily concerned with data structures and algorithms, which is great, but I’m one of the few people in the class who took the previous course in the series with a different professor than the one we’ve got now - his teaching style is radically different from anything I’m used to in CS, so it’s going to take a little longer for me to feel comfortable in the class. We’re still doing introductory and review stuff from last term now, but I think once we get into the meat of the course I’ll like it more.

I guess the bright side is that I don’t have any 9:30am classes this semester - although once the seminar I’m auditing begins in March, my Mondays and Wednesdays will go from 11am till 8pm.

I can always tell it’s the beginning of another semester when I’m reading for the millionth time either Descartes or the (very good) material on Jim Pryor’s site, or both (if it’s going to be one of those semesters). You, on the other hand, can always tell it’s the beginning of another semester when my posts get shorter and lighter on the content. It’s not my fault that I have to fit both sixty pages of Fear and Trembling and an hour of Queer Eye into one little Tuesday night, but I suppose we all suffer.

In what might be the best ever birthday present ever, several people made it possible for me to order my very own 40GB iPod today. It won’t be here for a few days, of course, but you can bet that until then I’ll be dreaming little iPod dreams. Chris and I recently combined our mp3 collections and we’ve got around 30GB so far - but I haven’t even bothered ripping around half of my music collection (perhaps I should have used RipDigital). 40GB should be plenty for the time being, however, and plenty too for backups and all of the other things that one can do with a tiny portable hard drive.

Thanks to everyone who combined their magical powers to form EMMAPOD UNITED (particularly my big bad brother), and also to the readers who sent a recent influx of Amazon stuff, including Choke and Tokyo.

I didn’t finish my unpacking, and Orkut’s now down (understandably so, given the security and scalability issues that have been showing up during the past day or so), and I’ve still got plenty of reading to finish for this week, but I did meet the friendliest deli cat in the world and gather the last of the cash monies needed for the Long Awaited iPod. Mmmm, iPod.

Although I’d intended to spend most of today finishing up my unpacking, I got sucked into playing with Orkut - which is just as pointlessly entertaining as was Friendster, only with nowhere near the sheer volume of suck. Being able to look at my friends list without waiting half an hour between clicks is a strange and slightly alarming experience, but at least now I have another way to keep track of people I already knew that I know!

The lingering birthday festivities officially ended tonight with one last celebratory dinner - MrTails and MrsTails took me and Chris to the Bread Bar at Tabla, where the food is far from traditionally Indian but is almost indescribably good. The strategy there (as opposed to at the more formal restaurant upstairs) is to order heaps of little appetizer plates and a couple of weird-sounding cocktails and graze for a while - all of the naan is fantastic, and the tamarind margarita is much better than it sounds. We also shared a pulled lamb sandwich (grilled on naan) that was more delicious than something made from baby sheep has any right to be. This isn’t the kind of place you’d want to come every Friday (and it’s admittedly quite pricey) but as a special occasion kind of thing, I recommend it. Go early, though - it gets crowded quickly on weekends.

So, the first week of my last semester (knock on wood): I’m doing two philosophy courses, two computer science, and I’m TAing for Logic again. All of my classes seem like they’re going to be interesting, although I expect both of the philosophies will be harder than either of the computer sciences - Existentialism & Phenomenology and Topics in Ethics. I’ve read only a very little in existentialism, and that was years ago. Similarly, I had an introductory ethics course my freshman year and another sometime later, but nothing recent, and the Topics courses all tend to be pretty challenging. But that’s a good thing, right?

Somewhere in all of this I need to find time to write my thesis. I had hoped to do some work on it over break, but the move (and associated packing, unpacking, complaining) took up most of my time, as I sort of thought it might. That’s all right. April is still pretty far away.