The sun goes down on another week at ISU...

Some days I don't know time is passing. One day of lectures just rolls into another. Another bleary sunrise turns to glum grey by lunch and back to a vivid jelly-roll sunset fading to black behind the black shutters of this computer lab. The bit of snow last week seems like a season ago, yet I can't believe my classmates are in the final countdown to Valentine's with a "secret buddy" game. (More on that later.) This is the eerie other-worldly existence of a student.

From inside the fortress we all live in, each week starts with students trickling in through the first lecture and ends with another movie projected on the lounge wall and the next revised schedule. This week, our team project stopped spinning its wheels finally and lurched forward with new organization structure and the first (finally) team-building/topic-refining brainstorming session. Our librarian returned and we started ordering materials for our personal assignments. We recycled our lectures into even more unlikely assignment presentations and voted in our new student council, which consists of 90% recycled student council.

I apologize for the vacuum of blog entries last month - they exist virtually, but the photos are still locked away in camera. I did make progress on other fronts this week. I made contact with an internship opportunity that could be more. I fell upon my usual computer station and turned it into an office. I gave up on the bike that was stolen and refitted the old stand-by that carried me through the summer. And I finally finished The Sykaos Papers, a decidedly external view of our world.

And in my spare time, I practiced penning poetry in a few other languages and fonts. I finally made it back to the calligraphy shop to get some India ink. All so I could send my "secret buddy" on a wild goose chase of international proportions. (She doesn't suspect that the person sitting next to her who can't even read her own lecture notes by day is inking gothic script and Japanese kanji by night.) The game is to pull a series of pranks on a classmate until V-Day when we must deliver a small gift. I, on the other hand, am tormented by someone who is decidedly lazier than me, but I did get a hoot out of trying to locate my student mailbox (that took some deconstruction).

In the final analysis, this week weighs in with 10% frittery details, 30% attentive listening, 35% entertainment and 25% creative inspiration. The weekend will either end in a fully lined boat or the disappearance of one boat-dweller in a tangle of cork and contact cement.

The game is afoot.