* tiny but powerful *

Current Music:: Vienna Teng - "Harbor"
What I'm listening to is actually just a preview clip of the song (available here), which Brian Lee shared with me a couple weeks ago. "Harbor" is on Vienna Teng's new album that will be released on February 24. This song is so cool! It's mostly in 5/4, but the chorus alternates between a 6/4 and 7/4 pattern. The melody is really pretty. :)

Bon Bon Ball last night was very well-attended. It was SO CROWDED. I'm not sure I've ever seen Toyon that full for a dance event. And I've definitely never seen that many people turn out for a dance lesson in that small space. I taught the beginning rotary waltz lesson with Brian, and it was REALLY HARD to control the crowd. It was hard deciding whether to cater to the majority of people who had some dance experience, or the large handful of people who had never danced before at all. Eventually the floor was so crowded that we had to split the room in half, so half the couples could have a chance at successfully practicing continuous rotary, while the other half waited off on the side (and then we switched them). I was yelling the entire time, and it was so much more stressful than anything else I've ever taught. I think I'm better cut out for small group/one-on-one teaching. Mike (Lin) offered to help teach the polka lesson at Heuriger Abend if I would do it with him, but now I'm not really sure I want to. Maybe I'll be better at it next time (and maybe the crowd's average dance experience will be higher), but I'm rather wary of it now. I guess I'll wait and see how I feel about it later, and see whether anyone else actively wants to teach in my place. In any case, many thanks go to Brian for being a great (though silly) teaching partner, and for his awesome music-DJ'ing services the entire night.

Social dance is definitely on the rise here at Stanford this year. I just could not believe how many people showed up to Bon Bon Ball. There are two classes of SD1 this quarter for the first time ever, which I think is partially responsible for the abnormally large crowd. It's also possible that people were enticed by the kick-off ticket sales for Viennese Ball. I think we sold a good number last night. I was disappointed that certain friends of mine didn't come to dance, but it was also fun to dance with the newbies and some older dance friends whom I haven't seen in a long time.

We finished the waltz in Opening this morning! It was very satisfying to finally connect the two halves of the waltz that we'd already taught (before today, there was roughly a one-minute gap in the middle). We also got in some good review of the polka. I think it was a very productive rehearsal. Yay for Kari and Jeremy's effective teaching (they've been doing most of it, which I think is for the better). My co-choreographers are awesome! It's so nice to be done with all the choreography before February (even though just barely), and now we have 3.5 weeks to polish it and attend to other details. If only we had guaranteed rehearsal space for Wednesdays, I would feel very good about things.

A big group of Opening people went out to brunch at Stacks after this morning's rehearsal. It's the first social thing that Opening has done this year, which is kind of sad (there just never seemed to be a good time last quarter). More thanks to Brian for making that happen! It was fun to hang out with Opening outside of the rehearsal context or even just a general dance context, but I was so tired (from Bon Bon, and from rehearsal) that I was pretty zoned out for most of the meal. Still, I'm glad I went. I wish I had more energy to invest in becoming better friends with all the cool people on Opening. I guess I can still make the most of the time we have left together.

In other exciting news, Lisa and Brian (Maeng) and I finished a complete draft of the "Less is More" arrangement this afternoon! Now it's time for feedback and revisions. We may even have a chance of passing it out by Tuesday. That would be supercool.

Current Music:: Lonestar - "Walking in Memphis"
The piano background in this song makes me happy. (Blame Kari for the country influence.) ;) And: 1) it's Friday, 2) I'm done with my classes, 3) I had lunch with silly friends, and 4) I don't have anything scheduled until Bon Bon Ball tonight. That all makes me happy too. So yay!

Current Music:: Michael W. Smith - "Angels Unaware"
I led Bible study for the first time (ever) tonight. I was pretty nervous about it beforehand (especially since I hadn't had a whole lot of time to prepare), but once we got started it actually wasn't that stressful. I realized that it's not all that different from leading lyrics discussions in Testimony rehearsal, and after that I became a whole lot more relaxed and had a lot of fun leading the study. This quarter, we're all taking turns leading Bible study each week, for character studies on different women in the Bible. It's been really interesting so far. Tonight I led a study on Abigail, from 1 Samuel 25. I knew practically nothing about her before I prepared to lead for tonight, but I'm glad I do now! What an admirable woman: keeping level-headed under pressure during a crisis, having good judgment to make wise decisions, and being courageous enough to step in and take action. Ya'll should read about her if you have the time. :)

Opening is having no end of problems trying to get rehearsal space for the remaining 5 Wednesday nights before Viennese Ball. We permanently lost our time slot in Roble Dance Studio (thanks a lot, Dance Division), and we can't get Roble Gym, Studio 42, Elliott, EV Hacienda Commons, MemAud stage, SLE lounge, or the Zapata basement. Our only glimmer of hope is MAYBE getting the A3C Ballroom, and that's only if we're lucky, if the people who have it booked may not actually use it from 10-11pm. I suppose there is also the Knoll, but that was a stressful experience last year, and in the dark it would be even harder to find. The last alternative (which we may resort to for tonight) is using the Castano/Lantana side of Manzanita Dining Hall -- and the only reason we have that option is because Trang, the Co-Chair of this year's Viennese Ball, is also the producer of "Kiss Me, Kate!", the musical that rehearses in Manzanita on Wednesdays. (Plus, there's like a million other Steering people involved in KMK, including Kari.) Manzanita will be tough to rehearse in because 1) it's carpeted, and 2) we'd have to move all the tables/chairs in order to clear enough space, but at least the room itself is big enough to hold our choreography formations. We're really desperate at this point. The Ball is 4.5 weeks away, and without Wed. nights we'd only have 4 more Saturday rehearsals left. ARGH, this is so frustrating!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHI-EN!!! :-D MEEP!

Current Music:: Relient K - "Less is More"
Lisa and I are already halfway done with arranging this song! Go us! :-D

And in Opening this morning, we got through over 2 minutes of new choreography. That means there's only about a minute left of the waltz to teach -- and last Saturday we finished getting through all of the polka. This is good. This means we should (hopefully) have sufficient polishing time (despite the fact that our Wed. rehearsal space situation is rather precarious). Go Opening!

Current Music:: Sister Hazel - "All For You"
I actually finished all my writing assignments in time for this morning's classes. Amazing. (Thanks, God.) And now it's Friday, so I can breathe a little more easily. Yay for Fridays!

Tonight I am going home to visit my mom in the hospital. Please pray for our time together - it's hard for me to juggle everything going on, so I want to make the most of the time I have with her (and my brother). Thanks. :)

In other news, I'm finally getting around to catching up with my non-Tmony friends. Yay!! Last night I had dinner with Annie (I don't consider her strictly "Tmony" because we were never in Tmony *together*--and isn't it cool that my action group does prayer buddies now?), today I had lunch with Mindi, next Monday is lunch with Theo, next Wednesday is dinner with Emily, and next Thursday is (maybe) dinner with Chris Wallis. Plus I might get to have some girl-time with Erin this weekend. So I'm not really all sucked up into Testimony, see? If I don't see you on a regular basis (or even if I do), let me know if you want to eat together sometime!

I had Chinese class this afternoon, so I guess I should say this in Mandarin too:

Gong xi fa cai ~ Xin nian kuai le!

Our teacher brought in some goodies for us at the end of class. It was nice to get a little bit of authentic Chinese-New-Year-ness, even though I'm away from home.

Gong hay fat choy ~ Sun lin fai lok!

Happy New Year!

Current Music:: Caedmon's Call - "40 Acres"
I finally switched into the Advanced Swimming class today! (Well actually I'm not sure whether I'm in "Advanced Swimming" or "Swim Conditioning," but it doesn't really matter.) It's the first time I've done a swim workout in at least two years. I am so out of shape, it is very sad. But it was GREAT to be back in the water. (The cloudy weather outside reminded me of the good ol' summer swim practice days when we used to get in the pool at 7:30am.) This morning, one of the things we did was a set of twelve 50's in reverse IM order. For those of you who don't know, IM order is fly-back-breast-free, so this meant doing three 50's each for freestyle, breast-stroke, backstroke, and butterfly. I was so exhausted by the time I finished the backstroke laps that there was no way I was getting through 150 of butterfly. I'm not sure I could do that even when I was in my best shape. :-P So I sort of flopped through half a lap of fly before I wussed out back to free. Oh man, I am definitely going to be sore tomorrow--especially the muscles in front of my shoulders and behind my shoulderblades--but it'll be a good kind of sore. Swimming on Thursday morning is going to be interesting (sometimes the second day is even harder), but I'm looking forward to it. I've really missed my high school sports, so this is quite exciting. Maybe one of these days I will figure out how to play badminton around here...

I have been nearly all better since about yesterday morning. Yay! I was even able to sing at church!! :-D I appreciate my voice sooo much right now. You don't realize how much you use it until something goes wrong with it--and life suddenly becomes really inconvenient.

I got to see my kids again! I hadn't been at Kids Community since Thanksgiving (due to Christmas Show and finals and tour and winter break and moving my brother and being sick), which is far too long ago. I love my kids so much. :) Pastor Keith's sons are so adorable! The oldest one, JD, is in my class, and yesterday the other two joined in our game of Duck-Duck-Goose when their mother came by at the end of service. *So* adorable! And Charlotte still always wants to hold my hand.

The message at church yesterday was really amazing. Really, really relevant to my life right now. I wish so much that my mom could have been there to hear it. We're starting a new message series on "Can Things Really Change?", and yesterday's was about how "God Loves to Make All Things New." It was so well-timed. I was crying a lot. But they were good tears.

I appreciate Pastor Keith's teaching so much. His words are always so clear and poignant. Something particularly encouraging from yesterday, about Isaiah 43:18-19 (quoted over on the left):: "God loves to do new, restoring, life-giving things for people. And He wants to do that in your life and relationships too. In fact, He wants to do that deep in your own being. He wants to restore you, not just your circumstances. He wants to make you new, not just the things you experience and your relationships. God literally wants to make a new you from the old, broken, and confused you that grew up and got shaped apart from God. The Jewish Scriptures poetically describe this as God bringing beauty from ashes."

I, too, am immensely thankful to God for His relentless pursuit of us and His tireless commitment to real and lasting change. It's reassuring to know that truth doesn't depend on how I feel about it. God is bigger than that.

My Thankful List from the whole week::
(please forgive me if I forget anything...I haven't been operating with the best memory!)
- Tmony makes me happy
- Mike brought me cookies baked from scratch
- seeing lots of Tmony people at Kevin's birthday celebration
- getting to see Chi-En
- being able to play violin at RUF worship when I had no voice
- my professors were very understanding about me being sick
- God took care of my mommy when I couldn't be at home
- my mom is so much stronger now (I'm so proud of you, and I love you)
- Jenn coming over to pray for me, and accompanying me to dinner and walking across campus
- Tony calling to see how I was doing
- having Jeff Lee in my life
- having Eric Lowe in my life
- making it through Opening rehearsal (kind of), even though dancing made my head throb like no other
- Justin knowing that I wanted him to come over, even though I wouldn't ask
- not being afraid to cry around my friends
- Justin making me hot tea and making sure I took my Tylenol
- Jenny bringing me sticky rice at 1:00 in the morning
- having so many people praying for me and my family
- Eric's mom's email of advice and encouragement (she is so caring to me, it is such a blessing!)
- Chi-En finally got to meet Flop!
- Minna coming by to lend me her CD's and bring me baked treats + her stuffed Eeyore to keep me company
- Jeff (Russell)'s email of encouragement
- Gavan offering to bring me soup, and his little messages of cheer
- finishing one of my papers in time for class, and being offered an extension on the other one
- getting a bit of hangout time with Kari
- getting so many messages of well-wishes from everyone
- catching a quick dinner with Bryan (a little time is better than none!)
- having a 3-day weekend ahead to catch up on rest and work

How could I say it has been a bad week? :)

Thanks so much for your prayers, everyone. God is sooo faithful.

I love you, Mommy!

Wilbur had rice porridge today. ("Jook"!) And it was actually pretty good. That made me happy. It was really hard to make myself go to dinner because I have absolutely no appetite, and I just didn't want to eat. But then I also knew that 5 hours later I would have regretted not eating. So I went, eventually (at 7:10). I think that when I'm sick, my body really wants home Chinese food. Like, eating non-Chinese food just takes extra energy out of me or something. I don't know why. Kinda weird.

Sometimes life is hard.

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes..., so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests." - Ephesians 6:10-18.

Please pray.

Current Music:: Rescue - "So Subtly"
This song is so pretty. I'm excited about singing it with Testimony soon! It will be fun to arrange/transcribe, too.

But actually, all thoughts relating to singing are slightly frustrating right now. I want to SING, but I CAN'T. I even suck at TALKING right now. I sound alternately raspy and squeaky, and then devolve into bouts of dry coughing. Singing is out of the question because I literally cannot produce any notes. I WANT MY VOICE BACK! This is so frustrating!! Argh!

Current Music:: Relient K - "Less Is More"
I like my Tuesdays. They are low-stress. Even though I have weekly quizzes for my Mandarin class on Tuesdays -- because they're easy. Yay!

I think I'm leaning toward switching to the Swimming class (or just swimming on my own during that hour), but I still went to Swing today because I can't find my goggles and I need to get new ones first. I feel bad, though, because it seems like the class is still slightly short on leads...and if I leave, it'll make gender balance even worse. But I really want to swim! So... I hope Richard doesn't get mad at me.

Today I woke up to find my voice half-gone. It's kind of amusing that my voice cracks at least twice per sentence, but mostly it's just kind of annoying. Once again, this will be inconvenient for Testimony rehearsal this afternoon. But pattern has shown that my voice usually gets better over the course of the day (mornings are icky), so I'll just hope for the best. I may not be very much help during worship for RUF tonight...so I think I'll be on the violin instead of singing. :-P

Oddly enough, Testimony rehearsal energized me more than it tired me. (This phenomenon occurred last year as well. I'm not complaining.) We had a good rehearsal. :) By the end of it, I could actually kinda sing, too. And even more oddly, singing hurt less than talking or swallowing does right now. Why is that?? That's so counterintuitive.

Heeheehee. I was pleased to witness the first (of the year) Tmony-diversion-into-social-dance at tonight's rehearsal! It's so exciting that there are SIX new members are taking Social Dance 1 this quarter: Lisa, Victoria, David, Brian, Jarreau, and Kevin. Plus Tony already knows basic swing and a little waltz. And Jeff and Jenny already dance. That makes 10 out of 17 of us! Not quite the 12/15 record we had two years ago, but it's getting there. ;)

I can barely talk. :( Tonight's rehearsal is going to be tough. And it was really difficult to go through worship today at church and not be able to sing. I wanted to sooo much. But owww. So there was no singing for Tina.

On the bright side, I was blessed with some surprise visitors last night! Soon after I returned from Ann's wedding, Tony, Victoria, and Lisa showed up at my door with hot tea and fruit snacks and medicine. My Tmony freshmen are so good to me! Thank you guys! I feel loved. :) They stuck around for awhile just hanging out and helping me decide where to put stuff on my walls (yes, believe it or not, I still hadn't decorated my walls, and after last night it's still only half done). I am pleased with the assortment of event posters now above the desk corner of my room, and I'm excited about the supercool idea they gave me for the wall next to my bed. Decorating is fun. (I just tend to be perfectionist about it, so I postpone putting anything up until I have the whole thing planned out in my head, which basically results in nothing ever happening.)

You all should meet Flop. :) And Flop needs to meet Plop! They can be friends! Heehee. (I lubba you, Chi-En.)

Short thoughts::
- Ann and Matt's wedding was a beautiful ceremony. It was a great blessing to see the beginning of such a God-centered marriage.
- I had lunch with David and Mindi today, despite some car troubles on their end. It was really encouraging to catch up about each other's breaks and hear them be so real with me.
- Last night I ended up stopping by Jammix for a little while after all. My headache had subsided a bit (yay for Tylenol, graciously provided by a Kimball neighbor), so I danced just a few songs, but I didn't want to push it. I'm glad I caught the performance by the Knotts Dance Company -- it was quite cool! But then I came back for bed.
- This morning was no good. I woke up and more or less couldn't move. My head was pounding and the sheer thought of going anywhere made me want to cry. I dragged myself out of bed long enough to swallow another Tylenol pill, but I definitely didn't make it to Opening rehearsal. When I woke up a couple hours later, the Tylenol was helping enough for me to be functionally mobile (but not enough for me to move around very quickly without sending shooting pain through my temples), so I went to the last 45 minutes or so of rehearsal just to watch.
- Methinks going to Kids' Community tomorrow would be a bad idea...

Congratulations to Ann and Matt today! May the Lord bless your marriage richly and abundantly, and may He watch over you and grow you closer to Him always.

This is going to be the first "normal" wedding I am attending at which I am not also performing. Yay!

(I'm still sick. Worse today, actually. Tylenol Flu, do your thing, please!)

I am sick. :( Boooo. :( :(

I woke up this morning with a sore throat and a stuffy/runny nose, and then a nice little headache decided to join in just as I got to my 9:00 class. Blarrrg. I still had lunch with Eric as planned, and it was very nice to see him but I had to warn him not to judge how interested I was in our conversation based on my facial expression. I feel really poopy. So I am going to sleep now and hope that I feel better by tonight. There is a Jammix, and I was going to have to be late anyway (there's an 8pm Music Dept. performance for which my Music 121 class requires mandatory attendance) but now I'm unsure whether I'll be in any shape to go (dance, that is). And I don't want to get other people sick either. At least I don't feel like I'll be missing out a *whole* lot because so many people are gone on ski trips this weekend, so I think Jammix will be a lot emptier than usual. I guess we'll see how I feel in a few hours.

Ahhhh! I *thought* I had finally settled on my classes for the quarter, but I just found out from Tony about the Advanced Swimming class which meets at the same time as Swing! I am sooo tempted to do the swimming class because I keep saying that I want to get back into swimming regularly but I never get around to it (especially since the public hours are usually so inconvenient). It would be good to get back into a routine and stay in better shape than I've been since getting to Stanford (I miss all my high school sports...). Now I can't decide! At least neither class meets again until next Tuesday, but...ack, what to do??

In other news, tonight was Ann's bachelorette party. The group consisted mostly of our action group, plus Ann's sister, Ann's fiance's sister, and one of Ann's friends from high school. We played a couple fun(for us)/embarrassing(for her) games over dinner at their hotel, and then our posse headed over to Alberto's for a beginning salsa lesson -- dressed up in really obnoxious dresses, no less! (Ann's was the craziest of them all: an old flimsy wedding dress from a thrift store, on which each of us wrote messages of "advice" for her honeymoon/marriage. It was hilarious!) We changed out of the dresses before any actual dancing, but it was great fun while it lasted. Anyway, I've been hearing of Alberto's for forever but had never been there before, so it was good to see the place. I ended up sitting out the last half of the lesson because there were too many girls (and it was getting kind of boring for me anyway). I recognized a couple familiar faces (from Stanford, and from the hustle place) but for the most part I didn't see very many people I knew. We left fairly soon after the lesson (this was not a dancy group) in favor of getting pearl milk tea down the street. It was fun to hang out with Ann one last time and do silly girly things. Our action group will miss her dearly. But I am very excited about her wedding this Saturday! (How is it that I already have friends who are getting married??)

I unfortunately had to opt out of the post-party hanging out back at their hotel, because I have a writing assignment due tomorrow for Music 41. So I'm going to work on that now. This quarter isn't wasting any time getting underway...

So I just had what seemed like the longest day EVER. I was out of my room pretty much all day from 9am to 11pm. I had two classes in the morning (Music 121 and Music 41), then a quick lunch and shopping trip for a friend who's getting married this weekend, then an arranging team meeting, then visiting a very dear girl named Chi-En, then more class from 4:15-5:30 (ChemE 120A), then a Core dinner meeting, then Crusade weekly meeting, *insert short breather period here*, and finally Opening rehearsal from 9:55-10:55. Whew. I am *tired*. Thank goodness not all Wednesdays are going to be like this. I hope hope hope my violin lessons don't get scheduled for Wednesdays again.

I guess I am going to take Living Traditions of Swing after all. Richard emailed me and said the class needs more leads, so I'm willing to hop on the bandwagon if it'll help out the class. My Tues/Thurs. will mostly be "fun days." (Except for Fluid Mechanics on Thurs.)

Here's what we all (well, really just my mom) have been waiting for...

Tina's Winter Quarter 2004
- Music 121 (Analysis of Tonal Music, 4 units) -- MF 9:00-10:30am, W 9:00-9:50am
- Music 41 (Music History 1600-1815, 4 units) -- MW 11:00am-12:30pm, F 11:00-11:50am
- Music 174A (Violin: Individual Instruction, 3 units) -- TBD
- ChemE 120A (Fluid Mechanics, finishing Incomplete) -- MWTh 4:00-5:15pm
- Dance 147 (Living Traditions of Swing, 2 units) -- TTh 10:00-10:50am
- Chinese 07 (2nd Qtr. Conversational Mandarin, 2 units) -- TTh 12:15-1:05pm

I only have one class on Tuesdays: 2nd Quarter Conversational Mandarin. It's been a full year since I took 1st Quarter (Fall 2002), so I was a little worried that I'd be too rusty. But I remembered more than I thought I did, and my pronunciation still managed to be better than most people in the class. And the professor even remembered me! I was so surprised -- I walked in, and her face immediately lit up with recognition and she exclaimed, "Ni hao! Long time no see! Welcome back!" That was exciting.

I was considering taking Living Traditions of Swing as a lead, but I decided that Conversational Mandarin would be a better unit-filler. (I need at least one "fun" class because I'm finishing my Incomplete in ChemE120A Fluid Mechanics this quarter, which doesn't count as new units.) I also just didn't want to bother going to the early morning signups yesterday. I figured that if they expected the class to be full, I wouldn't want to take a spot away from someone else. I didn't bother showing up to the class this morning, but then Jeff Lee emailed to tell me that Richard is saving me a spot, because I forgot to drop the class on Axess. So maybe I'll reconsider, depending on how full the class really is and what gender balance looks like. I'd only do it as a lead, since I already took Living Traditions as a follow last year. We'll see.

I'm not ready to be back at school, but here I am anyway. I got back to campus last night around 9:15, after spending the afternoon/evening helping my brother move into his dorm at UC Davis. He took last quarter off, so now he's finally starting college -- yay Tim!! My little brudder is so grown up now. It was fun to see his dorm room and exercise my dorm-furniture-arranging expertise. Unfortunately, my mom wasn't feeling well enough to come along, but that meant I could drive straight from Davis to Stanford without stopping by Castro Valley first. So much driving = Tina pooped. But hungry, too, so Justin, David, Jenny, and I went to get pizza. And then I slept for 10 hours! Yay!

Today has been Errands Galore. Checking mail, shipping CD's, visiting the bank, paying bills, buying books -- you name it. We had a huge Tmony-ish group of people at Wilbur for lunch, who all went traipsing around campus together for the aforementioned errands, and apparently we have similar plans for dinner tonight too. Yay for Tmony hilarity! It's wonderful to see friends again. :)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Dana has declared 2004 to be The Year of the Scarf (I had forced her to wear my extra scarf during tour, because it's cold in the Northwest! Later she told me, "I asked for a scarf for Christmas, after my positive T-Mobile scarf experience!"). Then again, she has also diagnosed me with "a near-fatal case of DDS. No, not Dolby Digital Sound, but the shocking Disney Deficiency Syndrome." Yeah...she found out that I haven't seen some of the older Disney classics, and went kind of berserk on me. She has a whole "treatment plan" outlined for winter quarter. Oh boy. See what I mean about the Tmony freshmen having so much energy?

It's kind of weird thinking that it's 2004 now, because for me, "2004" was the next big number after "2000". I remember four years ago at New Years when it was weird to think that it was finally my graduating year from high school. Now, 2004 should have that same ring to it too...except I'm not graduating. Socially at Stanford I've always been the "Class of 2004", but I guess I'm not really anymore. Oh well -- I just tell myself that I'm using the extra year by which I had gotten ahead when I skipped kindergarten. So I'm actually the same age as most people in the Class of 2005. Heehee.

Last week, I found out about *5* other people from my high school graduating class who are also going to take a fifth year for college. Plus, my brother says he knows a lot of people his year who are already planning on the same thing. I guess it's becoming more and more common these days. People are more willing to take time off, too, which is good. I am a big advocate of taking time off.

On an unrelated note, welcome back from Urbana, everyone who went!

On another unrelated note, I changed my desktop wallpaper for the first time in two years. It is now this! Yay!