la jour jusqu'á présent

[rfmcdonald]

• Biking at 7:30 in the morning is a good experience, on the whole, particularly since it's an interesting way to wake up in the morning, particularly with coffee and good literature. Granted that I'm not likely to repeat the experiment, still.


• I waited for Dr. MacLaine for one hour and a quarter. In the end, I left since he must not have driven up from Rice Point (a half-hour drive from the countryside) in the storm. I didn't mind this for two reasons: I have time to further refine my MacLennan essay; I had the chance to chat with Tamara at length. Tamara is an infinitely cool person, and I think I like her. I remember that Yetvushenko poem when I think of her. Hmm.


• I met up with Jen Galle in the English Lounge at 11:30. We--and another girl who was in there; Jen, if you're reading this, do you know her name?--were talking about global politics. I find that I stand out from my peers in that while I'm critical of US foreign policy, I tend to be--perhaps--more realistic than them. There are problems with US foreign policy, but we could have worse; still more to the point, you can make a cogent case that US foreign policy problems are the result of inaction (not finishing off Saddam in 1991, opposing any strengthening of world-governance institutions) than action, at least recently.


• Despite this disagreement, Jen and I were able to go to lunch over in the cafeteria. (Her, chips and fish; me, chicken noodle soup, a roll, a muffin, an orange juice, and a bag of Cheese Sticks [hard Cheezies].) it was there that we learned that the 2 o'clock exams were cancelled. So, no reason for me to have gone at all, biking aside.


• I was talking about Buffy with Dr. Furlong and Jen. It was brought to our attention that Amber, Warren's sexbot from season 5, could also qualify as one of Warren's female victims. She did pass the Turing test, after all, and he did leave her to starve to death (deprived of power) in his dorm room. He was definitely a criminal sort: weak enough, and knowing he was weak enough, to be insecure about her status; powerful enough to be a threat when he tried to prove his power. He was a misogynistic young man. If anyone ever deserved Dark!Willow's unkind attentions ...


• Jen mentioned, as we talked about Buffy, that she saw my website. (I'd E-mailed her the URL a while back, after Harry Potter.) This is tantamount to my coming out, which I'm sure she knew, particularly since we were talking about whether or not Willow was a lesbian. (I believe that she is, though I do believe based on the precedent of the very aware Vamp!Willow that she wouldn't have any objections to a heterosexual relationship with a close friend. David Bowie's right; it's confusing these days.) She said that the content was interesting, but--she quickly added--"in a good way" as we chuckled.That went nicely. No bad reactions to date.


• I passed by Dr. Walker's office to find my HIST 391 paper, and to find that I only got a lousy 84 on it. Dammit.


• Before I left, I passed by the computer lab to forward some papers of mine to my home address. I learned--from the same girl as who sat in the lounge--that my annotated bibliography for Dr. Pratt's Bibligoraphic research class is apparently on file as an example for students. Which is nice. I then showed her and another student some research techniques, including the INFOTrac database available free of charge to UPEI library subscribers and searching Google for PDF files. They seemed impressed. The other student in particular--is there such a thing as academic prowess impressing women?